"Gentlemen," recommenced my Uncle Roland, "thumbs and hands are given to an Esquimaux, as well as to scholars and surgeons--and what the deuce are they the wiser for them? Sirs, you cannot reduce us thus into mechanism. Look within. Man, I say, re-creates himself. How? BY THE PRINCIPLE OF HONOUR. His first desire is to excel some one else--his first impulse is distinction above his fellows. Heaven places in his soul, as if it were a compass, a needle that always points to one end,--viz., to honour in that which those around him consider honourable. Therefore, as man at first is exposed to all dangers from wild beasts, and from men as savage as himself, COURAGE becomes the first quality mankind must honour: therefore the savage is courageous; therefore he covets the praise for courage; therefore he decorates himself with the skins of the beasts he has subdued, or the scalps of the foes he has slain. Sirs, don't tell me that the skins and the scalps are only hide and leather; they are trophies of honour. Don't tell me they are ridiculous and disgusting; they become glorious as proofs that the savage has emerged out of the first brute-like egotism, and attached price to the praise which men never give except for works that secure or advance their welfare. By-and-by, sirs, our savages discover that they cannot live in safety amongst themselves unless they agree to speak the truth to each other; therefore TRUTH becomes valued, and grows into a principle of honour; so, brother Augustine will tell us that, in the primitive times, truth was always the attribute of a hero." "Right," said my father: "Homer emphatically gives it to Achilles." "Out of truth comes the necessity for some kind of rude justice and law. Therefore men, after courage in the warrior, and truth in all, begin to attach honour to the elder, whom they intrust with preserving justice amongst them. So, sirs, LAW is born--" "But the first lawgivers were priests," quoth my father.