The Superstition of Divorce

The Superstition of Divorce

(1920)

by G.K. Chesterton

Introductory Note I The Superstition of Divorce (1) II The Superstition of Divorce (2) III The Superstition of Divorce (3) IV The Superstition of Divorce (4) V The Story of the Family VI The Story of the Vow VII The Tragedies of Marriage VIII The Vista of Divorce IX Conclusion

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INTRODUCTORY NOTE

The earlier part of this book appeared in the form of five articles which came out in the “New Witness” at the crisis of the recent controversy in the Press on the subject of divorce. Crude and sketchy as they confessedly were, they had a certain rude plan of their own, which I find it very difficult to recast even in order to expand. I have therefore decided to reprint the original articles as they stood, save for a few introductory words; and then, at the risk of repetition, to add a few further chapters, explaining more fully any conceptions that may seem to have been too crudely assumed or dismissed. I have set forth the original matter as it appeared, under a general heading, without dividing it into chapters.

G.K.C.

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I

THE SUPERSTITION OF DIVORCE (1)

It is futile to talk of reform without reference to form. To take a case from my own taste and fancy, there is nothing I feel to be so beautiful and wonderful as a window. All casements are magic casements, whether they open on the foam or the front-garden; they lie close to the ultimate mystery and paradox of limitation and liberty. But if I followed my instinct towards an infinite number of windows, it would end in having no walls. It would also (it may be added incidentally) end in having no windows either; for a window makes a picture by making a picture-frame. But there is a simpler way of stating my more simple and fatal error. It is that I have wanted a window, without considering whether I wanted a house. Now many appeals are being made to us to-day on behalf of that light and liberty that might well be symbolised by windows; especially as so many of them concern the enlightenment and liberation of the house, in the sense of the home. Many quite disinterested people urge many quite reasonable considerations in the case of divorce, as a type of domestic liberation; but in the journalistic and general discussion of the matter there is far too much of the mind that works backwards and at random, in the manner of all windows and no walls. Such people say they want divorce, without asking themselves whether they want marriage. Even in order to be divorced it has generally been found necessary to go through the preliminary formality of being married; and unless the nature of this initial act be considered, we might as well be discussing haircutting for the bald or spectacles for the blind. To be divorced is to be in the literal sense unmarried; and there is no sense in a thing being undone when we do not know if it is done.

There is perhaps no worse advice, nine times out of ten, than the advice to do the work that’s nearest. It is especially bad when it means, as it generally does, removing the obstacle that’s nearest. It means that men are not to behave like men but like mice; who nibble at the thing that’s nearest. The man, like the mouse, undermines what he cannot understand. Because he himself bumps into a thing, he calls it the nearest obstacle; though the obstacle may happen to be the pillar that holds up the whole roof over his head. He industriously removes the obstacle; and in return, the obstacle removes him, and much more valuable things than he. This opportunism is perhaps the most unpractical thing in this highly unpractical world. People talk vaguely against destructive criticism; but what is the matter with this criticism is not that it destroys, but that it does not criticise. It is destruction without design. It is taking a complex machine to pieces bit by bit, in any order, without even knowing what the machine is for. And if a man deals with a deadly dynamic machine on the principle of touching the knob that’s nearest, he will find out the defects of that cheery philosophy. Now leaving many sincere and serious critics of modern marriage on one side for the moment, great masses of modern men and women, who write and talk about marriage, are thus nibbling blindly at it like an army of mice. When the reformers propose, for instance, that divorce should be obtainable after an absence of three years (the absence actually taken for granted in the first military arrangements of the late European War) their readers and supporters could seldom give any sort of logical reason for the period being three years, and not three months or three minutes. They are like people who should say “Give me three feet of dog”; and not care where the cut came. Such persons fail to see a dog as an organic entity; in other words, they cannot make head or tail of it. And the chief thing to say about such reformers of marriage is that they cannot make head or tail of it. They do not know what it is, or what it is meant to be, or what its supporters suppose it to be; they never look at it, even when they are inside it. They do the work that’s nearest; which is poking 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 quite true, and that some of us may be so perverse as to think a point in favour of the religion. But anybody who holds it at all will hold it as a philosophy, not hung on one text but on a hundred truths. Fraternity may be a sentimental metaphor; I may be suffering a delusion when I hail a Montenegrin peasant as my long lost brother. As a fact, I have my own suspicions about which of us it is that has got lost. But my delusion is not a deduction from one text, or from twenty; it is the expression of a relation that to me at least seems a reality. And what I should say about the idea of a brother, I should say about the idea of a wife.

It is supposed to be very unbusinesslike to begin at the beginning. It is called “abstract and academic principles with which we English, etc., etc.” It is still in some strange way considered unpractical to open up inquiries about anything by asking what it is. I happen to have, however, a fairly complete contempt for that sort of practicality; for I know that it is not even practical. My ideal business man would not be one who planked down fifty pounds and said “Here is hard cash; I am a plain man; it is quite indifferent to me whether I am paying a debt, or giving alms to a beggar, or buying a wild bull or a bathing machine.” Despite the infectious heartiness of his tone, I should still, in considering the hard cash, say (like a cabman) “What’s this?” I should continue to insist, priggishly, that it was a highly practical point what the money was; what it was supposed to stand for, to aim at or to declare; what was the nature of the transaction; or, in short, what the devil the man supposed he was doing. I shall therefore begin by asking, in an equally mystical manner, what in the name of God and the angels a man getting married supposes he is doing. I shall begin by asking what marriage is; and the mere question will probably reveal that the act itself, good or bad, wise or foolish, is of a certain kind; that it is not an inquiry or an experiment or an accident; it may probably dawn on us that it is a promise. It can be more fully defined by saying it is a vow.

Many will immediately answer that it is a rash vow. I am content for the moment to reply that all vows are rash vows. I am not now defending but defining vows; I am pointing out that this is a discussion about vows; first, of whether there ought to be vows; and second, of what vows ought to be. Ought a man to break a promise? Ought a man to make a promise? These are philosophic questions; but the philosophic peculiarity of divorce and re-marriage, as compared with free love and no marriage, is that a man breaks and makes a promise at the same moment. It is a highly German philosophy; and recalls the way in which the enemy wishes to celebrate his successful destruction of all treaties by signing some more. If I were breaking a promise, I would do it without promises. But I am very far from minimising the momentous and disputable nature of the vow itself. I shall try to show, in a further article, that this rash and romantic operation is the only furnace from which can come the plain hardware of humanity, the cast-iron resistance of citizenship or the cold steel of common sense; but I am not denying that the furnace is a 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.

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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 kiss on the mere book alters the moral quality of perjury. Yet this is precisely what is implied in saying that formal re-marriage alters the moral quality of conjugal infidelity. It may have been a mark of the Dark Ages that Harold should swear on a relic, though he were afterwards forsworn. But surely those ages would have been at their darkest, if he had been content to be sworn on a relic and forsworn on another relic. Yet this is the new altar these reformers would erect for us, out of the mouldy and meaningless relics of their dead law and their dying religion.

Now we, at any rate, are talking about an idea, a thing of the intellect and the soul; which we feel to be unalterable by legal antics. We are talking about the idea of loyalty; perhaps a fantastic, perhaps only an unfashionable idea, but one we can explain and defend as an idea. Now I have already pointed out that most sane men do admit our ideal in such a case as patriotism or public spirit; the necessity of saving the state to which we belong. The patriot may revile but must not renounce his country; he must curse it to cure it, but not to wither it up. The old pagan citizens felt thus about the city; and modern nationalists feel thus about the nation. But even mere modern internationalists feel it about something; if it is only the nation of mankind. Even the humanitarian does not become a misanthrope and live in a monkey-house. Even a disappointed Collectivist or Communist does not retire into the exclusive society of beavers, because beavers are all communists of the most class-conscious solidarity. He admits the necessity of clinging to his fellow creatures, and begging them to abandon the use of the possessive pronoun; heart-breaking as his efforts must seem to him after a time. Even a Pacifist does not prefer rats to men, on the ground that the rat community is so pure from the taint of Jingoism as always to leave the sinking ship. In short, everybody recognises that there is some ship, large and small, which he ought not to leave, even when he thinks it is sinking.

We may take it then that there are institutions to which we are attached finally; just as there are others to which we are attached temporarily. We go from shop to shop trying to get what we want; but we do not go from nation to nation doing this; unless we belong to a certain group now heading very straight for Pogroms. In the first case it is the threat that we shall withdraw our custom; in the second it is the threat that we shall never withdraw ourselves; that we shall be part of the institution to the last. The time when the shop loses its customers is the time when the city needs its citizens; but it needs them as critics who will always remain to criticise. I need not now emphasise the deadly need of this double energy of internal reform and external defence; the whole towering tragedy which has eclipsed our earth in our time is but one terrific illustration of it. The hammer-strokes are coming thick and fast now; and filling the world with infernal thunders; and there is still the iron sound of something unbreakable deeper and louder than all the things that break. We may curse the kings, we may distrust the captains, we may murmur at the very existence of the armies; but we know 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 lived 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 that 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 survival of the family as a small and free state? The writers are content to say that Mr. Brown is uncomfortable with Mrs. Brown, and the last emancipation, for separated couples, seems only to mean that he is still uncomfortable without Mrs. Brown. These are not days in which being uncomfortable is felt as the final test of public action. For the rest, the reformers show statistically that families are in fact so scattered in our industrial anarchy, that they may as well abandon hope of finding their way home again. I am acquainted with that argument for making bad worse and I see it everywhere leading to slavery. Because London Bridge is broken down, we must assume that bridges are not meant to bridge. Because London commercialism and capitalism have copied hell, we are to continue to copy them. Anyhow, 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 earth.

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 divorce. I am not at the moment pronouncing on the moral problem of either; I am merely noting, as signs of those times, those two true or false counsels of despair; the end of life and the end of love. Other forms of freedom were being increasingly curtailed. Freedom indeed was the one thing that progressives and conservatives alike contemned. Socialists were largely concerned to prevent strikes, by State arbitration; that is, by adding another rich man to give the casting vote between rich and poor. Even in claiming what they called the right to work they tacitly surrendered the right to leave off working. Tories were preaching conscription, not so much to defend the independence of England as to destroy the independence of Englishmen. Liberals, of course, were chiefly interested in eliminating liberty, especially touching beer and betting. It was wicked to fight, and unsafe even to argue; for citing any certain and contemporary fact might land one in a libel action. As all these doors were successfully shut in our faces along the chilly and cheerless corridor of progress (with its glazed tiles) the doors of death and divorce alone stood open, or rather opened wider and wider. I do not expect the exponents of divorce to admit any similarity in the two things; yet the passing parallel is not irrelevant. It may enable them to realise the limits within which our moral instincts can, even for the sake of argument, treat this desperate remedy as a normal object of desire. Divorce is for us at best a failure, of which we are more concerned to find and cure the cause than to complete the effects; and we regard a system that produces many divorces as we do a system that drives men to drown and shoot themselves. For instance, it is perhaps the commonest complaint against the existing law that the poor cannot afford to avail themselves of it. It is an argument to which normally I should listen with special sympathy. But while I should condemn the law being a luxury, my first thought will naturally be that divorce and death are only luxuries in a rather rare sense. I should not primarily condole with the poor man on the high price of prussic acid; or on the fact that all precipices of suitable suicidal height were the private property of the landlords. There are other high prices and high precipices I should attack first. I should admit in the abstract that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander; that what is good for the rich is good for the poor; but my first and strongest impression would be that prussic acid sauce is not good for anybody. I fear I should, on the impulse of the moment, pull a poor clerk or artisan back by the coat-tails, if he were jumping over Shakespeare’s Cliff, even if Dover sands were strewn with the remains of the dukes and bankers who had already taken the plunge.

But in one respect, I will heartily concede, the cult of divorce has differed from the mere cult of death. The cult of death is dead. Those I knew in my youth as young pessimists are now aged optimists. And, what is more to the point at present, even when it was living it was limited; it was a thing of one clique in one class. We know the rule in the old comedy, that when the heroine went mad in white satin, the confidante went mad in white muslin. But when, in some tragedy of the artistic temperament, the painter committed suicide in velvet, it was never implied that the plumber must commit suicide in corduroy. It was never held that Hedda Gabler’s housemaid must die in torments on the carpet (trying as her term of service may have been); or that Mrs. Tanqueray’s butler must play the Roman fool and die on his own carving knife. That particular form of playing the fool, Roman or otherwise, was an oligarchic privilege in the decadent epoch; and even as such has largely passed with that epoch. Pessimism, which was never popular, is no longer even fashionable. A far different fate has awaited the other fashion; the other somewhat dismal form of freedom. If divorce is a disease, it is no longer to be a fashionable disease like appendicitis; it is to be made an epidemic like small-pox. As we have already seen papers and public men to-day make a vast parade of the necessity of setting the poor man free to get a divorce. Now why are they so mortally anxious that he should be free to get a divorce, and not in the least anxious that he should be free to get anything else? Why are the same people happy, nay almost hilarious, when he gets a divorce, who are horrified when he gets a drink? What becomes of his money, what becomes of his children, where he works, when he ceases to work, are less and less under his personal control. Labour Exchanges, Insurance Cards, Welfare Work, and a hundred forms of police inspection and supervision have combined for good or evil to fix him more and more strictly to a certain place in society. He is less and less allowed to go to look for a new job; why is he allowed to go to look for a new wife? He is more and more compelled to recognise a Moslem code about liquor; why is it made so easy for him to escape from his old Christian code about sex? What is the meaning of this mysterious immunity, this special permit for adultery; and why is running away with his neighbour’s wife to be the only exhilaration still left open to him? Why must he love as he pleases; when he may not even live as he pleases?

The answer is, I regret to say, that this social campaign, in most though by no means all of its most prominent campaigners, relies in this matter on a very smug and pestilent piece of cant. There are some advocates of democratic divorce who are really advocates of general democratic freedom; but they are the exceptions; I might say, with all respect, that they are the dupes. The omnipresence of the thing in the press and in political society is due to a motive precisely opposite to the motive professed. The modern rulers, who are simply the rich men, are really quite consistent in their attitude to the poor man. It is the same spirit which takes away his children under the pretence of order, which takes away his wife under the pretence of liberty. That which wishes, in the words of the comic song, to break up the happy home, is primarily anxious not to break up the much more unhappy factory. Capitalism, of course, is at war with the family, for the same reason which has led to its being at war with the Trade Union. This indeed is the only sense in which it is true that capitalism is connected with individualism. Capitalism believes in collectivism for itself and individualism for its enemies. It desires its victims to be individuals, or (in other words) to be atoms. For the word atom, in its clearest meaning (which is none too clear) might be translated as “individual.” If there be any bond, if there be any brotherhood, if there be any class loyalty or domestic discipline, by which the poor can help the poor, these emancipators will certainly strive to loosen that bond or lift that discipline in the most liberal fashion. If there be such a brotherhood, these individualists will redistribute it in the form of individuals; or in other words smash it to atoms.

The masters of modern plutocracy know what they are about. They are making no mistake; they can be cleared of the slander of inconsistency. A very profound and precise instinct has let them to single out the human household as the chief obstacle to their inhuman progress. Without the family we are helpless before the State, which in our modern case is the Servile State. To use a military metaphor, the family is the only formation in which the charge of the rich can be repulsed. It is a force that forms twos as soldiers form fours; and, in every peasant country, has stood in the square house or the square plot of land as infantry have stood in squares against cavalry. How this force operates this, and why, I will try to explain in the last of these articles. But it is when it is most nearly ridden down by the horsemen of pride and privilege, as in Poland or Ireland, when the battle grows most desperate and the hope most dark, that men begin to understand why that wild oath in its beginnings was flung beyond the bonds of the world; and what would seem as passing as a vision is made permanent as a vow.

