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 sinis