It binds men together, as in a vessel or a regiment, a school or a
college, an institution or a municipality, and leads them to sacrifice
their ease or their selfish aims, and to act loyally and cordially with
one another in view of the common interest. It is only when it
sacrifices to the interests of its own body wider interests still, and
subordinates patriotism or morality to the narrower sentiment attaching
to a special law of honour, that it incurs the reprobation of the
moralist. But that it does sometimes deservedly incur this reprobation,
admits of no question. A man, to save the honour of his regiment, may
impair the efficiency of an army, or, to promote the interests of his
college or school, may inflict a lasting injury on education, or, to
protect his associates, may withhold or pervert evidence, or, to
aggrandize his trade, may ruin his country. It is the special province
of the moralist, in these cases, to intervene, and point out how the
more general is being sacrificed to the more special interest, the wider
to the narrower sentiment, morality itself to a point of honour or
etiquette. But, at the same time, he must recollect that the _esprit de
corps_ of any small aggregate of men is, as such, always an ennobling
and inspiriting sentiment, and that, unless it plainly detach them from
the rest of the community, and is attended with pernicious consequences
to society at large, it is unwise, if not reckless, to seek to impair
it.
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