The Essays of Arthur Schopenhauer: the Wisdom of Life
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.