Example 1.--A.: "You are not yet initiated into the mysteries of the
Kantian philosophy."
B.: "Oh, if it's mysteries you're talking of, I'll have nothing to do
with them."
Example 2.--I condemned the principle involved in the word _honour_
as a foolish one; for, according to it, a man loses his honour by
receiving an insult, which he cannot wipe out unless he replies with a
still greater insult, or by shedding his adversary's blood or his own.
I contended that a man's true honour cannot be outraged by what he
suffers, but only and alone by what he does; for there is no saying
what may befall any one of us. My opponent immediately attacked
the reason I had given, and triumphantly proved to me that when a
tradesman was falsely accused of misrepresentation, dishonesty, or
neglect in his business, it was an attack upon his honour, which in
this case was outraged solely by what he suffered, and that he could
only retrieve it by punishing his aggressor and making him retract.
Here, by a homonymy, he was foisting _civic honour_, which is
otherwise called _good name_, and which may be outraged by libel and
slander, on to the conception of _knightly honour_, also called _point
d'honneur_, which may be outraged by insult. And since an attack on
the former cannot be disregarded, but must be repelled by public
disproof, so, with the same justification, an attack on the latter
must not be disregarded either, but it must be defeated by still
greater insult and a duel. Here we have a confusion of two essentially
different things through the homonymy in the word _honour_, and a
consequent alteration of the point in dispute.