The fifth of
the 10 Commandments that thundered down from Sinai was, “Honour thy father and
thy mother. . . .” The commandment is
specific but has many implications and extends far beyond one’s parentage. A civil person—indeed any who aspire to be a
true gentleman or gentlewoman—will extend honor, as Christian scripture
enjoins, to “masters” [i.e., leaders, exemplars], to “husbands,” “to wives,” to
any “to whom honor belongs.”
Honor is not
restricted to people alone. Honor can be
paid to institutions, such as marriage, the family, position or political
office, the flag and country.
The Japanese
had a cultural ideal—the Samurai code which they called ‘bushido.’ It was taken to the extreme, as many good
things are, but we can learn from it. The
Way of the Warrior, which bound one so subscribed in bushido, was to live with
honor, fight with fearlessness and honor, and die with honor; to have undying
loyalty to his feudal lord and to his land, and to his own name and heritage. It was, in the words of one historian, “training
in the law of honor, obedience, duty, and self-sacrifice.... As a child [the
Samurai] had but to be instructed, as indeed he was from his earliest years, in
the etiquette of self-immolation.” (Arthur
May Knapp (1896), "Feudal
and Modern Japan" ) Their code of honor included eight virtues and three associated
virtues:
- Righteousness (gi?)
- Courage (yū?)
- Benevolence (jin?)
- Respect (rei?)
- Sincerity (makoto?)
- Honor (meiyo?)
- Loyalty (chūgi?)
- Self-Control (jisei?)
Associated
virtues:
- Filial piety (kō?)
- Wisdom (chi?)
- Fraternal Respect (tei?)
Service to
the concept of bushido (Samurai means ‘service’) was a duty, and fidelity to
duty was honor. We would do well to try
to cultivate those virtues but not distort them or take them to the extreme of
the violence practiced by the Samurai warrior.
In our
society for today’s young scholars to have ‘honors’ is to be ‘honored’ because
of academic achievement alone. Formerly
it did not mean that at all; it meant for one so identified as having the
qualities of moral and character strength and distinction. Indeed, mankind’s earliest records equate
honor with power.
I like the
term David Brooks in his book The Road to
Character uses-- ‘great souled’-- to describe someone or something
deserving of the honor I write of today. So as to not misunderstand and believe that fame is honor, for it is
not, I approach the end of my message with the example of a man of honor Brooks uses—a
Civil War soldier named Sullivan Ballou
who wrote this letter to his wife the day before he fought in the Battle of
Bull Run:
“If
it is necessary that I should fall on the battlefield for my country, I am ready. . . . I know how strongly American
Civilization now leans upon the triumph of the government, and how great a debt
we owe to those who went before us through
the blood and suffering of the Revolution.
And I am willing—perfectly willing—to lay down all my joys in this life,
to help . . . pay that debt.
“But,
my dear wife, when I know that with my own joys I lay down nearly all of yours,
and replace them in this life with cares and sorrows—when, after having eaten
for long years the bitter fruit of the orphanage myself, I must offer it as
their only sustenance to my dear little children—is it weak or dishonorable,
while the banner of my purpose floats calmly and proudly in the breeze, that my
unbounded love for you, my darling wife and children, should struggle in
fierce, though useless, contest with my love of country? . . .
“Sarah,
my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me to you with mighty cables
that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over
me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly on with all these chains to the
battlefield . . . . I have, I know, but few and small claims upon Divine
Providence, but something whispers to me—perhaps it is the wafted prayer of my
little Edgar—that I shall return to my loved ones unharmed. If I do not, my dear Sarah, never forget how
much I love you, and when my last breath escapes me on the battlefield it will
whisper your name.” Sullivan Ballou died the next day in battle
for the country he loved and honored.
Two years
later, following the Battle of Gettysburg, President Abraham Lincoln uttered
these words as part of his immortal speech honoring all the dead of that tragic
war: “from
these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave
the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these
dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a
new birth of freedom. . . .
”
We do not have to die to have
honor; but if we do, so be it.
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