e 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
bit