,,the ,,superstition ,,of ,,divorce ,,by ,,the ,,same ,,author ,,irish ,,impressions ,,heretics ,,orthodoxy ,,the ,,crimes ,,of ,,england ,a ,,short ,,history ,,of ,,england ,,all ,,things ,,considered ,,george ,,bernard ,,shaw ,,man ,,alive ,,the ,,flying ,,inn ,,the ,,ball ,,and ,,the ,,cross ,,the ,,innocence ,,of ,,father ,,brown ,,the ,,wisdom ,,of ,,father ,,brown ,,the ,,napoleon ,,of ,,notting ,,hill ,,poems ,,the ,,ballad ,,of ,,the ,,white ,,horse ,,the ,,superstition ,,of ,,divorce ,,by ,g4 ,k4 ,,chesterton ,,author ,,of 8,,heretics10 8,,orthodoxy10 8,,irish ,,impressions10 ,,etc4 ,,new ,,york ,,john ,,lane ,,company ,,mcmxx ,copyright1 #aibj1 ,,by ,,john ,,lane ,,company ,press of ,j4 ,j4 ,little ,ives ,company ,new ,york1 ,u4 ,s4 ,a4 ,introductory ,note ,the earlier part of this book appeared in the form of five articles which came out in the 8,new ,witness0 at the crisis of the recent controversy in the ,press on the subject of divorce4 ,crude and sketchy as they confessedly were1 they had a certain rude plan of their own1 which ,i find it very difficult to recast even in order to expand4 ,i have therefore decided to reprint the original articles as they stood1 save for a few introductory words2 and then1 at the risk of repetition1 to add a few further chapters1 explaining more fully any conceptions that may seem to have been too crudely assumed or dismissed4 ,i have set forth the original matter as it appeared1 under a general heading1 without dividing it into chapters4 ,g4 ,k4 ,c4 ,,contents ,,page ,,the ,,superstition ,,of ,,divorce #aa ,,the ,,story ,,of ,,the ,,family #fa ,,the ,,story ,,of ,,the ,,vow #hc ,,the ,,tragedies ,,of ,,marriage #aje ,,the ,,vista ,,of ,,divorce #abg ,,conclusion #adg ,,the ,,superstition ,,of ,,divorce ,i4--,the ,superstition of ,divorce ,it is futile to talk of reform without reference to form4 ,to take a case from my own taste and fancy1 there is nothing ,i feel to be so beautiful and wonderful as a window4 ,all casements are magic casements1 whether they open on the foam or the front-garden2 they lie close to the ultimate mystery and paradox of limitation and liberty4 ,but if ,i followed my instinct towards an infinite number of windows1 it would end in having no walls4 ,it would also 7it may be added incidentally7 end in having no windows either2 for a window makes a picture by making a picture-frame4 ,but there is a simpler way of stating my more simple and fatal error4 ,it is that ,i have wanted a window1 without considering whether ,i wanted a house4 ,now many appeals are being made to us to-day on behalf of that light and liberty that might well be symbolised by windows2 especially as so many of them concern the enlightenment and liberation of the house1 in the sense of the home4 ,many quite disinterested people urge many quite reasonable considerations in the case of divorce1 as a type of domestic liberation2 but in the journalistic and general discussion of the matter there is far too much of the mind that works backwards and at random1 in the manner of all windows and no walls4 ,such people say they want divorce1 without asking themselves whether they want marriage4 ,even in order to be divorced it has generally been found necessary to go through the preliminary formality of being married2 and unless the nature of this initial act be considered1 we might as well be discussing haircutting for the bald or spectacles for the blind4 ,to be divorced is to be in the literal sense unmarried2 and there is no sense in a thing being undone when we do not know if it is done4 ,there is perhaps no worse advice1 nine times out of ten1 than the advice to do the work that's nearest4 ,it is especially bad when it means1 as it generally does1 removing the obstacle that's nearest4 ,it means that men are not to behave like men but like mice2 who nibble at the thing that's nearest4 ,the man1 like the mouse1 undermines what he cannot understand4 ,because he himself bumps into a thing1 he calls it the nearest obstacle2 though the obstacle may happen to be the pillar that holds up the whole roof over his head4 ,he industriously removes the obstacle2 and in return the obstacle removes him1 and much more valuable things than he4 ,this opportunism is perhaps the most unpractical thing in this highly unpractical world4 ,people talk vaguely against destructive criticism2 but what is the matter with this criticism is not that it destroys1 but that it does not criticise4 ,it is destruction without design4 ,it is taking a complex machine to pieces bit by bit1 in any order1 without even knowing what the machine is for4 ,and if a man deals with a deadly dynamic machine on the principle of touching the knob that's nearest1 he will find out the defects of that cheery philosophy4 ,now leaving many sincere and serious critics of modern marriage on one side for the moment1 great masses of modern men and women1 who write and talk about marriage1 are thus nibbling blindly at it like an army of mice4 ,when the reformers propose1 for instance1 that divorce should be obtainable after an absence of three years 7the absence actually taken for granted in the first military arrangements of the late ,european ,war7 their readers and supporters could seldom give any sort of logical reason for the period being three years1 and not three months or three minutes4 ,they are like people who should say 8,give me three feet of dog02 and not care where the cut came4 ,such persons fail to see a dog as an organic entity2 in other words1 they cannot make head or tail of it4 ,and the chief thing to say about such reformers of marriage is that they cannot make head or tail of it4 ,they do not know what it is1 or what it is meant to be1 or what its supporters suppose it to be2 they never look at it1 even when they are inside it4 ,they do the work that's nearest2 which is poking holes in the bottom of a boat under the impression that they are digging in a garden4 ,this question of what a thing is1 and whether it is a garden or a boat1 appears to them abstract and academic4 ,they have no notion of how large is the idea they attack2 or how relatively small appear the holes that they pick in it4 ,thus1 ,sir ,arthur ,conan ,doyle1 an intelligent man in other matters1 says that there is only a 8theological0 opposition to divorce1 and that it is entirely founded on 8certain texts0 in the ,bible about marriages4 ,this is exactly as if he said that a belief in the brotherhood of men was only founded on certain texts in the ,bible1 about all men being the children of ,adam and ,eve4 ,millions of peasants and plain people all over the world assume marriage to be static1 without having ever clapped eyes on any text4 ,numbers of more modern people1 especially after the recent experiments in ,america1 think divorce is a social disease1 without having ever bothered about any text4 ,it may be maintained that even in these1 or in any one1 the idea of marriage is ultimately mystical2 and the same may be maintained about the idea of brotherhood4 ,it is obvious that a husband and wife are not visibly one flesh1 in the sense of being one quadruped4 ,it is equally obvious that ,paderewski and ,jack ,johnson are not twins1 and probably have not played together at their mother's knee4 ,there is indeed a very important admission1 or addition1 to be realised here4 ,what is true is this3 that if the nonsense of ,nietzsche or some such sophist submerged current culture1 so that it was the fashion to deny the duties of fraternity2 then indeed it might be found that the group which still affirmed fraternity was the original group in whose sacred books was the text about ,adam and ,eve4 ,suppose some ,prussian professor has opportunely discovered that ,germans and lesser men are respectively descended from two such very different monkeys that they are in no sense brothers1 but barely cousins 7,german7 any number of times removed4 ,and suppose he proceeds to remove them even further with a hatchet2 suppose he bases on this a repetition of the conduct of ,cain1 saying not so much 8,am ,i my brother's keeper80 as 8,is he really my brother80 ,and suppose this higher philosophy of the hatchet becomes prevalent in colleges and cultivated circles1 as even more foolish philosophies have done4 ,then ,i agree it probably will be the ,christian1 the man who preserves the text about ,cain1 who will continue to assert that he is still the professor's brother2 that he is still the professor's keeper4 ,he may possibly add that1 in his opinion1 the professor seems to require a keeper4 ,and that is doubtless the situation in the controversies about divorce and marriage to-day4 ,it is the ,christian church which continues to hold strongly1 when the world for some reason has weakened on it1 what many others hold at other times4 ,but even then it is barely picking up the shreds and scraps of the subject to talk about a reliance on texts4 ,the vital point in the comparison is this3 that human brotherhood means a whole view of life1 held in the light of life1 and defended1 rightly or wrongly1 by constant appeals to every aspect of life4 ,the religion that holds it most strongly will hold it when nobody else holds it2 that is quite true1 and that some of us may be so perverse as to think a point in favour of the religion4 ,but anybody who holds it at all will hold it as a philosophy1 not hung on one text but on a hundred truths4 ,fraternity may be a sentimental metaphor2 ,i may be suffering a delusion when ,i hail a ,montenegrin peasant as my long lost brother4 ,as a fact1 ,i have my own suspicions about which of us it is that has got lost4 ,but my delusion is not a deduction from one text1 or from twenty2 it is the expression of a relation that to me at least seems a reality4 ,and what ,i should say about the idea of a brother1 ,i should say about the idea of a wife4 ,it is supposed to be very unbusinesslike to begin at the beginning4 ,it is called 8abstract and academic principles with which we ,english1 etc41 etc40 ,it is still in some strange way considered unpractical to open up inquiries about anything by asking what it is4 ,i happen to have1 however1 a fairly complete contempt for that sort of practicality2 for ,i know that it is not even practical4 ,my ideal business man would not be one who planked down fifty pounds and said 8,here is hard cash2 ,i am a plain man2 it is quite indifferent to me whether ,i am paying a debt1 or giving alms to a beggar1 or buying a wild bull or a bathing machine40 ,despite the infectious heartiness of his tone1 ,i should still1 in considering the hard cash1 say 7like a cabman7 8,what's this80 ,i should continue to insist1 priggishly1 that it was a highly practical point what the money was2 what it was supposed to stand for1 to aim at or to declare2 what was the nature of the transaction2 or1 in short1 what the devil the man supposed he was doing4 ,i shall therefore begin by asking1 in an equally mystical manner1 what in the name of ,god and the angels a man getting married supposes he is doing4 ,i shall begin by asking what marriage is2 and the mere question will probably reveal that the act itself1 good or bad1 wise or foolish1 is of a certain kind2 that it is not an inquiry or an experiment or an accident2 it may probably dawn on us that it is a promise4 ,it can be more fully defined by saying it is a vow4 ,many will immediately answer that it is a rash vow4 ,i am content for the moment to reply that all vows are rash vows4 ,i am not now defending but defining vows2 ,i am pointing out that this is a discussion about vows2 first1 of whether there ought to be vows2 and second1 of what vows ought to be4 ,ought a man to break a promise8 ,ought a man to make a promise8 ,these are philosophic questions2 but the philosophic peculiarity of divorce and re-marriage1 as compared with free love and no marriage1 is that a man breaks and makes a promise at the same moment4 ,it is a highly ,german philosophy2 and recalls the way in which the enemy wishes to celebrate his successful destruction of all treaties by signing some more4 ,if ,i were breaking a promise1 ,i would do it without promises4 ,but ,i am very far from minimising the momentous and disputable nature of the vow itself4 ,i shall try to show1 in a further article1 that this rash and romantic operation is the only furnace from which can come the plain hardware of humanity1 the cast-iron resistance of citizenship or the cold steel of common sense2 but ,i am not denying that the furnace is a fire4 ,the vow is a violent and unique thing2 though there have been many besides the marriage vow2 vows of chivalry1 vows of poverty1 vows of celibacy1 pagan as well as ,christian4 ,but modern fashion has rather fallen out of the habit2 and men miss the type for the lack of the parallels4 ,the shortest way of putting the problem is to ask whether being free includes being free to bind oneself4 ,for the vow is a tryst with oneself4 ,i may be misunderstood if ,i say1 for brevity1 that marriage is an affair of honour4 ,the sceptic will be delighted to assent1 by saying it is a fight4 ,and so it is1 if only with oneself2 but the point here is that it necessarily has the touch of the heroic1 in which virtue can be translated by virtus4 ,now about fighting1 in its nature1 there is an implied infinity1 or at least a potential infinity4 ,i mean that loyalty in war is loyalty in defeat or even disgrace2 it is due to the flag precisely at the moment when the flag nearly falls4 ,we do already apply this to the flag of the nation2 and the question is whether it is wise or unwise to apply it to the flag of the family4 ,of course1 it is tenable that we should apply it to neither2 that misgovernment in the nation or misery in the citizen would make the desertion of the flag an act of reason and not treason4 ,i will only say here that1 if this were really the limit of national loyalty1 some of us would have deserted our nation long ago4 ,,ii4--,the ,superstition of ,divorce ,to the two or three articles appearing here on this subject ,i have given the title of the ,superstition of ,divorce2 and the title is not taken at random4 ,while free love seems to me a heresy1 divorce does really seem to me a superstition4 ,it is not only more of a superstition than free love1 but much more of a superstition than strict sacramental marriage2 and this point can hardly be made too plain4 ,it is the partisans of divorce1 not the defenders of marriage1 who attach a stiff and senseless sanctity to a mere ceremony1 apart from the meaning of the ceremony4 ,it is our opponents1 and not we1 who hope to be saved by the letter of ritual1 instead of the spirit of reality4 ,it is they who hold that vow or violation1 loyalty or disloyalty1 can all be disposed of by a mysterious and magic rite1 performed first in a law-court and then in a church or a registry office4 ,there is little difference between the two parts of the ritual2 except that the law court is much more ritualistic4 ,but the plainest parallels will show anybody that all this is sheer barbarous credulity4 ,it may or may not be superstition for a man to believe he must kiss the ,bible to show he is telling the truth4 ,it is certainly the most grovelling superstition for him to believe that1 if he kisses the ,bible1 anything he says will come true4 ,it would surely be the blackest and most benighted ,bible-worship to suggest that the mere kiss on the mere book alters the moral quality of perjury4 ,yet this is precisely what is implied in saying that formal re-marriage alters the moral quality of conjugal infidelity4 ,it may have been a mark of the ,dark ,ages that ,harold should swear on a relic1 though he were afterwards foresworn4 ,but surely those ages would have been at their darkest1 if he had been content to be sworn on a relic and forsworn on another relic4 ,yet this is the new altar these reformers would erect for us1 out of the mouldy and meaningless relics of their dead law and their dying religion4 ,now we1 at any rate1 are talking about an idea1 a thing of the intellect and the soul2 which we feel to be unalterable by legal antics4 ,we are talking about the idea of loyalty2 perhaps a fantastic1 perhaps only an unfashionable idea1 but one we can explain and defend as an idea4 ,now ,i have already pointed out that most sane men do admit our ideal in such a case as patriotism or public spirit2 the necessity of saving the state to which we belong4 ,the patriot may revile but must not renounce his country2 he must curse it to cure it1 but not to wither it up4 ,the old pagan citizens felt thus about the city2 and modern nationalists feel thus about the nation4 ,but even mere modern internationalists feel it about something2 if it is only the nation of mankind4 ,even the humanitarian does not become a misanthrope and live in a monkey-house4 ,even a disappointed ,collectivist or ,communist does not retire into the exclusive society of beavers1 because beavers are all communists of the most class-conscious solidarity4 ,he admits the necessity