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Speaking of the goddess Ishtar, Innana, Nana, Nina, and Anunit are all designations of that goddess, and that it is best to regard them as being local names. There seems to have been a tendency to look upon her as the one great female divinity, hence the use of the word istarit as synonymous with lltu, ‘goddess.’ She has her own sphere, and carries on her existence without any connection with a masculine deity.

With regard to this it may be noted that the name of Tammuz, her spouse, occurs as early as the time of Lugal-anda and Uru-ka-gina, and notwithstanding that we have no records proving the existence of the well-known legends concerning Istar and Tammuz at that early period, there is every probability that they had already taken form.

It is true that Tammuz seems not to have attained a greater importance in Babylonia than did Adonis, his counterpart, in Greece, but the goddess of reproduction and the god of the recurring seasons represent ideas so closely related that they could not reasonably be separated—they are, in fact, complements of each other.

The god Anu at the earliest period of Babylonian history is especially noteworthy. The goddess Bau was his daughter, and Nin-gis-zida his son, whilst Nannar, the moon, in the inscriptions of Ur-Engur, is called ” the mighty steer of Anu,” proving that the last-named was already, at that early date, the god of the firmament.

In the earliest times the worship of the heaven-god was not in special favour. This would be due to the fact that a god of the heavens is an abstract idea, and could not become a popular belief.

In the time of Hammurabi, Babylonia’s great lawgiver, things had changed somewhat, and political concentration in the Euphrates-valley brought to a focus the intellectual life of the land. The manner in which the name Anu is written in the Babylonian inscriptions of that period indicates that the people had not yet reached the abstract principle which lies in the idea of a god of the heavens, notwithstanding that a certain amount of personification was unavoidable.

The spelling referred to is the use of the word for ‘ heaven’ as a material idea—the vault which we see over our heads. It is doubtful, however, whether much can be based on this evidence, as it may be merely a device of the scribes to avoid writing the determinative prefix of divinity. The goddess Bau is called ” child of Anu,” but this he regards as an indication of the personification of the heavens without deification.

Among the minor deities whose names are discussed may be mentioned Nin-sah, the latter component of whose name means, he points out, ‘ wild swine,’ regarded, he says, as holy by the Babylonians, as also by other nations. The eating of its flesh was forbidden on certain days of the year. For the 30th day of Ab, there are the words ” the flesh of a swine he shall not eat, maskadu (? gout) will seize him.” For the 27th of Tisri, however, in addition to pork, beef is mentioned: ” the flesh of a swine, the flesh of an ox, he shall not eat—the face is dark,” trouble will result. It seems probable, however, that these are rather of the nature of general recommendations than prohibitions, and may, perhaps, be addressed to a class of persons—the tablet whence they are taken seems to have belonged to one of a class of agriculturalists attached to the temple of Nebo— and not to the whole community.

The worship of Nebo, which was most popular in Babylonia, and also much favoured in Assyria, owed its popularity to the fact that, as god of Borsippa, he stood in close connection with Merodach. This is in all probability true, but it must not be forgotten that all the gods of Babylonia were identified with Merodach after he became the national god of the Babylonians, and that Merodach, with the attributes of Nebo, the god of writing, literature, knowledge, wisdom, trade, and commerce, would, from the mere possession of these attributes, acquire considerable favour. Naturally Nebo’s pre-eminence came comparatively late, when the necessity of furthering the worship of Merodach no longer existed. In this connection Hammurabi seems intentionally to have ignored the worship of Nebo, and it is noteworthy that though that king mentions, in the introduction to his laws, Nebo’s city Borsippa and its temple, the name of the god does not appear.

The history of the worship of Nebo and its political signification are well its importance are evidenced by the fact that it was on a distant mountain named after him that Moses, the great Hebrew lawgiver, died.

About the Anunnaki and the Igigi, the latter are described in the texts as the gods of the heavens, whilst the former were apparently regarded as the gods or spirits of the earth, and it may be noted that as Anunna is found instead of Anunnaki, the ending aki is in all probability simply a termination, of which the syllable ki is generally dropped. The meaning would then be simply ‘ the gods of the great waters,’ as has been already suggested, and, if it be correct, possibly designates the gods of the earth as those who brooded over the deep at the creation, when as yet no land had appeared. Their mention at the coming of the Flood would seem to confirm this.

The Igigi were ‘ the great princes’ of the gods, but there is much uncertainty as to the meaning of the name. Taken separately, its elements mean ‘ five one one,’ pointing to the use of the numeral ‘ five’ as a separate group, from which there was at first a five-day week, replaced later on by one of seven days. Other inscriptions give the Igigi as eight in number, whilst the Anunnaki are said to have numbered nine.

To read the complete and unabridged text: Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, London, Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, April 1904: http://books.google.it/books?pg=PA323&dq=Anunnaki&lr=&cd=1&id=TPgAAAAAYAAJ&as_brr=4#v=onepage&q=Anunnaki&f=false

DRACAENA, a genus of endogenous plants, of the natural family Asparageae of Jussieu, now arranged as a section of Liliaceae by Dr. Lindley. The genus was established by Linnaeus, and named from one of its species yielding the resinous exudation, familiarly known by the name of Dragon’s blood, a translation of the Arabic name dum al akh- wain, met with in Avicenna and other Arabian authors. Dracaena is characterized by having an inferior six-partite perianth, of which the segments are nearly erect, and have inserted on them the six stamens, with filaments thickened towards the middle and linear anthers. The style is single, with a trifid stigma. The berry two or three-celled, with its cells one or two-seeded.

The species of Dracaena are now about 30 in number, and found in the warm parts of the Old World, and in many of both Asiatic and African islands, whence they extend southwards to the Cape of Good Hope and New Holland, and northwards into China, and to the eastern parts of India, as the districts of Silhet and Chittagong. Species are also found in Socotra, and the Canary and Cape Verd Islands, as well as at Sierra Leone. From this distribution it is evident that the species require artificial heat for their cultivation in England. They are found to thrive in a light loam, and may be grown from cuttings sunk in a bark bed.

The species of Dracaena are evergreens, either of a shrubby or arboreous nature; and having long, slender, often columnar stems, they emulate palms in habit. Their trunks are marked with the cicatrices of fallen leaves; the centre is soft and cellular, having externally a circle of stringy fibres. The leaves are simple, usually crowded together towards the end of the branches, or terminal like the inflorescence: whence we might suppose that the name terminalis had been applied to some of the species, if Rumphius had not stated that it was in consequence of their being planted along the boundaries of fields. The structure of the stem and leaves is particularly interesting, as the fossil genera Clathraria and Sternbergia have been assimilated to Dracaena, the former by M. Adolphe Brongniart, and the latter by Dr. Lindley; and as Rumphius compares he leaves of a Dracaena with those of Galanga, it is as probable that the fossil leaves called Cannophyllites may be those of a plant allied to Dracaena, as that they belong to one of the Canneae.