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III

THE SUPERSTITION OF DIVORCE (3)

There has long been a curiously consistent attempt to conceal the fact that France is a Christian country. There have been Frenchmen in the plot, no doubt, 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 writer. I began to read Balzac long after I had read the admirers of Balzac; and they had never given me a hint of this truth. I had read that his books were bound in yellow and “quite impudently French”; though I may have been cloudy about why being French should be impudent in a Frenchman. I had read the truer description of “the grimy wizard of the Comedie Humaine,” and have lived to learn the truth of it; Balzac certainly is a genius of the type of that artist he himself describes, who could draw a broomstick so that one knew it had swept the room after a murder. The furniture of Balzac is more alive than the figures of many dramas. For this I was prepared; but not for a certain spiritual assumption which I recognised at once as a historical phenomenon. The morality of a great writer is not the morality he teaches, but the morality he takes for granted. The Catholic type of Christian ethics runs through Balzac’s books, exactly as the Puritan type of Christian ethics runs through Bunyan’s books. What his professed opinions were I do not know, any more than I know Shakespeare’s; but I know that both those great creators of a multitudinous world made it, as compared with other and later writers, on the same fundamental moral plan as the universe of Dante. There can be no doubt about it for any one who can apply as a test the truth I have mentioned; that the fundamental things in a man are not the things he explains, but rather the things he forgets to explain. But here and there Balzac does explain; and with that intellectual concentration Mr. George Moore has acutely observed in that novelist when he is a theorist. And the other day I found in one of Balzac’s novels this passage; which, whether or no it would precisely hit Mr. George Moore’s mood at this moment, strikes me as a perfect prophecy of this epoch, and might also be a motto for this book: “With the solidarity of the family society has lost that elemental force which Montesquieu defined and called ‘honour.’ Society has isolated its members the better to govern them, and has divided in order to weaken.”

Throughout our youth and the years before the War, the current criticism followed Ibsen in describing the domestic system as a doll’s house and the domestic woman as a doll. Mr. Bernard Shaw varied the metaphor by saying that mere custom kept the woman in the home as it keeps the parrot in the cage; and the plays and tales of the period made vivid sketches of a woman who also resembled a parrot in other particulars, rich in raiment, shrill in accent and addicted to saying over and over again what she had been taught to say. Mr. Granville Barker, the spiritual child of Mr. Bernard Shaw, commented in his clever play of “The Voysey Inheritance” on tyranny, hypocrisy and boredom, as the constituent elements of a “happy English home.” Leaving the truth of this aside for the moment, it will be well to insist that the conventionality thus criticised would be even more characteristic of a happy French home. It is not the Englishman’s house, but the Frenchman’s house that is his castle. It might be further added, touching the essential ethical view of the sexes at least, that the Irishman’s house is his castle; though it has been for some centuries a besieged castle. Anyhow, those conventions which were remarked as making domesticity dull, narrow and unnaturally meek and submissive, are particularly powerful among the Irish and the French. From this it will surely be easy, for any lucid and logical thinker, to deduce the fact that the French are dull and narrow, and that the Irish are unnaturally meek and submissive. Mr. Bernard Shaw, being an Irishman who lives among English men, may be conveniently taken as the type of the difference; and it will no doubt be found that the political friends of Mr. Shaw, among Englishmen, will be of a wilder revolutionary type than those whom he would have found among Irishmen. We are in a position to compare the meekness of the Fenians with the fury of the Fabians. This deadening monogamic ideal may even, in a larger sense define and distinguish all the flat subserviency of Clare from all the flaming revolt of Clapham. Nor need we now look far to understand why revolutions have been unknown in the history of France; or why they happen so persistently in the vaguer politics of England. This rigidity and respectability must surely be the explanation of all that incapacity for any civil experiment or explosion, which has always marked that sleepy hamlet of very private houses which we call the city of Paris. But the same things are true not only of Parisians but of peasants; they are even true of other peasants in the great Alliance. Students of Serbian traditions tell us that the peasant literature lays a special and singular curse on the violation of marriage; and this may well explain the prim and sheepish pacifism complained of in that people.

In plain words, there is clearly something wrong in the calculation by which it was proved that a housewife must be as much a servant as a housemaid; or which exhibited the domesticated man as being as gentle as the primrose or as conservative as the Primrose League. It is precisely those who have been conservative about the family who have been revolutionary about the state. 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 reforms. Nor is there seriously any difficulty in discovering the cause of this. It is simply that in such a society the government, in dealing with the family, deals with something almost as permanent and self-renewing as itself. There can be a continuous family policy, like a continuous foreign policy. In peasant countries the family fights, it may almost be said that the farm fights. I do not mean merely that it riots in evil and exceptional times; though this is not unimportant. It was a savage but a sane feature when, in the Irish evictions, the women poured hot water from the windows; it was part of a final falling back on private tools as public weapons. That sort of thing is not only war to the knife, but almost war to the fork and spoon. It was in this grim sense perhaps that Parnell, in that mysterious pun, said that Kettle was a household word in Ireland (it certainly ought to be after its subsequent glories), and in a more general sense it is certain that meddling with the housewife will ultimately mean getting into hot water. But it is not of such crises of bodily struggle that I speak, but of a steady and peaceful pressure from below of a thousand families upon the framework of government. For this a certain spirit of defence and enclosure is essential; and even feudalism was right in feeling that any such affair of honour must be a family affair. It was a true artistic instinct that pictured the pedigree on a coat that protects the body. The free peasant has arms if he has not armorial bearings. He has not an escutcheon; but he has a shield. Nor do I see why, in a freer and happier society than the present, or even the past, it should not be a blazoned shield. For that is true of pedigree which is true of property; the wrong is not in its being imposed on men, but rather in its being denied to them. Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists; and so aristocracy sins not in planting a family tree, but in not planting a family forest.

Anyhow, it is found in practice that the domestic citizen can stand a siege, even by the State; because he has those who will stand by him through thick and thin—especially thin. Now those who hold that the State can be made fit to own all and administer all, can consistently disregard this argument; but it may be said with all respect that the world is more and more disregarding them. If we could find a perfect machine, and a perfect man to work it, it might be a good argument for State Socialism, though an equally good argument for personal despotism. But most of us, I fancy, are now agreed that something of that social pressure from below which we call freedom is vital to the health of the State; and this it is which cannot be fully exercised by individuals, but only by groups and traditions. Such groups have been many; there have been monasteries; there may be guilds; but there is only one type among them which all human beings have a spontaneous and omnipresent inspiration to build for themselves; and this type is the family.

I had intended this article to be the last of those outlining the elements of this debate; but I shall have to add a short concluding section on the way in which all this is missed in the practical (or rather unpractical) proposals about divorce. Here I will only say that they suffer from the modern and morbid weaknesses of always sacrificing the normal to the abnormal. As a fact the “tyranny, hypocrisy and boredom” complained of are not domesticity, but the decay of domesticity. The case of that particular complaint, in Mr. Granville Barker’s play, is itself a proof. The whole point of “The Voysey Inheritance” was that there was no Voysey inheritance. The only heritage of that family was a highly dishonourable debt. Naturally their family affections had decayed when their whole ideal of property and probity had decayed; and there was little love as well as little honour among thieves. It has yet to be proved that they would have been as much bored if they had had a positive and not a negative heritage; and had worked a farm instead of a fraud. And the experience of mankind points the other way.

—/—

IV

THE SUPERSTITION OF DIVORCE (4)

I have touched before now on a famous or infamous Royalist who suggested that the people should eat grass; an unfortunate remark perhaps for a Royalist to make; since the regimen is only recorded of a Royal Personage. But there was certainly a simplicity in the solution worthy of a sultan or even a savage chief; and it is this touch of autocratic innocence on which I have mainly insisted touching the social reforms of our day, and especially the social reform known as divorce. I am primarily more concerned with the arbitrary method than with the anarchic result. Very much as the old tyrant would turn any number of men out to grass, so the new tyrant would turn any number of women into grass-widows. Anyhow, to vary the legendary symbolism, it never seems to occur to the king in this fairy tale that the gold crown on his head is a less, and not a more, sacred and settled ornament than the gold ring on the woman’s finger. This change is being achieved by the summary and even secret government which we now suffer; and this would be the first point against it, even if it were really an emancipation; and it is only in form an emancipation. I will not anticipate the details of its defence, which can be offered by others, but I will here conclude for the present by roughly suggesting the practical defences of divorce, as generally given just at present, under four heads. And I will only ask the reader to note that they all have one thing in common; the fact that each argument is also used for all that social reform which plain men are already calling slavery.

First, it is very typical of the latest practical proposals that they are concerned with the case of those who are already separated, and the steps they must take to be divorced. There is a spirit penetrating all our society to-day by which the exception is allowed to alter the rule; the exile to deflect patriotism, the orphan to depose parenthood, and even the widow or, in this case as we have seen the grass widow, to destroy the position of the wife. There is a sort of symbol of this tendency in that mysterious and unfortunate nomadic nation which has been allowed to alter so many things, from a crusade in Russia to a cottage in South Bucks. We have been told to treat the wandering Jew as a pilgrim, while we still treat the wandering Christian as a vagabond. And yet the latter is at least trying to get home, like Ulysses; whereas the former is, if anything, rather fleeing from home, like Cain. He who is detached, disgruntled, non descript, intermediate is everywhere made the excuse for altering what is common, corporate, traditional and popular. And the alteration is always for the worse. The mermaid never becomes more womanly, but only more fishy. The centaur never becomes more manly, but only more horsy. The Jew cannot really internationalise Christendom; he can only denationalise Christendom. The proletarian does not find it easy to become a small proprietor; he is finding it far easier to become a slave. So the unfortunate man, who cannot tolerate the woman he has chosen from all the women in the world, is not encouraged to return to her and tolerate her, but encouraged to choose another woman whom he may in due course refuse to tolerate. And in all these cases the argument is the same; that the man in the intermediate state is unhappy. Probably he is unhappy, since he is abnormal; but the point is that he is permitted to loosen the universal bond which has kept millions of others normal. Because he has himself got into a hole, he is allowed to burrow in it like a rabbit and undermine a whole countryside.

Next we have, as we always have touching such crude experiments, an argument from the example of other countries, and especially of new countries. Thus the Eugenists tell me solemnly that there have been very successful Eugenic experiments in America. And they rigidly retain their solemnity (while refusing with many rebukes to believe in mine) when I tell them that one of the Eugenic experiments in America is a chemical experiment; which consists of changing a black man into the allotropic form of white ashes. It is really an exceedingly Eugenic experiment; since its chief object is to discourage an inter-racial mixture of blood which is not desired. But I do not like this American experiment, however American; and I trust and believe that it is not typically American at all. It represents, I conceive, only one element in the complexity of the great democracy; and goes along with other evil elements; so that I am not at all surprised that the same strange social sections, which permit a human being to be burned alive, also permit the exalted science of Eugenics. It is the same in the milder matter of liquor laws; and we are told that certain rather crude colonials have established prohibition Laws, which they try to evade; just as we are told they have established divorce laws, which they are now trying to repeal. For in this case of divorce, at least, the argument from distant precedents has recoiled crushingly upon itself. There is already an agitation for less divorce in America, even while there is an agitation for more divorce in England.

Again, when an argument is based on a need of population, it will be well if those supporting it realise where it may carry them. It is exceedingly doubtful whether population is one of the advantages of divorce; but there is no doubt that it is one of the advantages of polygamy. It is already used in Germany as an argument for polygamy. But the very word will teach us to look even beyond Germany for something yet more remote and repulsive. Mere population, along with a sort of polygamous anarchy, will not appear even as a practical ideal to any one who considers, for instance, how consistently Europe has held the headship of the human race, in face of the chaotic myriads of Asia. If population were the chief test of progress and efficiency, China would long ago have proved itself the most progressive and efficient state. 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 comes. “Man is a weed in those regions.” Many Europeans, fearing for the garden of the world, have fancied that in some future fatality those weeds may spring up and choke it. But no Europeans have really wished that the flowers should become like the weeds. Even if it were true, therefore, that the loosening of the tie necessarily increased the population; even if this were not contradicted, as it is, by the facts of many countries, we should have strong historical grounds for not accepting the deduction. We should still be suspicious of the paradox that we may encourage large families by abolishing the family.

Lastly, I believe it is part of the defence of the new proposal that even its defenders have found its principle a little too crude. I hear they have added provisions which modify the principle; and which seem to be in substance, first, that a man shall be made responsible for a money payment to the wife he deserts, and second, that the matter shall once again be submitted in some fashion to some magistrate. For my purpose here, it is enough to note that there is something of the unmistakable savour of the sociology we resist, in these two touching acts of faith, in a cheque-book and in a lawyer. Most of the fashionable reformers of marriage would be faintly shocked at any suggestion that a poor old charwoman might possibly refuse such money, or that a good kind magistrate might not have the right to give such advice. For the reformers of marriage are very respectable people, with some honourable exceptions; and nothing could fit more smoothly into the rather greasy groove of their respectability than the suggestion that treason is best treated with the damages, gentlemen, heavy damages, of Mr. Serjeant Buzfuz; or that tragedy is best treated by the spiritual arbitrament of Mr. Nupkins.

One word should be added to this hasty sketch of the elements of the case. I have deliberately left out the loftiest aspect and argument, that which sees marriage as a divine institution; and that for the logical reason that those who believe in this would not believe in divorce; and I am arguing with those who do believe in divorce. I do not ask them to assume the worth of my creed or any creed; and I could wish they did not so often ask me to assume the worth of their worthless, poisonous plutocratic modern society. But if it could be shown, as I think it can, that a long historical view and a patient political experience can at last accumulate solid scientific evidence of the vital need of such a vow, then I can conceive no more tremendous tribute than this, to any faith, which made a flaming affirmation from the darkest beginnings, of what the latest enlightenment can only slowly discover in the end.

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V

THE STORY OF THE FAMlLY

The most ancient of human institutions has an authority that may seem as wild as anarchy. Alone among all such institutions it begins with a spontaneous attraction; and may be said strictly and not sentimentally to be founded on love instead of fear. The attempt to compare it with coercive institutions complicating later history has led to infinite illogicality in later times. It is as unique as it is universal. There is nothing in any other social relations in any way parallel to the mutual attraction of the sexes. By missing this simple point, the modern world has fallen into a hundred follies. The idea of a general revolt of women against men has been proclaimed with flags and processions, like a revolt of vassals against their lords, of niggers against nigger-drivers, of Poles against Prussians or Irishmen against Englishmen; for all the world as if we really believed in the fabulous nation of the Amazons. The equally philosophical idea of a general revolt of men against women has been put into a romance by Sir Walter Besant, and into a sociological book by Mr. Belfort Bax. But at the first touch of this truth of an aboriginal attraction, all such comparisons collapse and are seen to be comic. A Prussian does not feel from the first that he can only be happy if he spends his days and nights with a Pole. An Englishman does not think his house empty and cheerless unless it happens to contain an Irishman. A white man does not in his romantic youth dream of the perfect beauty of a black man. A railway magnate seldom writes poems about the personal fascination of a railway porter. All the other revolts against all the other relations are reasonable and even inevitable, because those relations are originally only founded upon force or self interest. Force can abolish what force can establish; self-interest can terminate a contract when self-interest has dictated the contract. But the love of man and woman is not an institution that can be abolished, or a contract that can be terminated. It is something older than all institutions or contracts, and something that is certain to outlast them all. All the other revolts are real, because there remains a possibility that the things may be destroyed, or at least divided. You can abolish capitalists; but you cannot abolish males. Prussians can go out of Poland or negroes can be repatriated to Africa; but a man and a woman must remain together in one way or another; and must learn to put up with each other somehow.

