Chivalry is in like case with justice.  It might have seemed better for the world that the able and distinguished men should have been saved from the Titanic-some of them were men of considerable importance in various lines of work-rather than less-needed women.  But the effect of the noble example in strengthening the will to sacrifice self for others, and in maintaining our beautiful devotion to woman, was worth the cost.  Fox was right when he said, “Example avails ten times more than precept.”  Even if the loss had been greater than it was, it would have been better to incur it than to allow an exception to the code of chivalry.  Such codes are formed with infinite pains and are very easily shattered; a little laxity here, a tolerated exception there, and the selfishness and passions of men rise to the surface and undo the work of years.  At all costs we must maintain the code.  In the end it pays.  The greatest genius must run the risk of drowning in the endeavor to save the life of some unknown person who may be a worthless scamp.  He may die and the scamp live, a great loss to the world.  But only so can the code of honor be maintained which in the long run adds so much positive joy to man and saves him from so much pain.

In most instances, though not in some of those cited, the reward of justice and chivalry is sufficient for the individual himself.  As Socrates said to Theodoras, [Footnote:  Plato, Theoetetus, 176.] “The penalty of injustice cannot be escaped.  They do not see, in their infatuation, that they are growing like the one and unlike the other, by reason of their evil deeds; and the penalty is, that they lead a life answering to the pattern which they resemble.”  “On the other hand,"-to supplement Plato with Emerson, [Footnote:  Essays, First Series:  “Spiritual Laws.”  Cf.  George Eliot, in Romola:  “The contaminating effect of deeds often lies less in the commission than the hero the avowal of a just and brave act, it will go unwitnessed and unloved.  One knows it himself and is pledged by it to sweetness of peace and to nobleness of aim, which will prove in the end a better proclamation of it than the relating of the incident.”  And, we may add, a greater joy.]

But even in view of the cases where no apparent compensation comes to the individual, the ideals of justice and chivalry, like the more general concept of duty, are among the most valuable possessions of man’s fashioning.  Cross our inclinations as they often do, cost dearly as they sometimes will, the habit of unquestioning allegiance to them is one of the greatest of all gains as means to the attainment by mankind of a stable and assured happiness.

A brief discussion of the conflict of duty and inclination will be found in Dewey and Tufts, Ethics, chap.  XVII, first few pages.  Carlyle’s declamations against happiness are too scattered and unsystematic to make reference to specific chapters useful.  The general point of view may be found, more temperately stated, in F. H. Bradley’s Ethical Studies, the chapter entitled “Why Should I be Moral?” Contemporary accounts of the nature of obligation will be found in the International Journal of Ethics, vol. 22, p. 282; vol. 23, pp. 143, 323.