The Essays Of Arthur Schopenhauer: The Wisdom of Life - Arthur Schopenhauer
[Footnote: 1: _Translator's Note_. The story to which Schopenhauer
here refers is briefly as follows: Two gentlemen, one of whom was
named Desglands, were paying court to the same lady. As they sat at
table side by side, with the lady opposite, Desglands did his best to
charm her with his conversation; but she pretended not to hear him,
and kept looking at his rival. In the agony of jealousy, Desglands, as
he was holding a fresh egg in his hand, involuntarily crushed it; the
shell broke, and its contents bespattered his rival's face. Seeing him
raise his hand, Desglands seized it and whispered: _Sir, I take it as
given_. The next day Desglands appeared with a large piece of black
sticking-plaster upon his right cheek. In the duel which followed,
Desglands severely wounded his rival; upon which he reduced the size
of the plaster. When his rival recovered, they had another duel;
Desglands drew blood again, and again made his plaster a little
smaller; and so on for five or six times. After every duel Desglands'
plaster grew less and less, until at last his rival.]
From what I have said it must be quite evident that the principle
of knightly honor has no essential and spontaneous origin in human
nature. It is an artificial product, and its source is not hard to
find. Its existence obviously dates from the time when people used
their fists more than their heads, when priestcraft had enchained the
human intellect, the much bepraised Middle Age, with its system of
chivalry. That was the time when people let the Almighty not only care
for them but judge for them too; when difficult cases were decided by
an ordeal, a _Judgment of God_; which, with few exceptions, meant
a duel, not only where nobles were concerned, but in the case of
ordinary citizens as well. There is a neat illustration of this in
Shakespeare's Henry VI.[1] Every judicial sentence was subject to an
appeal to arms--a court, as it were, of higher instance, namely, _the
Judgment of God_: and this really meant that physical strength and
activity, that is, our animal nature, usurped the place of reason on
the judgment seat, deciding in matters of right and wrong, not by what
a man had done, but by the force with which he was opposed, the same
system, in fact, as prevails to-day under the principles of knightly
honor. If any one doubts that such is really the origin of our modern
duel, let him read an excellent work by J.B. Millingen, _The History
of Dueling_.[2] Nay, you may still find amongst the supporters of
the system,--who, by the way are not usually the most educated or
thoughtful of men,--some who look upon the result of a duel as really
constituting a divine judgment in the matter in dispute; no doubt in
consequence of the traditional feeling on the subject.
But leaving aside the question of origin, it must now be clear to us
that the main tendency of the principle is to use physical menace for
the purpose of extorting an appearance of respect which is deemed too
difficult or superfluous to acquire in reality; a proceeding which
comes to much the same thing as if you were to prove the warmth of
your room by holding your hand on the thermometer and so make it rise.
In fact, the kernel of the matter is this: whereas civic honor aims
at peaceable intercourse, and consists in the opinion of other people
that _we deserve full confidence_, because we pay unconditional
respect to their rights; knightly honor, on the other hand, lays
down that _we are to be feared_, as being determined at all costs to
maintain our own.
As not much reliance can be placed upon human integrity, the principle
that it is more essential to arouse fear than to invite confidence
would not, perhaps, be a false one, if we were living in a state of
nature, where every man would have to protect himself and directly
maintain his own rights. But in civilized life, where the State
undertakes the protection of our person and property, the principle is
no longer applicable: it stands, like the castles and watch-towers of
the age when might was right, a useless and forlorn object, amidst
well-tilled fields and frequented roads, or even railways.