of clinging to his fellow creatures1 and begging them to abandon the use of the possessive pronoun2 heart-breaking as his efforts must seem to him after a time4 ,even a ,pacifist does not prefer rats to men1 on the ground that the rat community is so pure from the taint of ,jingoism as always to leave the sinking ship4 ,in short1 everybody recognises that there is some ship1 large and small1 which he ought not to leave1 even when he thinks it is sinking4 ,we may take it then that there are institutions to which we are attached finally2 just as there are others to which we are attached temporarily4 ,we go from shop to shop trying to get what we want2 but we do not go from nation to nation doing this2 unless we belong to a certain group now heading very straight for ,pogroms4 ,in the first case it is the threat that we shall withdraw our custom2 in the second it is the threat that we shall never withdraw ourselves2 that we shall be part of the institution to the last4 ,the time when the shop loses its customers is the time when the city needs its citizens2 but it needs them as critics who will always remain to criticise4 ,i need not now emphasise the deadly need of this double energy of internal reform and external defence2 the whole towering tragedy which has eclipsed our earth in our time is but one terrific illustration of it4 ,the hammer-strokes are coming thick and fast now2,a and filling the world with infernal thunders2 and there is still the iron sound of something unbreakable deeper and louder than all the things that break4 ,we may curse the kings1 we may distrust the captains1 we may murmur at the very existence of the armies2 but we know that in the darkest days that may come to us1 no man will desert the flag4 ,now when we pass from loyalty to the nation to loyalty to the family1 there can be no doubt about the first and plainest difference4 ,the difference is that the family is a thing far more free4 ,the vow is a voluntary loyalty2 and the marriage vow is marked among ordinary oaths of allegiance by the fact that the allegiance is also a choice4 ,the man is not only a citizen of the city1 but also the founder and builder of the city4 ,he is not only a soldier serving the colours1 but he has himself artistically selected and combined the colours1 like the colours of an individual dress4 ,if it be admissible to ask him to be true to the commonwealth that has made him1 it is at least not more illiberal to ask him to be true to the commonwealth he has himself made4 ,if civic fidelity be1 as it is1 a necessity1 it is also in a special sense a constraint4 ,the old joke against patriotism1 the ,gilbertian irony1 congratulated the ,englishman on his fine and fastidious taste in being born in ,england4 ,it made a plausible point in saying 8,for he might have been a ,russian02 though indeed we have lived to see some persons who seemed to think they could be ,russians when the fancy took them4 ,if commonsense considers even such involuntary loyalty natural1 we can hardly wonder if it thinks voluntary loyalty still more natural4 ,and the small state founded on the sexes is at once the most voluntary and the most natural of all self-governing states4 ,it is not true of ,mr4 ,brown that he might have been a ,russian2 but it may be true of ,mrs4 ,brown that she might have been a ,robinson4 ,now it is not at all hard to see why this small community1 so specially free touching its cause1 should yet be specially bound touching its effects4 ,it is not hard to see why the vow made most freely is the vow kept most firmly4 ,there are attached to it1 by the nature of things1 consequences so tremendous that no contract can offer any comparison4 ,there is no contract1 unless it be that said to be signed in blood1 that can call spirits from the vasty deep2 or bring cherubs 7or goblins7 to inhabit a small modern villa4 ,there is no stroke of the pen which creates real bodies and souls1 or makes the characters in a novel come to life4 ,the institution that puzzles intellectuals so much can be explained by the mere material fact 7perceptible even to intellectuals7 that children are1 generally speaking1 younger than their parents4 8,till death do us part0 is not an irrational formula1 for those will almost certainly die before they see more than half of the amazing 7or alarming7 thing they have done4 ,such is1 in a curt and crude outline1 this obvious thing for those to whom it is not obvious4 ,now ,i know there are thinking men among those who would tamper with it2 and ,i shall expect some of these to reply to my questions4 ,but for the moment ,i only ask this question3 whether the parliamentary and journalistic divorce movement shows even a shadowy trace of these fundamental truths1 regarded as tests4 ,does it even discuss the nature of a vow1 the limits and objects of loyalty1 the survival of the family as a small and free state8 ,the writers are content to say that ,mr4 ,brown is uncomfortable with ,mrs4 ,brown1 and the last emancipation1 for separated couples1 seems only to mean that he is still uncomfortable without ,mrs4 ,brown4 ,these are not days in which being uncomfortable is felt as the final test of public action4 ,for the rest1 the reformers show statistically that families are in fact so scattered in our industrial anarchy1 that they may as well abandon hope of finding their way home again4 ,i am acquainted with that argument for making bad worse and ,i see it everywhere leading to slavery4 ,because ,london ,bridge is broken down1 we must assume that bridges are not meant to bridge4 ,because ,london commercialism and capitalism have copied hell1 we are to continue to copy them4 ,anyhow1 some will retain the conviction that the ancient bridge built between the two towers of sex is the worthiest of the great works of the earth4 ,it is exceedingly characteristic of the dreary decades before the ,war that the forms of freedom in which they seemed to specialise were suicide and divorce4 ,i am not at the moment pronouncing on the moral problem of either2 ,i am merely noting1 as signs of those times1 those two true or false counsels of despair2 the end of life and the end of love4 ,other forms of freedom were being increasingly curtailed4 ,freedom indeed was the one thing that progressives and conservatives alike contemned4 ,socialists were largely concerned to prevent strikes1 by ,state arbitration2 that is1 by adding another rich man to give the casting vote between rich and poor4 ,even in claiming what they called the right to work they tacitly surrendered the right to leave off working4 ,tories were preaching conscription1 not so much to defend the independence of ,england as to destroy the independence of ,englishmen4 ,liberals1 of course1 were chiefly interested in eliminating liberty1 especially touching beer and betting4 ,it was wicked to fight1 and unsafe even to argue2 for citing any certain and contemporary fact might land one in a libel action4 ,as all these doors were successfully shut in our faces along the chilly and cheerless corridor of progress 7with its glazed tiles7 the doors of death and divorce alone stood open1 or rather opened wider and wider4 ,i do not expect the exponents of divorce to admit any similarity in the two things2 yet the passing parallel is not irrelevant4 ,it may enable them to realise the limits within which our moral instincts can1 even for the sake of argument1 treat this desperate remedy as a normal object of desire4 ,divorce is for us at best a failure1 of which we are more concerned to find and cure the cause than to complete the effects2 and we regard a system that produces many divorces as we do a system that drives men to drown and shoot themselves4 ,for instance1 it is perhaps the commonest complaint against the existing law that the poor cannot afford to avail themselves of it4 ,it is an argument to which normally ,i should listen with special sympathy4 ,but while ,i should condemn the law being a luxury1 my first thought will naturally be that divorce and death are only luxuries in a rather rare sense4 ,i should not primarily condole with the poor man on the high price of prussic acid2 or on the fact that all precipices of suitable suicidal height were the private property of the landlords4 ,there are other high prices and high precipices ,i should attack first4 ,i should admit in the abstract that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander2 that what is good for the rich is good for the poor2 but my first and strongest impression would be that prussic acid sauce is not good for anybody4 ,i fear ,i should1 on the impulse of the moment1 pull a poor clerk or artisan back by the coat-tails1 if he were jumping over ,shakespeare's ,cliff1 even if ,dover sands were strewn with the remains of the dukes and bankers who had already taken the plunge4 ,but in one respect1 ,i will heartily concede1 the cult of divorce has differed from the mere cult of death4 ,the cult of death is dead4 ,those ,i knew in my youth as young pessimists are now aged optimists4 ,and1 what is more to the point at present1 even when it was living it was limited2 it was a thing of one clique in one class4 ,we know the rule in the old comedy1 that when the heroine went mad in white satin1 the confidante went mad in white muslin4 ,but when1 in some tragedy of the artistic temperament1 the painter committed suicide in velvet1 it was never implied that the plumber must commit suicide in corduroy4 ,it was never held that ,hedda ,gabler's housemaid must die in torments on the carpet 7trying as her term of service may have been72 or that ,mrs4 ,tanqueray's butler must play the ,roman fool and die on his own carving knife4 ,that particular form of playing the fool1 ,roman or otherwise1 was an oligarchic privilege in the decadent epoch2 and even as such has largely passed with that epoch4 ,pessimism1 which was never popular1 is no longer even fashionable4 ,a far different fate has awaited the other fashion2 the other somewhat dismal form of freedom4 ,if divorce is a disease1 it is no longer to be a fashionable disease like appendicitis2 it is to be made an epidemic like small-pox4 ,as we have already seen1 papers and public men to-day make a vast parade of the necessity of setting the poor man free to get a divorce4 ,now why are they so mortally anxious that he should be free to get a divorce1 and not in the least anxious that he should be free to get anything else8 ,why are the same people happy1 nay almost hilarious1 when he gets a divorce1 who are horrified when he gets a drink8 ,what becomes of his money1 what becomes of his children1 where he works1 when he ceases to work1 are less and less under his personal control4 ,labour ,exchanges1 ,insurance ,cards1 ,welfare ,work1 and a hundred forms of police inspection and supervision1 have combined for good or evil to fix him more and more strictly to a certain place in society4 ,he is less and less allowed to go to look for a new job2 why is he allowed to go to look for a new wife8 ,he is more and more compelled to recognise a ,moslem code about liquor2 why is it made so easy for him to escape from his old ,christian code about sex8 ,what is the meaning of this mysterious immunity1 this special permit for adultery2 and why is running away with his neighbour's wife to be the only exhilaration still left open to him8 ,why must he love as he pleases2 when he may not even live as he pleases8 ,the answer is1 ,i regret to say1 that this social campaign1 in most though by no means all of its most prominent campaigners1 relies in this matter on a very smug and pestilent piece of cant4 ,there are some advocates of democratic divorce who are really advocates of general democratic freedom2 but they are the exceptions2 ,i might say1 with all respect1 that they are the dupes4 ,the omnipresence of the thing in the press and in political society is due to a motive precisely opposite to the motive professed4 ,the modern rulers1 who are simply the rich men1 are really quite consistent in their attitude to the poor man4 ,it is the same spirit which takes away his children under the pretence of order1 which takes away his wife under the pretence of liberty4 ,that which wishes1 in the words of the comic song1 to break up the happy home1 is primarily anxious not to break up the much more unhappy factory4 ,capitalism1 of course1 is at war with the family1 for the same reason which has led to its being at war with the ,trade ,union4 ,this indeed is the only sense in which it is true that capitalism is connected with individualism4 ,capitalism believes in collectivism for itself and individualism for its enemies4 ,it desires its victims to be individuals1 or 7in other words7 to be atoms4 ,for the word atom1 in its clearest meaning 7which is none too clear7 might be translated as 8individual40 ,if there be any bond1 if there be any brotherhood1 if there be any class loyalty or domestic discipline1 by which the poor can help the poor1 these emancipators will certainly strive to loosen that bond or lift that discipline in the most liberal fashion4 ,if there be such a brotherhood1 these individualists will redistribute it in the form of individuals2 or in other words smash it to atoms4 ,the masters of modern plutocracy know what they are about4 ,they are making no mistake2 they can be cleared of the slander of inconsistency4 ,a very profound and precise instinct has led them to single out the human household as the chief obstacle to their inhuman progress4 ,without the family we are helpless before the ,state1 which in our modern case is the ,servile ,state4 ,to use a military metaphor1 the family is the only formation in which the charge of the rich can be repulsed4 ,it is a force that forms twos as soldiers form fours2 and1 in every peasant country1 has stood in the square house or the square plot of land as infantry have stood in squares against cavalry4 ,how this force operates thus1 and why1 ,i will try to explain in the last of these articles4 ,but it is when it is most nearly ridden down by the horsemen of pride and privilege1 as in ,poland or ,ireland1 when the battle grows most desperate and the hope most dark1 that men begin to understand why that wild oath in its beginnings was flung beyond the bounds of the world2 and what would seem as passing as a vision is made permanent as a vow4 ,,iii4--,the ,superstition of ,divorce ,there has long been a curiously consistent attempt to conceal the fact that ,france is a ,christian country4 ,there have been ,frenchmen in the plot1 no doubt1 and no doubt there have been ,frenchmen--though ,i have myself only found ,englishmen--in the derivative attempt to conceal the fact that ,balzac was a ,christian writer4 ,i began to read ,balzac long after ,i had read the admirers of ,balzac2 and they had never given me a hint of this truth4 ,i had read that his books were bound in yellow and 8quite impudently ,french02 though ,i may have been cloudy about why being ,french should be impudent in a ,frenchman4 ,i had read the truer description of 8the grimy wizard of the ,comedie ,humaine10 and have lived to learn the truth of it2 ,balzac certainly is a genius of the type of that artist he himself describes1 who could draw a broomstick so that one knew it had swept the room after a murder4 ,the furniture of ,balzac is more alive than the figures of many dramas4 ,for this ,i was prepared2 but not for a certain spiritual assumption which ,i recognised at once as a historical phenomenon4 ,the morality of a great writer is not the morality he teaches1 but the morality he takes for granted4 ,the ,catholic type of ,christian ethics runs through ,balzac's books1 exactly as the ,puritan type of ,christian ethics runs through ,bunyan's books4 ,what his professed opinions were ,i do not know1 any more than ,i know ,shakespeare's2 but ,i know that both those great creators of a multitudinous world made it1 as compared with other and later writers1 on the same fundamental moral plan as the universe of ,dante4 ,there can be no doubt about it for any one who can apply as a test the truth ,i have mentioned2 that the fundamental things in a man are not the things he explains1 but rather the things he forgets to explain4 ,but here and there ,balzac does explain2 and with that intellectual concentration ,mr4 ,george ,moore has acutely observed in that novelist when he is a theorist4 ,and the other day ,i found in one of ,balzac's novels this passage2 which1 whether or no it would precisely hit ,mr4 ,george ,moore's mood at this moment1 strikes me as a perfect prophecy of this epoch1 and might also be a motto for this book3 8,with the solidarity of the family society has lost that elemental force which ,montesquieu defined and called #8honour4' ,society has isolated its members the better to govern them1 and has divided in order to weaken40 ,throughout our youth and the years before the ,war1 the current criticism followed ,ibsen in describing the domestic system as a doll's house and the domestic woman as a doll4 ,mr4 ,bernard ,shaw varied the metaphor by saying that mere custom kept the woman in the home as it keeps the parrot in the cage2 and the plays and tales of the period made vivid sketches of a woman who also resembled a parrot in other particulars1 rich in raiment1 shrill in accent and addicted to saying over and over again what she had been taught to say4 ,mr4 ,granville ,barker1 the spiritual child of ,mr4 ,bernard ,shaw1 commented in his clever play of 8,the ,voysey ,inheritance0 on tyranny1 hypocrisy and boredom1 as the constituent elements of a 8happy ,english home40 ,leaving the truth of this aside for the moment1 it will be well to insist that the conventionality thus criticised would be even more characteristic of a happy ,french home4 ,it is not the ,englishman's house1 but the ,frenchman's house that is his castle4 ,it might be further added1 touching the essential ethical view of the sexes at least1 that the ,irishman's house is his castle2 though it has been for some centuries a besieged castle4 ,anyhow1 those conventions which were remarked as making domesticity dull1 narrow and unnaturally meek and submissive1 are particularly powerful among the ,irish and the ,french4 ,from this it will surely be easy1 for any lucid and logical thinker1 to deduce the fact that the ,french are dull and narrow1 and that the ,irish are unnaturally meek and submissive4 ,mr4 ,bernard ,shaw1 being an ,irishman who lives among ,englishmen1 may be conveniently taken as the type of the difference2 and it will no doubt be found that the political friends of ,mr4 ,shaw1 among ,englishmen1 will be of a wilder revolutionary type than those whom he would have found among ,irishmen4 ,we are in a position to compare the meekness of the ,fenians with the fury of the ,fabians4 ,this deadening monogamic ideal may even1 in a larger sense1 define and distinguish all the flat subserviency of ,clare from all the flaming revolt of ,clapham4 ,nor need we now look far to understand why revolutions have been unknown in the history of ,france2 or why they happen so persistently in the vaguer politics of ,england4 ,this rigidity and respectability must surely be the explanation of all that incapacity for any civil experiment or explosion1 which has always marked that sleepy hamlet of very private houses1 which we call the city of ,paris4 ,but the same things are true not only of ,parisians but of peasants2 they are even true of other peasants in the great ,alliance4 ,students of ,serbian traditions tell us that the peasant literature lays a special and singular curse on the violation of marriage2 and this may well explain the prim and sheepish pacifism complained of in that people4 ,in plain words1 there is clearly something wrong in the calculation by which it was proved that a housewife must be as much a servant as a housemaid2 or which exhibited the domesticated man as being as gentle as the primrose or as conservative as the ,primrose ,league4 ,it is precisely those who have been conservative about the family who have been revolutionary about the state4 ,those who are blamed for the bigotry or bourgeois smugness of their marriage conventions are actually those blamed for the restlessness and violence of their political reforms4 ,nor is there seriously any difficulty in discovering the cause of this4 ,it is simply that in such a society the government1 in dealing with the family1 deals with something almost as permanent and self-renewing as itself4 ,there can be a continuous family policy1 like a continuous foreign policy4 ,in peasant countries the family fights1 it may almost be said that the farm fights4 ,i do not mean merely that it riots in evil and exceptional times2 though this is not unimportant4 ,it was a savage but a sane feature when1 in the ,irish evictions1 the women poured hot water from the windows2 it was part of a final falling back on private tools as public weapons4 ,that sort of thing is not only war to the knife1 but almost war to the fork and spoon4 ,it was in this grim sense perhaps that ,parnell1 in that mysterious pun1 said that ,kettle was a household word in ,ireland 7it certainly ought to be after its subsequent glories71 and in a more general sense it is certain that meddling with the housewife will ultimately mean getting into hot water4 ,but it is not of such crises of bodily struggle that ,i speak1 but of a steady and peaceful pressure from below of a thousand families upon the framework of government4 ,for this a certain spirit of defence and enclosure is essential2 and even feudalism was right in feeling that any such affair of honour must be a family affair4 ,it was a true artistic instinct that pictured the pedigree on a coat that protects the body4 ,the free peasant has arms if he has not armorial bearings4 ,he has not an escutcheon2 but he has a shield4 ,nor do ,i see why1 in a freer and happier society than the present1 or even the past1 it should not be a blazoned shield4 ,for that is true of pedigree which is true of property2 the wrong is not in its being imposed on men1 but rather in its being denied to them4 ,too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists1 but too few capitalists2 and so aristocracy sins1 not in planting a family tree1 but in not planting a family forest4 ,anyhow1 it is found in practice that the domestic citizen can stand a siege1 even by the ,state2 because he has those who will stand by him through thick and thin--especially thin4 ,now those who hold that the ,state can be made fit to own all and administer all1 can consistently disregard this argument2 but it may be said with all respect that the world is more and more disregarding them4 ,if we could find a perfect machine1 and a perfect man to work it1 it might be a good argument for ,state ,socialism1 though an equally good argument for personal despotism4 ,but most of us1 ,i fancy1 are now agreed that something of that social pressure from below which we call freedom is vital to the health of the ,state2 and this it is which cannot be fully exercised by individuals1 but only by groups and traditions4 ,such groups have been many2 there have been monasteries2 there may be guilds2 but there is only one type among them which all human beings have a spontaneous and omnipresent inspiration to build for themselves2 and this type is the family4 ,i had intended this article to be the last of those outlining the elements of this debate2 but ,i shall have to add a short concluding section on the way in which all this is missed in the practical 7or rather unpractical7 proposals about divorce4 ,here ,i will only say that they suffer from the modern and morbid weaknesses of always sacrificing the normal to the abnormal4 ,as a fact the 8tyranny1 hypocrisy and boredom0 complained of are not domesticity1 but the decay of domesticity4 ,the case of that particular complaint1 in ,mr4 ,granville ,barker's play1 is itself a proof4 ,the whole point of 8,the ,voysey ,inheritance0 was that there was no ,voysey inheritance4 ,the only heritage of that family was a highly dishonourable debt4 ,naturally their family affections had decayed when their whole ideal of property and probity had decayed2 and there was little love as well as little honour among thieves4 ,it has yet to be proved that they would have been as much bored if they had had a positive and not a negative heritage2 and had worked a farm instead of a fraud4 ,and the experience of mankind points the other way4 ,,iv4--,the ,superstition of ,divorce ,i have touched before now on a famous or infamous ,royalist who suggested that the people should eat grass2 an unfortunate remark perhaps for a ,royalist to make2 since the regimen is only recorded of a ,royal ,personage4 ,but there was certainly a simplicity in the solution worthy of a sultan or even a savage chief2 and it is this touch of autocratic innocence on which ,i have mainly insisted touching the social reforms of our day1 and especially the social reform known as divorce4 ,i am primarily more concerned with the arbitrary method than with the anarchic result4 ,very much as the old tyrant would turn any number of men out to grass1 so the new tyrant would turn any number of women into grass-widows4 ,anyhow1 to vary the legendary symbolism1 it never seems to occur to the king in this fairy tale that the gold crown on his head is a less1 and not a more1 sacred and settled ornament than the gold ring on the woman's finger4 ,this change is being achieved by the summary and even secret government which we now suffer2 and this would be the first point against it1 even if it were really an emancipation2 and it is only in form an emancipation4 ,i will not anticipate the details of its defence1 which can be offered by others1 but ,i will here conclude for the present by roughly suggesting the practical defences of divorce1 as generally given just at present1 under four heads4 ,and ,i will only ask the reader to note that they all have one thing in common2 the fact that each argument is also used for all that social reform which plain men are already calling slavery4 ,first1 it is very typical of the latest practical proposals that they are concerned with the case of those who are already separated1 and the steps they must take to be divorced4 ,there is a spirit penetrating all our society to-day by which the exception is allowed to alter the rule2 the exile to deflect patriotism1 the orphan to depose parenthood1 and even the widow or1 in this case as we have seen the grass-widow1 to destroy the position of the wife4 ,there is a sort of symbol of this tendency in that mysterious and unfortunate nomadic nation which has been allowed to alter so many things1 from a crusade in ,russia to a cottage in ,south ,bucks4 ,we have been told to treat the wandering ,jew as a pilgrim1 while we still treat the wandering ,christian as a vagabond4 ,and yet the latter is at least trying to get home1 like ,ulysses2 whereas the former is1 if anything1 rather fleeing from home1 like ,cain4 ,he who is detached1 disgruntled1 nondescript1 intermediate1 is everywhere made the excuse for altering what is common1 corporate1 traditional and popular4 ,and the alteration is always for the worse4 ,the mermaid never becomes more womanly1 but only more fishy4 ,the centaur never becomes more manly1 but only more horsy4 ,the ,jew cannot really internationalise ,christendom2 he can only denationalise ,christendom4 ,the proletarian does not find it easy to become a small proprietor2 he is finding it far easier to become a slave4 ,so the unfortunate man1 who cannot tolerate the woman he has chosen from all the women in the world1 is not encouraged to return to her and tolerate her1 but encouraged to choose another woman whom he may in due course refuse to tolerate4 ,and in all these cases the argument is the same2 that the man in the intermediate state is unhappy4 ,probably he is unhappy1 since he is abnormal2 but the point is that he is permitted to loosen the universal bond which has kept millions of others normal4 ,because he has himself got into a hole1 he is allowed to burrow in it like a rabbit and undermine a whole countryside4 ,next we have1 as we always have touching such crude experiments1 an argument from the example of other countries1 and especially of new countries4 ,thus the ,eugenists tell me solemnly that there have been very successful ,eugenic experiments in ,america4 ,and they rigidly retain their solemnity 7while refusing with many rebukes to believe in mine7 when ,i tell them that one of the ,eugenic experiments in ,america is a chemical experiment2 which consists of changing a black man into the allotropic form of white ashes4 ,it is really an exceedingly ,eugenic experiment2 since its chief object is to discourage an inter-racial mixture of blood which is not desired4 ,but ,i do not like this ,american experiment1 however ,american2 and ,i trust and believe that it is not typically ,american at all4 ,it represents1 ,i conceive1 only one element in the complexity of the great democracy2 and goes along with other evil elements2 so that ,i am not at all surprised that the same strange social sections1 which permit a human being to be burned alive1 also permit the exalted science of ,eugenics4 ,it is the same in the milder matter of liquor laws2 and we are told that certain rather crude colonials have established prohibition laws1 which they try to evade2 just as we are told they have established divorce laws1 which they are now trying to repeal4 ,for in this case of divorce1 at least1 the argument from distant precedents has recoiled crushingly upon itself4 ,there is already an agitation for less divorce in ,america1 even while there is an agitation for more divorce in ,england4 ,again1 when an argument is based on a need of population1 it will be well if those supporting it realise where it may carry them4 ,it is exceedingly doubtful whether population is one of the advantages of divorce2 but there is no doubt that it is one of the advantages of polygamy4 ,it is already used in ,germany as an argument for polygamy4 ,but the very word will teach us to look even beyond ,germany for something yet more remote and repulsive4 ,mere population1 along with a sort of polygamous anarchy1 will not appear even as a practical ideal to any one who considers1 for instance1 how consistently ,europe has held the headship of the human race1 in face of the chaotic myriads of ,asia4 ,if population were the chief test of progress and efficiency1 ,china would long ago have proved itself the most progressive and efficient state4 ,de ,quincey summed up the whole of that enormous situation in a sentence which is perhaps more impressive and even appalling than all the perspectives of orient architecture and vistas of opium vision in the midst of which it comes4 8,man is a weed in those regions40 ,many ,europeans1 fearing for the garden of the world1 have fancied that in some future fatality those weeds may spring up and choke it4 ,but no ,europeans have really wished that the flowers should become like the weeds4 ,even if it were true1 therefore1 that the loosening of the tie necessarily increased the population2 even if this were not contradicted1 as it is1 by the facts of many countries1 we should have strong historical grounds for not accepting the deduction4 ,we should still be suspicious of the paradox that we may encourage large families by abolishing the family4 ,lastly1 ,i believe it is part of the defence of the new proposal that even its defenders have found its principle a little too crude4 ,i hear they have added provisions which modify the principle2 and which seem to be in substance1 first1 that a man shall be made responsible for a money payment to the wife he deserts1 and second1 that the matter shall once again be submitted in some fashion to some magistrate4 ,for my purpose here1 it is enough to note that there is something of the unmistakable savour of the sociology we resist1 in these two touching acts of faith1 in a cheque-book and in a lawyer4 ,most of the fashionable reformers of marriage would be faintly shocked at any suggestion that a poor old charwoman might possibly refuse such money1 or that a good kind magistrate might not have the right to give such advice4 ,for the reformers of marriage are very respectable people1 with some honourable exceptions2 and nothing could fit more smoothly into the rather greasy groove of their respectability than the suggestion that treason is best treated with the damages1 gentlemen1 heavy damages1 of ,mr4 ,serjeant ,buzfuz2 or that tragedy is best treated by the spiritual arbitrament of ,mr4 ,nupkins4 ,one word should be added to this hasty sketch of the elements of the case4 ,i have deliberately left out the loftiest aspect and argument1 that which sees marriage as a divine institution2 and that for the logical reason that those who believe in this would not believe in divorce2 and ,i am arguing with those who do believe in divorce4 ,i do not ask them to assume the worth of my creed or any creed2 and ,i could wish they did not so often ask me to assume the worth of their worthless1 poisonous plutocratic modern society4 ,but if it could be shown1 as ,i think it can1 that a long historical view and a patient political experience can at last accumulate solid scientific evidence of the vital need of such a vow1 then ,i can conceive no more tremendous tribute than this1 to any faith1 which made a flaming affirmation from the darkest beginnings1 of what the latest enlightenment can only slowly discover in the end4 ,,the ,,story ,,of ,,the ,,family ,v4--,the ,story of the ,family ,the most ancient of human institutions has an authority that may seem as wild as anarchy4 ,alone among all such institutions it begins with a spontaneous attraction2 and may be said strictly and not sentimentally to be founded on love instead of fear4 ,the attempt to compare it with coercive institutions complicating later history has led to infinite illogicality in later times4 ,it is as unique as it is universal4 ,there is