18. Chapter XVIII: Of Honor In The United States And In Democratic
Communities
It would seem that men employ two very distinct methods in the public
estimation [8] of the actions of their
fellowmen; at one time they judge them by those simple notions of right
and wrong which are diffused all over the world; at another they refer
their decision to a few very special notions which belong exclusively to
some particular age and country. It often happens that these two rules
differ; they sometimes conflict: but they are never either entirely
identified or entirely annulled by one another. Honor, at the periods
of its greatest power, sways the will more than the belief of men; and
even whilst they yield without hesitation and without a murmur to its
dictates, they feel notwithstanding, by a dim but mighty instinct, the
existence of a more general, more ancient, and more holy law, which they
sometimes disobey although they cease not to acknowledge it. Some
actions have been held to be at the same time virtuous and dishonorable
-a refusal to fight a duel is a case in point.
I think these peculiarities may be otherwise explained than
by the mere caprices of certain individuals and nations, as has
hitherto been the customary mode of reasoning on the subject.
Mankind is subject to general and lasting wants that have
engendered moral laws, to the neglect of which men have ever and
in all places attached the notion of censure and shame: to
infringe them was "to do ill" -"to do well" was to conform to
them. Within the bosom of this vast association of the human
race, lesser associations have been formed which are called
nations; and amidst these nations further subdivisions have
assumed the names of classes or castes. Each of these
associations forms, as it were, a separate species of the human
race; and though it has no essential difference from the mass of
mankind, to a certain extent it stands apart and has certain
wants peculiar to itself. To these special wants must be
attributed the modifications which affect in various degrees and
in different countries the mode of considering human actions, and
the estimate which ought to be formed of them. It is the general
and permanent interest of mankind that men should not kill each
other: but it may happen to be the peculiar and temporary
interest of a people or a class to justify, or even to honor,
homicide.
Honor is simply that peculiar rule, founded upon a peculiar
state of society, by the application of which a people or a class
allot praise or blame. Nothing is more unproductive to the mind
than an abstract idea; I therefore hasten to call in the aid of
facts and examples to illustrate my meaning.
I select the most extraordinary kind of honor which was ever
known in the world, and that which we are best acquainted with,
viz., aristocratic honor springing out of feudal society. I
shall explain it by means of the principle already laid down, and
I shall explain the principle by means of the illustration. I am
not here led to inquire when and how the aristocracy of the
Middle Ages came into existence, why it was so deeply severed
from the remainder of the nation, or what founded and
consolidated its power. I take its existence as an established
fact, and I am endeavoring to account for the peculiar view which
it took of the greater part of human actions. The first thing
that strikes me is, that in the feudal world actions were not
always praised or blamed with reference to their intrinsic worth,
but that they were sometimes appreciated exclusively with
reference to the person who was the actor or the object of them,
which is repugnant to the general conscience of mankind. Thus
some of the actions which were indifferent on the part of a man
in humble life, dishonored a noble; others changed their whole
character according as the person aggrieved by them belonged or
did not belong to the aristocracy. When these different notions
first arose, the nobility formed a distinct body amidst the
people, which it commanded from the inaccessible heights where it
was ensconced. To maintain this peculiar position, which
constituted its strength, it not only required political
privileges, but it required a standard of right and wrong for its
own especial use. That some particular virtue or vice belonged
to the nobility rather than to the humble classes -that certain
actions were guiltless when they affected the villain, which were
criminal when they touched the noble -these were often arbitrary
matters; but that honor or shame should be attached to a man's
actions according to his condition, was a result of the internal
constitution of an aristocratic community. This has been
actually the case in all the countries which have had an
aristocracy; as long as a trace of the principle remains, these
peculiarities will still exist; to debauch a woman of color
scarcely injures the reputation of an American -to marry her
dishonors him.
