"the secret of all culture," he says). "Idleness," says old Burton, "the bane of body and mind, the nurse of naughtiness, the chief author of all mischief." "Labor is man's great function; the hardest work in the world is to do nothing." (Dr. Dewey.)

"There is a perennial nobleness, and even sacredness, in work. Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works; in idleness alone is there perpetual despair. Work, never so mammonish, mean, is in communication with Nature; the real desire to get work done will itself lead one more and more to truth, to Nature's appointments and regulations, which are truth. All true work is sacred; in all true work, were it but true handlabor, there is something of divineness. Labor, wide as the earth, has its summit in heaven." (Carlyle.)

Work is of the mind as well as of the hand; the tendency of civilization is set forth by Sir Thomas More:

"The Utopians, when nede requireth, are liable to abide and suffer much bodelie laboure; els they be not greatly desirous and fond of it; but in the exercise and studie of the mind they be never wery. . . . For whil, in the institution of that weale publique, this end is onelye and chiefely pretended and mynded, that what time may possibly be spared from the necessary occupacions and affayres of the commen welth, all that the citizeins should withdraw from the bodely service to the free libertye of the mind and garnishinge of the same. For herein they suppose the felicitye of this liffe to consiste."

CHAPTER X.

THE LAW OF HONOR.

THE moral law, we have seen, is the law which declares the proper relations of human beings to each other in personal conduct. Like every other natural law, it is disclosed to us by study and observation of the beings whom it governs. It governs them because it is a part of their nature, which they cannot escape. Man is a social being, and if he would live in society as he desires, he must obey the laws of the social life: of these laws the moral law is a most important part. A portion of it is written down in the statute law of the land, and is carried into effect against wrong-doers by courts and police and prisons.

Another part is recognized in this or that country as binding on all; but men do not judge it expedient to pass laws concerning it. A power that we call "public opinion" enforces certain duties, such as the education of a man's children according to his means, without legal penalties. The law of the land obliges every parent to send his children to school so many weeks in the year; in the State of Massachusetts this must be done up to the age of fourteen. This is all that the legislature, or the State, thinks it wise to attempt in the way of obliging a parents to educate their children. But when a man is amply able to send his children to the high school or to college, and they wish to go, public opinion says that he ought to send them; and so much. do men, in general, care for the good opinion of their fellow-men, that children not rarely receive this further education when the parents themselves do not admit

the intellectual need of it. Public opinion, is, however, a very variable thing, and it often represents a sort of compromise between all kinds and degrees of private opinions, when it concerns a moral question. There must be some persons whose opinion is worth more than that of others on a point of right and wrong, just as there are on a matter of art or science. These persons every one will recognize as the honorable people, those who live according to the moral law of honor.

I. There are two very opposite senses in which a person may be "a law to himself." A man may be willing and ready to defy and disobey the moral law whenever and wherever he thinks he can do so safely. If the offence he has in mind is one against the written law, he will commit it in case he thinks himself sure not to be found out, or in case he cares less for the shame of the punishment than for the advantage to be gained from the crime. This man's law is his own self-interest, or the gratification of his passions, whether for his interest or not. He will care little for public opinion in respect to matters of which the law says nothing. So he will lie and cheat and steal and break his promises whenever he considers it to be for his own advantage. He will rob and do personal violence, perhaps even commit murder, if he considers himself very likely to escape punishment. He thus puts himself outside the moral law which declares these deeds wrong in themselves, and makes his own will his law. But such conduct is directed against the very life of human society, which would go to pieces if it were practised to any great extent. Therefore these dangerous classes, the open enemies of order and civilization and morality, must be kept down. Laws are passed against them: the constable and the policeman, the criminal courts, the jails and the prisons, and the gallows in the last resort, are employed against these savages and barbarians who are survivals from the times before morality.

Other enemies of morality are those men who are more crafty and prey on their fellow-men by taking advantage of the imperfections of the statute law to defraud and do any other wrong which they think for their own interest. They do not kill, or rob on the highway; but they make war on their kind by craft. Morality is to them simply an outside restraint: they cannot be trusted to do right when to do wrong would be for their own profit. Both these classes, the violent and the crafty, are "a law to themselves" in the bad sense that they reject all law but their own will.

II. At the other extreme in human society stand those men and women who are a law to themselves in the good sense of the phrase. They see that all the laws which mankind has ever made are but clumsy and imperfect attempts to carry out the full moral law as the highest minds and the best hearts perceive and feel it. They do what they know to be just, not because the authorities will otherwise punish them, but because they realize that justice is the one fit thing for men to do to one another. They keep the peace because they love peace and the things which peace brings. They tell the truth because they wish to live themselves and to have others live, at all times, in a real world; their word does not need to be supported by an oath, it is always to be relied upon. Their verbal promises are as good as written contracts made before witnesses and under penalty. They pay regard to every known right of others because they feel that we are members one of another in society, and that "no man ever hurt himself save through another's side."

To live in this way is to live under the law of honor. Every honorable man feels bound to live up to his fullest knowledge of right, without regard to the statute law or to public opinion, which are satisfied with a lower standard. He is very sure that both are, and must be, imperfect, and that his duty is to remedy their

imperfections and to show in his own practice a nearer approach to what is demanded by the full moral law. His own enlightened conscience is his guide it tells him to square his conduct not by the letter of morality, but by its spirit. "Conscientiousness" means having a delicate conscience and paying instant heed to it, in small things as in great things. To be conscientious, to be high-minded, to be magnanimous, to be honorable,

these are one and the same thing: the words mark the person to whom morality has become real and vital. The conscientious are truthful in the extreme degree; the magnanimous do nothing mean by taking advantage of the weakness or the mistakes of others; the honorable are themselves the highest moral law incarnate. The essence of honor is in fixing one's eye upon the result to character of any action and then acting as selfrespect and kindness dictate. To follow the law of honor is the ideal of morality; and no one desiring to live the right life should be satisfied until he values the moral life for itself as the highest and best expression of refined human nature: then he is one of the truly honorable of the earth.

Any practice that is dishonorable, however common, bears its condemnation in itself: it must disappear before a more active moral sense, a better instructed public opinion, or more thorough-going legislation. Every honorable man has the duty laid upon him of raising the standard of morality in his business or profession. There are tricks in every trade which do not cease to be evil because they are common; there are offences against truth in every profession, which are none the less wrong because they are nearly universal. Morality and business, honor and trade, must be kept together. No man is justified in saying to his conscience, prescribing the law of honor, what Frederick the Great used to say to his people demanding a reform: "You may say what you like: I will do what I like."