These are very simple truths; that is why nobody nowadays seems to take any particular notice of them; and the truth that follows next is equally obvious. There is no dispute about the purpose of Nature in creating such an attraction. It would be more intelligent to call it the purpose of God; for Nature can have no purpose unless God is behind it. To talk of the purpose of Nature is to make a vain attempt to avoid being anthropomorphic, merely by being feminist. It is believing in a goddess because you are too sceptical to believe in a god. But this is a controversy which can be kept apart from the question, if we content ourselves with saying that the vital value ultimately found in this attraction is, of course, the renewal of the race itself. The child is an explanation of the father and mother and the fact that it is a human child is the explanation of the ancient human ties connecting the father and mother. The more human, that is the less bestial, is the child, the more lawful and lasting are the ties. So far from any progress in culture or the sciences tending to loosen the bond, any such progress must logically tend to tighten it. The more things there are for the child to learn, the longer he must remain at the natural school for learning them; and the longer his teachers must at least postpone the dissolution of their partnership. This elementary truth is hidden to-day in vast masses of vicarious, indirect and artificial work, with the fundamental fallacy of which I shall deal in a moment. Here I speak of the primary position of the human group, as it has stood through unthinkable ages of waxing and waning civilisations; often unable to delegate any of its work, always unable to delegate all of it. In this, I repeat, it will always be necessary for the two teachers to remain together, in proportion as they have anything to teach. One of the shapeless sea-beasts, that merely detaches itself from its offspring and floats away, could float away to a submarine divorce court, or an advanced club founded on free-love for fishes. The sea-beast might do this, precisely because the sea beast’s offspring need do nothing; because it has not got to learn the polka or the multiplication table. All these are truisms but they are also truths, and truths that will return; for the present tangle of semi-official substitutes is not only a stop-gap, but one that is not big enough to stop the gap. If people cannot mind their own business, it cannot possibly be made economical to pay them to mind each other’s business; and still less to mind each other’s babies. It is simply throwing away a natural force and then paying for an artificial force; as if a man were to water a plant with a hose while holding up an umbrella to protect it from the rain. The whole really rests on a plutocratic illusion of an infinite supply of servants. When we offer any other system as a “career for women,” we are really proposing that an infinite number of them should become servants, of a plutocratic or bureaucratic sort. Ultimately, we are arguing that a woman should not be a mother to her own baby, but a nursemaid to somebody else’s baby. But it will not work, even on paper. We cannot all live by taking in each other’s washing, especially in the form of pinafores. In the last resort, the only people who either can or will give individual care, to each of the individual children, are their individual parents. The expression as applied to those dealing with changing crowds of children is a graceful and legitimate flourish of speech.

This triangle of truisms, of father, mother and child, cannot be destroyed; it can only destroy those civilisations which disregard it. Most modern reformers are merely bottomless sceptics, and have no basis on which to rebuild; and it is well that such reformers should realise that there is something they cannot reform. You can put down the mighty from their seat; you can turn the world upside down, and there is much to be said for the view that it may then be the right way up. But you cannot create a world in which the baby carries the mother. You cannot create a world in which the mother has not authority over the baby. You can waste your time in trying, by giving votes to babies or proclaiming a republic of infants in arms. You can say, as an educationist said the other day, that small children should “criticise, question authority and suspend their judgment.” I do not know why he did not go on to say that they should earn their own living, pay income tax to the state, and die in battle for the fatherland; for the proposal evidently is that children shall have no childhood. But you can, if you find entertainment in such games, organise “representative government” among little boys and girls, and tell them to take their legal and constitutional responsibilities as seriously as possible. In short, you can be crazy; but you cannot be consistent. You cannot really carry your own principle back to the aboriginal group, and really apply it to the mother and the baby. You will not act on your own theory in the simplest and most practical of all possible cases. You are not quite so mad as that.

This nucleus of natural authority has always existed in the midst of more artificial authorities. It has always been regarded as something in the literal sense individual; that is, as an absolute that could not really be divided. A baby was not even a baby apart from its mother; it was something else, most probably a corpse. It was always recognised as standing in a peculiar relation to government; simply because it was one of the few things that had not been made by government; and could to some extent come into existence with out the support of government. Indeed the case for it is too strong to be stated. For the case for it is that there is nothing like it; and we can only find faint parallels to it in those more elaborate and painful powers and institutions that are its inferiors. Thus the only way of conveying it is to compare it to a nation; although, compared to it, national divisions are as modern and formal as national anthems. Thus I may often use the metaphor of a city; though in its presence a citizen is as recent as a city clerk. It is enough to note here that everybody does know by intuition and admit by implication that a family is a solid fact, having a character and colour like a nation. The truth can be tested by the most modern and most daily experiences. A man does say “That is the sort of thing the Browns will like”; however tangled and interminable a psychological novel he might compose on the shades of difference between Mr. and Mrs. Brown. A woman does say “I don’t like Jemima seeing so much of the Robinsons”; and she does not always, in the scurry of her social or domestic duties, pause to distinguish the optimistic materialism of Mrs. Robinson from the more acid cynicism which tinges the hedonism of Mr. Robinson. There is a colour of the household inside, as conspicuous as the colour of the house outside. That colour is a blend, and if any tint in it predominate it is generally that preferred by Mrs. Robinson. But, like all composite colours, it is a separate colour; as separate as green is from blue and yellow. Every marriage is a sort of wild balance; and in every case the compromise is as unique as an eccentricity. Philanthropists walking in the slums often see the compromise in the street, and mistake it for a fight. When they interfere, they are thoroughly thumped by both parties; and serve them right, for not respecting the very institution that brought them into the world.

The first thing to see is that this enormous normality is like a mountain; and one that is capable of being a volcano. Every abnormality that is now opposed to it is like a mole-hill; and the earnest sociological organisers of it are exceedingly like moles. But the mountain is a volcano in another sense also; as suggested in that tradition of the southern fields fertilised by lava. It has a creative as well as a destructive side; and it only remains, in this part of the analysis, to note the political effect of this extra-political institution, and the political ideals of which it has been the champion; and perhaps the only permanent champion.

The ideal for which it stands in the state is liberty. It stands for liberty for the very simple reason with which this rough analysis started. It is the only one of these institutions that is at once necessary and voluntary. It is the only check on the state that is bound to renew itself as eternally as the state, and more naturally than the state. Every sane man recognises that unlimited liberty is, anarchy, or rather is nonentity. The civic idea of liberty is to give the citizen a province of liberty; a limitation within which a citizen is a king. This is the only way in which truth can ever find refuge from public persecution, and the good man survive the bad government. But the good man by himself is no match for the city. There must be balanced against it another ideal institution, and in that sense an immortal institution. So long as the state is the only ideal institution the state will call on the citizen to sacrifice himself, and therefore will not have the smallest scruple in sacrificing the citizen. The state consists of coercion; and must always be justified from its own point of view in extending the bounds of coercion; as, for instance, in the case of conscription. The only thing that can be set up to check or challenge this authority is a voluntary law and a voluntary loyalty. That loyalty is the protection of liberty, in the only sphere where liberty can fully dwell. It is a principle of the constitution that the King never dies. It is the whole principle of the family that the citizen never dies. There must be a heraldry and heredity of freedom; a tradition of resistance to tyranny. A man must be not only free, but free-born.

Indeed, there is something in the family that might loosely be called anarchist; and more correctly called amateur. As there seems something almost vague about its voluntary origin, so there seems something vague about its voluntary organisation. The most vital function it performs, perhaps the most vital function that anything can perform, is that of education; but its type of early education is far too essential to be mistaken for instruction. In a thousand things it works rather by rule of thumb than rule of theory. To take a commonplace and even comic example, I doubt if any text-book or code of rules has ever contained any directions about standing a child in a corner. Doubtless when the modern process is complete, and the coercive principle of the state has entirely extinguished the voluntary element of the family, there will be some exact regulation or restriction about the matter. Possibly it will say that the corner must be an angle of at least ninety-five degrees. Possibly it will say that the converging line of any ordinary corner tends to make a child squint. In fact I am certain that if I said casually, at a sufficient number of tea-tables, that corners made children squint, it would rapidly become a universally received dogma of popular science. For the modern world will accept no dogmas upon any authority; but it will accept any dogmas on no authority. Say that a thing is so, according to the Pope or the Bible, and it will be dismissed as a superstition without examination. But preface your remark merely with “they say” or “don’t you know that?” or try (and fail) to remember the name of some professor mentioned in some newspaper; and the keen rationalism of the modern mind will accept every word you say. This parenthesis is not so irrelevant as it may appear, for it will be well to remember that when a rigid officialism breaks in upon the voluntary compromises of the home, that officialism itself will be only rigid in its action and will be exceedingly limp in its thought. Intellectually it will be at least as vague as the amateur arrangements of the home, and the only difference is that the domestic arrangements are in the only real sense practical, that is, they are founded on experiences that have been suffered. The others are what is now generally called scientific; that is, they are founded on experiments that have not yet been made. As a matter of fact, instead of invading the family with the blundering bureaucracy that mismanages the public services, it would be far more philosophical to work the reform the other way round. It would be really quite as reasonable to alter the laws of the nation so as to resemble the laws of the nursery. The punishments would be far less horrible, far more humorous, and far more really calculated to make men feel they had made fools of themselves. It would be a pleasant change if a judge, instead of putting on the black cap, had to put on the dunce’s cap; or if we could stand a financier in his own corner.

Of course this opinion is rare, and reactionary—whatever that may mean. Modern education is founded on the principle that a parent is more likely to be cruel than anybody else. It passes over the obvious fact that he is less likely to be cruel than anybody else. Anybody may happen to be cruel; but the first chances of cruelty come with the whole colourless and indifferent crowd of total strangers and mechanical mercenaries, whom it is now the custom to call in as infallible agents of improvement; policemen, doctors, detectives, inspectors, instructors, and so on. They are automatically given arbitrary power because there are here and there such things as criminal parents; as if there were no such things as criminal doctors or criminal school-masters. A mother is not always judicious about her child’s diet, so it is given into the control of Dr. Crippen. A father is thought not to teach his sons the purest morality; so they are put under the tutorship of Eugene Aram. These celebrated criminals are no more rare in their respective professions than the cruel parents are in the profession of parenthood. But indeed the case is far stronger than this; and there is no need to rely on the case of such criminals at all. The ordinary weaknesses of human nature will explain all the weaknesses of bureaucracy and business government all over the world. The official need only be an ordinary man to be more indifferent to other people’s children than to his own; and even to sacrifice other people’s family prosperity to his own. He may be bored; he may be bribed; he may be brutal, for any one of the thousand reasons that ever made a man a brute. All this elementary common sense is entirely left out of account in our educational and social systems of today. It is assumed that the hireling will not flee, and that solely because he is a hireling. It is denied that the shepherd will lay down his life for the sheep; or for that matter, even that the she-wolf will fight for the cubs. We are to believe that mothers are inhuman; but not that officials are human. There are unnatural parents, but there are no natural passions; at least, there are none where the fury of King Lear dared to find them— in the beadle. Such is the latest light on the education of the young; and the same principle that is applied to the child is applied to the husband and wife. Just as it assumes that a child will certainly be loved by anybody except his mother, so it assumes that a man can be happy with anybody except the one woman he has himself chosen for his wife.

Thus the coercive spirit of the state prevails over the free promise of the family, in the shape of formal officialism. But this is not the most coercive of the coercive elements in the modern commonwealth. An even more rigid and ruthless external power is that of industrial employment and unemployment. An even more ferocious enemy of the family is the factory. Between these modern mechanical things the ancient natural institution is not being reformed or modified or even cut down; it is being torn in pieces. It is not only being torn in pieces in the sense of a true metaphor, like a living thing caught in a hideous clockwork of manufacture. It is being literally torn in pieces, in that the husband may go to one factory, the wife to another, and the child to a third. Each will become the servant of a separate financial group, which is more and more gaining the political power of a feudal group. But whereas feudalism received the loyalty of families, the lords of the new servile state will receive only the loyalty of individuals; that is, of lonely men and even of lost children.

It is sometimes said that Socialism attacks the family; which is founded on little beyond the accident that some Socialists believe in free-love. I have been a Socialist, and I am no longer a Socialist, and at no time did I believe in free-love. It is true, I think in a large and unconscious sense, that State Socialism encourages the general coercive claim I have been considering. But if it be true that Socialism attacks the family in theory, it is far more certain that Capitalism attacks it in practice. It is a paradox, but a plain fact, that men never notice a thing as long as it exists in practice. Men who will note a heresy will ignore an abuse. Let any one who doubts the paradox imagine the newspapers formally printing along with the Honours’ List a price list, for peerages and knighthoods; though everybody knows they are bought and sold. So the factory is destroying the family in fact; and need depend on no poor mad theorist who dreams of destroying it in fancy. And what is destroying it is nothing so plausible as free love; but something rather to be described as an enforced fear. It is economic punishment more terrible than legal punishment, which may yet land us in slavery as the only safety.

From its first days in the forest this human group had to fight against wild monsters; and so it is now fighting against these wild machines. It only managed to survive then, and it will only manage to survive now, by a strong internal sanctity; a tacit oath or dedication deeper than that of the city or the tribe. But though this silent promise was always present, it took at a certain turning point of our history a special form which I shall try to sketch in the next chapter. That turning point was the creation of Christendom by the religion which created it. Nothing will destroy the sacred triangle; and even the Christian faith, the most amazing revolution that ever took place in the mind, served only in a sense to turn that triangle upside down. It held up a mystical mirror in which the order of the three things was reversed; and added a holy family of child, mother and father to the human family of father, mother and child.

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VI

THE STORY OF THE VOW

Charles Lamb, with his fine fantastic instinct for combinations that are also contrasts, has noted somewhere a contrast between St. Valentine and valentines. 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 Ages. The paradox lends itself to his treatment, and there is a truth in his view of it. Perhaps it may seem even more of a paradox to say there is no paradox. In such cases unification appears more provocative than division; and it may seem idly contradictory to deny the contradiction. And yet in truth there is no contradiction. In the deepest sense there is a very real similarity, which puts St. Valentine and his valentines on one side, and most of the modern world on the other. I should hesitate to ask even a German professor to collect, collate and study carefully all the valentines in the world, with the object of tracing a philosophical principle running through them. But if he did, I have no doubt about the philosophic principle he would find. However trivial, however imbecile, however vulgar or vapid or stereotyped the imagery of such things might be, it would always involve one idea, the same idea that makes lovers laboriously chip their initials on a tree or a rock, in a sort of monogram of monogamy. It may be a cockney trick to tie one’s love on a tree; though Orlando did it, and would now doubtless be arrested by the police for breaking the byelaws of the Forest of Arden. 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 Parthenon, across the face of the Sphinx, or in any other nook or corner where it may chance to arrest the sentimental interest of posterity. But like many other popular things, of the sort that can generally be found in Shakespeare, there is a meaning in it that would probably be missed by a less popular poet, like Shelley. There is a very permanent truth in the fact that two free persons deliberately tie themselves to a log of wood. And it is the idea of tying oneself to something that runs through all this old amorous allegory like a pattern of fetters. There is always the notion of hearts chained together, or skewered together, or in some manner secured; there is a security that can only be called captivity. That it frequently fails to secure itself has nothing to do with the present point. The point is that every philosophy of sex must fail, which does not account for its ambition of fixity, as well as for its experience of failure. There is nothing to make Orlando commit himself on the sworn evidence of the nearest tree. He is not bound to be bound; he is under constraint, but nobody constrains him to be under constraint. In short, Orlando took a vow to marry precisely as Valentine took a vow not to marry. Nor could any ascetic, without being a heretic, have asserted in the wildest reactions of asceticism, that the vow of Orlando was not lawful as well as the vow of Valentine. But it is a notable fact that even when it was not lawful, it was still a vow. Through all that mediaeval culture, which has left us the legend of romance, there ran this pattern of a chain, which was felt as binding even where it ought not to bind. The lawless loves of mediaeval legends all have their own law, and especially their own loyalty, as in the tales of Tristram or Lancelot. In this sense we might say that mediaeval profligacy was more fixed than modern marriage. I am not here discussing either modern or mediaeval ethics, in the matter of what they did say or ought to say of such things. I am only noting as a historical fact the insistence of the mediaeval imagination, even at its wildest, upon one particular idea. That idea is the idea of the vow. It might be the vow which St. Valentine took; it might be a lesser vow which he regarded as lawful; it might be a wild vow which he regarded as quite lawless. But the whole society which made such festivals and bequeathed to us such traditions was full of the idea of vows; and we must recognise this notion, even if we think it nonsensical, as the note of the whole civilisation. And Valentine and the valentine both express it for us; even more if we feel them both as exaggerated, or even as exaggerating opposites. Those extremes meet; and they meet in the same place. Their trysting place is by the tree on which the lover hung his love-letters. And even if the lover hung himself on the tree, instead of his literary compositions, even that act had about it also an indefinable flavour of finality.