In some cases feudal honor enjoined revenge, and stigmatized
the forgiveness of insults; in others it imperiously commanded
men to conquer their own passions, and imposed forgetfulness of
self. It did not make humanity or kindness its law, but it
extolled generosity; it set more store on liberality than on
benevolence; it allowed men to enrich themselves by gambling or
by war, but not by labor; it preferred great crimes to small
earnings; cupidity was less distasteful to it than avarice;
violence it often sanctioned, but cunning and treachery it
invariably reprobated as contemptible. These fantastical notions
did not proceed exclusively from the caprices of those who
entertained them. A class which has succeeded in placing itself
at the head of and above all others, and which makes perpetual
exertions to maintain this lofty position, must especially honor
those virtues which are conspicuous for their dignity and
splendor, and which may be easily combined with pride and the
love of power. Such men would not hesitate to invert the natural
order of the conscience in order to give those virtues precedence
before all others. It may even be conceived that some of the
more bold and brilliant vices would readily be set above the
quiet, unpretending virtues. The very existence of such a class
in society renders these things unavoidable.
The nobles of the Middle Ages placed military courage
foremost amongst virtues, and in lieu of many of them. This was
again a peculiar opinion which arose necessarily from the
peculiarity of the state of society. Feudal aristocracy existed
by war and for war; its power had been founded by arms, and by
arms that power was maintained; it therefore required nothing
more than military courage, and that quality was naturally
exalted above all others; whatever denoted it, even at the
expense of reason and humanity, was therefore approved and
frequently enjoined by the manners of the time. Such was the
main principle; the caprice of man was only to be traced in
minuter details. That a man should regard a tap on the cheek as
an unbearable insult, and should be obliged to kill in single
combat the person who struck him thus lightly, is an arbitrary
rule; but that a noble could not tranquilly receive an insult,
and was dishonored if he allowed himself to take a blow without
fighting, were direct consequences of the fundamental principles
and the wants of military aristocracy.
Thus it was true to a certain extent to assert that the laws
of honor were capricious; but these caprices of honor were always
confined within certain necessary limits. The peculiar rule,
which was called honor by our forefathers, is so far from being
an arbitrary law in my eyes, that I would readily engage to
ascribe its most incoherent and fantastical injunctions to a
small number of fixed and invariable wants inherent in feudal
society.
If I were to trace the notion of feudal honor into the
domain of politics, I should not find it more difficult to
explain its dictates. The state of society and the political
institutions of the Middle Ages were such, that the supreme power
of the nation never governed the community directly. That power
did not exist in the eyes of the people: every man looked up to a
certain individual whom he was bound to obey; by that
intermediate personage he was connected with all the others.
Thus in feudal society the whole system of the commonwealth
rested upon the sentiment of fidelity to the person of the lord:
to destroy that sentiment was to open the sluices of anarchy.
Fidelity to a political superior was, moreover, a sentiment of
which all the members of the aristocracy had constant
opportunities of estimating the importance; for every one of them
was a vassal as well as a lord, and had to command as well as to
obey. To remain faithful to the lord, to sacrifice one's self
for him if called upon, to share his good or evil fortunes, to
stand by him in his undertakings whatever they might be -such
were the first injunctions of feudal honor in relation to the
political institutions of those times. The treachery of a vassal
was branded with extraordinary severity by public opinion, and a
name of peculiar infamy was invented for the offence which was
called "felony."
On the contrary, few traces are to be found in the Middle Ages of
the passion which constituted the life of the nations of antiquity -I
mean patriotism; the word itself is not of very ancient date in the
language. [9] Feudal institutions
concealed the country at large from men's sight, and rendered the love
of it less necessary. The nation was forgotten in the passions which
attached men to persons. Hence it was no part of the strict law of
feudal honor to remain faithful to one's country. Not indeed that the
love of their country did not exist in the hearts of our forefathers;
but it constituted a dim and feeble instinct, which has grown more clear
and strong in proportion as aristocratic classes have been abolished,
and the supreme power of the nation centralized. This may be clearly
seen from the contrary judgments which European nations have passed upon
the various events of their histories, according to the generations by
which such judgments have been formed. The circumstance which most
dishonored the Constable de Bourbon in the eyes of his contemporaries
was that he bore arms against his king: that which most dishonors him in
our eyes, is that he made war against his country; we brand him as
deeply as our forefathers did, but for different reasons.