Of the several species of Dracaena which have been described by botanists, there are few which are of much importance either for their useful or ornamental properties. Among them, however, may be mentioned D. terminalis, a species rather extensively diffused. The root is said by Rumphius to be employed as a demulcent in cases of diarrhoea, and the plant as a signal of truth and of peace in the Eastern archipelago. In the Islands of the Pacific Ocean a sweetish juice is expressed from its roots, and afterwards educed by evaporation to a sugar, of which specimens were brought to Paris by Captain D’Urville from the island of Tahiti. (Otaheite.) The root is there called Ti or Tii, and thence no doubt corrupted into Tea-root by the English and Americans. M. Gaudichaud mentions that in the Sandwich Islands generally an intoxicating drink is prepared from this root, to which the name Ava is often applied, is well as to that made with the roots of Piper methysticum.

Dracaena Draco is the best known species, not only from its producing Dragon’s blood, but also from one specimen having so frequently been described or noticed in the works of visitors to the Canary Islands. The erect trunk of the Dragon-tree is usually from 8 to 12 feet high, and divided above into numerous short branches, which terminate in tufts of spreading sword-shaped leaves, pointed at the extremity.

The most celebrated specimen of this tree grows near the town of Orotava, in the Island of Teneriffe, and was found by Humboldt in 1799 to be about 45 feet in circumference. Sir G. Staunton had previously stated it to be 12 feet in diameter at the height of 10 feet; and Ledru gave even larger dimensions. It annually bears flowers and fruit; and though continuing thus to grow, does not appear much increased in size, in consequence of some of its brandies being constantly blown down, as in the storm of July 1819, when it lost a great part of its top. The great size of this enormous vegetable is mentioned in many of the older authors ; indeed as early as the time of Bethencourt, or in 1402, it is described as large and as hollow as it is now; whence, from the slowness of growth of Dracaenas, has been inferred the great antiquity of a tree which four centuries have so little changed. Humboldt, indeed, remarks that there can be no doubt of the Dracaena of Orotava being with the Baobab (Adansonia digitata) one of the oldest inhabitants of our planet, and as tradition relates that it was revered by the Guanches, he considers it as singular that it should have been cultivated from the most distant ages in the Canaries, in Madeira, and Porto Santo, although it comes originally from India. This fact he adduces as contradicting the assertion of those who represent the Guanches as a race of men completely isolated from the other races of either Asia or Africa.

Text quoted from: The Penny Cyclopaedia, Vol. IX, London, Knight and Co., 1838: http://books.google.it/books?pg=PA117&dq=Dracaena&lr=&ei=l2KhSt-kConOzQSpw6HoDg&id=XpENMl2OZ2MC&as_brr=1#v=onepage&q=Dracaena&f=false

Rumor is mouth-to-mouth communication of unconfirmed stories and anecdotes. It is the most primitive kind of news, and it is just as inefficient and inaccurate as it is primitive.

Civilized countries in normal times have more reliable kinds of news than rumor. But in times of stress and confusion rumor emerges and becomes rife, still further increasing the confusion. At such times you may find two kinds of news in competition: the supposedly authoritative confirmed information, on the one hand, and the unconfirmed information of the grapevine, on the other. Especially do rumors spread when war requires secrecy on many important matters. The customary sources of news no longer give out enough information, both because the news is unavailable to them and because, even if it were available, censorship is often expedient. If people cannot learn through legitimate channels all that they would like to learn or are anxious to learn, they pick up “news” wherever they can get it. When that happens, rumor thrives.

It was a rumor that helped to start the great Indian Mutiny in 1857. In those days the soldiers, with muzzle-loading rifles, had to bite a greased patch of paper from the end of each cartridge in order to release a charge of powder, which they then poured into the muzzle of the gun before ramming the bullet home. The mutiny was really ready to start anyway; the rumors about this grease merely speeded it up. The Moslems heard that the grease was pig grease—lard—and that they had been defiled by putting grease from an unclean animal in their mouths. The Hindus heard that it was cow grease and that they had lost caste by putting grease from a sacred animal in their mouths. These rumors spread rapidly, each in its appropriate group. The British tried in vain to correct them, to let the men grease their own powder-papers with butter, but it was too late. Rumor had touched off an explosion and the mutiny was on. Still the rumor would not have spread if the men had not for other reasons already been suspicious of the British and angry with them.

Rumors spread because, in spite of the fact that they lack supporting evidence, most people who hear and repeat a rumor are ready to push it along. Why? It might be better not to pass along an uncertain tale about an important matter. The answer lies, however, in the fact that the matter is important to the person who repeats the rumor. A person will repeat a rumor only if it satisfies some one of his needs. A rumor that supports a suspicion or a hatred, verifies a fear, expresses a hope, will be repeated, and it gets reenforced by the emotions of the teller. Thus, when rumors spread rapidly and far, it means that hates, fears or hopes are common to the many people who are doing the repeating.

It follows that rumors are repeated even by those who do not believe in them, because they provide a chance to express an emotion which would otherwise have to be suppressed. If a soldier hates his commanding officer, he will not literally shoot him in the back. In wartime, he would not even come out and openly say that he thinks the Old Man is a tyrant. Suppose, however, that the soldier hears a rumor that his commanding officer has been drinking so much that his health has suffered and that he is likely to be retired. There may not be a shred of evidence in support of this rumor, yet what will happen? The soldier will pass the rumor on. He does not feel guilty, for he is not responsible for the story. It is just something that people are saying. Yet in listening to it and telling it, he gets a great deal of satisfaction. It relieves his pent-up feelings about the officer and about other things connected with the Army, too.

Passing on a rumor that the commanding officer has been drinking too much may indicate more than conscious hatred of him. It may mean that the soldier is accusing the officer of doing just what he himself would like to do and dares not do. And so the soldier, with righteous indignation, repeats the rumor to other soldiers.

Rumors of this sort are called hostility or wedge-driving rumors. In spreading them the teller gets rid of some of his own feelings of hostility and he encourages others to do the same. It is not necessary that a man understand why he gets satisfaction from passing along a wedge-driving rumor. It is enough for him that he feels better after telling it.

It is the same way in civilian life, or anywhere that men or women meet and exchange a few words of idle chatter.

