The corresponding virtue in men is a product of the one I have been discussing.  It is their esprit de corps, which demands that, once a man has made that surrender of himself in marriage which is so advantageous to his conqueror, he shall take care that the terms of the treaty are maintained; both in order that the agreement itself may lose none of its force by the permission of any laxity in its observance, and that men, having given up everything, may, at least, be assured of their bargain, namely, exclusive possession.  Accordingly, it is part of a man’s honor to resent a breach of the marriage tie on the part of his wife, and to punish it, at the very least by separating from her.  If he condones the offence, his fellowmen cry shame upon him; but the shame in this case is not nearly so foul as that of the woman who has lost her honor; the stain is by no means of so deep a dye—­levioris notae macula;—­because a man’s relation to woman is subordinate to many other and more important affairs in his life.  The two great dramatic poets of modern times have each taken man’s honor as the theme of two plays; Shakespeare in Othello and The Winter’s Tale, and Calderon in El medico de su honra, (The Physician of his Honor), and A secreto agravio secreta venganza, (for Secret Insult Secret Vengeance).  It should be said, however, that honor demands the punishment of the wife only; to punish her paramour too, is a work of supererogation.  This confirms the view I have taken, that a man’s honor originates in esprit de corps.

The kind of honor which I have been discussing hitherto has always existed in its various forms and principles amongst all nations and at all times; although the history of female honor shows that its principles have undergone certain local modifications at different periods.  But there is another species of honor which differs from this entirely, a species of honor of which the Greeks and Romans had no conception, and up to this day it is perfectly unknown amongst Chinese, Hindoos or Mohammedans.  It is a kind of honor which arose only in the Middle Age, and is indigenous only to Christian Europe, nay, only to an extremely small portion of the population, that is to say, the higher classes of society and those who ape them.  It is knightly honor, or point d’honneur.  Its principles are quite different from those which underlie the kind of honor I have been treating until now, and in some respects are even opposed to them.  The sort I am referring to produces the cavalier; while the other kind creates the man of honor.  As this is so, I shall proceed to give an explanation of its principles, as a kind of code or mirror of knightly courtesy.