My last report was about duty, a word that has fallen from favor in today’s world.

Another word that has fallen from favor is the word “honor.”

This too is an old-fashioned word that many feel belongs to the past.

There was a time when honor was at the top of people’s values. Impugn a man’s honor, and you could be expected to be called out to the “field of honor” in a duel. Many duels were fought because someone offended a man’s honor in public and such behavior could cost you your life.

Aaron Burr killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel over honor. Andrew Jackson fought duels over honor. Many people in the past met on the “field of honor” to defend their honor with pistols and swords.

William Shakespeare said: “Life every man holds dear; but the dear man holds honor far more precious and dear than life.” Publilius Syrus, a Roman writer who flourished in the 1st century B.C., wrote: “He who has lost honor can lose nothing more.”

So what is honor? We can liken honor to what is called the “brand name” in the marketplace. Certain brand names like Coca-Cola, Ford, IBM and Kellogg’s Corn Flakes are standards of excellence in the marketplace. Companies strive to keep their name in the market place as excellence in products.

Some companies have lost this precious status for one reason or another. Once your product has poisoned thousands of people and has been on the nightly news, your brand name is finished — and you are done.

So you can think of your honor as your brand name. Webster defines honor as a keen sense of ethical behavior. This is a good way to think of it because people of honor have this sense and always do the right thing, even if is not the popular thing to do. People with honor are respected and held in esteem. People with honor can be trusted.

And it is said that a man holds his honor like water in his hands. Once he drops it, it can never be recovered. This flies in the face of forgiveness, a Christian value, but is true nonetheless. Lyndon Johnson gave to Richard Nixon this advice: If you ever lose the trust of the American people, you will never get it back. Johnson experienced this firsthand and, prophetically, Nixon would come to experience this as well. Both left the presidency early and lost their honor in the bargain.

We don’t think in terms of honor much these days, but that should not be taken to mean that honor is no longer important. Rather, it is not emphasized as much by our institutions. One has to take a course in college philosophy to learn much about honor, as it was the subject of much discussion among philosophers in the past.

Like duty, honor has disappeared from our lexicon. That is too bad. The concept is still very appropriate to our times. Fear of losing one’s honor causes you to behave ethically. The last thing an honorable person should want is to be accused of behaving dishonorably.

So is there any practical advice to be given about how to behave honorably? I am reminded of my time as a Boy Scout. I was taught that a scout was trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent.

That is pretty good for a start. If everyone behaved like this, we would all be honorable, and there would be few problems in society. Unfortunately, this cannot be taught in schools because of the word reverent, a reference to religion.

Although not understanding honor overtly, many kids get their honor offended, and there is a fight at school and perhaps a gangland killing, often not recognizing that this is a matter of honor. Although dueling is now illegal in all states, it still goes on in a sort of way.

Should we resurrect this concept, which might cause many fights over its offense, or should we let it die away and with it the behavior of honorable people? It seems impossible to teach the behavior without considering the word honor because the answer to the question “why should I behave this way?” is that it is the honorable thing to do.

That is the question now before us.