Workers gathered in knots at lunch time will pass on a yarn about some unfair treatment of labor. Bankers at the City Club will tell the story about the labor union that called a strike on a vital war contract because the plant employed a few Negroes. The workers, dependent on the bosses for their jobs and resenting their insecurity and dependency, are ready to believe that labor has been treated unfairly. The bankers, dependent on workers for turning out capital goods, and resenting the growing strength of labor, are ready to believe that labor unions are unreasonable. These too are wedge-driving rumors. The workers arouse other workers against capital, and capitalists arouse other capitalists against labor. Wedge-driving rumors are especially dangerous since they foment hostility and distrust between allies or between particular groups within a country. If a man dislikes a particular group, he believes the rumor and passes it along. In this way wedge-driving rumors are used to create scapegoats.

The Office of War Information published a list of the targets at which the 1942 crop of wedge-driving rumors—the “hate rumors”— were aimed. They were: Army administration, business, Catholics, defense workers, draft boards, English farmers, Jews, labor, Negroes, profiteers, rationing boards, Red Cross (blood donor services), Russia and unions.

Some rumors spread because people are anxious. They are all afraid of the same things and are therefore ready to believe rumors about those things. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, men were afraid and the rumor spread that a large part of the Pacific Fleet had been destroyed. It was true that the destruction had been great, but the facts were kept out of the true news and the stories spread as rumor, exaggerated and unverifiable, because men were afraid. In 1944 there began to be rumors about the great numbers of men sent home from the European and Pacific theaters of war as “insane.” It is true that many men were returned to America because they proved unable to stand the strain of combat, but only a few of them were “insane,” were unfit for military or civilian service at home. This rumor was spread by the anxiety of parents, wives and sweethearts for their loved ones. Such rumors, based on fear, are known as bogey rumors.

There is still another kind of rumor and another reason why rumors spread. When a man is tense and anxious he will clutch at any favorable straw. He will indulge in wishful thinking. There is pleasure in believing and repeating what you hope is true. Rumors based on a wish are known as pipe-dream rumors. They spread because they make people feel happier.

Three common pipe-dream rumors, current shortly after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, were:

“The Japanese do not have enough oil and war supplies to last six months.”

“There will soon be a revolution in both Germany and Italy.”

“Lloyds of London and Wall Street are betting 10 to 1 the war will be over by next autumn.”

Some rumors appear freely in the press and radio. They are frankly reported as rumors. If they do not get exaggerated by repetition and continue to be labeled rumors they may do little harm.

Others are covert and secret, being repeated sub rosa and often growing to fantastic proportions. They are dangerous. The teller, having no responsibility, is free to let his wishes, fears, and hostilities work.

Most rumors can be accepted passively. They are insidious but work slowly to undermine confidence.

Other rumors, however, incite to action. They are the panic rumors that come “as reports of military defeat or of the approach of enemy troops. With them the danger is real, palpable and immediate, for the listener tends to do something about them suddenly and violently. He packs a few of his most cherished possessions in a wheel-barrow, collects his family and starts trudging out of town away from the enemy. Then he himself becomes a rumor, and the rumor becomes a fact, for people see him going and decide to go, too. Presently the procession along the road is the most potent rumor of all, a visual symbol that needs no words. Everyone seeks to join it. Panic is on.

Since the telling of a rumor satisfies some need of the teller, rumors constitute an important index of morale. Pessimistic rumors about defeat, disaster or treachery—bogey-rumors and wedge-driving rumors— are a straw in the wind to show that people who repeat them are worried, anxious or hostile. Optimistic rumors about record production or coming peace—pipe-dream rumors—point to complacency or confidence—to overconfidence often. Both the pessimistic and the optimistic rumors may betoken low morale.

The anxiety rumors always indicate low morale. Overconfidence rumors usually point to it also. Overconfidence makes a man more susceptible to other pipe-dream rumors and less susceptible to the true facts. “Why go into a defense plant if the war is to end in a few months?” A study of the rumors current at any one time, then, provides an index of the prevailing needs and emotions of the groups among whom the rumors are rife.

Rumors are also an index of the morale of particular groups. Since rumors typically are spread by word of mouth, a man who hears a rumor is likely to tell his friends, neighbors and fellow workers. A soldier spreads it in his unit. Since a rumor usually passes along more or less established networks, certain rumors become current in one group or unit, while other rumors are current in other groups. Some of these groups will believe rumors of one emotional coloring; others, rumors of another coloring. The needs of the different groups—their wishes, fears and hostilities—are revealed by the unverified stories current among them.

The number of rumors current in a given group is an index of the degree to which the formal system of communication—among civilians, the newspapers and the radio—satisfies their need for information. If there is a high incidence of rumor, the people are not getting enough information from official sources. Prevalence of rumors may also mean that the group does not trust the formal communication system. In France in 1940 before the Battle of Flanders, when people distrusted the radio and press, rumor was very widespread. The British, on the other hand, have so much trust in their press that they had comparatively few rumors.

The conditions which promote the spread of rumor are to be found both in the general atmosphere of social groups and also in the personal needs of the individuals who make up the groups.

Rumors spread most easily in a homogeneous group where the feelings are alike—in a community, a city or an army. War helps rumor because it establishes common intense emotions in men who are similarly related to the war. They share the hope of victory, the fear of defeat, the frustration of separation from loved ones, and hostility against both enemy and all others who threaten them with failure. A rumor that gives expression to these emotions is easy to tell, easy to hear.

Lack of information about important things favors rumor. People demand information about what concerns them most. The greater their concern the more information they require. When civilian censorship is strict or when news is scarce and interest high, as it is in wartime, newspapers have to string out their accounts of trivial events in order to satisfy the public appetite. Then it is that rumor spreads easily. People . want news, something, anything. They accept any report that appears to be news, and they lack the factual information that would contradict and stop a false rumor.

In the same way the morale of soldiers depends in part upon the information which they have about what is going to happen to them or is likely to happen to them.

Rumor is encouraged by discontent, frustration, boredom and idleness. That is why rumor spreads so easily in small communities, like prisons, hospitals and camps. Men really need to be active, and idleness puts them under tension. Gossip and rumor provide release for this tension—some release, although it is not very satisfying.

Expectation also fosters rumor. Men are eager for news, eager for action, eager to hear of victories, eager to be off to the war, eager to be home from the war. If no one feeds them facts, they will take half-facts as better than nothing. Men readily believe what previous events or experiences have prepared them to believe, and they discount stories that are contrary to what they expect.

