"GKChesterton-TheSuperstitionOfDivorce" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chesterton G.K)

holes in the bottom of a boat under the impression that they are digging
in a garden. This question of what a thing is, and whether it is a
garden or a boat, appears to them abstract and academic. They have no
notion of how large is the idea they attack; or how relatively small
appear the holes that they pick in it.

Thus, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, an intelligent man in other matters, says
that there is only a "theological" opposition to divorce, and that it
is entirely founded on "certain texts" in the Bible about marriages.
This is exactly as if he said that a belief in the brotherhood of men
was only founded on certain texts in the Bible, about all men being the
children of Adam and Eve. Millions of peasants and plain people all over
the world assume marriage to be static, without having ever clapped eyes
on any text. Numbers of more modern people, especially after the recent
experiments in America, think divorce is a social disease, without
having ever bothered about any text. It may be maintained that even in
these, or in any one, the idea of marriage is ultimately mystical; and
the same may be maintained about the idea of brotherhood. It is obvious
that a husband and wife are not visibly one flesh, in the sense of being
one quadruped. It is equally obvious that Paderewski and Jack Johnson
are not twins, and probably have not played together at their mother's
knee. There is indeed a very important admission, or addition, to be
realised here. What is true is this: that if the nonsense of Nietzsche
or some such sophist submerged current culture, so that it was the
fashion to deny the duties of fraternity; 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 Eve. 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 brothers, but barely cousins (German) any number of
times removed. And suppose he proceeds to remove them even further with
a hatchet, suppose he bases on this a repetition of the conduct of Cain,
saying not so much "Am I my brother's keeper?" as "Is he really my
brother?" And suppose this higher philosophy of the hatchet becomes
prevalent in colleges and cultivated circles, as even more foolish
philosophies have done. Then I agree it probably will be the Christian,
the man who preserves the text about Cain, who will continue to assert
that he is still the professor's brother; that he is still the
professor's keeper. He may possibly add that, in his opinion, the
professor seems to require a keeper.

And that is doubtless the situation in the controversies about divorce
and marriage to-day. It is the Christian church which continues to hold
strongly, when the world for some reason has weakened on it, what many
others hold at other times. But even then it is barely picking up the
shreds and scraps of the subject to talk about a reliance on texts. The
vital point in the comparison is this: that human brotherhood means a
whole view of life, held in the light of life, and defended, rightly or
wrongly, by constant appeals to every aspect of life. The religion that
holds it most strongly will hold it when nobody else holds it; that is