nothing in any other social relations in any way parallel to the mutual attraction of the sexes4 ,by missing this simple point1 the modern world has fallen into a hundred follies4 ,the idea of a general revolt of women against men has been proclaimed with flags and processions1 like a revolt of vassals against their lords1 of niggers against nigger-drivers1 of ,poles against ,prussians or ,irishmen against ,englishmen2 for all the world as if we really believed in the fabulous nation of the ,amazons4 ,the equally philosophical idea of a general revolt of men against women has been put into a romance by ,sir ,walter ,besant1 and into a sociological book by ,mr4 ,belfort ,bax4 ,but at the first touch of this truth of an aboriginal attraction1 all such comparisons collapse and are seen to be comic4 ,a ,prussian does not feel from the first that he can only be happy if he spends his days and nights with a ,pole4 ,an ,englishman does not think his house empty and cheerless unless it happens to contain an ,irishman4 ,a white man does not in his romantic youth dream of the perfect beauty of a black man4 ,a railway magnate seldom writes poems about the personal fascination of a railway porter4 ,all the other revolts against all the other relations are reasonable and even inevitable1 because those relations are originally only founded upon force or self-interest4 ,force can abolish what force can establish2 self-interest can terminate a contract when self-interest has dictated the contract4 ,but the love of man and woman is not an institution that can be abolished1 or a contract that can be terminated4 ,it is something older than all institutions or contracts1 and something that is certain to outlast them all4 ,all the other revolts are real1 because there remains a possibility that the things may be destroyed1 or at least divided4 ,you can abolish capitalists2 but you cannot abolish males4 ,prussians can go out of ,poland or negroes can be repatriated to ,africa2 but a man and a woman must remain together in one way or another2 and must learn to put up with each other somehow4 ,these are very simple truths2 that is why nobody nowadays seems to take any particular notice of them2 and the truth that follows next is equally obvious4 ,there is no dispute about the purpose of ,nature in creating such an attraction4 ,it would be more intelligent to call it the purpose of ,god2 for ,nature can have no purpose unless ,god is behind it4 ,to talk of the purpose of ,nature is to make a vain attempt to avoid being anthropomorphic1 merely by being feminist4 ,it is believing in a goddess because you are too sceptical to believe in a god4 ,but this is a controversy which can be kept apart from the question1 if we content ourselves with saying that the vital value ultimately found in this attraction is1 of course1 the renewal of the race itself4 ,the child is an explanation of the father and mother2 and the fact that it is a human child is the explanation of the ancient human ties connecting the father and mother4 ,the more human1 that is the less bestial1 is the child1 the more lawful and lasting are the ties4 ,so far from any progress in culture or the sciences tending to loosen the bond1 any such progress must logically tend to tighten it4 ,the more things there are for the child to learn1 the longer he must remain at the natural school for learning them2 and the longer his teachers must at least postpone the dissolution of their partnership4 ,this elementary truth is hidden to-day in vast masses of vicarious1 indirect and artificial work1 with the fundamental fallacy of which ,i shall deal in a moment4 ,here ,i speak of the primary position of the human group1 as it has stood through unthinkable ages of waxing and waning civilisations2 often unable to delegate any of its work1 always unable to delegate all of it4 ,in this1 ,i repeat1 it will always be necessary for the two teachers to remain together1 in proportion as they have anything to teach4 ,one of the shapeless sea-beasts1 that merely detaches itself from its offspring and floats away1 could float away to a submarine divorce court1 or an advanced club founded on free-love for fishes4 ,the sea-beast might do this1 precisely because the sea-beast's offspring need do nothing2 because it has not got to learn the polka or the multiplication table4 ,all these are truisms but they are also truths1 and truths that will return2 for the present tangle of semi-official substitutes is not only a stop-gap1 but one that is not big enough to stop the gap4 ,if people cannot mind their own business1 it cannot possibly be more economical to pay them to mind each other's business2 and still less to mind each other's babies4 ,it is simply throwing away a natural force and then paying for an artificial force2 as if a man were to water a plant with a hose while holding up an umbrella to protect it from the rain4 ,the whole really rests on a plutocratic illusion of an infinite supply of servants4 ,when we offer any other system as a 8career for women10 we are really proposing that an infinite number of them should become servants1 of a plutocratic or bureaucratic sort4 ,ultimately1 we are arguing that a woman should not be a mother to her own baby1 but a nursemaid to somebody else's baby4 ,but it will not work1 even on paper4 ,we cannot all live by taking in each other's washing1 especially in the form of pinafores4 ,in the last resort1 the only people who either can or will give individual care1 to each of the individual children1 are their individual parents4 ,the expression as applied to those dealing with changing crowds of children is a graceful and legitimate flourish of speech4 ,this triangle of truisms1 of father1 mother and child1 cannot be destroyed2 it can only destroy those civilisations which disregard it4 ,most modern reformers are merely bottomless sceptics1 and have no basis on which to rebuild2 and it is well that such reformers should realise that there is something they cannot reform4 ,you can put down the mighty from their seat2 you can turn the world upside down1 and there is much to be said for the view that it may then be the right way up4 ,but you cannot create a world in which the baby carries the mother4 ,you cannot create a world in which the mother has not authority over the baby4 ,you can waste your time in trying2 by giving votes to babies or proclaiming a republic of infants in arms4 ,you can say1 as an educationist said the other day1 that small children should 8criticise1 question authority and suspend their judgment40 ,i do not know why he did not go on to say that they should earn their own living1 pay income tax to the state1 and die in battle for the fatherland2 for the proposal evidently is that children shall have no childhood4 ,but you can1 if you find entertainment in such games1 organise 8representative government0 among little boys and girls1 and tell them to take their legal and constitutional responsibilities as seriously as possible4 ,in short1 you can be crazy2 but you cannot be consistent4 ,you cannot really carry your own principle back to the aboriginal group1 and really apply it to the mother and the baby4 ,you will not act on you own theory in the simplest and most practical of all possible cases4 ,you are not quite so mad as that4 ,this nucleus of natural authority has always existed in the midst of more artificial authorities4 ,it has always been regarded as something in the literal sense individual2 that is1 as an absolute that could not really be divided4 ,a baby was not even a baby apart from its mother2 it was something else1 most probably a corpse4 ,it was always recognised as standing in a peculiar relation to government2 simply because it was one of the few things that had not been made by government2 and could to some extent come into existence without the support of government4 ,indeed the case for it is too strong to be stated4 ,for the case for it is that there is nothing like it2 and we can only find faint parallels to it in those more elaborate and painful powers and institutions that are its inferiors4 ,thus the only way of conveying it is to compare it to a nation2 although1 compared to it1 national divisions are as modern and formal as national anthems4 ,thus ,i may often use the metaphor of a city2 though in its presence a citizen is as recent as a city clerk4 ,it is enough to note here that everybody does know by intuition and admit by implication that a family is a solid fact1 having a character and colour like a nation4 ,the truth can be tested by the most modern and most daily experiences4 ,a man does say 8,that is the sort of thing the ,browns will like02 however tangled and interminable a psychological novel he might compose on the shades of difference between ,mr4 and ,mrs4 ,brown4 ,a woman does say 8,i don't like ,jemima seeing so much of the ,robinsons02 and she does not always1 in the scurry of her social or domestic duties1 pause to distinguish the optimistic materialism of ,mrs4 ,robinson from the more acid cynicism which tinges the hedonism of ,mr4 ,robinson4 ,there is a colour of the household inside1 as conspicuous as the colour of the house outside4 ,that colour is a blend1 and if any tint in it predominate it is generally that preferred by ,mrs4 ,robinson4 ,but1 like all composite colours1 it is a separate color1 as separate as green is from blue and yellow4 ,every marriage is a sort of wild balance2 and in every case the compromise is as unique as an eccentricity4 ,philanthropists walking in the slums often see the compromise in the street1 and mistake it for a fight4 ,when they interfere1 they are thoroughly thumped by both parties2 and serve them right1 for not respecting the very institution that brought them into the world4 ,the first thing to see is that this enormous normality is like a mountain2 and one that is capable of being a volcano4 ,every abnormality that is now opposed to it is like a molehill2 and the earnest sociological organisers of it are exceedingly like moles4 ,but the mountain is a volcano in another sense also2 as suggested in that tradition of the southern fields fertilised by larva4 ,it has a creative as well as a destructive side2 and it only remains1 in this part of the analysis1 to note the political effect of this extra-political institution1 and the political ideals of which it has been the champion2 and perhaps the only permanent champion4 ,the ideal for which it stands in the state is liberty4 ,it stands for liberty for the very simple reason with which this rough analysis started4 ,it is the only one of these institutions that is at once necessary and voluntary4 ,it is the only check on the state that is bound to renew itself as eternally as the state1 and more naturally than the state4 ,every sane man recognises that unlimited liberty is anarchy1 or rather is nonentity4 ,the civic idea of liberty is to give the citizen a province of liberty2 a limitation within which a citizen is a king4 ,this the only way in which truth can ever find refuge from public persecution1 and the good man survive the bad government4 ,but the good man by himself is no match for the city4 ,there must be balanced against it another ideal institution1 and in that sense an immortal institution4 ,so long as the state is the only ideal institution1 the state will call on the citizen to sacrifice himself1 and therefore will not have the smallest scruple in sacrificing the citizen4 ,the state consists of coercion2 and must always be justified from its own point of view in extending the bounds of coercion2 as1 for instance1 in the case of conscription4 ,the only thing that can be set up to check or challenge this authority is a voluntary law and a voluntary loyalty4 ,that loyalty is the protection of liberty1 in the only sphere where liberty can fully dwell4 ,it is a principle of the constitution that the ,king never dies4 ,it is the whole principle of the family that the citizen never dies4 ,there must be a heraldry and heredity of freedom2 a tradition of resistance to tyranny4 ,a man must be not only free1 but free-born4 ,indeed1 there is something in the family that might loosely be called anarchist2 and more correctly called amateur4 ,as there seems something almost vague about its voluntary origin1 so there seems something vague about its voluntary organisation4 ,the most vital function it performs1 perhaps the most vital function that anything can perform1 is that of education2 but its type of early education is far too essential to be mistaken for instruction4 ,in a thousand things it works rather by rule of thumb than rule of theory4 ,to take a commonplace and even comic example1 ,i doubt if any text-book or code of rules has ever contained any directions about standing a child in a corner4 ,doubtless when the modern process is complete1 and the coercive principle of the state has entirely extinguished the voluntary element of the family1 there will be some exact regulation or restriction about the matter4 ,possibly it will say that the corner must be an angle of at least ninety-five degrees4 ,possibly it will say that the converging line of any ordinary corner tends to make a child squint4 ,in fact ,i am certain that if ,i said casually1 at a sufficient number of tea-tables1 that corners made children squint1 it would rapidly become a universally received dogma of popular science4 ,for the modern world will accept no dogmas upon any authority2 but it will accept any dogmas upon no authority4 ,say that a thing is so1 according to the ,pope or the ,bible1 and it will be dismissed as a superstition without examination4 ,but preface your remark merely with 8they say0 or 8don't you know that80 or try 7and fail7 to remember the name of some professor mentioned in some newspaper2 and the keen rationalism of the modern mind will accept every word you say4 ,this parenthesis is not so irrelevant as it may appear1 for it will be well to remember that when a rigid officialism breaks in upon the voluntary compromises of the home1 that officialism itself will be only rigid in its action and will be exceedingly limp in its thought4 ,intellectually it will be at least as vague as the amateur arrangements of the home1 and the only difference is that the domestic arrangements are in the only real sense practical2 that is1 they are founded on experiences that have been suffered4 ,the others are what is now generally called scientific2 that is1 they are founded on experiments that have not yet been made4 ,as a matter of fact1 instead of invading the family with the blundering bureaucracy that mismanages the public services1 it would be far more philosophical to work the reform the other way round4 ,it would be really quite as reasonable to alter the laws of the nation so as to resemble the laws of the nursery4 ,the punishments would be far less horrible1 far more humorous1 and far more really calculated to make men feel they had made fools of themselves4 ,it would be a pleasant change if a judge1 instead of putting on the black cap1 had to put on the dunce's cap2 or if we could stand a financier in his own corner4 ,of course this opinion is rare1 and reactionary--whatever that may mean4 ,modern education is founded on the principle that a parent is more likely to be cruel than anybody else4 ,it passes over the obvious fact that he is less likely to be cruel than anybody else4 ,anybody may happen to be cruel2 but the first chances of cruelty come with the whole colourless and indifferent crowd of total strangers and mechanical mercenaries1 whom it is now the custom to call in as infallible agents of improvement2 policemen1 doctors1 detectives1 inspectors1 instructors1 and so on4 ,they are automatically given arbitrary power because there are here and there such things as criminal parents2 as if there were no such things as criminal doctors or criminal school-masters4 ,a mother is not always judicious about her child's diet2 so it is given into the control of ,dr4 ,crippen4 ,a father is thought not to teach his sons the purest morality2 so they are put under the tutorship of ,eugene ,aram4 ,these celebrated criminals are no more rare in their respective professions than the cruel parents are in the profession of parenthood4 ,but indeed the case is far stronger than this2 and there is no need to rely on the case of such criminals at all4 ,the ordinary weaknesses of human nature will explain all the weaknesses of bureaucracy and business government all over the world4 ,the official need only be an ordinary man to be more indifferent to other people's children than to his own2 and even to sacrifice other people's family prosperity to his own4 ,he may be bored2 he may be bribed2 he may be brutal1 for any one of the thousand reasons that ever made a man a brute4 ,all this elementary common sense is entirely left out of account in our educational and social systems of today4 ,it is assumed that the hireling will not flee1 and that solely because he is a hireling4 ,it is denied that the shepherd