It is often said by the critics of Christian origins that certain ritual feasts, processions or dances are really of pagan origin. They might as well say that our legs are of pagan origin. Nobody ever disputed that humanity was human before it was Christian; and no Church manufactured the legs with which men walked or danced, either in a pilgrimage or a ballet. What can really be maintained, so as to carry not a little conviction, is this: that where such a Church has existed it has preserved not only the processions but the dances; not only the cathedral but the carnival. One of the chief claims of Christian civilisation is to have preserved things of pagan origin. In short, in the old religious countries men continue to dance; while in the new scientific cities they are often content to drudge.

But when this saner view of history is realised, there does remain something more mystical and difficult to define. Even heathen things are Christian when they have been preserved by Christianity. Chivalry is something recognisably different even from the virtus of Virgil. Charity is something exceedingly different from the plain pity of Homer. Even our patriotism is something more subtle than the undivided love of the city; and the change is felt in the most permanent things, such as the love of landscape or the love of woman. To define the differentiation in all these things will always be hopelessly difficult. But I would here suggest one element in the change which is perhaps too much neglected; which at any rate ought not to be neglected; the nature of a vow. I might express it by saying that pagan antiquity was the age of status; that Christian mediaevalism was the age of vows; and that sceptical modernity has been the age of contracts; or rather has tried to be, and has failed.

The outstanding example of status was slavery. Needless to say slavery does not mean tyranny; indeed it need only be regarded relatively to other things to be regarded as charity. The idea of slavery is that large numbers of men are meant and made to do the heavy work of the world, and that others, while taking the margin of profits, must nevertheless support them while they do it. The point is not whether the work is excessive or moderate, or whether the condition is comfortable or uncomfortable. The point is that his work is chosen for the man, his status fixed for the man; and this status is forced on him by law. As Mr. Balfour said about Socialism, that is slavery and nothing else is slavery. The slave might well be, and often was, far more comfortable than the average free labourer, and certainly far more lazy than the average peasant. He was a slave because he had not reached his position by choice, or promise, or bargain, but merely by status.

It is admitted that when Christianity had been for some time at work in the world, this ancient servile status began in some mysterious manner to disappear. I suggest here that one of the forms which the new spirit took was the importance of the vow. Feudalism, for instance, differed from slavery chiefly because feudalism was a vow. The vassal put his hands in those of his lord, and vowed to be his man; but there was an accent on the noun substantive as well as on the possessive pronoun. By swearing to be his man, he proved he was not his chattel. Nobody exacts a promise from a pickaxe, or expects a poker to swear everlasting friendship with the tongs. Nobody takes the word of a spade; and nobody ever took the word of a slave. It marks at least a special stage of transition that the form of freedom was essential to the fact of service, or even of servitude. In this way it is not a coincidence that the word homage actually means manhood. And if there was vow instead of status even in the static parts of Feudalism, it is needless to say that there was a wilder luxuriance of vows in the more adventurous part of it. The whole of what we call chivalry was one great vow. Vows of chivalry varied infinitely from the most solid to the most fantastic; 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 Jerusalem. As I have remarked, this rule of loyalty, even in the unruly exceptions which proved the rule, ran through all the romances and songs of the troubadours; and there were always vows even when they were very far from being marriage vows. The idea is as much present in what they called the Gay Science, of love, as in what they called the Divine Science, of theology. The modern reader will smile at the mention of these things as sciences; and will turn to the study of sociology, ethnology and psycho-analysis; for if these are sciences (about which I would not divulge a doubt) at least nobody would insult them by calling them either gay or divine.

I mean here to emphasise the presence, and not even to settle the proportion, of this new notion in the middle ages. But the critic will be quite wrong if he thinks it enough to answer that all these things affected only a cultured class, not corresponding to the servile class of antiquity. When we come to workmen and small tradesmen, we find the same vague yet vivid presence of the spirit that can only be called the vow. In this sense there was a chivalry of trades as well as a chivalry of orders of knighthood; just as there was a heraldry of shop-signs as well as a heraldry of shields. Only it happens that in the enlightenment and liberation of the sixteenth century, the heraldry of the rich was preserved, and the heraldry of the poor destroyed. 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 Lombardy. Of all those democratic glories nothing can now glitter in the sun; except the sign of the golden usury that has devoured them all. The point here, however, is that the trade or craft had not only something like the crest, but something like the vow of knighthood. There was in the position of the guildsman the same basic notion that belonged to knights and even to monks. It was the notion of the free choice of a fixed estate. We can realise the moral atmosphere if we compare the system of the Christian guilds, not only with the status of the Greek and Roman slaves, but with such a scheme as that of the Indian castes. The oriental caste has some of the qualities of the occidental guild; especially the valuable quality of tradition and the accumulation of culture. Men might be proud of their castes, as they were proud of their guilds. But they had never chosen their castes, as they have chosen their guilds. They had never, within historic memory, even collectively created their castes, as they collectively created their guilds. Like the slave system, the caste system was older than history. The heathens of modern Asia, as much as the heathens of ancient Europe, lived by the very spirit of status. Status in a trade has been accepted like status in a tribe; and that in a tribe of beasts and birds rather than men. The fisherman continued to be a fisherman as the fish continued to be a fish; and the hunter would no more turn into a cook than his dog would try its luck as a cat. Certainly his dog would not be found prostrated before the mysterious altar of Pasht, barking or whining a wild, lonely, and individual vow that he at all costs would become a cat. Yet that was the vital revolt and innovation of vows, as compared with castes or slavery; as when a man vowed to be a monk, or the son of a cobbler saluted the shrine of St. Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters. When he had entered the guild of the carpenters he did indeed find himself responsible for a very real loyalty and discipline; but the whole social atmosphere surrounding his entrance was full of the sense of a separate and personal decision. There is one place where we can still find this sentiment; the sentiment of something at once free and final. We can feel it, if the service is properly understood, before and after the marriage vows at any ordinary wedding in any ordinary church.

Such, in very vague outline, has been the historical nature of vows; and the unique part they played in that mediaeval civilisation out of which modern civilisation rose—or fell. We can now consider, a little less cloudily than it is generally considered nowadays, whether we really think vows are good things; whether they ought to be broken; and (as would naturally follow) whether they ought to be made. But we can never judge it fairly till we face, as I have tried to suggest, this main fact of history; that the personal pledge, feudal or civic or monastic, was the way in which the world did escape from the system of slavery in the past. For the modern breakdown of mere contract leaves it still doubtful if there be any other way of escaping it in the future.

The idea, or at any rate the ideal, of the thing called a vow is fairly obvious. It is to combine the fixity that goes with finality with the self-respect that only goes with freedom. The man is a slave who is his own master, and a king who is his own ancestor. For all kinds of social purposes he has the calculable orbit of the man in the caste or the servile state; but in the story of his own soul he is still pursuing, at great peril, his own adventure. As seen by his neighbours, he is as safe as if immured in a fortress; but as seen by himself he may be forever careering through the sky or crashing towards the earth in a flying-ship. What is socially humdrum is produced by what is individually heroic; and a city is made not merely of citizens but knight-errants. It is needless to point out the part played by the monastery in civilising Europe in its most barbaric interregnum; and even those who still denounce the monasteries will be found denouncing them for these two extreme and apparently opposite eccentricities. They are blamed for the rigid character of their collective routine; and also for the fantastic character of their individual fanaticism. For the purposes of this part of the argument, it would not matter if the marriage vow produced the most austere discomforts of the monastic vow. The point for the present is that it was sustained by a sense of free will; and the feeling that its evils were not accepted but chosen. The same spirit ran through all the guilds and popular arts and spontaneous social systems of the whole civilisation. It had all the discipline of an army; but it was an army of volunteers.

The civilisation of vows was broken up when Henry the Eighth broke his own vow of marriage. Or rather, it was broken up by a new cynicism in the ruling powers of Europe, of which that was the almost accidental expression in England. The monasteries, that had been built by vows, were destroyed. The guilds, that had been regiments of volunteers were dispersed. The sacramental nature of marriage was denied; and many of the greatest intellects of the new movement, like Milton, already indulged in a very modern idealisation of divorce. 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 England; with all its sympathy with personal liberty, and all its utter lack of sympathy with popular life. Marriage not only became less of a sacrament but less of a sanctity. It threatened to become not only a contract, but a contract that could not be kept. For this one question has retained a strange symbolic supremacy amid all the similar questions, which seems to perpetuate the coincidence of the origin. It began with divorce for a king; and it is now ending in divorces for a whole kingdom.

The modern era that followed can be called the era of contract; but it can still more truly be called the era of leonine contract. The nobles of the new time first robbed the people, and then offered to bargain with them. It would not be an exaggeration to say that they first robbed the people, and then offered to cheat them. For their rents were competitive rents, their economics competitive economics, their ethics competitive ethics; they applied not only legality but pettifogging. No more was heard of the customary rents of the mediaeval estates; just as no more was heard of the standard wages of the mediaeval guilds. The object of the whole process was to isolate the individual poor man in his dealings with the individual rich man; and then offer to buy and sell with him, though it must necessarily be himself that was bought and sold. In the matter of labour, that is, though a man was supposed to be in the position of a seller, he was more and more really in the possession of a slave. Unless the tendency be reversed, he will probably become admittedly a slave. That is to say, the word slave will never be used; for it is always easy to find an inoffensive word; but he will be admittedly a man legally bound to certain social service, in return for economic security. In other words, the modern experiment of mere contract has broken down. Trusts as well as Trades’ Unions express the fact that it has broken down. Social reform, Socialism, Guild Socialism, Syndicalism, even organised philanthropy, are so many ways of saying that it has broken down. The substitute for it may be the old one of status; but it must be something having some of the stability of status. So far history has found only one way of combining that sort of stability with any sort of liberty. In this sense there is a meaning in the much misused phrase about the army of industry. But the army must be stiffened either by the discipline of conscripts or by the vows of volunteers.

If we may extend the doubtful metaphor of an army of industry to cover the yet weaker phrase about captains of industry, there is no doubt about what those captains at present command. They work for a centralised discipline in every department. They erect a vast apparatus of supervision and inspection; they support all the modern restrictions touching drink and hygiene. They may be called the friends of temperance or even of happiness; but even their friends would not call them the friends of freedom. There is only one form of freedom which they tolerate; and that is the sort of sexual freedom which is covered by the legal fiction of divorce. If we ask why this liberty is alone left, when so many liberties are lost, we shall find the answer in the summary of this chapter. They are trying to break the vow of the knight as they broke the vow of the monk. They recognise the vow as the vital antithesis to servile status, the alternative and therefore the antagonist. Marriage makes a small state within the state, which resists all such regimentation. That bond breaks all other bonds; that law is found stronger than all later and lesser laws. They desire the democracy to be sexually fluid, because the making of small nuclei is like the making of small nations. Like small nations, they are a nuisance to the mind of imperial scope. In short, what they fear, in the most literal sense, is home rule.

Men can always be blind to a thing so long as it is big enough. It is so difficult to see the world in which we live, that I know that many will see all I have said here of slavery as a nonsensical nightmare. But if my association of divorce with slavery seems only a far-fetched and theoretical paradox, I should have no difficulty in replacing it by a concrete and familiar picture. Let them merely remember the time when they read “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and ask themselves whether the oldest and simplest of the charges against slavery has not always been the breaking up of families.

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VII

THE TRAGEDIES OF MARRlAGE

There is one view very common among the liberal-minded which is exceedingly fatiguing to the clear-headed. It is symbolised in the sort of man who says, “These ruthless bigots will refuse to bury me in consecrated ground, because I have always refused to be baptised.” A clear-headed person can easily conceive his point of view, in so far as he happens to think that baptism does not matter. But the clear-headed will be completely puzzled when they ask themselves why, if he thinks that baptism does not matter, he should think that burial does matter. If it is in no way imprudent for a man to keep himself from a consecrated font, how can it be inhuman for other people to keep him from a consecrated field? It is surely much nearer to mere superstition to attach importance to what is done to a dead body than to a live baby. I can understand a man thinking both superstitious, or both sacred; but I cannot see why he should grumble that other people do not give him as sanctities what he regards as superstitions. He is merely complaining of being treated as what he declares himself to be. It is as if a man were to say, “My persecutors still refuse to make me king, out of mere malice because I am a strict republican.” Or it is as if he said, “These heartless brutes are so prejudiced against a teetotaler, that they won’t even give him a glass of brandy.”

The fashion of divorce would not be a modern fashion if it were not full of this touching fallacy. A great deal of it might be summed up as a most illogical and fanatical appetite for getting married in churches. It is as if a man should practice polygamy out of sheer greed for wedding cake. Or it is as if he provided his household with new shoes, entirely by having them thrown after the wedding carriage when he went off with a new wife. There are other ways of procuring cake or purchasing shoes; and there are other ways of setting up a human establishment. What is unreasonable is the request which the modern man really makes of the religious institutions of his fathers The modern man wants to buy one shoe without the other; to obtain one half of a supernatural revelation without the other. The modern man wants to eat his wedding cake and have it, too.

I am not basing this book on the religious argument, 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 complaints. As a matter of fact nobody does propose that some ferocious Anti-Semite like M. Drumont should be buried as a Jew with all the rites of the Synagogue. But the broad-minded were furious because Tolstoi, who had denounced Russian orthodoxy quite as ferociously, was not buried as orthodox, with all the rites of the Russian Church. Nobody does insist that a man who wishes to have fifty wives when Mahomet allowed him five must have his fifty with the full approval of Mahomet’s religion. But the broad-minded are extremely bitter because a Christian who wishes to have several wives when his own promise bound him to one, is not allowed to violate his vow at the same altar at which he made it. Nobody does insist on Baptists totally immersing people who totally deny the advantages of being totally immersed. Nobody ever did expect Mormons to receive the open mockers of the Book of Mormon, nor Christian Scientists to let their churches be used for exposing Mrs. Eddy as an old fraud. It is only of the forms of Christianity making the Catholic claim that such inconsistent claims are made. And even the inconsistency is, I fancy, a tribute to the acceptance of the Catholic idea in a catholic fashion. 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 Church; and though he may have made a few dozen Mormon marriages in a wandering and entertaining life, he will really have nowhere to go to if he does not somehow find his way back to the churchyard. But all this concerns the general theological question and not the matter involved here, which is merely historical and social. The point here is that it is at least superficially inconsistent to ask institutions for a formal approval, which they can only give by inconsistency.

