It behoves us, therefore, in general, to praise those who do not allow
themselves to be offended with impunity. They keep up among us an idea
of extra-legal justice by which we all profit and which would soon
become exhausted without their aid. Let us rather deplore that they are
not more numerous. If there were not quite so many good-natured souls,
capable of chastising, but too ready to forgive, we should find far
fewer evil-doers too ready to do wrong; for three-quarters of the wrong
that is committed springs from the certainty of impunity. In order to
maintain the vague fear and respect that allow the unfortunate unarmed
to live and breathe almost freely in a society teeming with knaves and
dastards, it is the strict duty of all who are able to resist
unpunishable injustice by means of an act of violence never fail to do
so. They thus restore the level of immanent justice. Thinking that they
are defending only themselves, they defend in the aggregate the most
precious heritage of mankind. I do not contend that it would not be
better, in the greater number of cases, that the courts should
intervene; but, until our laws become simpler, more practical, less
costly and more familiar, we have no other remedy than the fist or the
sword against a number of iniquities that are very real, although not
provided for by our codes.
V
The fist is quick, immediate; but it is not conclusive enough; when the
offence is at all grave, we see that it is really too lenient and
ephemeral; and, besides, it has always movements that are a little
vulgar and effects that are somewhat repugnant. It brings only a brutal
faculty into play. It is the blindest and most unequal of weapons; and,
since it evades all the conditions that adjust the chances of two
ill-matched adversaries, it involves exaggerated reprisals on the part
of the beaten combatant, which end by arming him with the stick, the
knife or the revolver.
It is allowable in certain countries, in England, for instance. There
the science of boxing forms part of the elementary education and its
general practice tends in a curious way to remove natural inequalities;
moreover, a whole organism of clubs, paternal juries and tribunals easy
of access confirms or forestalls its exploits. But in France it would be
a pity to return to it. The sword, which has there replaced it since
immemorial days, is an incomparably more sensitive, serious, graceful
and delicate instrument of justice. It is reproached with being neither
equitable nor probative. But it proves first of all the quality of our
attitude in the face of danger; and that already is a proof which is not
without its value. For our attitude in the face of danger is exactly our
attitude in the face of the reproaches or encouragements of the various
consciences that lie hidden within us, of those which are both below and
above our intelligible conscience and which mingle with the essential
and, so to speak, universal elements of our being. Next, it depends only
upon ourselves that it should become as equitable as any human
instrument, ever subject to chance, error and weakness, can be. Its art
is certainly accessible to every healthy man. It demands neither
abnormal muscular strength nor exceptional agility. The least gifted of
us need devote to it no more than two or three hours of every week. He
will acquire a suppleness and a precision sufficient soon to discover
what the astronomers call his "personal equation," to attain his
individual average, which is at the same time a general average that
only a few fire-eaters, a few idlers succeed in surpassing, at the cost
of long, painful and very ungrateful efforts.