The Struggle for Law
itself also in every individual not entirely blunted to it, i.e., in every individual who has not grown accustomed to positive lawlessness, as moral pain, and thus summons him to fight against the cause which produces it—not so much to put an end to the feeling of pain as to preserve the health, which is threatened by the inactive bearing of it. It is a reminder of the duty of moral self-preservation, such as physical pain is in respect to physical self-preservation.
Let us take the most undoubted case, an attack on one’s honor, and the profession in which it is most sensitively developed—the military profession. An officer who has patiently borne an insult which involves his honor is no longer an officer. Why? The vindication of his honor is every man’s duty. Why then does the military gentleman attach more importance than any other to the fulfillment of this duty? Because he has the right feeling, that the courageous vindication of one’s personality is, for him, more, perhaps, than for a person of any other class, an indis-
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