I have chosen the honor of feudal times by way of
illustration of my meaning, because its characteristics are more
distinctly marked and more familiar to us than those of any other
period; but I might have taken an example elsewhere, and I should
have reached the same conclusion by a different road. Although
we are less perfectly acquainted with the Romans than with our
own ancestors, yet we know that certain peculiar notions of glory
and disgrace obtained amongst them, which were not solely derived
from the general principles of right and wrong. Many human
actions were judged differently, according as they affected a
Roman citizen or a stranger, a freeman or a slave; certain vices
were blazoned abroad, certain virtues were extolled above all
others. "In that age," says Plutarch in the life of Coriolanus,
"martial prowess was more honored and prized in Rome than all the
other virtues, insomuch that it was called virtus, the name of
virtue itself, by applying the name of the kind to this
particular species; so that virtue in Latin was as much as to say
valor." Can anyone fail to recognize the peculiar want of that
singular community which was formed for the conquest of the
world?
Any nation would furnish us with similar grounds of observation;
for, as I have already remarked, whenever men collect together as a
distinct community, the notion of honor instantly grows up amongst them;
that is to say, a system of opinions peculiar to themselves as to what
is blamable or commendable; and these peculiar rules always originate in
the special habits and special interests of the community. This is
applicable to a certain extent to democratic communities as well as to
others, as we shall now proceed to prove by the example of the
Americans. [10] Some loose notions of
the old aristocratic honor of Europe are still to be found scattered
amongst the opinions of the Americans; but these traditional opinions
are few in number, they have but little root in the country, and but
little power. They are like a religion which has still some temples
left standing, though men have ceased to believe in it. But amidst
these half-obliterated notions of exotic honor, some new opinions have
sprung up, which constitute what may be termed in our days American
honor. I have shown how the Americans are constantly driven to engage
in commerce and industry. Their origin, their social condition, their
political institutions, and even the spot they inhabit, urge them
irresistibly in this direction. Their present condition is then that of
an almost exclusively manufacturing and commercial association, placed
in the midst of a new and boundless country, which their principal
object is to explore for purposes of profit. This is the characteristic
which most peculiarly distinguishes the American people from all others
at the present time. All those quiet virtues which tend to give a
regular movement to the community, and to encourage business, will
therefore be held in peculiar honor by that people, and to neglect those
virtues will be to incur public contempt. All the more turbulent
virtues, which often dazzle, but more frequently disturb society, will
on the contrary occupy a subordinate rank in the estimation of this same
people: they may be neglected without forfeiting the esteem of the
community -to acquire them would perhaps be to run a risk of losing it.
The Americans make a no less arbitrary classification of
men's vices. There are certain propensities which appear
censurable to the general reason and the universal conscience of
mankind, but which happen to agree with the peculiar and
temporary wants of the American community: these propensities are
lightly reproved, sometimes even encouraged; for instance, the
love of wealth and the secondary propensities connected with it
may be more particularly cited. To clear, to till, and to
transform the vast uninhabited continent which is his domain, the
American requires the daily support of an energetic passion; that
passion can only be the love of wealth; the passion for wealth is
therefore not reprobated in America, and provided it does not go
beyond the bounds assigned to it for public security, it is held
in honor. The American lauds as a noble and praiseworthy ambition
what our own forefathers in the Middle Ages stigmatized as
servile cupidity, just as he treats as a blind and barbarous
frenzy that ardor of conquest and martial temper which bore them
to battle. In the United States fortunes are lost and regained
without difficulty; the country is boundless, and its resources
inexhaustible. The people have all the wants and cravings of a
growing creature; and whatever be their efforts, they are always
surrounded by more than they can appropriate. It is not the ruin
of a few individuals which may be soon repaired, but the
inactivity and sloth of the community at large which would be
fatal to such a people. Boldness of enterprise is the foremost
cause of its rapid progress, its strength, and its greatness.