will lay down his life for the sheep2 or for that matter1 even that the she-wolf will fight for the cubs4 ,we are to believe that mothers are inhuman2 but not that officials are human4 ,there are unnatural parents1 but there are no natural passions2 at least1 there are none where the fury of ,king ,lear dared to find them--in the beadle4 ,such is the latest light on the education of the young2 and the same principle that is applied to the child is applied to the husband and wife4 ,just as it assumes that a child will certainly be loved by anybody except his mother1 so it assumes that a man can be happy with anybody except the one woman he has himself chosen for his wife4 ,thus the coercive spirit of the state prevails over the free promise of the family1 in the shape of formal officialism4 ,but this is not the most coercive of the coercive elements in the modern commonwealth4 ,an even more rigid and ruthless external power is that of industrial employment and unemployment4 ,an even more ferocious enemy of the family is the factory4 ,between these modern mechanical things the ancient natural institution is not being reformed or modified or even cut down2 it is being torn in pieces4 ,it is not only being torn in pieces in the sense of a true metaphor1 like a living thing caught in a hideous clockwork of manufacture4 ,it is being literally torn in pieces1 in that the husband may go to one factory1 the wife to another1 and the child to a third4 ,each will become the servant of a separate financial group1 which is more and more gaining the political power of a feudal group4 ,but whereas feudalism received the loyalty of families1 the lords of the new servile state will receive only the loyalty of individuals2 that is1 of lonely men and even of lost children4 ,it is sometimes said that ,socialism attacks the family2 which is founded on little beyond the accident that some ,socialists believe in free-love4 ,i have been a ,socialist1 and ,i am no longer a ,socialist1 and at no time did ,i believe in free-love4 ,it is true1 ,i think in a large and unconscious sense1 that ,state ,socialism encourages the general coercive claim ,i have been considering4 ,but if it be true that ,socialism attacks the family in theory1 it is far more certain that ,capitalism attacks it in practice4 ,it is a paradox1 but a plain fact1 that men never notice a thing as long as it exists in practice4 ,men who will note a heresy will ignore an abuse4 ,let any one who doubts the paradox imagine the newspapers formally printing along with the ,honours' ,list a price list1 for peerages and knighthoods2 though everybody knows they are bought and sold4 ,so the factory is destroying the family in fact2 and need depend on no poor mad theorist who dreams of destroying it in fancy4 ,and what is destroying it is nothing so plausible as free-love2 but something rather to be described as an enforced fear4 ,it is economic punishment more terrible than legal punishment1 which may yet land us in slavery as the only safety4 ,from its first days in the forest this human group had to fight against wild monsters2 and so it is now fighting against these wild machines4 ,it only managed to survive then1 and it will only manage to survive now1 by a strong internal sanctity2 a tacit oath or dedication deeper than that of the city or the tribe4 ,but though this silent promise was always present1 it took at a certain turning point of our history a special form which ,i shall try to sketch in the next chapter4 ,that turning point was the creation of ,christendom by the religion which created it4 ,nothing will destroy the sacred triangle2 and even the ,christian faith1 the most amazing revolution that ever took place in the mind1 served only in a sense to turn that triangle upside down4 ,it held up a mystical mirror in which the order of the three things was reversed2 and added a holy family of child1 mother and father to the human family of father1 mother and child4 ,,the ,,story ,,of ,,the ,,vow ,,vi4--,the ,story of the ,vow ,charles ,lamb1 with his fine fantastic instinct for combinations that are also contrasts1 has noted somewhere a contrast between ,st4 ,valentine and valentines4 ,there seems a comic incongruity in such lively and frivolous flirtations still depending on the date and title of an ascetic and celibate bishop of the ,dark ,ages4 ,the paradox lends itself to his treatment1 and there is a truth in his view of it4 ,perhaps it may seem even more of a paradox to say there is no paradox4 ,in such cases unification appears more provocative than division2 and it may seem idly contradictory to deny the contradiction4 ,and yet in truth there is no contradiction4 ,in the deepest sense there is a very real similarity1 which puts ,st4 ,valentine and his valentines on one side1 and most of the modern world on the other4 ,i should hesitate to ask even a ,german professor to collect1 collate and study carefully all the valentines in the world1 with the object of tracing a philosophical principle running through them4 ,but if he did1 ,i have no doubt about the philosophic principle he would find4 ,however trivial1 however imbecile1 however vulgar or vapid or stereotyped the imagery of such things might be1 it would always involve one idea1 the same idea that makes lovers laboriously chip their initials on a tree or a rock1 in a sort of monogram of monogamy4 ,it may be a cockney trick to tie one's love on a tree2 though ,orlando did it1 and would now doubtless be arrested by the police for breaking the bye-laws of the ,forest of ,arden4 ,i am not here concerned especially to commend the habit of cutting one's own name and private address in large letters on the front of the ,parthenon1 across the face of the ,sphinx1 or in any other nook or corner where it may chance to arrest the sentimental interest of posterity4 ,but like many other popular things1 of the sort that can generally be found in ,shakespeare1 there is a meaning in it that would probably be missed by a less popular poet1 like ,shelley4 ,there is a very permanent truth in the fact that two free persons deliberately tie themselves to a log of wood4 ,and it is the idea of tying oneself to something that runs through all this old amorous allegory like a pattern of fetters4 ,there is always the notion of hearts chained together1 or skewered together1 or in some manner secured2 there is a security that can only be called captivity4 ,that it frequently fails to secure itself has nothing to do with the present point4 ,the point is that every philosophy of sex must fail1 which does not account for its ambition of fixity1 as well as for its experience of failure4 ,there is nothing to make ,orlando commit himself on the sworn evidence of the nearest tree4 ,he is not bound to be bound2 he is under constraint1 but nobody constrains him to be under constraint4 ,in short1 ,orlando took a vow to marry precisely as ,valentine took a vow not to marry4 ,nor could any ascetic1 without being a heretic1 have asserted in the wildest reactions of asceticism1 that the vow of ,orlando was not lawful as well as the vow of ,valentine4 ,but it is a notable fact that even when it was not lawful1 it was still a vow4 ,through all that medival culture1 which has left us the legend of romance1 there ran this pattern of a chain1 which was felt as binding even where it ought not to bind4 ,the lawless loves of medival legends all have their own law1 and especially their own loyalty1 as in the tales of ,tristram or ,lancelot4 ,in this sense we might say that medival profligacy was more fixed than modern marriage4 ,i am not here discussing either modern or medival ethics1 in the matter of what they did say or ought to say of such things4 ,i am only noting as a historical fact the insistence of the medival imagination1 even at its wildest1 upon one particular idea4 ,that idea is the idea of the vow4 ,it might be the vow which ,st4 ,valentine took2 it might be a lesser vow which he regarded as lawful2 it might be a wild vow which he regarded as quite lawless4 ,but the whole society which made such festivals and bequeathed to us such traditions was full of the idea of vows2 and we must recognise this notion1 even if we think it nonsensical1 as the note of the whole civilisation4 ,and ,valentine and the valentine both express it for us2 even more if we feel them both as exaggerated1 or even as exaggerating opposites4 ,those extremes meet2 and they meet in the same place4 ,their trysting place is by the tree on which the lover hung his love-letters4 ,and even if the lover hung himself on the tree1 instead of his literary compositions1 even that act had about it also an indefinable flavour of finality4 ,it is often said by the critics of ,christian origins that certain ritual feasts1 processions or dances are really of pagan origin4 ,they might as well say that our legs are of pagan origin4 ,nobody ever disputed that humanity was human before it was ,christian2 and no ,church manufactured the legs with which men walked or danced1 either in a pilgrimage or a ballet4 ,what can really be maintained1 so as to carry not a little conviction1 is this3 that where such a ,church has existed it has preserved not only the processions but the dances2 not only the cathedral but the carnival4 ,one of the chief claims of ,christian civilisation is to have preserved things of pagan origin4 ,in short1 in the old religious countries men continue to dance2 while in the new scientific cities they are often content to drudge4 ,but when this saner view of history is realised1 there does remain something more mystical and difficult to define4 ,even heathen things are ,christian when they have been preserved by ,christianity4 ,chivalry is something recognisably different even from the virtus of ,virgil4 ,charity is something exceedingly different from the plain city of ,homer4 ,even our patriotism is something more subtle than the undivided lover of the city2 and the change is felt in the most permanent things1 such as the love of landscape or the love of woman4 ,to define the differentiation in all these things will always be hopelessly difficult4 ,but ,i would here suggest one element in the change which is perhaps too much neglected2 which at any rate ought not to be neglected2 the nature of a vow4 ,i might express it by saying that pagan antiquity was the age of status2 that ,christian medivalism was the age of vows2 and that sceptical modernity has been the age of contracts2 or rather has tried to be1 and has failed4 ,the outstanding example of status was slavery4 ,needless to say slavery does not mean tyranny2 indeed it need only be regarded relatively to other things to be regarded as charity4 ,the idea of slavery is that large numbers of men are meant and made to do the heavy work of the world1 and that others1 while taking the margin of profits1 must nevertheless support them while they do it4 ,the point is not whether the work is excessive or moderate1 or whether the condition is comfortable or uncomfortable4 ,the point is that his work is chosen for the man1 his status fixed for the man2 and this status is forced on him by law4 ,as ,mr4 ,balfour said about ,socialism1 that is slavery and nothing else is slavery4 ,the slave might well be1 and often was1 far more comfortable than the average free labourer2 and certainly far more lazy than the average peasant4 ,he was a slave because he had not reached his position by choice1 or promise1 or bargain1 but merely by status4 ,it is admitted that when ,christianity had been for some time at work in the world1 this ancient servile status began in some mysterious manner to disappear4 ,i suggest here that one of the forms which the new spirit took was the importance of the vow4 ,feudalism1 for instance1 differed from slavery chiefly because feudalism was a vow4 ,the vassal put his hands in those of his lord1 and vowed to be his man2 but there was an accent on the noun substantive as well as on the possessive pronoun4 ,by swearing to be his man1 he proved he was not his chattel4 ,nobody exacts a promise from a pickaxe1 or expects a poker to swear everlasting friendship with the tongs4 ,nobody takes the word of a spade2 and nobody ever took the word of a slave4 ,it marks at least a special stage of transition that the form of freedom was essential to the fact of service1 or even of servitude4 ,in this way it is not a coincidence that the word homage actually means manhood4 ,and if there was vow instead of status even in the static parts of ,feudalism1 it is needless to say that there was a wilder luxuriance of vows in the more adventurous part of it4 ,the whole of what we call chivalry was one great vow4 ,vows of chivalry varied infinitely from the most solid to the most fantastic2 from a vow to give all the spoils of conquest to the poor to a vow to refrain from shaving until the first glimpse of ,jerusalem4 ,as ,i have remarked1 this rule of loyalty1 even in the unruly exceptions which proved the rule1 ran through all the romances and songs of the troubadours2 and there were always vows even when they were very far from being marriage vows4 ,the idea is as much present in what they called the ,gay ,science1 of love1 as in what they called the ,divine ,science1 of theology4 ,the modern reader will smile at the mention of these things as sciences2 and will turn to the study of sociology1 ethnology and psycho-analysis2 for if these are sciences 7about which ,i would not divulge a doubt7 at least nobody would insult them by calling them either gay or divine4 ,i mean here to emphasise the presence1 and not even to settle the proportion1 of this new notion in the middle ages4 ,but the critic will be quite wrong if he thinks it enough to answer that all these things affected only a cultured class1 not corresponding to the servile class of antiquity4 ,when we come to workmen and small tradesmen1 we find the same vague yet vivid presence of the spirit that can only be called the vow4 ,in this sense there was a chivalry of trades as well as a chivalry of orders of knighthood2 just as there was a heraldry of shop-signs as well as a heraldry of shields4 ,only it happens that in the enlightenment and liberation of the sixteenth century1 the heraldry of the rich was preserved1 and the heraldry of the poor destroyed4 ,and there is a sinister symbolism in the fact that almost the only emblem still hung above a shop is that of the three balls of ,lombardy4 ,of all those democratic glories nothing can now glitter in the sun2 except the sign of the golden usury that has devoured them all4 ,the point here1 however1 is that the trade or craft had not only something like the crest1 but something like the vow of knighthood4 ,there was in the position of the guildsman the same basic notion that belonged to knights and even to monks4 ,it was the notion of the free choice of a fixed estate4 ,we can realise the moral atmosphere if we compare the system of the ,christian guilds1 not only with the status of the ,greek and ,roman slaves1 but with such a scheme as that of the ,indian castes4 ,the oriental caste has some of the qualities of the occidental guild2 especially the valuable quality of tradition and the accumulation of culture4 ,men might be proud of their castes1 as they were proud of their guilds4 ,but they had never chosen their castes1 as they have chosen their guilds4 ,they had never1 within historic memory1 even collectively created their castes1 as they collectively created their guilds4 ,like the slave system1 the caste system was older than history4 ,the heathens of modern ,asia1 as much as the heathens of ancient ,europe1 lived by the very spirit of status4 ,status in a trade has been accepted like status in a tribe2 and that in a tribe of beasts and birds rather than men4 ,the fisherman continued to be a fisherman as the fish continued to be a fish2 and the hunter would no more turn into a cook than his dog would try its luck as a cat4 ,certainly his dog would not be found prostrated before the mysterious altar of ,pasht1 barking or whining a wild1 lonely1 and individual vow that he at all costs would become a cat4 ,yet that was the vital revolt and innovation of vows1 as compared with castes or slavery2 as when a man vowed to be a monk1 or the son of a cobbler saluted the shrine of ,st4 ,joseph1 the patron saint of carpenters4 ,when he had entered the guild of the carpenters he did indeed find himself responsible for a very real loyalty and discipline2 but the whole social atmosphere surrounding his entrance was full of the sense of a separate and personal decision4 ,there is one place where we can still find this sentiment2 the sentiment of something at once free and final4 ,we can feel it1 if the service is properly understood1 before and after the marriage vows at any ordinary wedding in any ordinary church4 ,such1 in very vague outline1 has been the historical nature of vows2 and the unique part they played in that medival civilisation out of which modern civilisation rose--or fell4 ,we can now consider1 