I have put first the question of what is marriage. And we are now in a position to ask more clearly what is divorce. It is not merely the negation or neglect of marriage; for any one can always neglect marriage. It is not the dissolution of the legal obligation of marriage, or even the legal obligation of monogamy; for the simple reason that no such obligation exists. Any man in modern London may have a hundred wives if he does not call them wives; or rather, if he does not go through certain more or less mystical ceremonies in order to assert that they are wives. He might create a certain social coolness round his household, a certain fading of his general popularity. But that is not created by law, and could not be prevented by law. As the late Lord Salisbury very sensibly observed about boycotting in Ireland, “How can you make a law to prevent people going out of the room when somebody they don’t like comes into it?” We cannot be forcibly introduced to a polygamist by a policeman. It would not be an assertion of social liberty, but a denial of social liberty, if we found ourselves practically obliged to associate with all the profligates in society. But divorce is not in this sense mere anarchy. On the contrary divorce is in this sense respectability; and even a rigid excess of respectability. Divorce in this sense might indeed be not unfairly called snobbery. The definition of divorce, which concerns us here, is that it is the attempt to give respectability, and not liberty. It is the attempt to give a certain social status, and not a legal status. It is indeed supposed that this can be done by the alteration of certain legal forms; and this will be more or less true according to the extent to which law as such overawed public opinion, or was valued as a true expression of public opinion. If a man divorced in the large-minded fashion of Henry the Eighth pleaded his legal title among the peasantry of Ireland, for instance, I think he would find a difference still existing between respectability and religion. But the peculiar point here is that many are claiming the sanction of religion as well as of respectability. They would attach to their very natural and sometimes very pardonable experiments a certain atmosphere, and even glamour, which has undoubtedly belonged to the status of marriage in historic Christendom. But before they make this attempt, it would be well to ask why such a dignity ever appeared or in what it consisted. And I fancy we shall find ourselves confronted with the very simple truth, that the dignity arose wholly and entirely out of the fidelity; and that the glamour merely came from the vow. People were regarded as having a certain dignity because they were dedicated in a certain way; as bound to certain duties and, if it be preferred, to certain discomforts. It may be irrational to endure these discomforts; it may even be irrational to respect them. But it is certainly much more irrational to respect them, and then artificially transfer the same respect to the absence of them. It is as if we were to expect uniforms to be saluted when armies were disbanded; and ask people to cheer a soldier’s coat when it did not contain a soldier. If you think you can abolish war, abolish it; but do not suppose that when there are no wars to be waged, there will still be warriors to be worshipped. If it was a good thing that the monasteries were dissolved, let us say so and dismiss them. But the nobles who dissolved the monasteries did not shave their heads, and ask to be regarded as saints solely on account of that ceremony. The nobles did not dress up as abbots and ask to be credited with a potential talent for working miracles, because of the austerity of their vows of poverty and chastity. They got inside the houses, but not the hoods, and still less the haloes. They at least knew that it is not the habit that makes the monk. They were not so superstitious as those moderns, who think it is the veil that makes the bride.

What is respected, in short, is the fidelity to the ancient flag of the family, and a readiness to fight for what I have noted as its unique type of freedom. I say readiness to fight, for fortunately the fight itself is the exception rather than the rule. The soldier is not respected because he is doomed to death, but because he is ready for death; and even ready for defeat. The married man or woman is not doomed to evil, sickness or poverty; but is respected for taking a certain step for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness or in health. But there is one result of this line of argument which should correct a danger in some arguments on the same side.

It is very essential that a stricture on divorce, which is in fact simply a defence of marriage, should be independent of sentimentalism, especially in the form called optimism. A man justifying a fight for national independence or civic freedom is neither sentimental nor optimistic. He explains the sacrifice, but he does not explain it away. He does not say that bayonet wounds are pin-pricks, or mere scratches of the thorns on a rose of pleasure. He does not say that the whole display of firearms is a festive display of fireworks. On the contrary, when he praises it most, he praises it as pain rather than pleasure. He increases the praise with the pain; it is his whole boast that militarism, and even modern science, can produce no instrument of torture to tame the soul of man. It is idle, in speaking of war, to pit the realistic against the romantic, in the sense of the heroic; for all possible realism can only increase the heroism; and therefore, in the highest sense, increase the romance. Now I do not compare marriage with war, but I do compare marriage with law or liberty or patriotism or popular government, or any of the human ideals which have often to be defended by war. Even the wildest of those ideals, which seem to escape from all the discipline of peace, do not escape from the discipline of war. The Bolshevists may have aimed at pure peace and liberty; but they have been compelled, for their own purpose, first to raise armies and then to rule armies. In a word, how ever beautiful you may think your own visions of beatitude, men must suffer to be beautiful, and even suffer a considerable interval of being ugly. And I have no notion of denying that mankind suffers much from the maintenance of the standard of marriage; as it suffers much from the necessity of criminal law or the recurrence of crusades and revolutions. The only question here is whether marriage is indeed, as I maintain, an ideal and an institution making for popular freedom; I do not need to be told that anything making for popular freedom has to be paid for in vigilance and pain, and a whole army of martyrs.

Hence I am far indeed from denying the hard cases which exist here, as in all matters involving the idea of honour. For indeed I could not deny them without denying the whole parallel of militant morality on which my argument rests. But this being first understood, it will be well to discuss in a little more detail what are described as the tragedies of marriage. And the first thing to note about the most tragic of them is that they are not tragedies of marriage at all They are tragedies of sex; and might easily occur in a highly modern romance in which marriage was not mentioned at all. It is generally summarised by saying that the tragic element is the absence of love. But it is often forgotten that another tragic element is often the presence of love. The doctors of divorce, with an air of the frank and friendly realism of men of the world, are always recommending and rejoicing in a sensible separation by mutual consent. But if we are really to dismiss our dreams of dignity and honour, if we are really to fall back on the frank realism of our experience as men of the world, then the very first thing that our experience will tell us is that it very seldom is a separation by mutual consent; that is, that the consent very seldom is sincerely and spontaneously mutual. By far the commonest problem in such cases is that in which one party wishes to end the partnership and the other does not. And of that emotional situation you can make nothing but a tragedy, whichever way you turn it. With or without marriage, with or without divorce, with or without any arrangements that anybody can suggest or imagine, it remains a tragedy. The only difference is that by the doctrine of marriage it remains both a noble and a fruitful tragedy; like that of a man who falls fighting for his country, or dies testifying to the truth. But the truth is that the innovators have as much sham optimism about divorce as any romanticist can have had about marriage. They regard their story, when it ends in the divorce court, through as rosy a mist of sentimentalism as anybody ever regarded a story ending with wedding bells. Such a reformer is quite sure that when once the prince and princess are divorced by the fairy godmother, they will live happily ever after. I enjoy romance, but I like it to be rooted in reality; and any one with a touch of reality knows that nine couples out of ten, when they are divorced, are left in an exceedingly different state. It will be safe to say in most cases that one partner will fail to find happiness in an infatuation, and the other will from the first accept a tragedy. In the realm of reality and not romance, it is commonly a case of breaking hearts as well as breaking promises; and even dishonour is not always a remedy for remorse.

The next limitation to be laid down in the matter affects certain practical forms of discomforts on a level rather lower than love or hatred. The cases most commonly quoted concern what is called “drink” and what is called “cruelty.” They are always talked about as matters of fact; though in practice they are very decidedly matters of opinion. It is not a flippancy, but a fact, 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 teetotaler. For the very definition of drunkenness may depend on the dogma of teetotalism. Drunkenness, it has been very truly observed, “may mean anything from delirium tremens to having a stronger head than the official appointed to conduct the examination.” Mr Bernard Shaw once professed, apparently seriously, that any man drinking wine or beer at all was incapacitated from managing a motorcar; and still more, therefore, one would suppose, from managing a wife. The scales are weighted here, of course, with all those false weights of snobbishness which are the curse of justice in this country. The working class is forced to conduct almost in public a normal and varying festive habit, which the upper class can afford to conduct in private; and a certain section of the middle class, that which happens to concern itself most with local politics and social reforms, really has or affects a standard quite abnormal and even alien. They might go any lengths of injustice in dealing with the working man or working woman accused of too hearty a taste in beer. To mention but one matter out of a thousand, the middle class reformers are obviously quite ignorant of the hours at which working people begin to work. Because they themselves, at eleven o’clock in the morning, have only recently finished breakfast and the full moral digestion of the Daily Mail, they think a char-woman drinking beer at that hour is one of those arising early in the morning to follow after strong drink. Most of them really do not know that she has already done more than half a heavy day’s work, and is partaking of a very reasonable luncheon. The whole problem of proletarian drink is entangled in a network of these misunderstandings; and there is no doubt whatever that, when judged by these generalisations, the poor will be taken in a net of injustices. And this truth is as certain in the case of what is called cruelty as of what is called drink. 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 lady. It is a class test; it may be a class superiority; but it is not an act of equal justice between the classes. It leaves out a thousand things; the provocation, the atmosphere, the harassing restrictions of space, the nagging which Dickens described as the terrors of “temper in a cart,” the absence of certain taboos of social training, the tradition of greater roughness even in the gestures of affection. To make all marriage or divorce, in the case of such a man, turn upon a blow is like blasting the whole life of a gentleman because he has slammed the door. Often a poor man cannot slam the door; partly because the model villa might fall down; but more because he has nowhere to go to; the smoking-room, the billiard room and the peacock music-room not being yet attached to his premises.

I say this in passing, to point out that while I do not dream of suggesting that there are only happy marriages, there will quite certainly, as things work nowadays, be a very large number of unhappy and unjust divorces. They will be cases in which the innocent partner will receive the real punishment of the guilty partner, through being in fact and feeling the faithful partner. For instance, it is insisted that a married person must at least find release from the society of a lunatic; but it is also true that the scientific reformers, with their fuss about “the feeble-minded,” are continually giving larger and looser definitions of lunacy. The process might begin by releasing somebody from a homicidal maniac, and end by dealing in the same way with a rather dull conversationalist. But in fact nobody does deny that a person should be allowed some sort of release from a homicidal maniac. The most extreme school of orthodoxy only maintains that anybody who has had that experience should be content with that release. In other words, it says he should be content with that experience of matrimony, and not seek another. It was put very wittily, I think, by a Roman Catholic friend of mine, who said he approved of release so long as it was not spelt with a hyphen.

To put it roughly, we are prepared in some cases to listen to the man who complains of having a wife. But we are not prepared to listen, at such length, to the same man when he comes back and complains that he has not got a wife. Now in practice at this moment the great mass of the complaints are precisely of this kind. The reformers insist particularly on the pathos of a man’s position when he has obtained a separation without a divorce. Their most tragic figure is that of the man who is already free of all those ills he had, and is only asking to be allowed to fly to others that he knows not of. I should be the last to deny that, in certain emotional circumstances, his tragedy may be very tragic indeed. But his tragedy is of the emotional kind which can never be entirely eliminated; and which he has himself, in all probability, inflicted on the partner he has left. We may call it the price of maintaining an ideal or the price of making a mistake; but anyhow it is the point of our whole distinction in the matter; it is here that we draw the line, and I have nowhere denied that it is a line of battle. The battle joins on the debatable ground, not of the man’s doubtful past but of his still more doubtful future. In a word, the divorce controversy is not really a controversy about divorce. It is a controversy about re-marriage; or rather about whether it is marriage at all.

And with that we can only return to the point of honour which I have compared here to a point of patriotism; since it is both the smallest and the greatest kind of patriotism. Men have died in torments during the last five years for points of patriotism far more dubious and fugitive. Men like the Poles or the Serbians, through long periods of their history, may be said rather to have lived in torments. I will never admit that the vital need of the freedom of the family, as I have tried to sketch it here, is not a cause as valuable as the freedom of any frontier. But I do willingly admit that the cause would be a dark and terrible one, if it really asked these men to suffer torments. As I have stated it, on its most extreme terms, it only asks them to suffer abnegations. And those negative sufferings I do think they may honourably be called upon to bear, for the glory of their own oath and the great things by which the nations live. In relation to their own nation most normal men will feel that this distinction between release and “re-lease” is neither fanciful nor harsh, but very rational and human. A patriot may be an exile in another country; but he will not be a patriot of another country. He will be as cheerful as he can in an abnormal position; he may or may not sing his country’s songs in a strange land; but he will not sing the strange songs as his own. And such may fairly be also the attitude of the citizen who has gone into exile from the oldest of earthly cities.

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VIII

THE VISTA OF DIVORCE

The case for divorce combines all the advantages of having it both ways; and of drawing the same deduction from right or left, and from black or white. Whichever way the programme works in practice, it can still be justified in theory. If there are few examples of divorce, it shows how little divorce need be dreaded; if there are many, it shows how much it is required. The rarity of divorce is an argument in favour of divorce; and the multiplicity of divorce is an argument against marriage. Now, in truth, if we were confined to considering this alternative in a speculative manner, if there were no concrete facts but only abstract probabilities, we should have no difficulty in arguing our case. The abstract liberty allowed by the reformers is as near as possible to anarchy, and gives no logical or legal guarantee worth discussing. The advantages of their reform do not accrue to the innocent party, but to the guilty party; especially if he be sufficiently guilty. A man has only to commit the crime of desertion to obtain the reward of divorce. And if they are entitled to take as typical the most horrible hypothetical cases of the abuse of the marriage laws, surely we are entitled to take equally extreme possibilities in the abuse of their own divorce laws. If they, when looking about for a husband, so often hit upon a homicidal maniac, 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 pleases. But in fact there is no necessity for us to argue thus in the abstract; for the amiable gentleman in question undoubtedly exists in the concrete. Of course, he is no new figure; he is a very recurrent type of rascal; his name has been Lothario or Don Juan; and he has often been represented as a rather romantic rascal. The point of divorce reform, it cannot be too often repeated, is that the rascal should not only be regarded as romantic, but regarded as respectable. He is not to sow his wild oats and settle down; he is merely to settle down to sowing his wild oats. They are to be regarded as tame and inoffensive oats; almost, if one may say so, as Quaker oats. But there is no need, as I say, to speculate about whether the looser view of divorce might prevail; for it is already prevailing. 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 lawyers; and about the undisguised haste of the “hustling judges” who carry on the work. It is a form of hilarity which would seem to recall the gaiety of a grave-digger in a city swept by a pestilence. But a few details occasionally flash by in the happy dance; from time to time the court is moved by a momentary curiosity about the causes of the general violation of oaths and promises; as if there might, here and there, be a hint of some sort of reason for ruining the fundamental institution of society. And nobody who notes those details, or considers those faint hints of reason, can doubt for a moment that masses of these men and women are now simply using divorce in the spirit of free-love. They are very seldom the sort of people who have once fallen tragically into the wrong place, and have now found their way triumphantly to the right place. They are almost always people who are obviously wandering from one place to another, and will probably leave their last shelter exactly as they have left their first. But it seems to amuse them to make again, if possible in a church, a promise they have already broken in practice and almost avowedly disbelieve in principle.

In face of this headlong fashion, it is really reasonable to ask the divorce reformers what is their attitude towards the old monogamous ethic of our civilisation; and whether they wish to retain it in general, or to retain it at all. Unfortunately even the sincerest and most lucid of them use language which leaves the matter a little doubtful. Mr. E. S. P. Haynes is one of the most brilliant and most fair-minded controversialists on that side; and he has said, for instance, that he agrees with me in supporting the ideal of indissoluble or, at least, of undissolved marriage. Mr. Haynes is one of the few friends of divorce who are also real friends of democracy; and I am sure that in practice this stands for a real sympathy with the home, especially the poor home. Unfortunately, on the theoretic side, the word “ideal” is far from being an exact term, and is open to two almost opposite interpretations. For many would say that marriage is an ideal as some would say that monasticism is an ideal, in the sense of a counsel of perfection. Now certainly we might preserve a conjugal ideal in this way. A man might be reverently pointed out in the street as a sort of saint, merely because he was married. A man might wear a medal for monogamy; or have letters after his name similar to V.C. or D.D.; let us say L.W. for “Lives With His Wife,” or N.D.Y. for “Not Divorced Yet.” We might, on entering some strange city, be struck by a stately column erected to the memory of a wife who never ran away with a soldier, or the shrine and image of a historical character, who had resisted the example of the man in the “New Witness” ballade in bolting with the children’s nurse. Such high artistic hagiology would be quite consistent with Mr. Haynes’ divorce reform; with re-marriage after three years, or three hours. It would also be quite consistent with Mr. Haynes’ phrase about preserving an ideal of marriage. What it would not be consistent with is the perfectly plain, solid, secular and social usefulness which I have here attributed to marriage. It does not create or preserve a natural institution, normal to the whole community, to balance the more artificial and even more arbitrary institution of the state; which is less natural even if it is equally necessary. It does not defend a voluntary association, but leaves the only claim on life, death and loyalty with a more coercive institution. It does not stand, in the sense I have tried to explain, for the principle of liberty. In short, it does not do any of the things which Mr. Haynes himself would especially desire to see done. For humanity to be thus spontaneously organised from below, it is necessary that the organisation should be almost as universal as the official organisation from above. The tyrant must find not one family but many families defying his power; he must find mankind not a dust of atoms, but fixed in solid blocks of fidelity. And those human groups must support not only themselves but each other. In this sense what some call individualism is as corporate as communism. It is a thing of volunteers; but volunteers must be soldiers. It is a defence of private persons; but we might say that the private persons must be private soldiers. The family must be recognised as well as real; above all, the family must be recognised by the families. To expect individuals to suffer successfully for a home apart from the home, that is for something which is an incident but not an institution, is really a confusion between two ideas; it is a verbal sophistry almost in the nature of a pun. Similarly, for instance, we cannot prove the moral force of a peasantry by pointing to one peasant; we might almost as well reveal the military force of infantry by pointing to one infant.

