But, notwithstanding the danger of exaggeration and
misapplication, there can be no doubt of the vast importance and the
generally beneficial results of a keen sensitiveness to the opinions of
our fellow-men. Without the powerful aid of this sanction, the
restraints of morality and religion would often be totally ineffective.
When the social sanction operates, not through society generally, but
through particular sections of society, it may be called a Law of
Honour, a term which originated in the usages of Chivalry. In a complex
and civilized form of society, such as our own, there may be many such
laws of honour, and the same individual may be subject to several of
them. Thus each profession, the army, the navy, the clerical, the legal,
the medical, the artistic, the dramatic profession, has its own peculiar
code of honour or rules of professional etiquette, which its members can
only infringe on pain of ostracism, or, at least, of loss of
professional reputation. The same is the case with trades, and is
specially exemplified in the instance of trades-unions, or, their
mediaeval prototypes, the guilds. A college or a school, again, has its
own rules and traditions, which the tutor or undergraduate, the master
or boy, can often only violate at his extreme peril. Almost every club,
institution, and society affords another instance in point. The class of
'gentlemen,' too, that is to say, speaking roughly, the upper and upper
middle ranks of society, claim to have a code of honour of their own,
superior to that of the ordinary citizen.
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