Page:Democracy in America (Reeve, v. 2).djvu/309

Rh chief characteristic of their own rank; they apply its different rules with all the warmth of personal interest, and they feel, (if I may use the expression,) a passion for complying with its dictates.

This truth is extremely obvious in the old black-letter law-books on the subject of trial by battel. The nobles, in their disputes, were bound to use the lance and sword; whereas the villains used only sticks amongst themselves, “inasmuch as,” to use the words of the old books, “villains have no honour.” This did not mean, as it may be imagined at the present day, that these people were contemptible; but simply that their actions were not to be judged by the same rules which were applied to the actions of the aristocracy.

It is surprising, at first sight, that when the sense of honour is most predominant, its injunctions are usually most strange; so that the further it is removed from common reason, the better it is obeyed; whence it has sometimes been inferred, that the laws of honour were strengthened by their own extravagance. The two things indeed originate from the same source, but the one is not derived from the other. Honour becomes fantastical in proportion to the peculiarity of the wants which it denotes, and the paucity of the men by whom those wants are felt; and it is because it denotes wants of this kind that its influence is great. Thus the notion of honour is not the stronger for being fantastical, but it is fantastical and strong from the self-same cause.

Further, amongst aristocratic nations each rank is different, but all ranks are fixed; every man occupies a place in his own sphere which he cannot relinquish, and he lives there amidst other men who are bound by the same ties. Amongst these nations no man can either hope or fear to escape being seen; no man is placed so low but that he has a stage of his own, and none can avoid censure or applause by his obscurity. In democratic states on the contrary, where all the