I take it, however, that the advocates of divorce do not mean that marriage is to remain ideal only in the sense of being almost impossible. They do not mean that a faithful husband is only to be admired as a fanatic. The reasonable men among them do really mean that a divorced person shall be tolerated as something unusually unfortunate, not merely that a married person shall be admired as some thing unusually blessed and inspired. But whatever they desire, it is as well that they should realise exactly what they do; and in this case I should like to hear their criticisms in the matter of what they see. They must surely see that in England at present, as in many parts of America in the past, the new liberty is being taken in the spirit of licence as if the exception were to be the rule, or, rather, perhaps the absence of rule. This will especially be made manifest if we consider that the effect of the process is accumulative like a snowball, and returns on itself like a snowball. The obvious effect of frivolous divorce will be frivolous marriage. If people can be separated for no reason they will feel it all the easier to be united for no reason. A man might quite clearly foresee that a sensual infatuation would be fleeting, and console himself with the knowledge that the connection could be equally fleeting. There seems no particular reason why he should not elaborately calculate that he could stand a particular lady’s temper for ten months; or reckon that he would have enjoyed and exhausted her repertoire of drawing-room songs in two years. The old joke about choosing the wife to fit the furniture or the fashions might quite logically return, not as an old joke but as a new solemnity; indeed, it will be found that a new religion is generally the return of an old joke. A man might quite consistently see a woman as suited to the period of the hobble skirt, and as less suited to the threatened recurrence of the crinoline. These fancies are fantastic enough, but they are not a shade more fantastic than the facts of many a divorce controversy as urged in the divorce courts. And this is to leave out altogether the most fantastic fact of all: the winking at widespread and conspicuous collusion. Collusion has become not so much an illegal evasion as a legal fiction, and even a legal institution, as it is admirably satirised in Mr. Somerset Maugham’s brilliant play of “Home and Beauty.” The fact was very frankly brought before the public, by a man who was eminently calculated to disarm satire by sincerity. Colonel Wedgewood is a man who can never be too much honoured, by all who have any hope of popular liberties still finding champions in the midst of parliamentary corruption. He is one of the very few men alive who have shown both military and political courage; the courage of the camp and the courage of the forum. And doubtless he showed a third type of social courage, in avowing the absurd expedient which so many others are content merely to accept and employ. It is admittedly a frantic and farcical thing that a good man should find or think it necessary to pretend to commit a sin. Some of the divorce moralists seem to deduce from this that he ought really to commit the sin. They may possibly be aware, however, that there are some who do not agree with them.

For this latter fact is the next step in the speculative progress of the new morality. The divorce advocates must be well aware that modern civilisation still contains strong elements, not the least intelligent and certainly not the least vigorous, which will not accept the new respectability as a substitute for the old religious vow. The Roman Catholic Church, the Anglo-Catholic school, the conservative peasantries, and a large section of the popular life everywhere, will regard the riot of divorce and re-marriage as they would any other riot of irresponsibility. The consequence would appear to be that two different standards will appear in ordinary morality, and even in ordinary society. Instead of the old social distinction between those who are married and those who are unmarried, there will be a distinction between those who are married and those who are really married. Society might even become divided into two societies, which is perilously approximate to Disraeli’s famous exaggeration about England divided into two nations. But whether England be actually so divided or not, this note of the two nations is the real note of warning in the matter. It is in this connection perhaps, that we have to consider most gravely and doubtfully the future of our own country.

Anarchy cannot last, but anarchic communities cannot last either. Mere lawlessness cannot live, but it can destroy life. The nations of the earth always return to sanity and solidarity; but the nations which return to it first are the nations which survive. We in England cannot afford to allow our social institutions to go to pieces, as if this ancient and noble country were an ephemeral colony. We cannot afford it comparatively, even if we could afford it positively. We are surrounded by vigorous nations mainly rooted in the peasant or permanent ideals; notably in the case of France and Ireland. I know that the detested and detestably undemocratic parliamentary clique, which corrupts France as it does England, was persuaded or bribed by a Jew named Naquet to pass a crude and recent divorce law, which was full of the hatred of Christianity. But only a very superficial critic of France can be unaware that French parliamentarism is superficial. The French nation as a whole, the most rigidly respectable nation in the world, will certainly go on living by the old standards of domesticity. When Frenchmen are not Christians they are heathens; the heathens who worshipped the household gods. It might seem strange to say, for instance, that an atheist like M. Clemenceau has for his chief ideal a thing called piety. But to understand this it is only necessary to know a little Latin— and a little French.

A short time ago, as I am well aware, it would have sounded very strange to represent the old religious and peasant communities either as a model or a menace. It was counted a queer thing to say, in the days when my friends and I first said it; in the days of my youth when the republic of France and the religion of Ireland were regarded as alike ridiculous and decadent. But many things have happened since then; and it will not now be so easy to persuade even newspaper readers that Foch is a fool, either because he is a Frenchman or because he is a Catholic. The older tradition, even in the most unfashionable forms, has found champions in the most unexpected quarters. Only the other day Dr. Saleeby, a distinguished scientific critic who had made himself the special advocate of all the instruction and organisation that is called social science, 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 Bradford. He gave his testimony from an entirely rationalistic and even materialistic point of view; indeed, he carried rationalism so far as to give the preference to Roscommon because the women are still mammals. To a mind of the more traditional type it might seem sufficient to say they are still mothers. To a memory that lingers over the legends and lyrical movements of mankind, it might seem no great improvement to imagine a song that ran “My mammal bids me bind my hair,” or “I’m to be Queen of the May, mammal, I’m to be Queen of the May.” But indeed the truth to which he testified is all the more arresting, because for him it was materialistic and not mystical. The brute biological advantage, as well as other advantages, was with those for whom that truth was a truth; and it was all the more instinctive and automatic where that truth was a tradition. The sort of place where mothers are still something more than mammals is the only sort of place where they still are mammals. There the people are still healthy animals; healthy enough to hit you if you call them animals. I also have, on this merely controversial occasion, used throughout the rationalistic and not the religious appeal. But it is not unreasonable to note that the materialistic advantages are really found among those who most repudiate materialism. This one stray testimony is but a type of a thousand things of the same kind, which will convince any one with the sense of social atmospheres that the day of the peasantries is not passing but rather arriving. It is the more complex types of society that are now entangled in their own complexities. Those who tell us, with a monotonous metaphor, that we cannot put the clock back, seem to be curiously unconscious of the fact that their own clock has stopped. And there is nothing so hopeless as clockwork when it stops. A machine cannot mend itself; it requires a man to mend it; and the future lies with those who can make living laws for men and not merely dead laws for machinery. Those living laws are not to be found in the scatter-brained scepticism which is busy in the great cities, dissolving what it cannot analyse. The primary laws of man are to be found in the permanent life of man; in those things that have been common to it in every time and land, though in the highest civilisation they have reached an enrichment like that of the divine romance of Cana in Galilee. We know that many critics of such a story say that its elements are not permanent; but indeed it is the critics who are not permanent. A hundred mad dogs of heresy have worried man from the beginning; but it was always the dog that died. We know there is a school of prigs who disapprove of the wine; and there may now be a school of prigs who disapprove of the wedding. For in such a case as the story of Cana, it may be remarked that the pedants are prejudiced against the earthly elements as much as, or more than, the heavenly elements. It is not the supernatural that disgusts them, so much as the natural. And those of us who have seen all the normal rules and relations of humanity uprooted by random speculators, as if they were abnormal abuses and almost accidents, will understand why men have sought for something divine if they wished to preserve anything human. They will know why common sense, cast out from some academy of fads and fashions conducted on the lines of a luxurious madhouse, has age after age sought refuge in the high sanity of a sacrament.

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IX

CONCLUSION

This is a pamphlet and not a book; and the writer of a pamphlet not only deals with passing things, but generally with things which he hopes will pass. In that sense it is the object of a pamphlet to be out of date as soon as possible. It can only survive when it does not succeed. The successful pamphlets are necessarily dull; and though I have no great hopes of this being successful, I dare say it is dull enough for all that. It is designed merely to note certain fugitive proposals of the moment, and compare them with certain recurrent necessities of the race; but especially the necessity for some spontaneous social formation freer than that of the state. If it were more in the nature of a work of literature, with anything like an ambition of endurance, I might go deeper into the matter, and give some suggestions about the philosophy or religion of marriage, and the philosophy or religion of all these rather random departures from it. Some day perhaps I may try to write something about the spiritual or psychological quarrel between faith and fads. Here I will only say, in conclusion, that I believe the universal fallacy here is a fallacy of being universal. There is a sense in which it is really a human if heroic possibility to love everybody; and the young student will not find it a bad preliminary exercise to love somebody. But the fallacy I mean is that of a man who is not even content to love everybody, but really wishes to be everybody. He wishes to walk down a hundred roads at once; to sleep in a hundred houses at once; to live a hundred lives at once. To do something like this in the imagination is one of the occasional visions of art and poetry, to attempt it in the art of life is not only anarchy but inaction. Even in the arts it can only be the first hint and not the final fulfillment; a man cannot work at once in bronze and marble, or play the organ and the violin at the same time. The universal vision of being such a Briareus is a nightmare of nonsense even in the merely imaginative world; and ends in mere nihilism in the social world. If a man had a hundred houses, there would still be more houses than he had days in which to dream of them; if a man had a hundred wives, there would still be more women than he could ever know. He would be an insane sultan jealous of the whole human race, and even of the dead and the unborn. I believe that behind the art and philosophy of our time there is a considerable element of this bottomless ambition and this unnatural hunger; and since in these last words I am touching only lightly on things that would need much larger treatment, I will admit that the rending of the ancient roof of man is probably only a part of such an endless and empty expansion. I asked in the last chapter what those most wildly engaged in the mere dance of divorce, as fantastic as the dance of death, really expected for themselves or for their children. And in the deepest sense I think this is the answer; that they expect the impossible, that is the universal. They are not crying for the moon, which is a definite and therefore a defensible desire. They are crying for the world; and when they had it, they would want another one. In the last resort they would like to try every situation, not in fancy but in fact, but they cannot refuse any and therefore cannot resolve on any. In so far as this is the modern mood, it is a thing so deadly as to be already dead. What is vitally needed everywhere, in art as much as in ethics, in poetry as much as in politics, is choice; a creative power in the will as well as in the mind. Without that self-limitation of somebody, nothing living will ever see the light.

I

THE SUPERSTITION OF DIVORCE (1)

It is futile to talk of reform without reference to form. To take a case from my own taste and fancy, there is nothing I feel to be so beautiful and wonderful as a window. All casements are magic casements, whether they open on the foam or the front-garden; they lie close to the ultimate mystery and paradox of limitation and liberty. But if I followed my instinct towards an infinite number of windows, it would end in having no walls. It would also (it may be added incidentally) end in having no windows either; for a window makes a picture by making a picture-frame. But there is a simpler way of stating my more simple and fatal error. It is that I have wanted a window, without considering whether I wanted a house. Now many appeals are being made to us to-day on behalf of that light and liberty that might well be symbolised by windows; especially as so many of them concern the enlightenment and liberation of the house, in the sense of the home. Many quite disinterested people urge many quite reasonable considerations in the case of divorce, as a type of domestic liberation; but in the journalistic and general discussion of the matter there is far too much of the mind that works backwards and at random, in the manner of all windows and no walls. Such people say they want divorce, without asking themselves whether they want marriage. Even in order to be divorced it has generally been found necessary to go through the preliminary formality of being married; and unless the nature of this initial act be considered, we might as well be discussing haircutting for the bald or spectacles for the blind. To be divorced is to be in the literal sense unmarried; and there is no sense in a thing being undone when we do not know if it is done.

There is perhaps no worse advice, nine times out of ten, than the advice to do the work that’s nearest. It is especially bad when it means, as it generally does, removing the obstacle that’s nearest. It means that men are not to behave like men but like mice; who nibble at the thing that’s nearest. The man, like the mouse, undermines what he cannot understand. Because he himself bumps into a thing, he calls it the nearest obstacle; though the obstacle may happen to be the pillar that holds up the whole roof over his head. He industriously removes the obstacle; and in return, the obstacle removes him, and much more valuable things than he. This opportunism is perhaps the most unpractical thing in this highly unpractical world. People talk vaguely against destructive criticism; but what is the matter with this criticism is not that it destroys, but that it does not criticise. It is destruction without design. It is taking a complex machine to pieces bit by bit, in any order, without even knowing what the machine is for. And if a man deals with a deadly dynamic machine on the principle of touching the knob that’s nearest, he will find out the defects of that cheery philosophy. Now leaving many sincere and serious critics of modern marriage on one side for the moment, great masses of modern men and women, who write and talk about marriage, are thus nibbling blindly at it like an army of mice. When the reformers propose, for instance, that divorce should be obtainable after an absence of three years (the absence actually taken for granted in the first military arrangements of the late European War) their readers and supporters could seldom give any sort of logical reason for the period being three years, and not three months or three minutes. They are like people who should say “Give me three feet of dog”; and not care where the cut came. Such persons fail to see a dog as an organic entity; in other words, they cannot make head or tail of it. And the chief thing to say about such reformers of marriage is that they cannot make head or tail of it. They do not know what it is, or what it is meant to be, or what its supporters suppose it to be; they never look at it, even when they are inside it. They do the work that’s nearest; which is poking 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.

I

LA SUPERSTIZIONE DEL DIVORZIO (1)

È inutile parlare di riforma senza riferimento alla forma. Per prendere un caso dal mio gusto e dalla mia fantasia, non c’è nulla che io senta tanto bello e meraviglioso quanto una finestra. Tutte le finestre sono finestre magiche, sia che si aprano sulla spuma sia sul giardino antistante; giacciono vicine al mistero ultimo e al paradosso della limitazione e della libertà. Ma se seguissi il mio istinto verso un numero infinito di finestre, finirei col non avere pareti. Finirei anche (si può aggiungere incidentalmente) col non avere neppure finestre; poiché una finestra fa un quadro facendo una cornice. Ma c’è un modo più semplice di enunciare il mio errore più semplice e fatale. Ed è che ho desiderato una finestra, senza considerare se desiderassi una casa. Ora molti appelli ci vengono rivolti oggi a favore di quella luce e libertà che potrebbero ben essere simboleggiate dalle finestre; specialmente perché tanti di essi riguardano l’illuminazione e la liberazione della casa, nel senso del focolare. Molte persone del tutto disinteressate adducono molte considerazioni del tutto ragionevoli nel caso del divorzio, come tipo di liberazione domestica; ma nella discussione giornalistica e generale della questione c’è fin troppo di quella mente che lavora a ritroso e a caso, alla maniera del tutte finestre e nessuna parete. Tali persone dicono di volere il divorzio, senza chiedersi se vogliano il matrimonio. Persino per divorziare si è generalmente trovato necessario passare attraverso la formalità preliminare di sposarsi; e a meno che non si consideri la natura di questo atto iniziale, potremmo bene discutere di tagli di capelli per i calvi o di occhiali per i ciechi. Essere divorziati significa, in senso letterale, essere non sposati; e non ha senso che una cosa venga disfatta quando non sappiamo se sia stata fatta.

