(4.) To receive an insult is disgraceful; to give one, honorable.  Let me take an example.  My opponent has truth, right and reason on his side.  Very well.  I insult him.  Thereupon right and honor leave him and come to me, and, for the time being, he has lost them—­until he gets them back, not by the exercise of right or reason, but by shooting and sticking me.  Accordingly, rudeness is a quality which, in point of honor, is a substitute for any other and outweighs them all.  The rudest is always right.  What more do you want?  However stupid, bad or wicked a man may have been, if he is only rude into the bargain, he condones and legitimizes all his faults.  If in any discussion or conversation, another man shows more knowledge, greater love of truth, a sounder judgment, better understanding than we, or generally exhibits intellectual qualities which cast ours into the shade, we can at once annul his superiority and our own shallowness, and in our turn be superior to him, by being insulting and offensive.  For rudeness is better than any argument; it totally eclipses intellect.  If our opponent does not care for our mode of attack, and will not answer still more rudely, so as to plunge us into the ignoble rivalry of the Avantage, we are the victors and honor is on our side.  Truth, knowledge, understanding, intellect, wit, must beat a retreat and leave the field to this almighty insolence.

Honorable people immediately make a show of mounting their war-horse, if anyone utters an opinion adverse to theirs, or shows more intelligence than they can muster; and if in any controversy they are at a loss for a reply, they look about for some weapon of rudeness, which will serve as well and come readier to hand; so they retire masters of the position.  It must now be obvious that people are quite right in applauding this principle of honor as having ennobled the tone of society.  This principle springs from another, which forms the heart and soul of the entire code.

(5.) Fifthly, the code implies that the highest court to which a man can appeal in any differences he may have with another on a point of honor is the court of physical force, that is, of brutality.  Every piece of rudeness is, strictly speaking, an appeal to brutality; for it is a declaration that intellectual strength and moral insight are incompetent to decide, and that the battle must be fought out by physical force—­a struggle which, in the case of man, whom Franklin defines as a tool-making animal, is decided by the weapons peculiar to the species; and the decision is irrevocable.  This is the well-known principle of right of might—­irony, of course, like the wit of a fool, a parallel phrase.  The honor of a knight may be called the glory of might.