d effectively applied. The task may, from
time to time, require the drastic hand of the moral or religious
reformer, but, unless some one has the courage to undertake it, we are
in constant danger of neglecting the weightier matters of the law, while
we are busy with the mint and cummin and anise of fashion and
convention. But, notwithstanding the danger of exaggeration and
misapplication, there can be no doubt of the vast importance and the
generally beneficial results of a keen sensitiveness to the opinions of
our fellow-men. Without the powerful aid of this sanction, the
restraints of morality and religion would often be totally ineffective.

When the social sanction operates, not through society generally, but
through particular sections of society, it may be called a Law of
Honour, a term which originated in the usages of Chivalry. In a complex
and civilized form of society, such as our own, there may be many such
laws of honour, and the same individual may be subject to several of
them. Thus each profession, the army, the navy, the clerical, the legal,
the medical, the artistic, the dramatic profession, has its own peculiar
code of honour or rules of professional etiquette, which its members can
only infringe on pain of ostracism, or, at least, of loss of
professional reputation. The same is the case with trades, and is
specially exemplified in the instance of trades-unions, or, their
mediaeval prototypes, the guilds. A college or a school, again, has its
own rules and traditions, which the tutor or undergraduate, the master
or boy, can often only violate at his extreme peril. Almost every club,
institution, and society affords another instance in point. The class of
'gentlemen,' too, that is to say, speaking roughly, the upper and upper
middle ranks of society, claim to have a code of honour of their own,
superior to that of the ordinary citizen. A breach of this code is
called 'ungentlemanly' rather than wrong or immoral or unjust or unkind.
So far as this code insists on courtesy of demeanour and delicacy of
feeling and conduct, it is a valuable complement to the ordinary rules
of morality, though, so far as it fulfils this function, it plainly
ought not to be the exclusive possession of one class, but ought to be
communicated, by means of example and education, to the classes who are
now supposed to be bereft of it. There are points in this code, however,
such as that the payment of 'debts of honour' should tak