those virtues which are conspicuous for
their dignity and splendor, and which may be easily combined with pride
and the love of power. Such men would not hesitate to invert the natural
order of the conscience in order to give those virtues precedence before
all others. It may even be conceived that some of the more bold and
brilliant vices would readily be set above the quiet, unpretending
virtues. The very existence of such a class in society renders these
things unavoidable.

The nobles of the Middle Ages placed military courage foremost amongst
virtues, and in lieu of many of them. This was again a peculiar opinion
which arose necessarily from the peculiarity of the state of society.
Feudal aristocracy existed by war and for war; its power had been
founded by arms, and by arms that power was maintained; it therefore
required nothing more than military courage, and that quality was
naturally exalted above all others; whatever denoted it, even at the
expense of reason and humanity, was therefore approved and frequently
enjoined by the manners of the time. Such was the main principle; the
caprice of man was only to be traced in minuter details. That a man
should regard a tap on the cheek as an unbearable insult, and should be
obliged to kill in single combat the person who struck him thus lightly,
is an arbitrary rule; but that a noble could not tranquilly receive an
insult, and was dishonored if he allowed himself to take a blow without
fighting, were direct consequences of the fundamental principles and the
wants of military aristocracy.

Thus it was true to a certain extent to assert that the laws of honor
were capricious; but these caprices of honor were always confined within
certain necessary limits. The peculiar rule, which was called honor by
our forefathers, is so far from being an arbitrary law in my eyes, that
I would readily engage to ascribe its most incoherent and fantastical
injunctions to a small number of fixed and invariable wants inherent in
feudal society.

If I were to trace the notion of feudal honor into the domain of
politics, I should not find it more difficult to explain its dictates.
The state of society and the political institutions of the Middle Ages
were such, that the supreme power of the nation never governed the
community directly. That power did not exist in the eyes of the people:
every man looked up to a certain individual whom he was bound to obey;
by that intermediate personage