HONOUR. T HE Pall Mall and " W. R. G." have
fallen out not only about the great political question of the day, but about the meaning and obligatory character of honour. " W. R. G." holds apparently; with Dr. Rogers, one of the old writers quoted by Dr. Johnson in his dictionary, that " if by honour is meant anything distinct from conscience, 'tis no more than a regard to the censure and esteem of the world." Indeed " W. R. G." makes precisely the same assertion, in almost precisely the same words, adding that where an appeal to honour is an appeal to duty under another name, it is an appeal
to one of the very highest principles of human nature, while, where it is an appeal to the mere " censure and esteem of the world," it is an appeal to one of the very lowest. To this the Pall Mall answers that if the sense of honour as distinguished from the sense of duty, be one of the lowest of all motives to which you • can make your appeal, it must be so in a woman's case as well as in a nation's, or a man's, and asks whether " W. R. G." would deem a woman who defended her honour against a ruffian to the- point of desperation, and at the cost of life, an ill-advised person • who was sacrificing everything to the opinion of others, without being called upon by what we can in precise language call con- science, to do so. Hence, the exact ethical question between " W. R. G." and his opponent appears to be this,—whether there be any cases in which the sense of honour is the real foundation and root of the sense of duty, or whether, on the contrary, the sense of honour be only a pallid reflection from the eyes of others of a missing sense of duty,—which men are far apter to defer to- when they find it exacted by the outer world, than even when it speaks loudly and imperatively in their own individual consciences • without gaining the world's approval.
Now we cannot agree with Johnson's authority or with " W. R. G." that honour, if it stand for anything but the highest of all principles, the principle of duty, is one of the lowest of all, the mere deference to a false external opinion. The ' code of honour,' as a substitute for a real moral law, has no doubt deserved much of the scorn which has been showered on it by moralists, but it has also deserved a fairer moral appreciation than it has usually got. The principle noblesse oblige has not often been a pure moral principle, but it has often been a very respectable principle, never- theless, and it will, we think, help us to indicate fairly the true meaning and limits of ' honourable' as distinguished from moral' obligation.
"Mine honour is my life ; both grow in one,
Take honour from me, and my life is done,"
says Norfolk in " Richard II.," and that again suggests, • as. does ' noblesse oblige,' that the characteristic sanction of hon- ourable obligation is the standard, set up before a class or an- individual, of the supreme object and aims for which either lives. An aristocracy, a nobility sprang or was called into ex- istence for the sake of setting an example, and keeping before the world less sordid and grander aims,—aims more satisfying to the imagination of men,—than would otherwise have been pur- sued on any large and conspicuous scale. Hence, noblesse oblige, the very motto of true aristocracy, implies that those who belong to that class shall put themselves in the front rank ; shall be the first to face danger and incur responsibility ; shall not fail to accord the leadership for the sake of which they received the privileges of leaders. This is in origin an honourable, rather than a moral obligation ; in other words, it is an obligation springing from a clear recognition of the ideal significance and meaning of any assigned rank. It does not press equally on all men with the same moral faculties ; on the contrary, it presses very much more heavily on those who claim to be natural leaders, and who have enjoyed the social prestige and advantages of natural leaders, than on those who have not. It is an obligation springing out of the clear conception of the significance of a high inherited or conferred position. Yet though it implies a real constraining motive, it implies one which is subject to the widest modifi- cations, the scope of which varies largely with faculty and op- portunity. It only goes as far as this :—" Other things being equal, a high political and social position makes it more incumbent on one who holds it to take a lead and make great sacrifices in any political or social crisis, than it would be were he outside that
rank,"—in other words, such is the duty of a noble as such, though there may be individual circumstances over-ruling the particular class-obligation, and absolving from it, nay, imposing one decidedly different,—for instance, ill-health, poverty, timidity, or the accident of a shy, retiring, student-like nature. We look to the class while it exists to embody an honourable sense of the obli- gatory character of the standard of life for the sake of which it exists, but we do not regard its honourable obligations as co-exten- sive with the highest individual moral obligations. The obliga- tion of the highest standard for the individual life must override the obligation involved in the standard of class-life for which the individual happens to be unfit. In short, the honourable obliga- tion is provisional only ; it may attain a very high ethical character in one fitted to embody the highest qualities of the class ; but it must be modified, and modified essentially, wherever it comes into competition with deeper and more intimate claims on the con- science of the individual.
