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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 amid 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 honour, homicide.
Honour 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 honour which was ever known in the world, and that which we are best acquainted with, viz. aristocratic honour 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 endeavouring 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, dishonoured a noble; others changed their whole
