(6.) Lastly, if, as we saw above, civic honor is very scrupulous in the matter of meum and tuum, paying great respect to obligations and a promise once made, the code we are here discussing displays, on the other hand, the noblest liberality.  There is only one word which may not be broken, the word of honor—­upon my honor, as people say—­the presumption being, of course, that every other form of promise may be broken.  Nay, if the worst comes to the worst, it is easy to break even one’s word of honor, and still remain honorable—­again by adopting that universal remedy, the duel, and fighting with those who maintain that we pledged our word.  Further, there is one debt, and one alone, that under no circumstances must be left unpaid—­a gambling debt, which has accordingly been called a debt of honor.  In all other kinds of debt you may cheat Jews and Christians as much as you like; and your knightly honor remains without a stain.

The unprejudiced reader will see at once that such a strange, savage and ridiculous code of honor as this has no foundation in human nature, nor any warrant in a healthy view of human affairs.  The extremely narrow sphere of its operation serves only to intensify the feeling, which is exclusively confined to Europe since the Middle Age, and then only to the upper classes, officers and soldiers, and people who imitate them.  Neither Greeks nor Romans knew anything of this code of honor or of its principles; nor the highly civilized nations of Asia, ancient or modern.  Amongst them no other kind of honor is recognized but that which I discussed first, in virtue of which a man is what he shows himself to be by his actions, not what any wagging tongue is pleased to say of him.  They thought that what a man said or did might perhaps affect his own honor, but not any other man’s.  To them, a blow was but a blow—­and any horse or donkey could give a harder one—­a blow which under certain circumstances might make a man angry and demand immediate vengeance; but it had nothing to do with honor.  No one kept account of blows or insulting words, or of the satisfaction which was demanded or omitted to be demanded.  Yet in personal bravery and contempt of death, the ancients were certainly not inferior to the nations of Christian Europe.  The Greeks and Romans were thorough heroes, if you like; but they knew nothing about point d’honneur.  If they had any idea of a duel, it was totally unconnected with the life of the nobles; it was merely the exhibition of mercenary gladiators, slaves devoted to slaughter, condemned criminals, who, alternately with wild beasts, were set to butcher one another to make a Roman holiday.  When Christianity was introduced, gladiatorial shows were done away with, and their place taken, in Christian times, by the duel, which was a way of settling difficulties by the Judgment of God.

If the gladiatorial fight was a cruel sacrifice to the prevailing desire for great spectacles, dueling is a cruel sacrifice to existing prejudices—­a sacrifice, not of criminals, slaves and prisoners, but of the noble and the free.[1]