“Rousseau prepared a political reform. Voltaire operated a revolution in religion, attacking its influence with insult and mockery. Philosophy, handled by him, became sophistical and narrow; but nevertheless, as Chateaubriand observes, it disengaged Christianity from its trammels, to restore it ultimately to all its purity.”
While thus endeavouring to accelerate a reform in the social order, Rousseau was most energetic in denouncing the practice of duelling; and the following are his memorable remarks on the subject:
“Beware how you confound the sacred name of honour with that ferocious prejudice which places virtue on the sword’s point, and which is only calculated to make brave ruffians.
“And what constitutes this prejudice?--the most extravagant and barbarous idea that ever entered the human mind; fancying that all social duties will find a substitute in valour; that a man ceases to be a rogue, a cheat, a slanderer, and becomes civilized, humane, and polite, when he knows how to fight! that falsehood becomes truth, theft legitimate, treachery and perfidiousness praiseworthy, so soon as he can maintain these qualities sword in hand! that an insult is wiped away by the wound of a sword, and that you can never be in the wrong when you have killed your adversary! There does exist, I admit, a sort of affair in which politeness is combined with cruelty, and where people only kill each other by chance; and this is when men fight for the _first blood_. The first blood! good God! And what dost thou want with this blood, ferocious beast? dost thou want to drink it?
“The bravest men of antiquity never thought of avenging injuries by single combat. Did Cæsar send a challenge to Cato, or Pompey to Cæsar, after the repeated affronts that they both had received? Was the greatest captain of Greece dishonoured when struck with a staff?
“The upright man, whose life has been spotless, and who never betrayed any symptoms of cowardice, will ever refuse to soil his hand by homicide, and will not be the less honoured. Ever prompt to serve his country, and to afford protection to the weak; to fulfill the most perilous duties, and to defend at the price of his blood everything that is just, honest, and dear to him; he will display in every act of his life that unshaken fortitude which is ever the attribute of true courage. Secure in the consciousness of his integrity, he will step out with head erect, and neither seek nor shun an enemy: he fears death much less than a foul deed, and dreads a crime more than danger. If vile prejudices assail him for a time, every day of his honourable life is a witness to defend him, when all his actions are judged by each other.