complying with its dictates. This truth is
extremely obvious in the old black-letter lawbooks 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 honor." 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 honor 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 honor were strengthened
by their own extravagance. The two things indeed originate from the
same source, but the one is not derived from the other. Honor 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 honor is not the stronger for being fantastical, but
it is fantastical and strong from the selfsame 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 members of the
community are mingled in the same crowd and in constant agitation,
public opinion has no hold on men; they disappear at every instant, and
elude its power. Consequently the dictates of honor will be there less
imperious and less stringent; for honor acts solely for the public
eye--differing in this respect from mere virtue, which lives upon itself
contented with its own approval.

If the reader has distinctly apprehended all that goes before, he will
understand that there is a close and necessary relation between the
inequality of social conditions and what has here been styled honor--a
relation which, if I am not mistaken, had not before been clear