evil associations, and its educational force put to do moral work, even though it
be by way of individual prescriptions for specific defects of character. At its
best, it is indeed a manly art, a superb school for quickness of eye and hand,
decision, force of will, and self-control. The moment this is lost stinging
punishment follows. Hence it is the surest of all cures for excessive irascibility
and has been found to have a most beneficent effect upon a peevish or unmanly
disposition. It has no mean theoretic side, of rules, kinds of blow and counters,
arts of drawing out and tiring an opponent, hindering but not injuring him,
defensive and offensive tactics, etc., and it addresses chiefly the fundamental
muscles in both training and conflict. I do not underestimate the many and great
difficulties of proper purgation, but I know from both personal practise and
observation that they are not unconquerable.
This form of personal conflict is better than dueling even in its comparatively
harmless German student form, although this has been warmly defended by
Jacob Grimm, Bismarck, and Treitschke, while Paulsen, Professor of Philosophy
and Pedagogy, and Schrempf, of Theology, have pronounced it but a slight evil,
and several Americans have thought it better than hazing, which it makes
impossible. The dark side of dueling is seen in the hypertrophied sense of honor
which under the code of the corps becomes an intricate and fantastic thing,
prompting, according to Ziegler,[12] a club of sixteen students to fight over two
hundred duels in four weeks in Jena early in this century. It is prone to
degenerate to an artificial etiquette demanding satisfaction for slight and
unintended offenses. Although this professor who had his own face scarred on
the mensur, pleaded for a student court of honor, with power to brand acts as
infamous and even to expel students, on the ground that honor had grown more
inward, the traditions in favor of dueling were too strong. The duel had a
religious romantic origin as revealing God's judgment, and means that the victim
of an insult is ready to stake body, or even life, and this is still its ideal side.
Anachronism as it now is and degenerating readily to sport or spectacle,
overpunishing what is often mere awkwardness or ignorance, it still impresses a
certain sense of responsibility for conduct and gives some physical training,
slight and specialized though it be. The code is conventional, drawn directly
from old French military life, and is not true to the line that separates real honor
from dishonor, deliberate insult that wounds normal self-respect from injury
fancied by oversensitiveness or feigned by arrogance; so that in its present form
it is not the best safeguard of the sacred shrine of personality against invasion of
ifs rights. If, as is claimed, it is some diversion from or fortification against
corrosive sensuality, it has generally allied itself with excessive beer-drinking.