Men differ with respect to the types of rumors they believe, and, therefore, with respect to their likelihood to transmit rumors. The pessimist accepts anxiety rumors, the optimist with rumors. The man who is anxious about one thing is susceptible to rumors which make him anxious about other things. The idle, bored, disorganized man will accept a rumor and spread it as a way of creating excitement and of relieving his monotony.

The motivation for passing a rumor on is usually complex but there are several typical ways in which individual needs enter into the process —over and above hostilities, fears or wishes:

(1) Exhibitionism. This consists of drawing attention to one’s self. A man may tell a rumor in order to increase his prestige, to make others think he is important because he is “in the know.” Or he may tell a rumor merely to engage another person in conversation or to entertain an audience.

(2) Reassurance and emotional support. Here the rumor is told in . the hope that the hearer will be able to deny or disprove it. Or the

telling of a rumor may reduce the teller’s own tension by sharing the burden with another. In this case a man may be seeking sympathy rather than denial.

(3) Projection. A man may tell a rumor because the rumor “externalizes” fears, wishes and hostilities which he may not be consciously aware of in himself. Unconscious motivation of this sort has been discussed in Chapter 15.

(4) Aggression. A man may transmit a rumor in order consciously to injure some person—he may be engaging in slander, gossip, “scape- goating.”

(5) Bestowing a favor. A rumor may be passed on in.order to curry favor with or bestow a favor upon the hearer. It may start as a complimentary remark, with little or even no basis in fact. Soon it turns into a “stated fact.”

Rumor is very effective in psychological warfare because it comes to the hearer without the taint of appearing to be propaganda. It comes self-propelled. What the Germans started as a short-wave broadcast in Germany, or as a story planted by a German agent, was presently being told by Americans about Americans in America. Its German origin was completely lost. The hearer could not ask for evidence, because the teller never claimed to have evidence. He was repeating only what he had heard and belief is easier than disbelief, especially if hope or fear supports the rumor.

These are the ways in which rumor is used in propaganda’s war of words:

(1) For disruption. Rumor can be made to play havoc with morale. At the fall of France in 1940 the Germans disrupted French morale in this manner. They alternated optimistic rumors with pessimistic. In the confusion of the German attack the French kept shifting between elation and despair. Soon they no longer knew what to believe, ending up in utter uncertainty and more confusion.

Propagandists also start rumors to foment distrust among allies, or to increase disunity within a country. Necessary cooperation can be ruined merely by the rise of plausible suspicions. Rumor never proves anything. It does its work if it creates distrust.

(2) As a smokescreen. Rumor can hide the truth.

The propagandist’s technique is to tell so many secrets that the true secret cannot be detected among all the conflicting reports. The Germans were past masters at this art of letting many conflicting “inside stories” slip out of Germany into the countries which they wished to confuse.

(3) For discrediting news sources. This is a special technique.

In 1941, the British tried several times to bomb the chief railroad station in Berlin. They failed, but the Germans planted “unconfirmed reports” that the British had succeeded. When these rumors came back to England, the British took them as confirmation of their success and broadcast them. Then the German Ministry of Propaganda took American newspaper men to the scene to prove that the British statements were not true, thus discrediting the British broadcasts.

(4) As bait. Rumor may be used to learn the truth.

The Japanese in the Second World War often started rumors about American losses in a naval engagement. They did not know what the losses were and they wished to know. The rumors, when this technique was new, spread, affecting American morale. If the American government, to bolster morale, had then broadcast the truth, the Japanese would have had information they sought.

Text from: National Research Council (U.S.), Psychology for the armed services, edited by Edwin G. Boring, Washington, The Infantry Journal, 1945. To read the original and unabridged text: http://books.google.it/books?id=ZzcrAAAAYAAJ&printsec=titlepage&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=&f=false

The title of this post is quoted from: Jean-Noël Kapferer, Rumors: uses, interpretations, and images, New Brunswick, Transaction Publishers, 1990. For an overview of the book: http://books.google.it/books?id=b0VYBLUC7Z0C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_navlinks_s#v=onepage&q=&f=false

I join these two because they generally go together, one being a consequence of the other: for it is the strong attachment to particular persons that makes men averse against hearkening to others, and less attentive to mind what is said, than who said it. Nature made us extremely credulous in our infancy until the cautions learned from our parents and tutors have armed us with an inflexibility to whatever contradicts the principles imbibed from them, or if we become refractory to parents and tutors it is commonly owing to the suggestions of some seducer, to which we have given an easy reception: thus in both cases we disregard one person, only because another has gained our entire confidence.

But the terms of my present subject do not relate solely to the credit found with us by other persons, they extend likewise to all kinds of evidence presenting to the thought which are made to lose their just weight by the fondness we have for whatever they tend to invalidate : so that we become incredulous upon some points by being too credulous of others, for the same prejudice that draws down one scale must necessarily raise up the other. This truth stands exemplified in persons of all denominations: the bigot and the free-thinker, the orthodox and the sectary, the courtier and the patriot, the lover, the projector, and the schemist will receive whatever favours their humour upon the slightest evidence, and reject whatever thwarts it though coming with the strongest.

For there are three causes of the errors we commit, one the want of sufficient lights to inform our judgment or of sagacity to discern them : this may draw us into some present inconveniences, but cannot affect our main concern; the errors will be mere errors without carrying anything blame – able in them ; they may excite pity or perhaps a smile, but can draw censure from none, except those whose censure we may justly despise. Another is the want of resolution to execute what our judgment clearly discerns to be right: this is only to be excused by the imbecility of human nature, and where such excuse cannot be pleaded, is indeed a fatal error which we must strive to rectify by the exercises of self-denial and vigilance before recommended. The third is an unlucky custom we fall into of blinding the judgment by shutting out some of the lights that would flow in upon it, and magnifying others with the glass of eagerness to contemplate them : this though a fault of the Will is such a one as no man stands totally exempt from, for it proceeds often from secret motives which we are not aware of, nor is it easy to know when we ought to give our assent and when to withhold it, or when the scale hitches in the briers of prejudice ; therefore it behoves us to be very attentive in looking about for such impediments, and careful to loosen them when discovered.

But it will be asked to what purpose we are exhorted to give, or withhold our assent? is not assent involuntary, the act of the objects before us, not of the mind ? can any man with all his efforts dissent from the truth that two and two make four, or assent to their making five ? All this is very true; nevertheless, though we cannot command assent, we may many times command the means that will infallibly work it: as a man cannot help reading the page he looks upon, nor see things otherwise than are there contained, yet he may shut the book or turn to any other page he pleases, and so choose what he shall see, although he be purely passive in the faculty of vision.

