a man
does, but on what he suffers, the obstacles he encounters; differing
from the honor which prevails in all else, in consisting, not in what
he says or does himself, but in what another man says or does. His
honor is thus at the mercy of every man who can talk it away on the
tip of his tongue; and if he attacks it, in a moment it is gone for
ever,--unless the man who is attacked manages to wrest it back again
by a process which I shall mention presently, a process which involves
danger to his life, health, freedom, property and peace of mind. A
man's whole conduct may be in accordance with the most righteous and
noble principles, his spirit may be the purest that ever breathed, his
intellect of the very highest order; and yet his honor may disappear
the moment that anyone is pleased to insult him, anyone at all who has
not offended against this code of honor himself, let him be the most
worthless rascal or the most stupid beast, an idler, gambler, debtor,
a man, in short, of no account at all. It is usually this sort of
fellow who likes to insult people; for, as Seneca[1] rightly remarks,
_ut quisque contemtissimus et ludibrio est, ita solutissimae est_, the
more contemptible and ridiculous a man is,--the readier he is with his
tongue. His insults are most likely to be directed against the very
kind of man I have described, because people of different tastes can
never be friends, and the sight of pre-eminent merit is apt to
raise the secret ire of a ne'er-do-well. What Goethe says in the
_Westoestlicher Divan_ is quite true, that it is useless to complain
against your enemies; for they can never become your friends, if your
whole being is a standing reproach to them:--

_Was klagst du ueber Feinde?
Sollten Solche je warden Freunde
Denen das Wesen, wie du bist,
Im stillen ein ewiger Vorwurf ist_?

[Footnote 1: _De Constantia_, 11.]

It is obvious that people of this worthless description have good
cause to be thankful to the principle of honor, because it puts them
on a level with people who in every other respect stand far above
them. If a fellow likes to insult any one, attribute to him,
for example, some bad quality, this is taken _prima facie_ as a
well-founded opinion, true in fact; a decree, as it were, with all the
force of law; nay, if it is not at once wiped out in blood, it is a
judgment which holds good and valid to all time. In other words,
the man who is insulted remains--in the eyes of all