Accordingly, the application of knightly honor, which still recognizes
this principle, is confined to those small cases of personal assault
which meet with but slight punishment at the hands of the law, or even
none at all, for _de minimis non_,--mere trivial wrongs, committed
sometimes only in jest. The consequence of this limited application of
the principle is that it has forced itself into an exaggerated respect
for the value of the person,--a respect utterly alien to the nature,
constitution or destiny of man--which it has elated into a species
of sanctity: and as it considers that the State has imposed a very
insufficient penalty on the commission of such trivial injuries, it
takes upon itself to punish them by attacking the aggressor in life
or limb. The whole thing manifestly rests upon an excessive degree
of arrogant pride, which, completely forgetting what man really is,
claims that he shall be absolutely free from all attack or even
censure. Those who determine to carry out this principle by main
force, and announce, as their rule of action, _whoever insults or
strikes me shall die_! ought for their pains to be banished the
country.[1]
[Footnote 1: Knightly honor is the child of pride and folly, and it is
_needy_ not pride, which is the heritage of the human race. It is a
very remarkable fact that this extreme form of pride should be found
exclusively amongst the adherents of the religion which teaches the
deepest humility. Still, this pride must not be put down to religion,
but, rather, to the feudal system, which made every nobleman a petty
sovereign who recognized no human judge, and learned to regard his
person as sacred and inviolable, and any attack upon it, or any blow
or insulting word, as an offence punishable with death. The principle
of knightly honor and of the duel were at first confined to the
nobles, and, later on, also to officers in the army, who, enjoying a
kind of off-and-on relationship with the upper classes, though they
were never incorporated with them, were anxious not to be behind them.
It is true that duels were the product of the old ordeals; but
the latter are not the foundation, but rather the consequence and
application of the principle of honor: the man who recognized no human
judge appealed to the divine. Ordeals, however, are not peculiar to
Christendom: they may be found in great force among the Hindoos,
especially of ancient times; and there are traces of them even now.]
As a palliative to this rash arrogance, people are in the habit of
giving way on everything. If two intrepid persons meet, and neither
will give way, the slightest difference may cause a shower of abuse,
then fisticuffs, and, finally, a fatal blow: so that it would really
be a more decorous proceeding to omit the intermediate steps and
appeal to arms at once. An appeal to arms has its own special
formalities; and these have developed into a rigid and precise system
of laws and regulations, together forming the most solemn farce there
is--a regular temple of honor dedicated to folly! For if two intrepid
persons dispute over some trivial matter, (more important affairs are
dealt with by law), one of them, the cleverer of the two, will of
course yield; and they will agree to differ. That this is so is proved
by the fact that common people,--or, rather, the numerous classes of
the community who do not acknowledge the principle of knightly honor,
let any dispute run its natural course. Amongst these classes homicide
is a hundredfold rarer than amongst those--and they amount, perhaps,
in all, to hardly one in a thousand,--who pay homage to the principle:
and even blows are of no very frequent occurrence.
Then it has been said that the manners and tone of good society are
ultimately based upon this principle of honor, which, with its system
of duels, is made out to be a bulwark against the assaults of savagery
and rudeness. But Athens, Corinth and Rome could assuredly boast of
good, nay, excellent society, and manners and tone of a high order,
without any support from the bogey of knightly honor. It is true that
women did not occupy that prominent place in ancient society which
they hold now, when conversation has taken on a frivolous and
trifling character, to the exclusion of that weighty discourse which
distinguished the ancients.
This change has certainly contributed a great deal to bring about the
tendency, which is observable in good society now-a-days, to prefer
personal courage to the possession of any other quality. The fact is
that personal courage is really a very subordinate virtue,--merely the
distinguishing mark of a subaltern,--a virtue, indeed, in which we are
surpassed by the lower animals; or else you would not hear people say,
_as brave as a lion_. Far from being the pillar of society, knightly
honor affords a sure asylum, in general for dishonesty and wickedness,
and also for small incivilities, want of consideration and
unmannerliness. Rude behavior is often passed over in silence because
no one cares to risk his neck in correcting it.
After what I have said, it will not appear strange that the dueling
system is carried to the highest pitch of sanguinary zeal precisely in
that nation whose political and financial records show that they
are not too honorable. What that nation is like in its private and
domestic life, is a question which may be best put to those who are
experienced in the matter. Their urbanity and social culture have long
been conspicuous by their absence.
