National honor, its codes and standards and its justification and vindication by combat, present so many resemblances to the practice of dueling and the idea of personal honor once so generally held by the upper class, and still existent where the military spirit prevails, that we ought to study the dueling code with reference to the psychology of war. There are psychological features that appear to be identical. The idea of personal honor is associated with a feeling of superiority that must be defended. Any offense or affront to the individual was a mortal offense. The superiority in question was first of all superiority of ancestry; it was this that constituted the value of the individual and set the standards that he must maintain. This superiority was to be judged not so much by conduct as by an assertion of it represented by certain external forms. The individual by his manners declared himself a gentleman, and laid claim to forms and considerations that must not be omitted in relations with him. The virtues he defended so rigorously did not exist as a rule in calculable or practical form, since they did nothing objective. They might be ornamental or purely fictitious. They existed in the form of claims, and the values assigned to them were arbitrary. The man declared himself possessed of superiority, and was ready uniformly to prove this claim by acts purporting to indicate willingness to die. This code and belief belonged to a day when relations among individuals were simple and, so to speak, external. They were relations that were readily codified and made invariable, since they had no essential practical content or function. Manners were significant as substitutes for friendly relations, since the system was lacking in moral and social sentiments. Manners were a means of fitting together individuals who really belonged to no functioning whole, except when, for example, they might be united in military exploits. Everything was unitary and independent of everything else in this society.