Non c’è forse peggior consiglio, nove volte su dieci, del consiglio di fare il lavoro che è più vicino. È particolarmente cattivo quando significa, come generalmente significa, rimuovere l’ostacolo più vicino. Significa che gli uomini non devono comportarsi da uomini ma da topi; che rosicchiano la cosa più vicina. L’uomo, come il topo, mina ciò che non riesce a comprendere. Poiché egli stesso urta contro una cosa, la chiama l’ostacolo più vicino; sebbene l’ostacolo possa darsi che sia il pilastro che regge tutto il tetto sopra la sua testa. Egli rimuove diligentemente l’ostacolo; e in cambio, l’ostacolo rimuove lui, e cose ben più preziose di lui. Questo opportunismo è forse la cosa più impraticabile in questo mondo altamente impraticabile. Si parla vagamente contro la critica distruttiva; ma ciò che non va in questa critica non è che essa distrugga, ma che non critichi. È distruzione senza disegno. È prendere una complessa macchina a pezzi uno per uno, in qualunque ordine, senza neppure sapere a cosa serva la macchina. E se un uomo tratta una macchina dinamica e mortale col principio di toccare la manopola più vicina, scoprirà i difetti di quell’allegra filosofia. Ora, lasciando da parte per il momento molti critici sinceri e seri del matrimonio moderno, grandi masse di uomini e donne moderni, che scrivono e parlano del matrimonio, lo stanno così rosicchiando alla cieca come un esercito di topi. Quando i riformatori propongono, per esempio, che il divorzio debba essere ottenibile dopo un’assenza di tre anni (l’assenza effettivamente data per scontata nei primi ordinamenti militari della recente Guerra europea) i loro lettori e sostenitori raramente saprebbero dare una qualche ragione logica per cui il periodo sia di tre anni, e non di tre mesi o tre minuti. Sono come persone che dicessero “Datemi tre piedi di cane”; e non si curassero di dove cada il taglio. Tali persone non riescono a vedere un cane come entità organica; in altre parole, non riescono a raccapezzarcisi. E la cosa principale da dire di tali riformatori del matrimonio è che non riescono a raccapezzarcisi. Non sanno cosa esso sia, o cosa sia inteso essere, o cosa i suoi sostenitori suppongano che sia; non lo guardano mai, nemmeno quando ci sono dentro. Fanno il lavoro che è più vicino; il che consiste nel praticare buchi nel fondo di una barca nella convinzione di stare zappando in un giardino. Questa questione di cosa una cosa sia, e se sia un giardino o una barca, appare loro astratta e accademica. Non hanno idea di quanto grande sia l’idea che attaccano; o di quanto relativamente piccoli appaiano i buchi che vi praticano.

Così, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, un uomo intelligente in altre faccende, dice che c’è soltanto un’opposizione “teologica” al divorzio, e che essa è interamente fondata su “certi testi” della Bibbia riguardo ai matrimoni. Questo è esattamente come se dicesse che la credenza nella fratellanza degli uomini fosse fondata soltanto su certi testi della Bibbia, sul fatto che tutti gli uomini sono figli di Adamo ed Eva. Milioni di contadini e di gente semplice in tutto il mondo danno per scontato che il matrimonio sia statico, senza aver mai posato gli occhi su alcun testo. Numeri di persone più moderne, specialmente dopo i recenti esperimenti in America, pensano che il divorzio sia una malattia sociale, senza essersi mai preoccupate di alcun testo. Si può sostenere che persino in costoro, o in chiunque, l’idea del matrimonio sia in ultima analisi mistica; e lo stesso si può sostenere dell’idea di fratellanza. È ovvio che marito e moglie non sono visibilmente una sola carne, nel senso di essere un solo quadrupede. È altrettanto ovvio che Paderewski e Jack Johnson non sono gemelli, e probabilmente non hanno giocato insieme sulle ginocchia della madre. C’è invero un’ammissione, o aggiunta, molto importante da cogliere qui. Ciò che è vero è questo: che se le sciocchezze di Nietzsche o di qualche altro sofista sommergessero la cultura corrente, sì da rendere di moda negare i doveri della fraternità; allora invero potrebbe trovarsi che il gruppo che ancora affermava la fraternità fosse il gruppo originario nei cui libri sacri stava il testo su Adamo ed Eva. Supponiamo che qualche professore prussiano abbia opportunamente scoperto che i Tedeschi e gli uomini inferiori discendono rispettivamente da due scimmie tanto diverse da non essere in alcun senso fratelli, ma appena cugini (tedeschi) rimossi un numero qualsiasi di volte. E supponiamo che egli proceda a rimuoverli ancor più con un’accetta, supponiamo che egli fondi su ciò una ripetizione della condotta di Caino, dicendo non tanto “Sono forse il custode di mio fratello?” quanto “È davvero mio fratello?” E supponiamo che questa più alta filosofia dell’accetta divenga prevalente nei collegi e nei circoli colti, come hanno fatto filosofie ancor più sciocche. Allora convengo che probabilmente sarà il cristiano, l’uomo che conserva il testo su Caino, a continuare ad affermare di essere ancora il fratello del professore; di essere ancora il custode del professore. Egli forse aggiungerà che, a suo parere, il professore sembra richiedere un custode.

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 quite true, and that some of us may be so perverse as to think a point in favour of the religion. But anybody who holds it at all will hold it as a philosophy, not hung on one text but on a hundred truths. Fraternity may be a sentimental metaphor; I may be suffering a delusion when I hail a Montenegrin peasant as my long lost brother. As a fact, I have my own suspicions about which of us it is that has got lost. But my delusion is not a deduction from one text, or from twenty; it is the expression of a relation that to me at least seems a reality. And what I should say about the idea of a brother, I should say about the idea of a wife.

It is supposed to be very unbusinesslike to begin at the beginning. It is called “abstract and academic principles with which we English, etc., etc.” It is still in some strange way considered unpractical to open up inquiries about anything by asking what it is. I happen to have, however, a fairly complete contempt for that sort of practicality; for I know that it is not even practical. My ideal business man would not be one who planked down fifty pounds and said “Here is hard cash; I am a plain man; it is quite indifferent to me whether I am paying a debt, or giving alms to a beggar, or buying a wild bull or a bathing machine.” Despite the infectious heartiness of his tone, I should still, in considering the hard cash, say (like a cabman) “What’s this?” I should continue to insist, priggishly, that it was a highly practical point what the money was; what it was supposed to stand for, to aim at or to declare; what was the nature of the transaction; or, in short, what the devil the man supposed he was doing. I shall therefore begin by asking, in an equally mystical manner, what in the name of God and the angels a man getting married supposes he is doing. I shall begin by asking what marriage is; and the mere question will probably reveal that the act itself, good or bad, wise or foolish, is of a certain kind; that it is not an inquiry or an experiment or an accident; it may probably dawn on us that it is a promise. It can be more fully defined by saying it is a vow.

Many will immediately answer that it is a rash vow. I am content for the moment to reply that all vows are rash vows. I am not now defending but defining vows; I am pointing out that this is a discussion about vows; first, of whether there ought to be vows; and second, of what vows ought to be. Ought a man to break a promise? Ought a man to make a promise? These are philosophic questions; but the philosophic peculiarity of divorce and re-marriage, as compared with free love and no marriage, is that a man breaks and makes a promise at the same moment. It is a highly German philosophy; and recalls the way in which the enemy wishes to celebrate his successful destruction of all treaties by signing some more. If I were breaking a promise, I would do it without promises. But I am very far from minimising the momentous and disputable nature of the vow itself. I shall try to show, in a further article, that this rash and romantic operation is the only furnace from which can come the plain hardware of humanity, the cast-iron resistance of citizenship or the cold steel of common sense; but I am not denying that the furnace is a 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.

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E questa è senza dubbio la situazione nelle controversie odierne sul divorzio e sul matrimonio. È la Chiesa cristiana che continua a sostenere con fermezza, quando il mondo per qualche ragione si è indebolito su di esso, ciò che molti altri sostengono in altri tempi. Ma anche allora è appena raccogliere i brandelli e i frammenti della questione parlare di un affidamento ai testi. Il punto vitale nel paragone è questo: che la fratellanza umana significa un’intera visione della vita, tenuta alla luce della vita, e difesa, a torto o a ragione, mediante costanti appelli a ogni aspetto della vita. La religione che la sostiene con più forza la sosterrà quando nessun altro la sostiene; questo è del tutto vero, e alcuni di noi possono essere tanto perversi da ritenerlo un punto a favore della religione. Ma chiunque la sostenga, in qualsiasi misura, la sosterrà come una filosofia, non appesa a un solo testo ma a cento verità. La fraternità può essere una metafora sentimentale; posso essere vittima di un’illusione, soffrire un delirio, quando saluto un contadino montenegrino come mio fratello perduto da tempo. In effetti, ho i miei sospetti su chi di noi due sia quello che si è perduto. Ma la mia illusione non è una deduzione da un solo testo, o da venti; è l’espressione di una relazione che a me almeno pare una realtà. E ciò che direi dell’idea di fratello, lo direi dell’idea di moglie.

Si suppone sia molto poco pratico cominciare dal principio. Lo si chiama “principi astratti e accademici coi quali noi Inglesi, eccetera, eccetera”. In qualche strano modo si considera ancora poco pratico aprire indagini su qualsiasi cosa chiedendo che cosa essa sia. Accade però che io provi un disprezzo abbastanza completo per quella sorta di praticità; poiché so che non è nemmeno pratica. Il mio uomo d’affari ideale non sarebbe uno che sbatte sul tavolo cinquanta sterline e dice “Ecco denaro contante; sono un uomo semplice; mi è del tutto indifferente se stia pagando un debito, o facendo l’elemosina a un mendicante, o comprando un toro selvatico o una macchina da bagno”. Nonostante la contagiosa cordialità del suo tono, io, considerando il denaro contante, direi comunque (come un vetturino) “Che cos’è questo?” Continuerei a insistere, pedantemente, che era un punto altamente pratico stabilire che cosa fosse quel denaro; che cosa fosse inteso a rappresentare, a mirare o a dichiarare; quale fosse la natura della transazione; o, in breve, che diamine credesse di fare quell’uomo. Comincerò dunque col chiedere, in modo altrettanto mistico, che cosa in nome di Dio e degli angeli creda di fare un uomo che si sposa. Comincerò col chiedere che cosa sia il matrimonio; e la sola domanda rivelerà probabilmente che l’atto stesso, buono o cattivo, saggio o folle, è di una certa specie; che non è un’indagine né un esperimento né un incidente; ci potrà probabilmente balenare alla mente che è una promessa. Lo si può definire più compiutamente dicendo che è un voto.

Molti risponderanno immediatamente che è un voto avventato. Mi accontento per il momento di replicare che tutti i voti sono voti avventati. Non sto ora difendendo ma definendo i voti; sto facendo notare che questa è una discussione sui voti; primo, se debbano esserci voti; e secondo, quali voti debbano esserci. Deve un uomo rompere una promessa? Deve un uomo fare una promessa? Queste sono questioni filosofiche; ma la peculiarità filosofica del divorzio e delle nuove nozze, in confronto al libero amore e al nessun matrimonio, è che un uomo rompe e fa una promessa nel medesimo istante. È una filosofia assai tedesca; e ricorda il modo in cui il nemico desidera celebrare la sua riuscita distruzione di tutti i trattati firmandone qualche altro. Se rompessi una promessa, lo farei senza promesse. Ma sono ben lontano dal minimizzare la natura momentosa e discutibile del voto stesso. Cercherò di mostrare, in un articolo successivo, che questa operazione avventata e romantica è l’unica fornace da cui possa uscire la semplice ferramenta dell’umanità, la resistenza di ghisa della cittadinanza o il freddo acciaio del buon senso; ma non nego che la fornace sia un fuoco. Il voto è una cosa violenta e unica; benché ve ne siano stati molti oltre al voto di matrimonio; voti di cavalleria, voti di povertà, voti di celibato, pagani non meno che cristiani. Ma la moda moderna è piuttosto uscita dall’abitudine; e gli uomini mancano il tipo per mancanza dei paralleli. Il modo più breve di porre il problema è chiedere se l’essere liberi includa l’essere liberi di legarsi. Poiché il voto è un appuntamento con se stessi.

Posso essere frainteso se dico, per brevità, che il matrimonio è una faccenda d’onore. Lo scettico sarà lieto di acconsentire, dicendo che è una lotta. E così è, non fosse che con se stessi; ma il punto qui è che esso ha necessariamente il tocco dell’eroico, in cui la virtù si può tradurre con virtus. Ora, riguardo al combattere, nella sua natura, c’è un’infinità implicita o almeno un’infinità potenziale. Voglio dire che la lealtà in guerra è lealtà nella sconfitta o persino nel disonore; è dovuta alla bandiera proprio nel momento in cui la bandiera quasi cade. Già applichiamo questo alla bandiera della nazione; e la questione è se sia saggio o insensato applicarlo alla bandiera della famiglia. Naturalmente, è sostenibile che non dovremmo applicarlo a nessuna delle due; che il malgoverno nella nazione o la miseria nel cittadino renderebbero la diserzione dalla bandiera un atto di ragione e non di tradimento. Dirò qui soltanto che, se questo fosse davvero il limite della lealtà nazionale, alcuni di noi avrebbero disertato la propria nazione da tempo.

—/—

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 kiss on the mere book alters the moral quality of perjury. Yet this is precisely what is implied in saying that formal re-marriage alters the moral quality of conjugal infidelity. It may have been a mark of the Dark Ages that Harold should swear on a relic, though he were afterwards forsworn. But surely those ages would have been at their darkest, if he had been content to be sworn on a relic and forsworn on another relic. Yet this is the new altar these reformers would erect for us, out of the mouldy and meaningless relics of their dead law and their dying religion.

Now we, at any rate, are talking about an idea, a thing of the intellect and the soul; which we feel to be unalterable by legal antics. We are talking about the idea of loyalty; perhaps a fantastic, perhaps only an unfashionable idea, but one we can explain and defend as an idea. Now I have already pointed out that most sane men do admit our ideal in such a case as patriotism or public spirit; the necessity of saving the state to which we belong. The patriot may revile but must not renounce his country; he must curse it to cure it, but not to wither it up. The old pagan citizens felt thus about the city; and modern nationalists feel thus about the nation. But even mere modern internationalists feel it about something; if it is only the nation of mankind. Even the humanitarian does not become a misanthrope and live in a monkey-house. Even a disappointed Collectivist or Communist does not retire into the exclusive society of beavers, because beavers are all communists of the most class-conscious solidarity. He admits the necessity of clinging to his fellow creatures, and begging them to abandon the use of the possessive pronoun; heart-breaking as his efforts must seem to him after a time. Even a Pacifist does not prefer rats to men, on the ground that the rat community is so pure from the taint of Jingoism as always to leave the sinking ship. In short, everybody recognises that there is some ship, large and small, which he ought not to leave, even when he thinks it is sinking.

We may take it then that there are institutions to which we are attached finally; just as there are others to which we are attached temporarily. We go from shop to shop trying to get what we want; but we do not go from nation to nation doing this; unless we belong to a certain group now heading very straight for Pogroms. In the first case it is the threat that we shall withdraw our custom; in the second it is the threat that we shall never withdraw ourselves; that we shall be part of the institution to the last. The time when the shop loses its customers is the time when the city needs its citizens; but it needs them as critics who will always remain to criticise. I need not now emphasise the deadly need of this double energy of internal reform and external defence; the whole towering tragedy which has eclipsed our earth in our time is but one terrific illustration of it. The hammer-strokes are coming thick and fast now; and filling the world with infernal thunders; and there is still the iron sound of something unbreakable deeper and louder than all the things that break. We may curse the kings, we may distrust the captains, we may murmur at the very existence of the armies; but we know 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 lived 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.

