ommitting 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