There is no truth, then, in such pretexts. It can be urged with more
justice that as, when you snarl at a dog, he snarls in return, and
when you pet him, he fawns; so it lies in the nature of men to return
hostility by hostility, and to be embittered and irritated at any
signs of depreciatory treatment or hatred: and, as Cicero says, _there
is something so penetrating in the shaft of envy that even men of
wisdom and worth find its wound a painful one_; and nowhere in the
world, except, perhaps, in a few religious sects, is an insult or a
blow taken with equanimity. And yet a natural view of either would
in no case demand anything more than a requital proportionate to the
offence, and would never go to the length of assigning _death_ as the
proper penalty for anyone who accuses another of lying or stupidity or
cowardice. The old German theory of _blood for a blow_ is a revolting
superstition of the age of chivalry. And in any case the return or
requital of an insult is dictated by anger, and not by any such
obligation of honor and duty as the advocates of chivalry seek to
attach to it. The fact is that, the greater the truth, the greater
the slander; and it is clear that the slightest hint of some real
delinquency will give much greater offence than a most terrible
accusation which is perfectly baseless: so that a man who is quite
sure that he has done nothing to deserve a reproach may treat it with
contempt, and will be safe in doing so. The theory of honor demands
that he shall show a susceptibility which he does not possess, and
take bloody vengeance for insults which he cannot feel. A man must
himself have but a poor opinion of his own worth who hastens to
prevent the utterance of an unfavorable opinion by giving his enemy a
black eye.
True appreciation of his own value will make a man really indifferent
to insult; but if he cannot help resenting it, a little shrewdness and
culture will enable him to save appearances and dissemble his anger.
If he could only get rid of this superstition about honor--the idea, I
mean, that it disappears when you are insulted, and can be restored by
returning the insult; if we could only stop people from thinking
that wrong, brutality and insolence can be legalized by expressing
readiness to give satisfaction, that is, to fight in defence of it,
we should all soon come to the general opinion that insult and
depreciation are like a battle in which the loser wins; and that, as
Vincenzo Monti says, abuse resembles a church-procession, because it
always returns to the point from which it set out. If we could only
get people to look upon insult in this light, we should no longer have
to say something rude in order to prove that we are in the right. Now,
unfortunately, if we want to take a serious view of any question, we
have first of all to consider whether it will not give offence in some
way or other to the dullard, who generally shows alarm and resentment
at the merest sign of intelligence; and it may easily happen that the
head which contains the intelligent view has to be pitted against the
noodle which is empty of everything but narrowness and stupidity. If
all this were done away with, intellectual superiority could take
the leading place in society which is its due--a place now occupied,
though people do not like to confess it, by excellence of physique,
mere fighting pluck, in fact; and the natural effect of such a change
would be that the best kind of people would have one reason the
less for withdrawing from society. This would pave the way for the
introduction of real courtesy and genuinely good society, such as
undoubtedly existed in Athens, Corinth and Rome. If anyone wants
to see a good example of what I mean, I should like him to read
Xenophon's _Banquet_.
The last argument in defence of knightly honor no doubt is, that,
but for its existence, the world--awful thought!--would be a regular
bear-garden. To which I may briefly reply that nine hundred and
ninety-nine people out of a thousand who do not recognize the code,
have often given and received a blow without any fatal consequences:
whereas amongst the adherents of the code a blow usually means death
to one of the parties. But let me examine this argument more closely.
I have often tried to find some tenable, or at any rate, plausible
basis--other than a merely conventional one--some positive reasons,
that is to say, for the rooted conviction which a portion of mankind
entertains, that a blow is a very dreadful thing; but I have looked
for it in vain, either in the animal or in the rational side of human
nature. A blow is, and always will be, a trivial physical injury which
one man can do to another; proving, thereby, nothing more than his
superiority in strength or skill, or that his enemy was off his guard.
Analysis will carry us no further. The same knight who regards a blow
from the human hand as the greatest of evils, if he gets a ten times
harder blow from his horse, will give you the assurance, as he limps
away in suppressed pain, that it is a matter of no consequence
whatever. So I have come to think that it is the human hand which is
at the bottom of the mischief. And yet in a battle the knight may get
cuts and thrusts from the same hand, and still assure you that his
wounds are not worth mentioning. Now, I hear that a blow from the flat
of a sword is not by any means so bad as a blow from a stick; and
that, a short time ago, cadets were liable to be punished by the one
but not the other, and that the very greatest honor of all is the
_accolade_. This is all the psychological or moral basis that I can
find; and so there is nothing left me but to pronounce the whole thing
an antiquated superstition that has taken deep root, and one more
of the many examples which show the force of tradition. My view is
confirmed by the well-known fact that in China a beating with a bamboo
is a very frequent punishment for the common people, and even for
officials of every class; which shows that human nature, even in a
highly civilized state, does not run in the same groove here and in
China.
