Let us begin by saying a few words about that moral force which was then the strongest bulwark against evil.The highly gifted man of that day thought to find it in the sentiment of honour.This is that enigmatic mixture of conscience and egotism which often survives in the modern man after he has lost, whether by his own fault or not, faith, love, and hope.This sense of honour is compatible with much selfishness and great vices, and may be the victim of astonishing illusions; yet, nevertheless, all the noble elements that are left in the wreck of a character may gather around it, and from this fountain may draw new strength.It has become, in a far wider sense than is commonly believed, a decisive test of conduct in the minds of the cultivated Europeans of our own day, and many of those who yet hold faithfully by religion and morality are unconsciously guided by this feeling in the gravest decisions of their lives.
It lies without the limits of our task to show how the men of antiquity also experienced this feeling in a peculiar form, and how, afterwards, in the Middle Ages, a special sense of honour became the mark of a particular class.Nor can we here dispute with those who hold that conscience, rather than honour, is the motive power.It would indeed be better and nobler if it were so; but since it must be granted that even our worthier resolutions result from 'a conscience more or less dimmed by selfishness,' it is better to call the mixture by its right name.It is certainly not always easy, in treating of the Italian of this period, to distinguish this sense of honour from the passion for fame, into which, indeed, it easily passes.Yet the two sentiments are essentially different.
There is no lack of witnesses on this subject.One who speaks plainly may here be quoted as a representative of the rest.We read in the recently published 'Aphorisms' of Guicciardini: 'who esteems honour highly succeeds in all that he undertakes, since he fears neither trouble, danger, nor expense; I have found it so in my own case, and may say it and write it; vain and dead are the deeds of men which have not this as their motive.' It is necessary to add that, from what is known of the life of the writer, he can here be only speaking of honour and not of fame.Rabelais has put the matter more clearly than perhaps any Italian.We quote him, indeed, unwillingly in these pages.What the great, baroque Frenchman gives us is a picture of what the Renaissance would be without form and without beauty.But his description of an ideal state of things in the Thelemite monastery is decisive as historical evidence.In speaking of his gentlemen and ladies of the Order of Free Will, he tells us as follows: