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

that in the darkest days that may come to us, no man will desert the
flag.

Now when we pass from loyalty to the nation to loyalty to the family,
there can be no doubt about the first and plainest difference. The
difference is that the family is a thing far more free. The vow is a
voluntary loyalty; and the marriage vow is marked among ordinary oaths
of allegiance by the fact that the allegiance is also a choice. The man
is not only a citizen of the city, but also the founder and builder of
the city. He is not only a soldier serving the colours, but he has
himself artistically selected and combined the colours, like the colours
of an individual dress. If it be admissible to ask him to be true to the
commonwealth that has made him, it is at least not more illiberal to ask
him to be true to the commonwealth he has himself made. If civic
fidelity be, as it is, a necessity, it is also in a special sense a
constraint. The old joke against patriotism, the Gilbertian irony,
congratulated the Englishman on his fine and fastidious taste in being
born in England. It made a plausible point in saying "For he might have
been a Russian"; though indeed we have liked to see some persons who
seemed to think they could be Russians when the fancy took them. If
commonsense considers even such involuntary loyalty natural, we can
hardly wonder if it thinks voluntary loyalty still more natural. And the
small state founded on the sexes is at once the most voluntary and the
most natural of all self-governing states. It is not true of Mr. Brown
that he might have been a Russian; but it may be true of Mrs. Brown that
she might have been a Robinson.

Now it is not at all hard to see why this small community, so specially
free touching its cause, should yet be specially bound touching its
effects. It is not hard to see why the vow made most freely is the vow
kept most firmly. There are attached to it, by the nature of things,
consequences so tremendous that no contract can offer any comparison.
There is no contract, unless it be what said to be signed in blood, that
can call spirits from the vastly deep, or bring cherubs (or goblins) to
inhabit a small modern villa. There is no stroke of the pen which
creates real bodies and souls, or makes the characters in a novel come
to life. The institution that puzzles intellectuals so much can be
explained by the mere material fact (perceptible even to intellectuals)
that children are, generally speaking, younger than their parents. "Till
death do us part" is not an irrational formula, for those will almost
certainly die before they see more than half of the amazing (or
alarming) thing they have done.

Such is, in a curt and crude outline, this obvious thing for those to
whom it is not obvious. Now I know there are thinking men among those
who would tamper with it; and I shall expect some of these to reply to
my questions But for the moment I only ask this question: whether the
parliamentary and journalistic divorce movement shows even a shadowy
trace of these fundamental truths, regarded as tests. Does it even
discuss the nature of a vow, the limits and objects of loyalty, the