Assent belongs to propositions, and is an additional perception over and above those of the terms contained in them, commonly called an opinion or judgment; for though Thomas be taller than John, they may both stand before me, and I may have a full view of their persons, yet without observing which of them is the taller, that is, without framing any mental proposition concerning their height to which I may assent. And among the objects we are daily conversant with, there are a thousand judgments might be passed upon them which never come into our heads, nor indeed is it possible they should all find room there : therefore besides the power we have by our hands, our eyes, or our memory, to brine; objects before us, we have likewise a choice of what propositions we shall form out of the materials in our reflection.

But our present subject stands concerned with such propositions only as occur spontaneously to our thoughts, or are suggested by other persons; yet even here we have a choice in what manner we shall receive them, whereon the assent they shall gain very frequently depends. For except in things very familiar to our acquaintance, where the judgment has been joined in association with the terms, it does not rise immediately upon inspection, but they must be held in contemplation some little time before it will follow : and as our ideas fluctuate for a while both in strength and colours, the determination will be very different according as taken from them in their highest or their lowest state. Therefore in all arguments, whether occurring to the thought or suggested by another, a man must aid himself to come at the decision, by givmg them a due consideration and waiting till the fluctuation ends.

The manner of proceeding herein is what I take to be understood by giving or withholding assent, which is done hastily or fairly according as you strive to fix a colour, while they are transient, or stay till they fix of themselves ; for you neither can nor ought to give any other assent, than that which results naturally from the colours of y^ur ideas. But the colour of our ideas is often affected by the mixture of others standing in company with them ; therefore if you hold one set in your thoughts to the exclusion of all others, they may have a very different aspect from what they would, had you given those others admittance.

Thus assent may be wrongfully given or withheld two ways, either by a partial choice of the objects you will contemplate, or by fixing your judgment upon them at some particular moment during their fluctuation of colour; as a witness deposing positively to a fact will be credited if you refuse to hear other testimony by the weight of which he may be overborne, or may appear to prove a point if you stop him short as soon as he has related the circumstances tending to confirm it, without suffering him to proceed in the rest of his evidence, which might make the contrary manifest.

This is innocently practised every day in that temporary persuasion we assume in reading a poem, a fable, or a novel, where we imagine incidents to be true while going on with the story, but whenever admitting our old ideas to return again into view, we presently know the whole to be a fiction. The same is done in following the rule laid down by Tully for an Orator, that he should make his client’s case his own : and that prescribed by Horace to such as would touch the passions, which he says they cannot do without putting on the very sentiments they would inspire. So likewise in study and deliberation it is often useful to imagine things for a while otherwise than they really are, for a false supposition may let in lights for our better discernment of the truth.

Yet there is some limitation to this power of temporary persuasion, for though one may imagine Fortunatus to possess a purse in which he shall always find ten guineas immediately after he has emptied it, yet we could not imagine him endued with a faculty of making twice ten guineas to be a hundred, or any other number he should want: and though we might fancy a Fairy causing a house to rise at once out of the ground with a stroke of her wand, or contract Paul’s church to the size of a pea, yet while continuing in its own dimensions we could never conceive her enclosing it within a nutshell: which shows that we cannot create a new colour in our ideas or our appearances, but can only catch such as they take in their fluctuations by some similitude with things we have seen.

Therefore poetry, whose province lies chiefly in fiction, nevertheless is restrained to probabilities, that is such things as imagination can suppose to be real: and for the same reason as we grow up we become less and less delighted with extravagant tales, because to children the common works of men appear conjuration and miracle, so that the marvellous and the preternatural is nothing strange to them, for they can always find something similar in their apprehension among the things they have seen.

By frequently supposing things true we may bring ourselves to believe them true, the temporary persuasion settling into a fixed one. This happens not so often in facts supposed already past, as in the expectation of similar events likely to fall out in the world. For though the probability of incidents required in fiction be no more than a possibility, yet it implies a possibility that the like may happen again, which being continually fed upon in the imagination, will turn into a high degree of probability.

Hence springs the mischief done to such as are much conversant in plays or novels, for having perpetually filled their head with ideas of Strephons and Phillises, they expect to find a faithful nymph or swain in whatever their fancy sets upon; the charming creature whose beauteous form or engaging prattle strikes irresistibly must needs be possessed of all valuable perfections ; the discovery of a prince stolen away in his cradle, or the sudden death of a rich uncle, or some extraordinary chance that has happened in the world before, and so may happen again, may reconcile parents, set all to rights, and prove they have made a lucky choice, which will do full as well as if they had made a wise one.

Hence likewise the spirit of gaming, for luck may run on one side for a month together, and if it may why should it not ? hence the fury of lotteries, for though the possibility of each ticket getting the great prize be no more than one in sixty thousand, yet by continual ruminating upon this little shrimp of a possibility, it is commonly swelled into a probability to be depended upon so far as to lay schemes for disposing of the produce.

For the most part we are led to dwell upon suppositions by the pleasure they give the imagination ; therefore it is a common observation, that men easily believe what they wish to be true, for they first suppose it to be true as matter of entertainment, until by frequency of supposal it grows into a persuasion: for we can very seldom trace our judgments up to their first principles, therefore the character of truth they have used to bear in our thoughts is an evidence of their being true, and it is not easy to remember whether such character was affixed by a continual amusing supposition, or by solid conviction. In some tempers imagination takes the contrary turn, they ruminate constantly upon the things they dread, and always suppose the worst that may happen : this practice not only increases evils by drawing up their strongest colours, but likewise magnifies chances, raising a bare possibility into an imminent danger. Where either of these habits have been contracted, it is the hardest matter in the world to admit a supposal that does not tally with them : the sanguine man can scarce form an imagination of anything that may cross his desires, nor the melancholy man of anything that can give him comfort.

But this stiffness of the faculty is a main obstacle against our following the golden rule, wherein we must be aided by a readiness of supposing ourselves in the condition and circumstances of another : it contracts our notions by rendering us incapable of entering for a moment into others of a different kind : it makes everything strange and absurd that we were not familiarly acquainted with before ; and it retards our reasoning, which cannot effectually go on without giving opposite sentiments their turn to possess our imagination singly, until they come to their full colour before we set them in comparison with their antagonists.