a little less cloudily than it is generally considered nowadays1 whether we really think vows are good things2 whether they ought to be broken2 and 7as would naturally follow7 whether they ought to be made4 ,but we can never judge it fairly till we face1 as ,i have tried to suggest1 this main fact of history2 that the personal pledge1 feudal or civic or monastic1 was the way in which the world did escape from the system of slavery in the past4 ,for the modern break-down of mere contract leaves it still doubtful if there be any other way of escaping it in the future4 ,the idea1 or at any rate the ideal1 of the thing called a vow is fairly obvious4 ,it is to combine the fixity that goes with finality with the self-respect that only goes with freedom4 ,the man is a slave who is his own master1 and a king who is his own ancestor4 ,for all kinds of social purposes he has the calculable orbit of the man in the caste or the servile state2 but in the story of his own soul he is still pursuing1 at great peril1 his own adventure4 ,as seen by his neighbours1 he is as safe as if immured in a fortress2 but as seen by himself he may be for ever careering through the sky or crashing towards the earth in a flying-ship4 ,what is socially humdrum is produced by what is individually heroic2 and a city is made not merely of citizens but knight-errants4 ,it is needless to point out the part played by the monastery in civilising ,europe in its most barbaric interregnum2 and even those who still denounce the monasteries will be found denouncing them for these two extreme and apparently opposite eccentricities4 ,they are blamed for the rigid character of their collective routine2 and also for the fantastic character of their individual fanaticism4 ,for the purposes of this part of the argument1 it would not matter if the marriage vow produced the most austere discomforts of the monastic vow4 ,the point for the present is that it was sustained by a sense of free will2 and the feeling that its evils were not accepted but chosen4 ,the same spirit ran through all the guilds and popular arts and spontaneous social systems of the whole civilisation4 ,it had all the discipline of an army2 but it was an army of volunteers4 ,the civilisation of vows was broken up when ,henry the ,eighth broke his own vow of marriage4 ,or rather1 it was broken up by a new cynicism in the ruling powers of ,europe1 of which that was the almost accidental expression in ,england4 ,the monasteries1 that had been built by vows1 were destroyed4 ,the guilds1 that had been regiments of volunteers1 were dispersed4 ,the sacramental nature of marriage was denied2 and many of the greatest intellects of the new movement1 like ,milton1 already indulged in a very modern idealisation of divorce4 ,the progress of this sort of emancipation advanced step by step with the progress of that aristocratic ascendancy which has made the history of modern ,england2 with all its sympathy with personal liberty1 and all its utter lack of sympathy with popular life4 ,marriage not only became less of a sacrament but less of a sanctity4 ,it threatened to become not only a contract1 but a contract that could not be kept4 ,for this one question has retained a strange symbolic supremacy amid all the similar questions1 which seems to perpetuate the coincidence of the origin4 ,it began with divorce for a king2 and it is now ending in divorces for a whole kingdom4 ,the modern era that followed can be called the era of contract2 but it can still more truly be called the era of leonine contract4 ,the nobles of the new time first robbed the people1 and then offered to bargain with them4 ,it would not be an exaggeration to say that they first robbed the people1 and then offered to cheat them4 ,for their rents were competitive rents1 their economics competitive economics1 their ethics competitive ethics2 they applied not only legality but pettifogging4 ,no more was heard of the customary rents of the medival estates2 just as no more was heard of the standard wages of the medival guilds4 ,the object of the whole process was to isolate the individual poor man in his dealings with the individual rich man2 and then offer to buy and sell with him1 though it must necessarily be himself that was bought and sold4 ,in the matter of labour1 that is1 though a man was supposed to be in the position of a seller1 he was more and more really in the possession of a slave4 ,unless the tendency be reversed1 he will probably become admittedly a slave4 ,that is to say1 the word slave will never be used2 for it is always easy to find an inoffensive word2 but he will be admittedly a man legally bound to certain social service1 in return for economic security4 ,in other words1 the modern experiment of mere contract has broken down4 ,trusts as well as ,trades' ,unions express the fact that it has broken down4 ,social reform1 ,socialism1 ,guild ,socialism1 ,syndicalism1 even organised philanthropy1 are so many ways of saying that it has broken down4 ,the substitute for it may be the old one of status2 but it must be something having some of the stability of status4 ,so far history has found only one way of combining that sort of stability with any sort of liberty4 ,in this sense there is a meaning in the much misused phrase about the army of industry4 ,but the army must be stiffened either by the discipline of conscripts or by the vows of volunteers4 ,if we may extend the doubtful metaphor of an army of industry to cover the yet weaker phrase about captains of industry1 there is no doubt about what those captains at present command4 ,they work for a centralised discipline in every department4 ,they erect a vast apparatus of supervision and inspection2 they support all the modern restrictions touching drink and hygiene4 ,they may be called the friends of temperance or even of happiness2 but even their friends would not call them the friends of freedom4 ,there is only one form of freedom which they tolerate2 and that is the sort of sexual freedom which is covered by the legal fiction of divorce4 ,if we ask why this liberty is alone left1 when so many liberties are lost1 we shall find the answer in the summary of this chapter4 ,they are trying to break the vow of the knight as they broke the vow of the monk4 ,they recognise the vow as the vital antithesis to servile status2 the alternative and therefore the antagonist4 ,marriage makes a small state within the state1 which resists all such regimentation4 ,that bond breaks all other bonds2 that law is found stronger than all later and lesser laws4 ,they desire the democracy to be sexually fluid1 because the making of small nuclei is like the making of small nations4 ,like small nations1 they are a nuisance to the mind of imperial scope4 ,in short1 what they fear1 in the most literal sense1 is home rule4 ,men can always be blind to a thing so long as it is big enough4 ,it is so difficult to see the world in which we live1 that ,i know that many will see all ,i have said here of slavery as a nonsensical nightmare4 ,but if my association of divorce with slavery seems only a far-fetched and theoretical paradox1 ,i should have no difficulty in replacing it by a concrete and familiar picture4 ,let them merely remember the time when they read 8,uncle ,tom's ,cabin10 and ask themselves whether the oldest and simplest of the charges against slavery has not always been the breaking up of families4 ,,the ,,tragedies ,,of ,,marriage ,,vii4--,the ,tragedies of ,marriage ,there is one view very common among the liberal-minded which is exceedingly fatiguing to the clear-headed4 ,it is symbolised in the sort of man who says1 8,these ruthless bigots will refuse to bury me in consecrated ground1 because ,i have always refused to be baptised40 ,a clear-headed person can easily conceive his point of view1 in so far as he happens to think that baptism does not matter4 ,but the clear-headed will be completely puzzled when they ask themselves why1 if he thinks that baptism does not matter1 he should think that burial does matter4 ,if it is in no way imprudent for a man to keep himself from a consecrated font1 how can it be inhuman for other people to keep him from a consecrated field8 ,it is surely much nearer to mere superstition to attach importance to what is done to a dead body than to a live baby4 ,i can understand a man thinking both superstitious1 or both sacred2 but ,i cannot see why he should grumble that other people do not give him as sanctities what he regards as superstitions4 ,he is merely complaining of being treated as what he declares himself to be4 ,it is as if a man were to say1 8,my persecutors still refuse to make me king1 out of mere malice because ,i am a strict republican40 ,or it is as if he said1 8,these heartless brutes are so prejudiced against a teetotaler1 that they won't even give him a glass of brandy40 ,the fashion of divorce would not be a modern fashion if it were not full of this touching fallacy4 ,a great deal of it might be summed up as a most illogical and fanatical appetite for getting married in churches4 ,it is as if a man should practice polygamy out of sheer greed for wedding cake4 ,or it is as if he provided his household with new shoes1 entirely by having them thrown after the wedding carriage when he went off with a new wife4 ,there are other ways of procuring cake or purchasing shoes2 and there are other ways of setting up a human establishment4 ,what is unreasonable is the request which the modern man really makes of the religious institutions of his fathers4 ,the modern man wants to buy one shoe without the other2 to obtain one half of a supernatural revelation without the other4 ,the modern man wants to eat his wedding cake and have it1 too4 ,i am not basing this book on the religious argument1 and therefore ,i will not pause to inquire why the old ,catholic institutions of ,christianity seem to be especially made the objects of these unreasonable complaints4 ,as a matter of fact nobody does propose that some ferocious ,anti-,semite like ,m4 ,drumont should be buried as a ,jew with all the rites of the ,synagogue4 ,but the broad-minded were furious because ,tolstoi1 who had denounced ,russian orthodoxy quite as ferociously1 was not buried as orthodox1 with all the rites of the ,russian ,church4 ,nobody does insist that a man who wishes to have fifty wives when ,mahomet allowed him five1 must have his fifty with the full approval of ,mahomet's religion4 ,but the broad-minded are extremely bitter because a ,christian who wishes to have several wives when his own promise bound him to one1 is not allowed to violate his vow at the same altar at which he made it4 ,nobody does insist on ,baptists totally immersing people who totally deny the advantages of being totally immersed4 ,nobody ever did expect ,mormons to receive the open mockers of the ,book of ,mormon1 nor ,christian ,scientists to let their churches be used for exposing ,mrs4 ,eddy as an old fraud4 ,it is only of the forms of ,christianity making the ,catholic claim that such inconsistent claims are made4 ,and even the inconsistency is1 ,i fancy1 a tribute to the acceptance of the ,catholic idea in a catholic fashion4 ,it may be that men have an obscure sense that nobody need belong to the ,mormon religion and every one does ultimately belong to the ,church2 and though he may have made a few dozen ,mormon marriages in a wandering and entertaining life1 he will really have nowhere to go to if he does not somehow find his way back to the churchyard4 ,but all this concerns the general theological question and not the matter involved here1 which is merely historical and social4 ,the point here is that it is at least superficially inconsistent to ask institutions for a formal approval1 which they can only give by an inconsistency4 ,i have put first the question of what is marriage4 ,and we are now in a position to ask more clearly what is divorce4 ,it is not merely the negation or neglect of marriage2 for any one can always neglect marriage4 ,it is not the dissolution of the legal obligation of marriage1 or even the legal obligation of monogamy2 for the simple reason that no such obligation exists4 ,any man in modern ,london may have a hundred wives if he does not call them wives2 or rather1 if he does not go through certain more or less mystical ceremonies in order to assert that they are wives4 ,he might create a certain social coolness round his household1 a certain fading of his general popularity4 ,but that is not created by law1 and could not be prevented by law4 ,as the late ,lord ,salisbury very sensibly observed about boycotting in ,ireland1 8,how can you make a law to prevent people going out of the room when somebody they don't like comes into it80 ,we cannot be forcibly introduced to a polygamist by a policeman4 ,it would not be an assertion of social liberty1 but a denial of social liberty1 if we found ourselves practically obliged to associate with all the profligates in society4 ,but divorce is not in this sense mere anarchy4 ,on the contrary divorce is in this sense respectability2 and even a rigid excess of respectability4 ,divorce in this sense might indeed be not unfairly called snobbery4 ,the definition of divorce1 which concerns us here1 is that it is the attempt to give respectability1 and not liberty4 ,it is the attempt to give a certain social status1 and not a legal status4 ,it is indeed supposed that this can be done by the alteration of certain legal forms2 and this will be more or less true according to the extent to which law as such overawed public opinion1 or was valued as a true expression of public opinion4 ,if a man divorced in the large-minded fashion of ,henry the ,eighth pleaded his legal title among the peasantry of ,ireland1 for instance1 ,i think he would find a difference still existing between respectability and religion4 ,but the peculiar point here is that many are claiming the sanction of religion as well as of respectability4 ,they would attach to their very natural and sometimes very pardonable experiments a certain atmosphere1 and even glamour1 which has undoubtedly belonged to the status of marriage in historic ,christendom4 ,but before they make this attempt1 it would be well to ask why such a dignity ever appeared or in what it consisted4 ,and ,i fancy we shall find ourselves confronted with the very simple truth1 that the dignity arose wholly and entirely out of the fidelity2 and that the glamour merely came from the vow4 ,people were regarded as having a certain dignity because they were dedicated in a certain way2 as bound to certain duties and1 if it be preferred1 to certain discomforts4 ,it may be irrational to endure these discomforts2 it may even be irrational to respect them4 ,but it is certainly much more irrational to respect them1 and then artificially transfer the same respect to the absence of them4 ,it is as if we were to expect uniforms to be saluted when armies were disbanded2 and ask people to cheer a soldier's coat when it did not contain a soldier4 ,if you think you can abolish war1 abolish it2 but do not suppose that when there are no wars to be waged1 there will still be warriors to be worshipped4 ,if it was a good thing that the monasteries were dissolved1 let us say so and dismiss them4 ,but the nobles who dissolved the monasteries did not shave their heads1 and ask to be regarded as saints solely on account of that ceremony4 ,the nobles did not dress up as abbots and ask to be credited with a potential talent for working miracles1 because of the austerity of their vows of poverty and chastity4 ,they got inside the houses1 but not the hoods1 and still less the haloes4 ,they at least knew that it is not the habit that makes the monk4 ,they were not so superstitious as those moderns1 who think it is the veil that makes the bride4 ,what is respected1 in short1 is fidelity to the ancient flag of the family1 and a readiness to fight for what ,i have noted as its unique type of freedom4 ,i say readiness to fight1 for fortunately the fight itself is the exception rather than the rule4 ,the soldier is not respected because he is doomed to death1 but because he is ready for death2 and even ready for defeat4 ,the married man or woman is not doomed to evil1 sickness or poverty2 but is respected for taking a certain step for better for worse1 for richer for poorer1 in sickness or in health4 ,but there is one result of this line of argument which should correct a danger in some arguments on the same side4 ,it is very essential that a stricture on divorce1 which is in fact simply a defence of marriage1 should be independent of sentimentalism1 especially in the form called optimism4 ,a man justifying a fight for national independence or civic freedom is neither sentimental nor optimistic4 ,he explains the sacrifice1 but he does not explain it away4 ,he does not say that bayonet wounds are pin-pricks1 or mere scratches of the thorns on the rose of pleasure4 ,he does not say that the whole display of firearms is a festive