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.
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