l wants, and the more extensive are its
notions of honor corresponding to those wants. The rules of honor will
therefore always be less numerous amongst a people not divided into
castes than amongst any other. If ever any nations are constituted in
which it may even be difficult to find any peculiar classes of society,
the notion of honor will be confined to a small number of precepts,
which will be more and more in accordance with the moral laws adopted
by the mass of mankind. Thus the laws of honor will be less peculiar and
less multifarious amongst a democratic people than in an aristocracy.
They will also be more obscure; and this is a necessary consequence
of what goes before; for as the distinguishing marks of honor are less
numerous and less peculiar, it must often be difficult to distinguish
them. To this, other reasons may be added. Amongst the aristocratic
nations of the Middle Ages, generation succeeded generation in vain;
each family was like a never-dying, ever-stationary man, and the state
of opinions was hardly more changeable than that of conditions. Everyone
then had always the same objects before his eyes, which he contemplated
from the same point; his eyes gradually detected the smallest details,
and his discernment could not fail to become in the end clear and
accurate. Thus not only had the men of feudal times very extraordinary
opinions in matters of honor, but each of those opinions was present to
their minds under a clear and precise form.

This can never be the case in America, where all men are in constant
motion; and where society, transformed daily by its own operations,
changes its opinions together with its wants. In such a country men
have glimpses of the rules of honor, but they have seldom time to fix
attention upon them.

But even if society were motionless, it would still be difficult to
determine the meaning which ought to be attached to the word "honor." In
the Middle Ages, as each class had its own honor, the same opinion
was never received at the same time by a large number of men; and this
rendered it possible to give it a determined and accurate form, which
was the more easy, as all those by whom it was received, having a
perfectly identical and most peculiar position, were naturally disposed
to agree upon the points of a law which was made for themselves alone.
Thus the code of honor became a complete and detailed system, in which
everything was anticipated and provided for bef