Therefore it is a very valuable art, hard to be learned but well worth the pains of acquiring, to suspend our desires, our prepossessions, our customary trains and former judgments for so long as is requisite, and be able to fix our attention upon things the most opposite to them : for without this we shall never attain a perfect impartiality nor true freedom of thought, and if we could accomplish this, though we might still remain liable to involuntary mistakes, we should never more pass a faulty judgment. However, as such entire command over imagination is not to be gained, it behoves us to be constantly suspicious of inclination and prejudice, to observe which way they draw, to make allowances for their attraction, and even to stir up a partiality against them which may suffice to counterbalance their weight.

But it may be asked, is there not a presumption in favour of old opinions ? This I never have denied, nor would have them called in question upon every slight objection suggested, nor even cast aside when questioned, unless the opposite weights visibly preponderate; for while the balance hangs even, or keeps nodding to and fro, the presumption ought still to prevail. I do not pretend to lay down rules for directing when an examination ought to be entered upon, which perhaps might be impossible, at least is past my skill, therefore must be left to everv man’s discretion: I only say that when he does think fit to enter upon it, he cannot keep his imagination too open for receiving every consideration his own sagacity or that of another person can suggest, and giving them room to expand with all the colours they are capable of exhibiting. During this operation the former judgments ought only to suspend their action, but not to lose their vigour, which will be wanted when they come to be called to mind again in order to make a fair comparison between them and their opponents.

For there is a defect in the faculty when it cannot distinguish between a supposition made to be examined into, and an approved truth, nor estimate the strength of opposite evidences confronted together in their full colours, nor can give fair play to one without its quite obscuring the other. Persons who labour under this infirmity are perpetually wavering; they have a hundred different opinions in a minute, or rather never have any opinion at all, but wander in a labyrinth of doubts without ever coming to a determination that they can confide in.

But some confidence in our judgment is absolutely necessary in time of action, for else it will be of no use to us, nor shall we ever proceed steadily and vigorously to complete any design : and in seasons of deliberation it ought not to be parted with during the time of deliberating, nor until some decision be maturely formed upon which we may place the like confidence. For if a suggestion occurs that the measures I have resolved upon may be wrong, I shall still presume them right until fully satisfied of the contrary; and if the business requires immediate dispatch so that there is not time for obtaining such satisfaction, I shall pursue them without heeding the suggestion.

Nor is it needful the judgment should be founded on demonstration to deserve our confidence, for this is very rarely to be found by the human understanding upon matters of greatest importance in prudence and practice : therefore it is expedient to study the art of judging accurately upon probabilities, which where they can be clearly discerned, are a sufficient ground for confidence to remain with them, until new lights break in or circumstances alter, whereon a new judgment may be formed with the like accuracy. ,It is the vain expectation of absolute certainty that keeps men continually wavering and irresolute, for being afraid of trusting to anything that has not such certainty, and being able to find it nowhere, they live in a round of doubts without settling upon any one point: but some courage as well as caution is requisite to secure a freedom of thought, and open a passage to proficiency in any science.

But you must not always take people at their word when they talk much of doubting, for this language is often used as a civiller way of contradicting than telling you bluntly that you are in an error, which they would be ready enough to do if they were not afraid of putting you out of humour. If you observe those people who pretend to be fullest of doubts you will find them most fond of that positive phrase, I will venture to say, and they employ both expressions with equal propriety, for as they never doubt of a thing without being perfectly sure it is false, so they never venture to say, unless when confident they run no hazard of being confuted.

I am apt to think there never yet has really been such a monster in the world as a thorough sceptic; but he that doubts of what is agreed to by everybody else, does it upon being fully possessed of notions that never found admittance in any other head’: and there is an air of positivenrss in all scepticism, an unreserved confidence in the strength of those arguments that are alleged to overthrow all the knowledge of mankind.

Thus partial judgment springs from a feebleness either to retain former decisions in their original vigour, or to give due consideration to matters opposite to them; the one renders us credulous, and the other incredulous. This weakness being natural can never be totally cured, but may be helped by good management, therefore the blame lies in not applying our diligence to work as much amendment as is feasible.

The first care should be to make our decisions maturely, for it is common through mere laziness to take them up in haste before they are half formed, and then there always remains a latent suspicion which renders them unable to maintain their ground against any specious opposition : but where there is a consciousness of the best information possible having been taken, it fixes their colours beyond hazard of being faded by the approach of other objects. Then with respect to such of them as are of importance in our conduct or our future reasonings, the next point is to habituate the imagination to cast them up spontaneously with the same lively vigour wherein they were delivered to her by the understanding, which is what I have called turning conviction into persuasion. By this means we shall become less credulous of other persons, of the suggestions of passion and fancy, or appearances of the senses.

For avoiding the other extreme it will be expedient to bear in mind that our surest decisions may possibly have deceived us, for there is nothing so certain as that we know nothing with infallible certainty: in the next place to accustom ourselves to observe and examine upon a fair opportunity offering, and acquire a readiness to depart from old notions upon cogent reasons: I know such practice may sometimes endanger the simple being imposed upon by artful persons, but there is something lying within the sphere of every one’s observation, and if he does not exercise himself therein he can never learn, because all learning implies some alterati.m of the judgment: for a sense of our ignorance and an aptness to learn upon information suited to our capacity I take to be the two best preservatives against incredulity. But it will be needful to stand always upon the guard against passion, inclination, and every habitual bias, for they will bring on a distempered weakness upon the faculties more hurtful than the natural; and I conceive it is in the freedom from those, in an exemption from tena- ciousness of old notions and fondness for new ones, that sound judgment and discretion consist.

Text from “ Abraham Tucker, The light of nature pursued”, Vol. II, London, Thomas Tegg and Son, 1837. To read the entire and original text: http://books.google.it/books?printsec=titlepage&id=ADBkAAAAMAAJ#v=onepage&q=&f=false

The history of the Sword is the history of humanity. The White Arm means something more than the oldest, the most universal, the most varied of weapons, the only one which has lived through all time.

He, she, or it — for the gender of the Sword varies — has been worshipped with priestly sacrifices as a present god. Hebrew revelation represents the sharp and two-edged Sword going out of the mouth of the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. We read of a Sword of God, a holy Sword, the Sword of the Lord and of Gideon; and I came not to send peace but a Sword, ‘meaning the warfare and martyrdom of man.

On a lower plane the Sword became the invention and the favourite arm of the gods and the demi-gods: a gift of magic, one of the treasures sent down from Heaven, which made Mulciber (Malik Kabfr, the great king) divine, and Voelunder, Quida, Galant, or Wayland Smith a hero. It was consecrated to the deities, and was stored in the Temple and in the Church. It was the key of heaven and hell: the saying is, If there were no Sword, there would be no law of Mohammed; and the Moslem brave’s highest title was Sayf Ullah — Sword of Allah.

