Suppose you are making a visit to a business friend and he leaves you
alone in his office for a few minutes, while he is called out by some
emergency--and suppose he has left on his desk an envelope containing
business secrets which you could profit by--and suppose you take
advantage of your opportunity, open the envelope, glance at the papers,
get the information and later on make good use of it?

An individual who is capable of doing that must be rather lacking in the
sense of honor.

If a business man happened to tell his wife something of a confidential
nature, as some husbands do, and the wife were indiscreet enough to
mention it to your wife, without realizing its full import, and your
wife repeated it to you, and you thereupon proceeded to communicate it
to the business man's competitor--you might not break any law, or do
anything dishonest, and your intellect might tell you there was profit
for yourself to be gained by it--and many another person in your place
might jump at the chance--but for all that, there ought to be a feeling
within you to prevent you doing it, because it would not be honorable.

In the world of politics, some people might feel that it is not
honorable to use a position of public trust for private ends.

Suppose you have it in your power to make an appointment which might
prove very lucrative to a certain type of individual who has no scruples
about graft. Among your political henchmen there is just such an
individual and he wants the appointment. There is another man whom you
might appoint, if you chose to, a high-minded, public-spirited man,
fitter and better for it in every way; but the political henchman was an
important factor in obtaining for you the office which you now occupy;
his good will and influence may be very helpful in your future
campaigns, whereas the other man has done nothing for you and is without
political influence. If you gave him the appointment, you would make an
enemy of your henchman and his followers. Your self-interest and your
intellect combine in showing you what a mistake that would be.

Usually a politician, by the time he has been selected by other
politicians as a candidate for office, has become amenable to reason and
may be counted on to avoid such a mistake. But occasionally a gentleman
of another sort finds himself in this position and he refuses to do the
usual thing, because it goes counter to an inner feeling--his sense of
honor.

So it is