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

fire. The vow is a violent and unique thing; though there have been many
besides the marriage vow; vows of chivalry, vows of poverty, vows of
celibacy, pagan as well as Christian. But modern fashion has rather
fallen out of the habit; and men miss the type for the lack of the
parallels. The shortest way of putting the problem is to ask whether
being free includes being free to bind oneself. For the vow is a tryst
with oneself.

I may be misunderstood if I say, for brevity, that marriage is an affair
of honour. The sceptic will be delighted to assent, by saying it is a
fight. And so it is, if only with oneself; but the point here is that it
necessarily has the touch of the heroic, in which virtue can be
translated by virtus. Now about fighting, in its nature, there is an
implied infinity or at least a potential infinity. I mean that loyalty
in war is loyalty in defeat or even disgrace; it is due to the flag
precisely at the moment when the flag nearly falls. We do already apply
this to the flag of the nation; and the question is whether it is wise
or unwise to apply it to the flag of the family. Of course, it is
tenable that we should apply it to neither; that misgovernment in the
nation or misery in the citizen would make the desertion of the flag an
act of reason and not treason. I will only say here that, if this were
really the limit of national loyalty, some of us would have deserted our
nation long ago.

Ч/Ч

II

THE SUPERSTITION OF DIVORCE (2)

To the two or three articles appearing here on this subject I have given
the title of the Superstition of Divorce; and the title is not taken at
random. While free love seems to me a heresy, divorce does really seem
to me a superstition. It is not only more of a superstition than free
love, but much more of a superstition than strict sacramental marriage;
and this point can hardly be made too plain. It is the partisans of
divorce, not the defenders of marriage, who attach a stiff and senseless
sanctity to a mere ceremony, apart from the meaning of the ceremony. It
is our opponents, and not we, who hope to be saved by the letter of
ritual, instead of the spirit of reality. It is they who hold that vow
or violation, loyalty or disloyalty, can all be disposed of by a
mysterious and magic rite, performed first in a law-court and then in a
church or a registry office. There is little difference between the two
parts of the ritual; except that the law court is much more ritualistic.
But the plainest parallels will show anybody that all this is sheer
barbarous credulity. It may or may not be superstition for a man to
believe he must kiss the Bible to show he is telling the truth. It is
certainly the most grovelling superstition for him to believe that, if
he kisses the Bible, anything he says will come true. It would surely be
the blackest and most benighted Bible-worship to suggest that the mere