Uniformly and persistently personal, the Sword became no longer an abstraction but a Personage, endowed with human as well as superhuman qualities. He was a sentient being who spoke, and sang, and joyed, and grieved. Identified with his wearer he was an object of affection, and was pompously named as a well-beloved son and heir. To surrender the Sword was submission ; to break the Sword was degradation. To kiss the Sword was, and in places still is, the highest form of oath and homage.

Lay on our royal Sword your banished hands says King Richard II. So Walther of Aquitaine: Contra Orientalem prostratus corpora partem. Ac nudum retinens ensem hac cum voce precatur.

The Sword killed and cured ; the hero when hopeless fell upon his Sword; and the heroine, like Lucretia and Calphurnia, used the blade standing. The Sword cut the Gordian knot of every difficulty. The Sword was the symbol of justice and of martyrdom, and accompanied the wearer to the tomb as well as to the feast and the fight. “Lay on my coffin a Sword” said dying Heinrich Heine, “for I have warred doughtily to win freedom for mankind“.

From days immemorial the Queen of Weapons, a creator as well as a destroyer, carved out history, formed the nations, and shaped the world. She decided the Alexandrine and the Caesarian victories which opened new prospects to human ken. She diffused everywhere the bright lights and splendid benefits of war and conquest, whose functions are all important in the formative and progressive processes. It is no paradox to assert “La guerre a enfanu le droit“: without War there would be no Right. The cost of life, says Emerson, the dreary havoc of comfort and time, are overpaid by the vistas it opens of Eternal Law reconstructing and uplifting society; it breaks up the old horizon, and we see through the rifts a wider view.

War, again, benefits society by raising its tone above the ineffable littleness and meanness which characterise the every-day life of the many. In the presence of the Great Destroyer, petty feuds and miserable envy, hatred, and malice stand hushed and awe-struck. Very hollow in these days sounds Voltaire’s banter on War when he says that a king picks up a parcel of men who have nothing to do,
dresses them in blue cloth at two shillings a yard, binds their hats with coarse white worsted, turns them to the right and left, and marches them away to glory.

The Sword and only the Sword raised the worthier race to power upon the ruins of impotent savagery; and she carried in her train, from time immemorial, throughout the civilised world, Asiatic Africa, Asia, and Europe, the arts and the sciences which humanise mankind. In fact, whatever apparent evil the Sword may have done, she worked for the highest ultimate good. With the Arabs the Sword was a type of individuality. Thus Shanfara, the fleet-foot, sings in his Lamiyyah,

(L-poem) : —

Three friends : the Heart no fear shall know,
The sharp white Sword, the yellow Bow.

Zayd bin Ali boasts, like El-Mutanabbi : —

The wielded Sword-blade knows my hand,
The Spear obeys my lusty arm.

And Ziydd El-Ajam thus writes the epitaph of El-Mughayrah: So died he, after having sought death between the spear-point and the Sword-edge.

This Pundonor presently extended westward. During the knightly ages the good Sword of the Paladin and the Chevalier embodied a new faith— the Religion of Honour, the first step towards the religion of humanity. These men once more taught the sublime truth, the splendid doctrine known to the Stoics and the Pharisees, but unaccountably neglected in later creeds: Do good, for Good is good to do.

Their recklessness of all consequences soared worlds-high above the various egotistic systems which bribe man to do good for a personal and private consideration, to win the world, or to save his soul. Hence Aristotle blamed his contemporaries, the Spartans: They are indeed good men, but they have not the supreme consummate excellence of loving all things worthy, decent and laudable, purely as such and for their own sakes ; nor of practising virtue for no other motive but the sole love of her own innate beauty. The everlasting Law of Honour binding on all and peculiar to each, would have thoroughly satisfied the Stagirite’s highest aspirations.

In knightly hands the Sword acknowledged no Fate but that of freedom and free-will; and it bred the very spirit of chivalry, a keen personal sentiment of self-respect, of dignity, and of loyalty, with the noble desire to protect weakness against the abuse of strength. The knightly Sword was ever the representative idea, the present and eternal symbol of all that man most prized — courage and freedom.

The names describe her quality: she is Joyeuse, and La Tisona ; he is Zò ‘l-Fikàr (sire of splitting) and Quersteinbeis, biter of the mill-stone. The weapon was everywhere held to be the best friend of bravery, and the worst foe of perfidy; the companion of authority, and the token of commandment; the outward and visible sign of force and fidelity, of conquest and dominion, of all that Humanity wants to have and wants to be.

The Sword was carried by and before kings; and the brand, not the sceptre, noted their seals of state. As the firm friend of the crown and of the ermine robe, it became the second fountain of honour. Amongst the ancient Germans even the judges sat armed on the judgment-seat ; and at marriages it represented the bride-groom in his absence. Noble and ennobling, its touch upon the shoulder conferred the prize of knighthood. As bakhshish it was, and still is, the highest testimony to the soldier’s character; a proof that he is brave as his sword-blade. Its presence was a moral lesson; unlike the Greeks, the Romans, and the Hebrews, Western and Southern Europe, during its chivalrous ages, appeared nowhere and on no occasion without the Sword. It was ever ready to leap from its sheath in the cause of weakness and at the call of Honour. Hence, with its arrogant individuality, the Sword still remained the all-sufficient type and token of the higher sentiments and the higher tendencies of human nature.

In society the position of the Sword was remarkable. Its aspect was brilliant; its manners were courtly; its habits were punctilious, and its connections were patrician. Its very vices were glittering; for most of them were the abuses which could not but accompany its uses. It bore itself haughtily as a victor, an arbitrator; and necessarily there were times when its superlative qualities showed corresponding defects. Handled by the vile it too often became, in the syllogism of violence, an incubus, a blusterer, a bully, a tyrant, a murderer, an assassin, in fact death’s stamp; and under such conditions it was a corruption of the best. But its lapses were individual and transient; its benefits to Humanity were general and ever-enduring.

The highest period of the Sword was the early sixteenth century, that mighty landmark separating the dark Past from the brilliant Present of Europe. The sudden awaking and excitement of man’s mind, produced by the revival of learning and the marriage-union of the West with the East; by the discovering of a new hemisphere, the doubling of the world ; by the so-called Reformation, a northern protest against the slavery of the soul; by the wide spread of the printing-press, which meant knowledge; and, simultaneously, by the illumination of that electric spark generated from the contact of human thought, suddenly changed the status of the Sword. It was no longer an assailant, a slaughterer: it became a defender, a preserver. It learned to be shield as well as Sword. And now arose swordsmanship proper, when the Art of Arms meant, amongst the old masters, the Art of Fence. The sixteenth century was its Golden Age.