display of fireworks4 ,on the contrary1 when he praises it most1 he praises it as pain rather than pleasure4 ,he increases the praise with the pain2 it is his whole boast that militarism1 and even modern science1 can produce no instrument of torture to tame the soul of man4 ,it is idle1 in speaking of war1 to pit the realistic against the romantic1 in the sense of the heroic2 for all possible realism can only increase the heroism2 and therefore1 in the highest sense1 increase the romance4 ,now ,i do not compare marriage with war1 but ,i do compare marriage with law or liberty or patriotism or popular government1 or any of the human ideals which have often to be defended by war4 ,even the wildest of those ideals1 which seem to escape from all the discipline of peace1 do not escape from the discipline of war4 ,the ,bolshevists may have aimed at pure peace and liberty2 but they have been compelled1 for their own purpose1 first to raise armies and then to rule armies4 ,in a word1 however beautiful you may think your own visions of beatitude1 men must suffer to be beautiful1 and even suffer a considerable interval of being ugly4 ,and ,i have no notion of denying that mankind suffers much from the maintenance of the standard of marriage2 as it suffers much from the necessity of criminal law or the recurrence of crusades and revolutions4 ,the only question here is whether marriage is indeed1 as ,i maintain1 an ideal and an institution making for popular freedom2 ,i do not need to be told that anything making for popular freedom has to be paid for in vigilance and pain1 and a whole army of martyrs4 ,hence ,i am far indeed from denying the hard cases which exist here1 as in all matters involving the idea of honour4 ,for indeed ,i could not deny them without denying the whole parallel of militant morality on which my argument rests4 ,but this being first understood1 it will be well to discuss in a little more detail what are described as the tragedies of marriage4 ,and the first thing to note about the most tragic of them is that they are not tragedies of marriage at all4 ,they are tragedies of sex2 and might easily occur in a highly modern romance in which marriage was not mentioned at all4 ,it is generally summarised by saying that the tragic element is the absence of love4 ,but it is often forgotten that another tragic element is often the presence of love4 ,the doctors of divorce1 with an air of the frank and friendly realism of men of the world1 are always recommending and rejoicing in a sensible separation by mutual consent4 ,but if we are really to dismiss our dreams of dignity and honour1 if we are really to fall back on the frank realism of our experience as men of the world1 then the very first thing that our experience will tell us is that it very seldom is a separation by mutual consent2 that is1 that the consent very seldom is sincerely and spontaneously mutual4 ,by far the commonest problem in such cases is that in which one party wishes to end the partnership and the other does not4 ,and of that emotional situation you can make nothing but a tragedy1 whichever way you turn it4 ,with or without marriage1 with or without divorce1 with or without any arrangements that anybody can suggest or imagine1 it remains a tragedy4 ,the only difference is that by the doctrine of marriage it remains both a noble and a fruitful tragedy2 like that of a man who falls fighting for his country1 or dies testifying to the truth4 ,but the truth is that the innovators have as much sham optimism about divorce as any romanticist can have had about marriage4 ,they regard their story1 when it ends in the divorce court1 through as rosy a mist of sentimentalism as anybody ever regarded a story ending with wedding bells4 ,such a reformer is quite sure that when once the prince and princess are divorced by the fairy godmother1 they will live happily ever after4 ,i enjoy romance1 but ,i like it to be rooted in reality2 and any one with a touch of reality knows that nine couples out of ten1 when they are divorced1 are left in an exceedingly different state4 ,it will be safe to say in most cases that one partner will fail to find happiness in an infatuation1 and the other will from the first accept a tragedy4 ,in the realm of reality and not of romance1 it is commonly a case of breaking hearts as well as breaking promises2 and even dishonour is not always a remedy for remorse4 ,the next limitation to be laid down in the matter affects certain practical forms of discomfort1 on a level rather lower than love or hatred4 ,the cases most commonly quoted concern what is called 8drink0 and what is called 8cruelty40 ,they are always talked about as matters of fact2 though in practice they are very decidedly matters of opinion4 ,it is not a flippancy1 but a fact1 that the misfortune of the woman who has married a drunkard may have to be balanced against the misfortune of the man who has married a teetotaler4 ,for the very definition of drunkenness may depend on the dogma of teetotalism4 ,drunkenness1 it has been very truly observed1,b 8may mean anything from delirium tremens to having a stronger head than the official appointed to conduct the examination40 ,mr4 ,bernard ,shaw once professed1 apparently seriously1 that any man drinking wine or beer at all was incapacitated from managing a motorcar2 and still more1 therefore1 one would suppose1 from managing a wife4 ,the scales are weighted here1 of course1 with all those false weights of snobbishness which are the curse of justice in this country4 ,the working class is forced to conduct almost in public a normal and varying festive habit1 which the upper class can afford to conduct in private2 and a certain section of the middle class1 that which happens to concern itself most with local politics and social reforms1 really has or affects a standard quite abnormal and even alien4 ,they might go any lengths of injustice in dealing with the working man or working woman accused of too hearty a taste in beer4 ,to mention but one matter out of a thousand1 the middle class reformers are obviously quite ignorant of the hours at which working people begin to work4 ,because they themselves1 at eleven o'clock in the morning1 have only recently finished breakfast and the full moral digestion of the ,daily ,mail1 they think a charwoman drinking beer at that hour is one of those arising early in the morning to follow after strong drink4 ,most of them really do not know that she has already done more than half a heavy day's work1 and is partaking of a very reasonable luncheon4 ,the whole problem of proletarian drink is entangled in a network of these misunderstandings2 and there is no doubt whatever that1 when judged by these generalisations1 the poor will be taken in a net of injustices4 ,and this truth is as certain in the case of what is called cruelty as of what is called drink4 ,nine times out of ten the judgment on a navvy for hitting a woman is about as just as a judgment on him for not taking off his hat to a lady4 ,it is a class test2 it may be a class superiority2 but it is not an act of equal justice between the classes4 ,it leaves out a thousand things2 the provocation1 the atmosphere1 the harassing restrictions of space1 the nagging which ,dickens described as the terrors of 8temper in a cart10 the absence of certain taboos of social training1 the tradition of greater roughness even in the gestures of affection4 ,to make all marriage or divorce1 in the case of such a man1 turn upon a blow is like blasting the whole life of a gentleman because he has slammed the door4 ,often a poor man cannot slam the door2 partly because the model villa might fall down2 but more because he has nowhere to go to2 the smoking-room1 the billiard-room and the peacock music-room not being yet attached to his premises4 ,i say this in passing1 to point out that while ,i do not dream of suggesting that there are only happy marriages1 there will quite certainly1 as things work nowadays1 be a very large number of unhappy and unjust divorces4 ,they will be cases in which the innocent partner will receive the real punishment of the guilty partner1 through being in fact and feeling the faithful partner4 ,for instance1 it is insisted that a married person must at least find release from the society of a lunatic2 but it is also true that the scientific reformers1 with their fuss about 8the feeble-minded10 are continually giving larger and looser definitions of lunacy4 ,the process might begin by releasing somebody from a homicidal maniac1 and end by dealing in the same way with a rather dull conversationalist4 ,but in fact nobody does deny that a person should be allowed some sort of release from a homicidal maniac4 ,the most extreme school of orthodoxy only maintains that anybody who has had that experience should be content with that release4 ,in other words1 it says he should be content with that experience of matrimony1 and not seek another4 ,it was put very wittily1 ,i think1 by a ,roman ,catholic friend of mine1 who said he approved of release so long as it was not spelt with a hyphen4 ,to put it roughly1 we are prepared in some cases to listen to the man who complains of having a wife4 ,but we are not prepared to listen1 at such length1 to the same man when he comes back and complains that he has not got a wife4 ,now in practice at this moment the great mass of the complaints are precisely of this kind4 ,the reformers insist particularly on the pathos of a man's position when he has obtained a separation without a divorce4 ,their most tragic figure is that of the man who is already free of all those ills he had1 and is only asking to be allowed to fly to others that he knows not of4 ,i should be the last to deny that1 in certain emotional circumstances1 his tragedy may be very tragic indeed4 ,but his tragedy is of the emotional kind which can never be entirely eliminated2 and which he has himself1 in all probability1 inflicted on the partner he has left4 ,we may call it the price of maintaining an ideal or the price of making a mistake2 but anyhow it is the point of our whole distinction in the matter2 it is here that we draw the line1 and ,i have nowhere denied that it is a line of battle4 ,the battle joins on the debatable ground1 not of the man's doubtful past but of his still more doubtful future4 ,in a word1 the divorce controversy is not really a controversy about divorce4 ,it is a controversy about re-marriage2 or rather about whether it is marriage at all4 ,and with that we can only return to the point of honour which ,i have compared here to a point of patriotism2 since it is both the smallest and the greatest kind of patriotism4 ,men have died in torments during the last five years for points of patriotism far more dubious and fugitive4 ,men like the ,poles or the ,serbians1 through long periods of their history1 may be said rather to have lived in torments4 ,i will never admit that the vital need of the freedom of the family1 as ,i have tried to sketch it here1 is not a cause as valuable as the freedom of any frontier4 ,but ,i do willingly admit that the cause would be a dark and terrible one1 if it really asked these men to suffer torments4 ,as ,i have stated it1 on its most extreme terms1 it only asks them to suffer abnegations4 ,and those negative sufferings ,i do think they may honourably be called upon to bear1 for the glory of their own oath and the great things by which the nations live4 ,in relation to their own nation most normal men will feel that this distinction between release and 8re-lease0 is neither fanciful nor harsh1 but very rational and human4 ,a patriot may be an exile in another country2 but he will not be a patriot of another country4 ,he will be as cheerful as he can in an abnormal position2 he may or may not sing his country's songs in a strange land2 but he will not sing the strange songs as his own4 ,and such may fairly be also the attitude of the citizen who has gone into exile from the oldest of earthly cities4 ,,the ,,vista ,,of ,,divorce ,,viii4--,the ,vista of ,divorce ,the case for divorce combines all the advantages of having it both ways2 and of drawing the same deduction from right or left1 and from black or white4 ,whichever way the programme works in practice1 it can still be justified in theory4 ,if there are few examples of divorce1 it shows how little divorce need be dreaded2 if there are many1 it shows how much it is required4 ,the rarity of divorce is an argument in favour of divorce2 and the multiplicity of divorce is an argument against marriage4 ,now1 in truth1 if we were confined to considering this alternative in a speculative manner1 if there were no concrete facts but only abstract probabilities1 we should have no difficulty in arguing our case4 ,the abstract liberty allowed by the reformers is as near as possible to anarchy1 and gives no logical or legal guarantee worth discussing4 ,the advantages of their reform do not accrue to the innocent party1 but to the guilty party2 especially if he be sufficiently guilty4 ,a man has only to commit the crime of desertion to obtain the reward of divorce4 ,and if they are entitled to take as typical the most horrible hypothetical cases of the abuse of the marriage laws1 surely we are entitled to take equally extreme possibilities in the abuse of their own divorce laws4 ,if they1 when looking about for a husband1 so often hit upon a homicidal maniac1 surely we may politely introduce them to the far more human figure of the gentleman who marries as many women as he likes and gets rid of them as often as he pleases4 ,but in fact there is no necessity for us to argue thus in the abstract2 for the amiable gentleman in question undoubtedly exists in the concrete4 ,of course1 he is no new figure2 he is a very recurrent type of rascal2 his name has been ,lothario or ,don ,juan2 and he has often been represented as a rather romantic rascal4 ,the point of divorce reform1 it cannot be too often repeated1 is that the rascal should not only be regarded as romantic1 but regarded as respectable4 ,he is not to sow his wild oats and settle down2 he is merely to settle down to sowing his wild oats4 ,they are to be regarded as tame and inoffensive oats2 almost1 if one may say so1 as ,quaker oats4 ,but there is no need1 as ,i say1 to speculate about whether the looser view of divorce might prevail2 for it is already prevailing4 ,the newspapers are full of an astonishing hilarity about the rapidity with which hundreds or thousands of human families are being broken up by the lawyers2 and about the undisguised haste of the 8hustling judges0 who carry on the work4 ,it is a form of hilarity which would seem to recall the gaiety of a grave-digger in a city swept by a pestilence4 ,but a few details occasionally flash by in the happy dance2 from time to time the court is moved by a momentary curiosity about the causes of the general violation of oaths and promises2 as if there might1 here and there1 be a hint of some sort of reason for ruining the fundamental institution of society4 ,and nobody who notes those details1 or considers those faint hints of reason1 can doubt for a moment that masses of these men and women are now simply using divorce in the spirit of free-love4 ,they are very seldom the sort of people who have once fallen tragically into the wrong place1 and have now found their way triumphantly to the right place4 ,they are almost always people who are obviously wandering from one place to another1 and will probably leave their last shelter exactly as they have left their first4 ,but it seems to amuse them to make again1 if possible in a church1 a promise they have already broken in practice and almost avowedly disbelieve in principle4 ,in face of this headlong fashion1 it is really reasonable to ask the divorce reformers what is their attitude towards the old monogamous ethic of our civilisation2 and whether they wish to retain it in general1 or to retain it at all4 ,unfortunately even the sincerest and most lucid of them use language which leaves the matter a little doubtful4 ,mr4 ,e4 ,s4 ,p4 ,haynes is one of the most brilliant and most fair-minded controversialists on that side2 and he has said1 for instance1 that he agrees with me in supporting the ideal of indissoluble or1 at least1 of undissolved marriage4 ,mr4 ,haynes is one of the few friends of divorce who are also real friends of democracy2 and ,i am sure that in practice this stands for a real sympathy with the home1 especially the poor home4 ,unfortunately1 on the theoretic side1 the word 8ideal0 is far from being an exact term1 and is open to two almost opposite interpretations4 ,for many would say that marriage is an ideal as some would say that monasticism is an ideal1 in the sense of a counsel of perfection4 ,now certainly we might preserve a conjugal ideal in this way4 ,a man might be reverently pointed out in the street as a sort of saint1 merely because he was married4 ,a man might wear a medal for monogamy2 or have letters after his name