On the contrary, an unprejudiced view of human nature shows that it is
just as natural for a man to beat as it is for savage animals to bite
and rend in pieces, or for horned beasts to butt or push. Man may be
said to be the animal that beats. Hence it is revolting to our sense
of the fitness of things to hear, as we sometimes do, that one man
bitten another; on the other hand, it is a natural and everyday
occurrence for him to get blows or give them. It is intelligible
enough that, as we become educated, we are glad to dispense with blows
by a system of mutual restraint. But it is a cruel thing to compel a
nation or a single class to regard a blow as an awful misfortune which
must have death and murder for its consequences. There are too
many genuine evils in the world to allow of our increasing them by
imaginary misfortunes, which brings real ones in their train: and yet
this is the precise effect of the superstition, which thus proves
itself at once stupid and malign.
It does not seem to me wise of governments and legislative bodies to
promote any such folly by attempting to do away with flogging as a
punishment in civil or military life. Their idea is that they are
acting in the interests of humanity; but, in point of fact, they are
doing just the opposite; for the abolition of flogging will serve only
to strengthen this inhuman and abominable superstition, to which so
many sacrifices have already been made. For all offences, except the
worst, a beating is the obvious, and therefore the natural penalty;
and a man who will not listen to reason will yield to blows. It seems
to me right and proper to administer corporal punishment to the man
who possesses nothing and therefore cannot be fined, or cannot be put
in prison because his master's interests would suffer by the loss of
his service. There are really no arguments against it: only mere talk
about _the dignity of man_--talk which proceeds, not from any clear
notions on the subject, but from the pernicious superstition I have
been describing. That it is a superstition which lies at the bottom of
the whole business is proved by an almost laughable example. Not
long ago, in the military discipline of many countries, the cat was
replaced by the stick. In either case the object was to produce
physical pain; but the latter method involved no disgrace, and was not
derogatory to honor.
By promoting this superstition, the State is playing into the hands of
the principle of knightly honor, and therefore of the duel; while at
the same time it is trying, or at any rate it pretends it is trying,
to abolish the duel by legislative enactment. As a natural consequence
we find that this fragment of the theory that _might is right_, which
has come down to us from the most savage days of the Middle Age, has
still in this nineteenth century a good deal of life left in it--more
shame to us! It is high time for the principle to be driven out bag
and baggage. Now-a-days no one is allowed to set dogs or cocks to
fight each other,--at any rate, in England it is a penal offence,--but
men are plunged into deadly strife, against their will, by the
operation of this ridiculous, superstitious and absurd principle,
which imposes upon us the obligation, as its narrow-minded supporters
and advocates declare, of fighting with one another like gladiators,
for any little trifle. Let me recommend our purists to adopt the
expression _baiting_[1] instead of _duel_, which probably comes to us,
not from the Latin _duellum_, but from the Spanish _duelo_,--meaning
suffering, nuisance, annoyance.
[Footnote 1: _Ritterhetze_]
In any case, we may well laugh at the pedantic excess to which this
foolish system has been carried. It is really revolting that this
principle, with its absurd code, can form a power within the
State--_imperium in imperio_--a power too easily put in motion, which,
recognizing no right but might, tyrannizes over the classes which come
within its range, by keeping up a sort of inquisition, before which
any one may be haled on the most flimsy pretext, and there and then be
tried on an issue of life and death between himself and his opponent.
This is the lurking place from which every rascal, if he only belongs
to the classes in question, may menace and even exterminate the
noblest and best of men, who, as such, must of course be an object of
hatred to him. Our system of justice and police-protection has made it
impossible in these days for any scoundrel in the street to attack us
with--_Your money or your life_! An end should be put to the burden
which weighs upon the higher classes--the burden, I mean, of having to
be ready every moment to expose life and limb to the mercy of anyone
who takes it into his rascally head to be coarse, rude, foolish or
malicious. It is perfectly atrocious that a pair of silly, passionate
boys should be wounded, maimed or even killed, simply because they
have had a few words.
