Duelling an old English Custom.
The best example of a difference of custom that is simply chronological is that of duelling. The English, by a real progress, have passed out of this custom; the French have not yet passed out of it, though it is probable that they will do so ultimately. Like all fashions very recently discarded, it seems absurd to those who thought it a part of the order of nature a little time ago. And so completely do we forget the reasons for discarded customs that the English now look upon duelling as quite contrary to reason, having forgotten the ancient reason on which the single combat was founded. Yet it was a very good reason indeed, according to the ideas that our fathers held about the government of the universe.
The old Religious Reason for Duelling.
The old belief, in France and England equally, was that the appeal to arms was an appeal to divine justice, and that God himself would interfere in the battle by protecting the combatant whose quarrel was rightful against the power and malice of his assailant. So long as this belief prevailed, a duel was incomparably more reasonable than is an action-at-law in the present day, for it appealed to infallible instead of to fallible justice, and in addition to being reasonable, it was distinctly a pious act, as the combatant proved his faith by staking his existence on his trust in the divine protection. “He will deliver me out of the hand of this Philistine.” The faith of David was the faith of the Middle Ages.
Duelling Irrational without a Providence.
The custom lasted longer than the belief, even in England, and in France it has long survived all faith in supernatural interference. The duel is utterly irrational when people do not believe that God will protect an inferior swordsman, with right on his side, against a better swordsman in the wrong, or that he will spare the innocent by deflecting the course of a bullet well aimed by a wicked adversary.
The Religion of Honour.
There has been, however, the intervention of a sort of secondary religion between the old one and modern unbelief. There has been the religion of honour. According to this, a man of honour was bound to expose his life on certain occasions to the rapier or pistol of a private enemy, and, if he fell, he fell a martyr to this religion of honour, leaving a name unsullied by the stain of cowardice, which was the equivalent of infidelity or apostasy.
The old English Sentiment.
The French Sentiment about Honour.