Commercial business is there like a vast lottery, by which a
small number of men continually lose, but the State is always a
gainer; such a people ought therefore to encourage and do honor
to boldness in commercial speculations. But any bold speculation
risks the fortune of the speculator and of all those who put
their trust in him. The Americans, who make a virtue of
commercial temerity, have no right in any case to brand with
disgrace those who practise it. Hence arises the strange
indulgence which is shown to bankrupts in the United States;
their honor does not suffer by such an accident. In this respect
the Americans differ, not only from the nations of Europe, but
from all the commercial nations of our time, and accordingly they
resemble none of them in their position or their wants.
In America all those vices which tend to impair the purity
of morals, and to destroy the conjugal tie, are treated with a
degree of severity which is unknown in the rest of the world. At
first sight this seems strangely at variance with the tolerance
shown there on other subjects, and one is surprised to meet with
a morality so relaxed and so austere amongst the selfsame people.
But these things are less incoherent than they seem to be. Public
opinion in the United States very gently represses that love of
wealth which promotes the commercial greatness and the prosperity
of the nation, and it especially condemns that laxity of morals
which diverts the human mind from the pursuit of well-being, and
disturbs the internal order of domestic life which is so
necessary to success in business. To earn the esteem of their
countrymen, the Americans are therefore constrained to adapt
themselves to orderly habits -and it may be said in this sense
that they make it a matter of honor to live chastely.
On one point American honor accords with the notions of
honor acknowledged in Europe; it places courage as the highest
virtue, and treats it as the greatest of the moral necessities of
man; but the notion of courage itself assumes a different aspect.
In the United States martial valor is but little prized; the
courage which is best known and most esteemed is that which
emboldens men to brave the dangers of the ocean, in order to
arrive earlier in port -to support the privations of the
wilderness without complaint, and solitude more cruel than
privations -the courage which renders them almost insensible to
the loss of a fortune laboriously acquired, and instantly prompts
to fresh exertions to make another. Courage of this kind is
peculiarly necessary to the maintenance and prosperity of the
American communities, and it is held by them in peculiar honor
and estimation; to betray a want of it is to incur certain
disgrace.
I have yet another characteristic point which may serve to
place the idea of this chapter in stronger relief. In a
democratic society like that of the United States, where fortunes
are scanty and insecure, everybody works, and work opens a way to
everything: this has changed the point of honor quite round, and
has turned it against idleness. I have sometimes met in America
with young men of wealth, personally disinclined to all laborious
exertion, but who had been compelled to embrace a profession.
Their disposition and their fortune allowed them to remain
without employment; public opinion forbade it, too imperiously to
be disobeyed. In the European countries, on the contrary, where
aristocracy is still struggling with the flood which overwhelms
it, I have often seen men, constantly spurred on by their wants
and desires, remain in idleness, in order not to lose the esteem
of their equals; and I have known them submit to ennui and
privations rather than to work. No one can fail to perceive that
these opposite obligations are two different rules of conduct,
both nevertheless originating in the notion of honor.
What our forefathers designated as honor absolutely was in
reality only one of its forms; they gave a generic name to what
was only a species. Honor therefore is to be found in democratic
as well as in aristocratic ages, but it will not be difficult to
show that it assumes a different aspect in the former. Not only
are its injunctions different, but we shall shortly see that they
are less numerous, less precise, and that its dictates are less
rigorously obeyed. The position of a caste is always much more
peculiar than that of a people. Nothing is so much out of the
way of the world as a small community invariably composed of the
same families (as was for instance the aristocracy of the Middle
Ages), whose object is to concentrate and to retain, exclusively
and hereditarily, education, wealth, and power amongst its own
members. But the more out of the way the position of a community
happens to be, the more numerous are its special 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 beforehand, and a
fixed and always palpable standard was applied to human actions.