The strength of this tyrannical power within the State, and the force
of the superstition, may be measured by the fact that people who are
prevented from restoring their knightly honor by the superior or
inferior rank of their aggressor, or anything else that puts the
persons on a different level, often come to a tragic-comic end by
committing suicide in sheer despair. You may generally know a thing
to be false and ridiculous by finding that, if it is carried to its
logical conclusion, it results in a contradiction; and here, too, we
have a very glaring absurdity. For an officer is forbidden to take
part in a duel; but if he is challenged and declines to come out, he
is punished by being dismissed the service.
As I am on the matter, let me be more frank still. The important
distinction, which is often insisted upon, between killing your enemy
in a fair fight with equal weapons, and lying in ambush for him, is
entirely a corollary of the fact that the power within the State, of
which I have spoken, recognizes no other right than might, that is,
the right of the stronger, and appeals to a _Judgment of God_ as the
basis of the whole code. For to kill a man in a fair fight, is to
prove that you are superior to him in strength or skill; and to
justify the deed, _you must assume that the right of the stronger is
really a right_.
But the truth is that, if my opponent is unable to defend himself, it
gives me the possibility, but not by any means the right, of killing
him. The _right_, the _moral justification_, must depend entirely upon
the _motives_ which I have for taking his life. Even supposing that I
have sufficient motive for taking a man's life, there is no reason
why I should make his death depend upon whether I can shoot or fence
better than he. In such a case, it is immaterial in what way I kill
him, whether I attack him from the front or the rear. From a moral
point of view, the right of the stronger is no more convincing than
the right of the more skillful; and it is skill which is employed if
you murder a a man treacherously. Might and skill are in this case
equally right; in a duel, for instance, both the one and the other
come into play; for a feint is only another name for treachery. If I
consider myself morally justified in taking a man's life, it is stupid
of me to try first of all whether he can shoot or fence better than
I; as, if he can, he will not only have wronged me, but have taken my
life into the bargain.
It is Rousseau's opinion that the proper way to avenge an insult is,
not to fight a duel with your aggressor, but to assassinate him,--an
opinion, however, which he is cautious enough only to barely indicate
in a mysterious note to one of the books of his _Emile_. This shows
the philosopher so completely under the influence of the mediaeval
superstition of knightly honor that he considers it justifiable to
murder a man who accuses you of lying: whilst he must have known that
every man, and himself especially, has deserved to have the lie given
him times without number.
The prejudice which justifies the killing of your adversary, so long
as it is done in an open contest and with equal weapons, obviously
looks upon might as really right, and a duel as the interference of
God. The Italian who, in a fit of rage, falls upon his aggressor
wherever he finds him, and despatches him without any ceremony, acts,
at any rate, consistently and naturally: he may be cleverer, but he is
not worse, than the duelist. If you say, I am justified in killing my
adversary in a duel, because he is at the moment doing his best to
kill me; I can reply that it is your challenge which has placed him
under the necessity of defending himself; and that by mutually putting
it on the ground of self-defence, the combatants are seeking a
plausible pretext for committing murder. I should rather justify the
deed by the legal maxim _Volenti non fit injuria_; because the parties
mutually agree to set their life upon the issue.
This argument may, however, be rebutted by showing that the injured
party is not injured _volens_; because it is this tyrannical principle
of knightly honor, with its absurd code, which forcibly drags one at
least of the combatants before a bloody inquisition.
I have been rather prolix on the subject of knightly honor, but I
had good reason for being so, because the Augean stable of moral and
intellectual enormity in this world can be cleaned out only with the
besom of philosophy. There are two things which more than all
else serve to make the social arrangements of modern life compare
unfavorably with those of antiquity, by giving our age a gloomy, dark
and sinister aspect, from which antiquity, fresh, natural and, as it
were, in the morning of life, is completely free; I mean modern honor
and modern disease,--_par nobile fratrum_!--which have combined to
poison all the relations of life, whether public or private. The
second of this noble pair extends its influence much farther than at
first appears to be the case, as being not merely a physical, but also
a moral disease. From the time that poisoned arrows have been found
in Cupid's quiver, an estranging, hostile, nay, devilish element has
entered into the relations of men and women, like a sinister thread
of fear and mistrust in the warp and woof of their intercourse;
indirectly shaking the foundations of human fellowship, and so more or
less affecting the whole tenor of existence. But it would be beside my
present purpose to pursue the subject further.