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DUELLING 209
the higher classes. But it is not quite clear wherein lies the
limit for people who are supposed to be worthy of fighting
duels and those who are not. In older times only the
nobility and the military were considered to have this right,
while later on University students were also deemed to
possess the right to take satisfaction and demand it by duels.
But when industry and commerce made themselves felt as
important factors in the life of the State, the representative
of those classes began to claim the same right. However,
the right to demand satisfaction by a duel is still not supposed
to belong to all men and all classes, and it is this feature
which makes it unacceptable to the modern democratic
structure of society. The duellists form, so to say, a caste—
a society acting contrary to the law, such as the Camorra in
Naples, the Maffia in Sicily, or the Black Hand in America,
associations which, of course, pursue different aims, but, in
common with the duellists, are in open opposition to the
existing law and addicted to violent methods.
Unbridled pugnacity, which pays no regard to human life
or considers duelling a kind of sport, can no longer be
tolerated in modern communities, where it is considered to be
the duty of each individual to respect the rights and
personality of the other. It is a rather curious fact that the
less a man is living by his own exertions, the more inclined
he is to lay stress on amour-propre and sensitiveness on the
point of honour. Men of the working classes and those who
have to earn their own living have no time to indulge in such
egotistic and petty pretensions. In England the idea of
class-honour has, broadly speaking, been replaced by the
ideas of honesty and respectability comprising all classes of
society—ideas which are, from an ethical point of view,
infinitely sounder, and are applicable to all members of
society. Honesty and respectability cannot be ensured by
duelling or any other illegal act, but are only acquired by a
conduct of life which secures such a reputation. It is said,
" By their fruits ye shall know them." There is a patent
difference between the conduct and behaviour of duellists
and non-duellists. The duellist does not need to be so care-
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