similar to ,v4,c4 or ,d4,d42 let us say ,l4,w4 for 8,lives ,with ,his ,wife10 or 8,n4,d4,y40 for 8,not ,divorced ,yet40 ,we might1 on entering some strange city1 be struck by a stately column erected to the memory of a wife who never ran away with a soldier1 or the shrine and image of a historical character1 who had resisted the example of the man in the 8,new ,witness0 ballade in bolting with the children's nurse4 ,such high artistic hagiology would be quite consistent with ,mr4 ,haynes' divorce reform2 with re-marriage after three years1 or three hours4 ,it would also be quite consistent with ,mr4 ,haynes' phrase about preserving an ideal of marriage4 ,what it would not be consistent with is the perfectly plain1 solid1 secular and social usefulness which ,i have here attributed to marriage4 ,it does not create or preserve a natural institution1 normal to the whole community1 to balance the more artificial and even more arbitrary institution of the state2 which is less natural even if it is equally necessary4 ,it does not defend a voluntary association1 but leaves the only claim on life1 death and loyalty with a more coercive institution4 ,it does not stand1 in the sense ,i have tried to explain1 for the principle of liberty4 ,in short1 it does not do any of the things which ,mr4 ,haynes himself would especially desire to see done4 ,for humanity to be thus spontaneously organised from below1 it is necessary that the organisation should be almost as universal as the official organisation from above4 ,the tyrant must find not one family but many families defying his power2 he must find mankind not a dust of atoms1 but fixed in solid blocks of fidelity4 ,and those human groups must support not only themselves but each other4 ,in this sense what some call individualism is as corporate as communism4 ,it is a thing of volunteers2 but volunteers must be soldiers4 ,it is a defence of private persons2 but we might say that the private persons must be private soldiers4 ,the family must be recognised as well as real2 above all1 the family must be recognised by the families4 ,to expect individuals to suffer successfully for a home apart from the home1 that is for something which is an incident but not an institution1 is really a confusion between two ideas2 it is a verbal sophistry almost in the nature of a pun4 ,similarly1 for instance1 we cannot prove the moral force of a peasantry by pointing to one peasant2 we might almost as well reveal the military force of infantry by pointing to one infant4 ,i take it1 however1 that the advocates of divorce do not mean that marriage is to remain ideal only in the sense of being almost impossible4 ,they do not mean that a faithful husband is only to be admired as a fanatic4 ,the reasonable men among them do really mean that a divorced person shall be tolerated as something unusually unfortunate1 not merely that a married person shall be admired as something unusually blessed and inspired4 ,but whatever they desire1 it is as well that they should realise exactly what they do2 and in this case ,i should like to hear their criticisms in the matter of what they see4 ,they must surely see that in ,england at present1 as in many parts of ,america in the past1 the new liberty is being taken in the spirit of licence as if the exception were to be the rule1 or1 rather1 perhaps the absence of rule4 ,this will especially be made manifest if we consider that the effect of the process is accumulative like a snowball1 and returns on itself like a snowball4 ,the obvious effect of frivolous divorce will be frivolous marriage4 ,if people can be separated for no reason they will feel it all the easier to be united for no reason4 ,a man might quite clearly foresee that a sensual infatuation would be fleeting1 and console himself with the knowledge that the connection could be equally fleeting4 ,there seems no particular reason why he should not elaborately calculate that he could stand a particular lady's temper for ten months2 or reckon that he would have enjoyed and exhausted her repertoire of drawing-room songs in two years4 ,the old joke about choosing the wife to fit the furniture or the fashions might quite logically return1 not as an old joke but as a new solemnity2 indeed1 it will be found that a new religion is generally the return of an old joke4 ,a man might quite consistently see a woman as suited to the period of the hobble skirt1 and as less suited to the threatened recurrence of the crinoline4 ,these fancies are fantastic enough1 but they are not a shade more fantastic than the facts of many a divorce controversy as urged in the divorce courts4 ,and this is to leave out altogether the most fantastic fact of all3 the winking at widespread and conspicuous collusion4 ,collusion has become not so much an illegal evasion as a legal fiction1 and even a legal institution1 as it is admirably satirised in ,mr4 ,somerset ,maugham's brilliant play of 8,home and ,beauty40 ,the fact was very frankly brought before the public1 by a man who was eminently calculated to disarm satire by sincerity4 ,colonel ,wedgewood is a man who can never be too much honoured1 by all who have any hope of popular liberties still finding champions in the midst of parliamentary corruption4 ,he is one of the very few men alive who have shown both military and political courage2 the courage of the camp and the courage of the forum4 ,and doubtless he showed a third type of social courage1 in avowing the absurd expedient which so many others are content merely to accept and employ4 ,it is admittedly a frantic and farcical thing that a good man should find or think it necessary to pretend to commit a sin4 ,some of the divorce moralists seem to deduce from this that he ought really to commit the sin4 ,they may possibly be aware1 however1 that there are some who do not agree with them4 ,for this latter fact is the next step in the speculative progress of the new morality4 ,the divorce advocates must be well aware that modern civilisation still contains strong elements1 not the least intelligent and certainly not the least vigorous1 which will not accept the new respectability as a substitute for the old religious vow4 ,the ,roman ,catholic ,church1 the ,anglo-,catholic school1 the conservative peasantries1 and a large section of the popular life everywhere1 will regard the riot of divorce and re-marriage as they would any other riot of irresponsibility4 ,the consequence would appear to be that two different standards will appear in ordinary morality1 and even in ordinary society4 ,instead of the old social distinction between those who are married and those who are unmarried1 there will be a distinction between those who are married and those who are really married4 ,society might even become divided into two societies2 which is perilously approximate to ,disraeli's famous exaggeration about ,england divided into two nations4 ,but whether ,england be actually so divided or not1 this note of the two nations is the real note of warning in the matter4 ,it is in this connection1 perhaps1 that we have to consider most gravely and doubtfully the future of our own country4 ,anarchy cannot last1 but anarchic communities cannot last either4 ,mere lawlessness cannot live1 but it can destroy life4 ,the nations of the earth always return to sanity and solidarity2 but the nations which return to it first are the nations which survive4 ,we in ,england cannot afford to allow our social institutions to go to pieces1 as if this ancient and noble country were an ephemeral colony4 ,we cannot afford it comparatively1 even if we could afford it positively4 ,we are surrounded by vigorous nations mainly rooted in the peasant or permanent ideals2 notably in the case of ,france and ,ireland4 ,i know that the detested and detestably undemocratic parliamentary clique1 which corrupts ,france as it does ,england1 was persuaded or bribed by a ,jew named ,naquet to pass a crude and recent divorce law1 which was full of the hatred of ,christianity4 ,but only a very superficial critic of ,france can be unaware that ,french parliamentarism is superficial4 ,the ,french nation as a whole1 the most rigidly respectable nation in the world1 will certainly go on living by the old standards of domesticity4 ,when ,frenchmen are not ,christians they are heathens2 the heathens who worshipped the household gods4 ,it might seem strange to say1 for instance1 that an atheist like ,m4 ,clemenceau has for his chief ideal a thing called piety4 ,but to understand this it is only necessary to know a little ,latin--and a little ,french4 ,a short time ago1 as ,i am well aware1 it would have sounded very strange to represent the old religious and peasant communities either as a model or a menace4 ,it was counted a queer thing to say1 in the days when my friends and ,i first said it2 in the days of my youth when the republic of ,france and the religion of ,ireland were regarded as alike ridiculous and decadent4 ,but many things have happened since then2 and it will not now be so easy to persuade even newspaper readers that ,foch is a fool1 either because he is a ,frenchman or because he is a ,catholic4 ,the older tradition1 even in the most unfashionable forms1 has found champions in the most unexpected quarters4 ,only the other day ,dr4 ,saleeby1 a distinguished scientific critic who had made himself the special advocate of all the instruction and organisation that is called social science1 startled his friends and foes alike by saying that the peasant families in the ,west of ,ireland were far more satisfactory and successful than those brooded over by all the benevolent sociology of ,bradford4 ,he gave his testimony from an entirely rationalistic and even materialistic point of view2 indeed1 he carried rationalism so far as to give the preference to ,roscommon because the women are still mammals4 ,to a mind of the more traditional type it might seem sufficient to say they are still mothers4 ,to a memory that lingers over the legends and lyrical movements of mankind1 it might seem no great improvement to imagine a song that ran 8,my mammal bids me bind my hair10 or 8,i'm to be ,queen of the ,may1 mammal1 ,i'm to be ,queen of the ,may40 ,but indeed the truth to which he testified is all the more arresting1 because for him it was materialistic and not mystical4 ,the brute biological advantage1 as well as other advantages1 was with those for whom that truth was a truth2 and it was all the more instinctive and automatic where that truth was a tradition4 ,the sort of place where mothers are still something more than mammals is the only sort of place where they still are mammals4 ,there the people are still healthy animals2 healthy enough to hit you if you call them animals4 ,i also have1 on this merely controversial occasion1 used throughout the rationalistic and not the religious appeal4 ,but it is not unreasonable to note that the materialistic advantages are really found among those who most repudiate materialism4 ,this one stray testimony is but a type of a thousand things of the same kind1 which will convince any one with the sense of social atmospheres that the day of the peasantries is not passing1 but rather arriving4 ,it is the more complex types of society that are now entangled in their own complexities4 ,those who tell us1 with a monotonous metaphor1 that we cannot put the clock back1 seem to be curiously unconscious of the fact that their own clock has stopped4 ,and there is nothing so hopeless as clockwork when it stops4 ,a machine cannot mend itself2 it requires a man to mend it2 and the future lies with those who can make living laws for men and not merely dead laws for machinery4 ,those living laws are not to be found in the scatter-brained scepticism which is busy in the great cities1 dissolving what it cannot analyse4 ,the primary laws of man are to be found in the permanent life of man2 in those things that have been common to it in every time and land1 though in the highest civilisation they have reached an enrichment like that of the divine romance of ,cana in ,galilee4 ,we know that many critics of such a story say that its elements are not permanent2 but indeed it is the critics who are not permanent4 ,a hundred mad dogs of heresy have worried man from the beginning2 but it was always the dog that died4 ,we know there is a school of prigs who disapprove of the wine2 and there may now be a school of prigs who disapprove of the wedding4 ,for in such a case as the story of ,cana1 it may be remarked that the pedants are prejudiced against the earthly elements as much as1 or more than1 the heavenly elements4 ,it is not the supernatural that disgusts them1 so much as the natural4 ,and those of us who have seen all the normal rules and relations of humanity uprooted by random speculators1 as if they were abnormal abuses and almost accidents1 will understand why men have sought for something divine if they wished to preserve anything human4 ,they will know why common sense1 cast out from some academy of fads and fashions conducted on the lines of a luxurious madhouse1 has age after age sought refuge in the high sanity of a sacrament4 ,,conclusion ,,ix4--,conclusion ,this is a pamphlet and not a book2 and the writer of a pamphlet not only deals with passing things1 but generally with things which he hopes will pass4 ,in that sense it is the object of a pamphlet to be out of date as soon as possible4 ,it can only survive when it does not succeed4 ,the successful pamphlets are necessarily dull2 and though ,i have no great hopes of this being successful1 ,i dare say it is dull enough for all that4 ,it is designed merely to note certain fugitive proposals of the moment1 and compare them with certain recurrent necessities of the race2 but especially the necessity for some spontaneous social formation freer than that of the state4 ,if it were more in the nature of a work of literature1 with anything like an ambition of endurance1 ,i might go deeper into the matter1 and give some suggestions about the philosophy or religion of marriage1 and the philosophy or religion of all these rather random departures from it4 ,some day perhaps ,i may try to write something about the spiritual or psychological quarrel between faith and fads4 ,here ,i will only say1 in conclusion1 that ,i believe the universal fallacy here is a fallacy of being universal4 ,there is a sense in which it is really a human if heroic possibility to love everybody2 and the young student will not find it a bad preliminary exercise to love somebody4 ,but the fallacy ,i mean is that of a man who is not even content to love everybody1 but really wishes to be everybody4 ,he wishes to walk down a hundred roads at once2 to sleep in a hundred houses at once2 to live a hundred lives at once4 ,to do something like this in the imagination is one of the occasional visions of art and poetry2 to attempt it in the art of life is not only anarchy but inaction4 ,even in the arts it can only be the first hint and not the final fulfillment2 a man cannot work at once in bronze and marble1 or play the organ and the violin at the same time4 ,the universal vision of being such a ,briareus is a nightmare of nonsense even in the merely imaginative world2 and ends in mere nihilism in the social world4 ,if a man had a hundred houses1 there would still be more houses than he had days in which to dream of them2 if a man had a hundred wives1 there would still be more women than he could ever know4 ,he would be an insane sultan jealous of the whole human race1 and even of the dead and the unborn4 ,i believe that behind the art and philosophy of our time there is a considerable element of this bottomless ambition and this unnatural hunger2 and since in these last words ,i am touching only lightly on things that would need much larger treatment1 ,i will admit that the rending of the ancient roof of man is probably only a part of such an endless and empty expansion4 ,i asked in the last chapter what those most wildly engaged in the mere dance of divorce1 as fantastic as the dance of death1 really expected for themselves or for their children4 ,and in the deepest sense ,i think this is the answer2 that they expect the impossible1 that is the universal4 ,they are not crying for the moon1 which is a definite and therefore a defensible desire4 ,they are crying for the world2 and when they had it1 they would want another one4 ,in the last resort they would like to try every situation1 not in fancy but in fact2 but they cannot refuse any and therefore cannot resolve on any4 ,in so far as this is the modern mood1 it is a thing so deadly as to be already dead4 ,what is vitally needed everywhere1 in art as much as in ethics1 in poetry as much as in politics1 is choice2 a creative power in the will as well as in the mind4 ,without that self-limitation of somebody1 nothing living will ever see the light4 ,,footnotes3 ,a ,written at the time of the last great ,german assaults4 ,b ,the late ,cecil ,chesterton1 in the 8,new ,witness40