Page:Montesquieu - The spirit of laws.djvu/98

46 ''so much as one executioner; they are honest citizens and brave soldiers. We jointly therefore beseech your majesty to command our arms and lives in things that are practicable.'' This great and generous soul looked upon a base action as a thing impossible.

There is nothing that honor more strongly recommends to the nobility, than to serve their prince in a military capacity. In fact this is their favourite profession, because its dangers, its success, and even its miscarriages are the road to grandeur. And yet this very law of its own making, honor chuses to explain; and if it happens to be affronted, requires or permits us to retire.

It insists also that we should be at liberty either to seek or to reject employments; a liberty which it prefers even to an ample fortune.

Honor therefore has its supreme laws, to which education is obliged to conform. The chief of these are, that we are allowed to set a value upon our fortune, but it is absolutely forbidden to set any value upon our lives.

The second is, that when we are raised to a post or rank, we should never do or permit any thing which may seem to imply that we look upon ourselves as inferior to the rank we hold.

The third is, that those things which honor forbids are more rigorously forbidden, when the laws do not concur in the prohibition; and those it commands are more strongly insisted upon, when they happen not to be commanded by law. Rh