ays
Cicero, without its obligations. In their due discharge consists all the
nobility, and in their neglect all the disgrace, of character. There
should be no selfish devotion to private interests. We are born not for
ourselves only, but for our kindred and fatherland. We owe duties not only
to those who have benefited but to those who have wronged us. We should
render to all their due; and justice is due even to the lowest of mankind:
what, for instance (he says with a hardness which jars upon our better
feelings), can be lower than a slave? Honour is that "unbought grace"
which adds a lustre to every action. In society it produces courtesy of
manners; in business, under the form of truth, it establishes public
credit. Again, as equity, it smooths the harsh features of the law. In war
it produces that moderation and good faith between contending armies which
are the surest basis of a lasting peace. And so in honour are centred the
elements of all the virtues--wisdom and justice, fortitude and temperance;
and "if", he says, reproducing the noble words of Plato, as applied by him
to Wisdom, "this 'Honour' could but be seen in her full beauty by mortal
eyes, the whole world would fall in love with her".

Such is the general spirit of this treatise, of which only the briefest
sketch can be given in these pages.

Cicero bases honour on our inherent excellence of nature, paying the same
noble tribute to humanity as Kant some centuries after: "On earth there is
nothing great but man; in man there is nothing great but mind". Truth is a
law of our nature. Man is only "lower than the angels"; and to him belong
prerogatives which mark him off from the brute creation--the faculties
of reason and discernment, the sense of beauty, and the love of law and
order. And from this arises that fellow--feeling which, in one sense,
"makes the whole world kin"--the spirit of Terence's famous line, which
Cicero notices (applauded on its recitation, as Augustin tells us, by the
cheers of the entire audience in the theatre)--

"Homo sum--humani nihil a me alienum puto:" [1]

for (he continues) "all men by nature love one another, and desire an
intercourse of words and action". Hence spring the family affections,
friendship, and social ties; hence also that general love of combination,
which forms a striking feature of the present age, resulting in clubs,
trades-unions, companies, and generally in what Mr. Carlyle terms
"swarmery".

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