Honourable obligations are, then, at a maximum value in men who—as Norfolk represents himself in " Richard II."—are hardly qualified to range beyond the conventional conception of any fixed standard of life,—be it the chivalrous or any other,—which is so closely identified with their individual character that they would seem to cease to have a character at all if they deviated from that standard. You often see such cases among soldiers, whose sense of honour is so closely identified with courage, with the conquest of fear, with prompt obedience to discipline, with the fiery resentment of base imputations, that they live less by the light of an individual conscience, than by the light of a particular type-conscience, which is partly true and partly conventional. The same may be said, at least in some respects, of women, whose class- type of moralitydepends almost as much on avoiding—at all hazards —certain external calamities, as on an inward condition of heart. Both the soldier's and the woman's honour, and perhaps that of some other classes also, is so necessarily bound up with the avoid- ance of misfortunes which may be purely external, that it is not unreasonable for any member of such a class to say with Norfolk, "Mine honour is my life, both grow in one ; take honour from me, and my life is done." But the special reason of this is that, were it not to be so, real guilt might so often take the form of calamity, as to make it almost better for the majority of the class to regard calamity as guilt, than for their eyes to be opened to the true distinction. If the soldier did not feel defeat to be at all events the greatest danger to his honour, he would soon be less complete a soldier than he is. If a woman did not feel violence the greatest possible danger to her honour, she would soon be less perfect as a woman. But it does not in any sense follow that the honourable obligation implied in the attempt to live up to a certain standard or type,—a type involving the highest value for certain circumstances of life, as well as for certain motives and principles,—is a full moral obligation ; any more than it follows that it is mere slavish deference to outside opinion, a mere preference of " the praise of man " to the " praise of God." It is not a full moral obligation, for it is always conceivable and possible that higher obligations may be apprehended which dissolve the mere honourable obligations of a customary type or standard of life. It is not a mere attempt to conciliate the praise of men, for the ideal of the type has so deeply ingrained itself into the soul, that nothing short of a real perception of higher duty could release from its claims.
The distinction between the two seems to be something of this kind. The honourable obligation expresses itself to the mind in the form, ' I would rather die than do this or that,' meaning primarily at least, not I ought to die sooner than do this or, that,' but ' It would be so contrary to my nature, so deep a wound to any self-respect, so permanent a disfigurement of my own historic consciousness' (to use Mr. Disraeli's phrase), that the whole mean- ing and use of me would disappear, if I did this, and I had better go out of life altogether.' On the other hand, the sense of duty says, 'I ought to die sooner than do this or that,' but is often very far indeed from asserting that it would be a true disfigurement and travestie, as it were, of my position in life, of myself, if I were to do it ; nay, it may even assert the very opposite ; I ought to die sooner than do this, but so far from its being unlike me, or a libel on me to do it, it is precisely what the world would expect and desire me to do, and what by all the precedents of my own career I should do.' Now, there is nothing, as far as we can see, in this account of the distinction to determine whether the honourable obligation is or is not necessarily a moral obligation. It may be quite right to respect the honourable obligation, even in an extreme ease ; by which we mean not that it, the honourable obligation, would, in that case, be created byan independent moral obligation, but, on the contrary, that a real moral obligation would be created, if there were no contending and higher claim. for your allegiance, by the mere existence of the honourable obligation. A soldier, for instance, who was a soldier and nothing more, might very properly elect to die on the field of battle, in the act of vindicating the true cha- racter of a soldier by leading a forlorn hope in a charge which, hope- less itself, would not be without its effect on the ultimate success of his country; whereas one who knew that he was a great deal more than a soldier, whether as commander or as statesman, and that his life might be infinitely better employed for his country's service, would be sinning against a moral obligation in so dying from fanatic devotion to military honour. Yet it would be impossible to say that in the former case the honourable obligation grew out of the moral obligation ; on the contrary, the moral obligation would grow out of the honourable obligation,—there being no higher claim to interfere with it. So, again, in the case of the woman who sacrifices her life deliberately in defence of her honour,—leaping, suppose, from a window, the fall from which is certain death, to escape a ruffian. In multitudes of cases this might not only be not wrong, but perfectly right,—so deeply might the whole personality of the woman be identified with her honour ; just as if you could conceive an alternative duty for a man between an action leading to certain death and an action leading to certain insanity, the highest conscience, as well as the highest sense of individual self-esteem, would probably recommend the former choice. But, on the other hand, it is easy to conceive the case of a woman with so high a religious life, with so clear and imperious a sense of a religious calling still to be followed even after honour were gone, that she might be forbidden by her conscience, and not by her cowardice, to take such a leap to escape the ruffian we have supposed. George Eliot's "Dinah," for instance, could never have taken such a leap, however utterly ruined her earthly life might have been by the loss of her honour. On the other hand, Sir Walter Scott's " Rebecca " not only threatens it, but is felt by the reader to be the higher, and not the lower, for really intending it.
It does not seem to us, then, to admit of a doubt that there is a class of honourable obligations not in their origin pro- perly moral, but rather obligations of personal self-respect, obli- gations quite capable of being overruled by the conscience, and yet if not so overruled, quite admitting of a moral defence and justification. Honour usually relates chiefly to the scrupulous fulfilment of the part in life which you have undertaken to play, and is derived not so much from the conscience as from esprit de corps in the case of a class, and from the deep sense of a well-de- fined individuality in the case of an individual,—the disregard of its claims being primarily rather a deep personal pain, than a sin. Still it may be and is perfectly justifiable to refuse to inflict such a wound on yourself, if there be no clear contending claim of a spiritual or ethical kind, which demands the suffering from you as a tribute to some higher part of your nature. We cannot con- ceive that any accurate moral observer will really doubt the truth of this analysis. How far it will go towards solving the compli- cated problem of the exact moral value of a keen sense of national honour,—the point in which the dispute between " W. R. G." and the Pall Mall arose,—we do not intend now to inquire ; as our only object has been to try and settle the simpler psychological question first, without complicating it by considerations more or less affected at the present moment by the violence of political feelings.
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