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The ancient world recognized it in the leading terms, honestum and utile, &c. The abstract notion of Duty is a relation between the action and the agent. It must be voluntary, and within the power of the agent. As to the Sense of Duty, Reid pronounces at once, without hesitation, and with very little examination, in favour of an original power or faculty, in other words, a Moral Sense.
Sepulcrum caespes erigit; monumentorum arduum et operosum honorem, ut gravem defunctis, aspernantur. Lamenta ac lacrimas cito, dolorem et tristitiam tarde ponunt. Feminis lugere honestum est; viris meminisse.
It behooves, at any rate, a man to be true to his country from first to last. And honesty and honor come next that "honestum" which carries him to something beyond the mere integrity of the well-conducted tradesmen. Then family affection; then friendship; and then that constant love for our fellow-creatures which teaches us to do unto others as we would they should do unto us.
The women alone shed tears on such occasions, the men only stared with a gloomy face and thoughtful mien. They recalled and remembered the dead. What the great master of historical composition has said of the ancient Germans may be applied here also: "Feminis lugere honestum est, viris meminisse."
HAEC QUIDEM: a short summary of the preceding arguments, preparatory to a transition to a new subject, introduced by venio nunc ad. The succession of two clauses both containing quidem seems awkward, but occurs in Fin. 5, 80 and elsewhere. HONESTUM SIT: 'does him honor'. UT ANTE DIXI: in 26, where see the notes.
Thus the Stoics said, about the origin of the Idea of Bonum or Honestum, much the same as what Aristotle says about ethical virtue. The Freedom of the Will. A distinction was taken by Epictetus and other Stoics between things in our power and things not in our power.
Marcus Antoninus is a scholar; he enacts the philosopher; and he tries conclusions upon the four elements, and upon the nature of the soul; and he discourses learnedly upon the Honestum; and concerning the Summum Bonum he is unanswerable. Meanwhile, is he learned in the interests of the State? Can he argue a point upon the public economy?
We are bound to acknowledge that this will suit only gentlemen, because he who shall live in accordance with it must be worthy of that name. The "honestum" means much more in Latin than it does in English. Neither "honor" nor "honesty" will give the rendering not that honor or that honesty which we know.
This is a very comfortable belief, however erroneous. Every nation has many such examples of its own; but this subject would require a treatise by itself. To add one word more to my former discourse, I would advise the ladies no longer to call that honour which is but their duty: "Ut enim consuetudo loquitur, id solum dicitur honestum, quod est populari fama gloriosum;"
The exaggeration of the sentiment is more marked than in any of his other writings; thus the fine outburst, Nemo illic vitia ridet, nec corrumpere et corrumpi seculum vocatur, concludes a passage in which he gravely suggests that the invention of writing is fatal to moral innocence; and though he is candid enough to note the qualities of laziness and drunkenness which the Germans shared with other half-barbarous races, he glosses over the other quality common to savages, want of feeling, with the sounding and grandiose commonplace, expressed in a phrase of characteristic force and brevity, feminis lugere honestum est, viris meminisse.
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