Like the  practice known  in  a  former age as “the judgment of God,” the duel is one of those barbaric institutions that still govern society. However, what would you say if you saw two adversaries  being immersed in boiling water or submitted to the contact of a red-hot iron in order to settle their quarrels, with the one enduring the test better being considered the one in the right? You would call such a custom ludicrous. The duel is even worse. For the skillful dueler, it is murder committed in cold blood with deliberate premeditation because he is sure of the blow he will deliver. For his adversary, almost certain to succumb due to his weakness and ineptitude, it is suicide committed with the coldest reflection. I know that oftentimes one seeks to avoid this alternative by relying on equally criminal chance; is not that, however, a return in a different form to the “judgment of God” of the Middle Ages? And yet, during that era, one would be infinitely less guilty; the very name judgment of God implies faith, naive certainly, but at least a faith in the justice of God who could not allow an innocent person to succumb, whereas in the duel one relies on brute strength in such a way that quite often it is the offended party who dies.

O stupid conceit, foolish vanity and insane pride, when will you be replaced by Christian charity, love for one’s neighbor and the humility that Christ exemplified and prescribed? Only then will those monstrous prejudices that still govern humankind – and which laws are powerless to repress – disappear, for it is not enough to prohibit evil and prescribe the good; the good and the horror of evil must dwell in the human heart.

A Protector Spirit (Bordeaux, 1861)