Amongst a democratic nation, like the Americans, in which ranks
are identified, and the whole of society forms one single mass,
composed of elements which are all analogous though not entirely
similar, it is impossible ever to agree beforehand on what shall
or shall not be allowed by the laws of honor. Amongst that
people, indeed, some national wants do exist which give rise to
opinions common to the whole nation on points of honor; but these
opinions never occur at the same time, in the same manner, or
with the same intensity to the minds of the whole community; the
law of honor exists, but it has no organs to promulgate it.
The confusion is far greater still in a democratic country
like France, where the different classes of which the former
fabric of society was composed, being brought together but not
yet mingled, import day by day into each other's circles various
and sometimes conflicting notions of honor -where every man, at
his own will and pleasure, forsakes one portion of his
forefathers' creed, and retains another; so that, amidst so many
arbitrary measures, no common rule can ever be established, and
it is almost impossible to predict which actions will be held in
honor and which will be thought disgraceful. Such times are
wretched, but they are of short duration.
As honor, amongst democratic nations, is imperfectly
defined, its influence is of course less powerful; for it is
difficult to apply with certainty and firmness a law which is not
distinctly known. Public opinion, the natural and supreme
interpreter of the laws of honor, not clearly discerning to which
side censure or approval ought to lean, can only pronounce a
hesitating judgment. Sometimes the opinion of the public may
contradict itself; more frequently it does not act, and lets
things pass.
The weakness of the sense of honor in democracies also
arises from several other causes. In aristocratic countries, the
same notions of honor are always entertained by only a few
persons, always limited in number, often separated from the rest
of their fellow-citizens. Honor is easily mingled and identified
in their minds with the idea of all that distinguishes their own
position; it appears to them as the chief characteristic of their
own rank; they apply its different rules with all the warmth of
personal interest, and they feel (if I may use the expression) a
passion for 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 clearly pointed out. I shall therefore make
one more attempt to illustrate it satisfactorily. Suppose a
nation stands apart from the rest of mankind: independently of
certain general wants inherent in the human race, it will also
have wants and interests peculiar to itself: certain opinions of
censure or approbation forthwith arise in the community, which
are peculiar to itself, and which are styled honor by the members
of that community. Now suppose that in this same nation a caste
arises, which, in its turn, stands apart from all the other
classes, and contracts certain peculiar wants, which give rise in
their turn to special opinions. The honor of this caste,
composed of a medley of the peculiar notions of the nation, and
the still more peculiar notions of the caste, will be as remote
as it is possible to conceive from the simple and general
opinions of men.
Having reached this extreme point of the argument, I now
return. When ranks are commingled and privileges abolished, the
men of whom a nation is composed being once more equal and alike,
their interests and wants become identical, and all the peculiar
notions which each caste styled honor successively disappear: the
notion of honor no longer proceeds from any other source than the
wants peculiar to the nation at large, and it denotes the
individual character of that nation to the world. Lastly, if it
be allowable to suppose that all the races of mankind should be
commingled, and that all the peoples of earth should ultimately
come to have the same interests, the same wants, undistinguished
from each other by any characteristic peculiarities, no
conventional value whatever would then be attached to men's
actions; they would all be regarded by all in the same light; the
general necessities of mankind, revealed by conscience to every
man, would become the common standard. The simple and general
notions of right and wrong only would then be recognized in the
world, to which, by a natural and necessary tie, the idea of
censure or approbation would be attached. Thus, to comprise all
my meaning in a single proposition, the dissimilarities and
inequalities of men gave rise to the notion of honor; that notion
is weakened in proportion as these differences are obliterated,
and with them it would disappear.
[8]
The word "honor" is not always used in the same
sense either in French or English. 1. It first signifies the
dignity, glory, or reverence which a man receives from his kind;
and in this sense a man is said to acquire honor. 2. Honor
signifies the aggregate of those rules by the assistance of which
this dignity, glory, or reverence is obtained. Thus we say that
a man has always strictly obeyed the laws of honor; or a man has
violated his honor. In this chapter the word is always used in
the latter sense.
[9]
Even the word "patrie" was not used by the French
writers until the sixteenth century.
[10]
I speak here of the Americans inhabiting those
States where slavery does not exist; they alone can be said to
present a complete picture of democratic society.