At this time the Sword was not only the Queen of Weapons, but the weapon paramount between man and man. Then, advancing by slow, stealthy, and stumbling steps, the age of gunpowder, of villanous saltpetre, appeared upon the scene of life. Gradually the bayonet, a modern modification of the pike, which again derives from the savage spear, one of the earliest forms of the arme blanche, ousted theSword amongst infantry because the former could be combined with the fire-piece.

A century afterwards cavalrymen learned, in the Federal-Confederate war, to prefer the revolver and repeater, the breech-loader and the reservoir-gun, to the sabre of past generations. It became an axiom that in a cavalry charge the spur, not the Sword, gains the day. By no means a unique, nor even a singular process of progress, is this return towards the past, this falling back upon the instincts of primitive invention, this recurrence to childhood: when the science of war reverted to ballistics it practically revived the practice of the first ages, and the characteristic attack of the savage and the barbarian who, as a rule, throw their weapons. The cannon is the ballista, and the arblast, the mangonel, and the trebuchet, worked not by muscular but by chemical forces. The torpedo is still the old, old petard; the spur of the ironclad is the long-disused embolon, rostrum, or beak; and steam-power is a rough, cheap substitute for man-power, for the banks of oarsmen, whose work had a delicacy of manipulation unknown to machinery, however ingenious. The armed nations, which in Europe are again becoming the substitutes for standing armies, represent the savage and barbarous stages of society, the proto-historic races, amongst which every man between the ages of fifteen and fifty is a man-at-arms. It is the same in moral matters ; the general spread of the revolutionary spirit, of republicanism, of democratic ideas, of communistic, socialistic, and nihilistic rights and claims now acting so powerfully upon society and upon the brotherhood of nations, is a re-dawning of that early day when the peoples ruled themselves, and were not yet governed by priestly and soldier kings. It is the same even in the immaterials.

The Swedenborgian school, popularly known by the trivial name Spiritualism has revived magic, and this ‘new motor force,’ for such I call it, has resurrected the Ghost, which many a wise head supposed to have been laid for ever.

The death-song of the Sword has been sung, and we are told that Steel has ceased to be a gentleman. Not so ! and by no means so. These are mere insular and insulated views, and England, though a grand figure, the mother of nations, the modern Rome, is yet but a fraction of the world. The Englishman and, for that matter, the German and the Scandinavian, adopted with a protest, and right unwillingly, swordsmanship proper — that is, rapier and point, the peculiar and especial weapon, offensive and defensive, of Southern Europe, Spain, Italy, and France. During the most flourishing age of the Sword it is rare to find a blade bearing the name of an English maker, and English inscriptions seldom date earlier than the eighteenth century. The reason is evident. The Northerners hacked with hangers, they hewed with hatchets, and they cut with cutlasses because the arm suited their bulk and stature, weight and strength. But such weapons are the brutality of the Sword. In England swordsmanship is, and ever was, an exotic; like the sentiment, as opposed to the knowledge, of Art, it is the property of the few, not of the many; and, being rare, it is somewhat un-English.

But the case is different on the continent of Europe. Probably at no period during the last four centuries has the Sword been so ardently studied as it is now by the Latin race in France and Italy. At no time have the schools been so distinguished for intellectual as well as for moral proficiency. The use of the foil bated and unbated has once more become quasi-universal. A duello, in the most approved fashion of our ancestors, was lately proposed (September 1882) by ten journalists of a Parisian paper, to as many on the staff of a rival publication.

Even the softer sex in France and Italy has become cunning of fence; and women are among the most prosperous pupils of the salles d’ armes. Witness, for instance, the ill-fated Mdlle Feyghine of the Théatre Français, so celebrated for her skill in the carte and the tierce and the reason demonstrative.

Nor is the cause of this wider diffusion far to seek. In the presence of arms of precision, the Sword, as a means of offence and defence, may practically fall for a time into disuse. It may no longer be the arm paramount or represent an idea. It may have come down from its high estate as tutor to the noble and the great Yet not the less it has, and will ever have, its work to do. The Ex-Queen now appears as instructress-general in the art of arms. As the mathematic is the basis of all exact science, so Sword-play teaches the soldier to handle every other weapon. This is well known to Continental armies, in which each regiment has its own fencing establishment and its salle d’armes.

Again, men of thought cannot ignore the intrinsic value of the Sword for stimulating physical qualities. Ce n’ est pas asses de roidir l’ ame, il faut aussi roidir les muscles, says Montaigne, who also remarks of fencing that it is the only exercise wherein l’ esprit s’ en exerce. The best of callisthenics, this energetic educator teaches the man to carry himself like a soldier. A compendium of gymnastics, it increases strength and activity, dexterity and rapidity of movement. Professors calculate that one hour of hard fencing wastes forty ounces by perspiration and respiration.

The foil is still the best training tool for the consensus of eye and hand; for the judgment of distance and opportunity; and, in fact, for the practice of combat. And thus swordsmanship engenders moral confidence and self-reliance while it stimulates a habit of resource; and it is not without suggesting, even in the schools, that curious, fantastic, very noble generosity proper to itself alone.

And now when the vain glory of violence has passed away from the Sword with the customs of a past age, we can hardly ignore the fact that the manners of nations have changed, not for the best As soon as the Sword ceased to be worn in France, a Frenchman said of his compatriots that the politest people in Europe had suddenly become the rudest. That gallant and courteous bearing, which in England during the early nineteenth century so charmed the fiery and fastidious Alfieri, lingers only amongst a few. True the swash-buckler, the professional duellist, has disappeared. But courtesy and punctiliousness, the politeness of man to man, and respect and deference of man to woman — that Frauencultus, the very conception of the knightly character— have to a great extent been improved off.

The latter condition of society, indeed, seems to survive only in the most cultivated classes of Europe; and, popularly, amongst the citizens of the United States, a curious oasis of chivalry in a waste of bald utilitarianism — preserved not by the Sword but by the revolver. Our England has abolished the duello without substituting aught better for it: she has stopped the effect and left the cause.

So far I have written concerning the Sword simply to show that my work does not come out a day after the fair ; and that there is still a powerful vitality in the heroic Weapon.

Text from “ Sir Richard Francis Burton, The book of the sword”, London, Chatto and Windus, 1884. To read the original and unabridged text: http://www.archive.org/details/booksword00unkngoog