II

LA SUPERSTIZIONE DEL DIVORZIO (2)

Ai due o tre articoli che qui compaiono su questo argomento ho dato il titolo di Superstizione del Divorzio; e il titolo non è preso a caso. Mentre il libero amore mi sembra un’eresia, il divorzio mi sembra davvero una superstizione. Non è soltanto più superstizione del libero amore, ma molto più superstizione del rigoroso matrimonio sacramentale; e questo punto non si può rendere troppo chiaro. Sono i fautori del divorzio, non i difensori del matrimonio, ad attribuire una rigida e insensata santità a una mera cerimonia, a prescindere dal significato della cerimonia. Sono i nostri avversari, e non noi, a sperare di essere salvati dalla lettera del rito, invece che dallo spirito della realtà. Sono loro a sostenere che voto o violazione, lealtà o slealtà, possano tutti risolversi mediante un rito misterioso e magico, celebrato prima in un tribunale e poi in una chiesa o in un ufficio dello stato civile. C’è poca differenza tra le due parti del rito; se non che il tribunale è molto più ritualistico. Ma i paralleli più semplici mostreranno a chiunque che tutto ciò è pura e barbara credulità. Può darsi che sia o non sia superstizione, per un uomo, credere di dover baciare la Bibbia per mostrare che sta dicendo la verità. È certamente la più abietta superstizione, per lui, credere che, se bacia la Bibbia, qualunque cosa dica diventerà vera. Sarebbe di sicuro il più nero e ottenebrato culto della Bibbia suggerire che il mero bacio sul mero libro alteri la qualità morale dello spergiuro. Eppure è precisamente ciò che è implicito nel dire che le nuove nozze formali alterano la qualità morale dell’infedeltà coniugale. Può essere stato un segno del Medioevo che Aroldo giurasse su una reliquia, benché egli fosse poi spergiuro. Ma di sicuro quelle età sarebbero state al loro più cupo, se egli si fosse accontentato di giurare su una reliquia e spergiurare su un’altra reliquia. Eppure questo è il nuovo altare che questi riformatori vorrebbero erigere per noi, con le ammuffite e insensate reliquie della loro legge morta e della loro religione morente.

Ora noi, in ogni caso, parliamo di un’idea, di una cosa dell’intelletto e dell’anima; che sentiamo inalterabile dalle buffonate legali. Parliamo dell’idea di lealtà; forse un’idea fantastica, forse soltanto un’idea fuori moda, ma un’idea che possiamo spiegare e difendere come idea. Ora ho già fatto notare che la maggior parte degli uomini sensati ammette il nostro ideale in un caso come il patriottismo o lo spirito pubblico; la necessità di salvare lo Stato al quale apparteniamo. Il patriota può inveire ma non deve rinnegare il proprio paese; deve maledirlo per guarirlo, ma non per farlo appassire. Gli antichi cittadini pagani sentivano così riguardo alla città; e i nazionalisti moderni sentono così riguardo alla nazione. Ma persino i meri internazionalisti moderni lo sentono per qualcosa; non fosse che per la nazione dell’umanità. Persino l’umanitario non diventa un misantropo e va a vivere in una casa di scimmie. Persino un deluso collettivista o comunista non si ritira nell’esclusiva società dei castori, perché i castori sono tutti comunisti della più consapevole solidarietà di classe. Egli ammette la necessità di aggrapparsi ai propri simili, e di supplicarli di abbandonare l’uso del pronome possessivo; per quanto strazianti debbano parergli i suoi sforzi dopo un certo tempo. Persino un pacifista non preferisce i ratti agli uomini, sul fondamento che la comunità dei ratti è così pura dalla contaminazione del bellicismo da abbandonare sempre la nave che affonda. In breve, ognuno riconosce che c’è qualche nave, grande o piccola, che non dovrebbe abbandonare, anche quando pensa che stia affondando.

Possiamo dunque ritenere che vi siano istituzioni alle quali siamo attaccati definitivamente; proprio come ve ne sono altre alle quali siamo attaccati temporaneamente. Andiamo di negozio in negozio cercando di ottenere ciò che vogliamo; ma non andiamo di nazione in nazione facendo questo; a meno di non appartenere a un certo gruppo che ora si dirige molto dritto verso i pogrom. Nel primo caso è la minaccia che ritireremo la nostra clientela; nel secondo è la minaccia che non ci ritireremo mai; che faremo parte dell’istituzione fino all’ultimo. Il momento in cui il negozio perde i suoi clienti è il momento in cui la città ha bisogno dei suoi cittadini; ma ne ha bisogno come critici che sempre rimarranno a criticare. Non ho bisogno ora di sottolineare la mortale necessità di questa duplice energia di riforma interna e difesa esterna; l’intera torreggiante tragedia che ha oscurato la nostra terra ai nostri giorni non è che una tremenda illustrazione di essa. I colpi di maglio giungono ora fitti e rapidi; e riempiono il mondo di tuoni infernali; e c’è ancora il ferreo suono di qualcosa d’infrangibile, più profondo e più forte di tutte le cose che si spezzano. Possiamo maledire i re, possiamo diffidare dei capitani, possiamo mormorare contro l’esistenza stessa degli eserciti; ma sappiamo che nei giorni più oscuri che possano venire a noi, nessun uomo diserterà la bandiera.

Ora, quando passiamo dalla lealtà alla nazione alla lealtà alla famiglia, non ci può essere alcun dubbio sulla prima e più evidente differenza. La differenza è che la famiglia è una cosa assai più libera. Il voto è una lealtà volontaria; e il voto di matrimonio si distingue tra i comuni giuramenti di fedeltà per il fatto che la fedeltà è anche una scelta. L’uomo non è soltanto un cittadino della città, ma anche il fondatore e costruttore della città. Non è soltanto un soldato che serve i colori, ma ha egli stesso artisticamente scelto e combinato i colori, come i colori di un abito individuale. Se è ammissibile chiedergli di essere fedele allo Stato che lo ha fatto, non è almeno più illiberale chiedergli di essere fedele allo Stato che egli stesso ha fatto. Se la fedeltà civica è, com’è, una necessità, essa è anche in un senso speciale una costrizione. La vecchia beffa contro il patriottismo, l’ironia gilbertiana, si congratulava con l’inglese per il suo fine e schizzinoso gusto di essere nato in Inghilterra. Segnava un punto plausibile dicendo “Poiché avrebbe potuto essere un russo”; benché invero siamo vissuti fino a vedere alcune persone che parevano credere di poter essere russi quando ne avessero il capriccio. Se il buon senso considera naturale persino una tale lealtà involontaria, difficilmente possiamo stupirci se giudica ancor più naturale la lealtà volontaria. E il piccolo Stato fondato sui sessi è al tempo stesso il più volontario e il più naturale di tutti gli Stati che si governano da sé. Non è vero del signor Brown che avrebbe potuto essere un russo; ma può esser vero della signora Brown che avrebbe potuto essere una 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 that 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 survival of the family as a small and free state? The writers are content to say that Mr. Brown is uncomfortable with Mrs. Brown, and the last emancipation, for separated couples, seems only to mean that he is still uncomfortable without Mrs. Brown. These are not days in which being uncomfortable is felt as the final test of public action. For the rest, the reformers show statistically that families are in fact so scattered in our industrial anarchy, that they may as well abandon hope of finding their way home again. I am acquainted with that argument for making bad worse and I see it everywhere leading to slavery. Because London Bridge is broken down, we must assume that bridges are not meant to bridge. Because London commercialism and capitalism have copied hell, we are to continue to copy them. Anyhow, 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 earth.

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 divorce. I am not at the moment pronouncing on the moral problem of either; I am merely noting, as signs of those times, those two true or false counsels of despair; the end of life and the end of love. Other forms of freedom were being increasingly curtailed. Freedom indeed was the one thing that progressives and conservatives alike contemned. Socialists were largely concerned to prevent strikes, by State arbitration; that is, by adding another rich man to give the casting vote between rich and poor. Even in claiming what they called the right to work they tacitly surrendered the right to leave off working. Tories were preaching conscription, not so much to defend the independence of England as to destroy the independence of Englishmen. Liberals, of course, were chiefly interested in eliminating liberty, especially touching beer and betting. It was wicked to fight, and unsafe even to argue; for citing any certain and contemporary fact might land one in a libel action. As all these doors were successfully shut in our faces along the chilly and cheerless corridor of progress (with its glazed tiles) the doors of death and divorce alone stood open, or rather opened wider and wider. I do not expect the exponents of divorce to admit any similarity in the two things; yet the passing parallel is not irrelevant. It may enable them to realise the limits within which our moral instincts can, even for the sake of argument, treat this desperate remedy as a normal object of desire. Divorce is for us at best a failure, of which we are more concerned to find and cure the cause than to complete the effects; and we regard a system that produces many divorces as we do a system that drives men to drown and shoot themselves. For instance, it is perhaps the commonest complaint against the existing law that the poor cannot afford to avail themselves of it. It is an argument to which normally I should listen with special sympathy. But while I should condemn the law being a luxury, my first thought will naturally be that divorce and death are only luxuries in a rather rare sense. I should not primarily condole with the poor man on the high price of prussic acid; or on the fact that all precipices of suitable suicidal height were the private property of the landlords. There are other high prices and high precipices I should attack first. I should admit in the abstract that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander; that what is good for the rich is good for the poor; but my first and strongest impression would be that prussic acid sauce is not good for anybody. I fear I should, on the impulse of the moment, pull a poor clerk or artisan back by the coat-tails, if he were jumping over Shakespeare’s Cliff, even if Dover sands were strewn with the remains of the dukes and bankers who had already taken the plunge.

But in one respect, I will heartily concede, the cult of divorce has differed from the mere cult of death. The cult of death is dead. Those I knew in my youth as young pessimists are now aged optimists. And, what is more to the point at present, even when it was living it was limited; it was a thing of one clique in one class. We know the rule in the old comedy, that when the heroine went mad in white satin, the confidante went mad in white muslin. But when, in some tragedy of the artistic temperament, the painter committed suicide in velvet, it was never implied that the plumber must commit suicide in corduroy. It was never held that Hedda Gabler’s housemaid must die in torments on the carpet (trying as her term of service may have been); or that Mrs. Tanqueray’s butler must play the Roman fool and die on his own carving knife. That particular form of playing the fool, Roman or otherwise, was an oligarchic privilege in the decadent epoch; and even as such has largely passed with that epoch. Pessimism, which was never popular, is no longer even fashionable. A far different fate has awaited the other fashion; the other somewhat dismal form of freedom. If divorce is a disease, it is no longer to be a fashionable disease like appendicitis; it is to be made an epidemic like small-pox. As we have already seen papers and public men to-day make a vast parade of the necessity of setting the poor man free to get a divorce. Now why are they so mortally anxious that he should be free to get a divorce, and not in the least anxious that he should be free to get anything else? Why are the same people happy, nay almost hilarious, when he gets a divorce, who are horrified when he gets a drink? What becomes of his money, what becomes of his children, where he works, when he ceases to work, are less and less under his personal control. Labour Exchanges, Insurance Cards, Welfare Work, and a hundred forms of police inspection and supervision have combined for good or evil to fix him more and more strictly to a certain place in society. He is less and less allowed to go to look for a new job; why is he allowed to go to look for a new wife? He is more and more compelled to recognise a Moslem code about liquor; why is it made so easy for him to escape from his old Christian code about sex? What is the meaning of this mysterious immunity, this special permit for adultery; and why is running away with his neighbour’s wife to be the only exhilaration still left open to him? Why must he love as he pleases; when he may not even live as he pleases?

Ora non è affatto difficile vedere perché questa piccola comunità, così particolarmente libera quanto alla sua causa, debba tuttavia essere particolarmente vincolata quanto ai suoi effetti. Non è difficile vedere perché il voto fatto più liberamente sia il voto mantenuto più fermamente. Ad esso sono legate, per la natura delle cose, conseguenze così tremende che nessun contratto può offrire alcun paragone. Non c’è contratto, a meno che non sia quello che si dice firmato col sangue, che possa chiamare spiriti dal profondo immenso, o portare cherubini (o folletti) ad abitare una piccola villetta moderna. Non c’è tratto di penna che crei corpi e anime reali, o che faccia prendere vita ai personaggi di un romanzo. L’istituzione che tanto sconcerta gli intellettuali si può spiegare col mero fatto materiale (percepibile persino agli intellettuali) che i figli sono, generalmente parlando, più giovani dei loro genitori. “Finché morte non ci separi” non è una formula irrazionale, poiché costoro moriranno quasi certamente prima di vedere più della metà della cosa stupefacente (o allarmante) che hanno compiuto.

Tale è, in un abbozzo brusco e grezzo, questa cosa ovvia per coloro ai quali non è ovvia. Ora so che vi sono uomini di pensiero tra coloro che vi metterebbero mano; e mi aspetto che alcuni di questi replichino alle mie domande. Ma per il momento pongo soltanto questa domanda: se il movimento parlamentare e giornalistico per il divorzio mostri anche una traccia d’ombra di queste verità fondamentali, considerate come banchi di prova. Discute forse la natura di un voto, i limiti e gli oggetti della lealtà, la sopravvivenza della famiglia come piccolo e libero Stato? Gli scrittori si accontentano di dire che il signor Brown è a disagio con la signora Brown, e l’ultima emancipazione, per le coppie separate, sembra significare soltanto che egli è ancora a disagio senza la signora Brown. Non sono giorni in cui l’essere a disagio è sentito come la prova ultima dell’azione pubblica. Per il resto, i riformatori mostrano statisticamente che le famiglie sono di fatto così sparpagliate nella nostra anarchia industriale, che potrebbero anche abbandonare la speranza di ritrovare la via di casa. Conosco quell’argomento del rendere peggio il male e lo vedo dovunque condurre alla schiavitù. Poiché il ponte di Londra è crollato, dobbiamo supporre che i ponti non siano fatti per fare da ponte. Poiché il commercialismo e il capitalismo di Londra hanno copiato l’inferno, dobbiamo continuare a copiarli. Comunque sia, alcuni conserveranno la convinzione che l’antico ponte costruito tra le due torri del sesso sia la più degna delle grandi opere della terra.

È estremamente caratteristico dei tetri decenni prima della Guerra che le forme di libertà nelle quali essi parevano specializzarsi fossero il suicidio e il divorzio. Non mi sto in questo momento pronunciando sul problema morale né dell’uno né dell’altro; sto soltanto notando, come segni di quei tempi, quei due veri o falsi consigli di disperazione; la fine della vita e la fine dell’amore. Altre forme di libertà venivano sempre più ristrette. La libertà, invero, era l’unica cosa che progressisti e conservatori del pari disprezzavano. I socialisti si preoccupavano in gran parte di impedire gli scioperi, mediante l’arbitrato statale; cioè aggiungendo un altro uomo ricco che desse il voto decisivo tra ricchi e poveri. Persino nel rivendicare ciò che chiamavano il diritto al lavoro cedevano tacitamente il diritto di smettere di lavorare. I Tory predicavano la coscrizione, non tanto per difendere l’indipendenza dell’Inghilterra quanto per distruggere l’indipendenza degli inglesi. I liberali, naturalmente, erano soprattutto interessati a eliminare la libertà, specialmente quanto alla birra e alle scommesse. Era malvagio combattere, e malsicuro persino discutere; poiché citare un qualche fatto certo e contemporaneo poteva far finire in una causa per diffamazione. Mentre tutte queste porte venivano chiuse con successo in faccia a noi lungo il gelido e squallido corridoio del progresso (con le sue piastrelle smaltate) le porte della morte e del divorzio sole restavano aperte, o piuttosto si aprivano sempre più. Non mi aspetto che i fautori del divorzio ammettano alcuna somiglianza tra le due cose; eppure il fugace parallelo non è irrilevante. Può metterli in grado di rendersi conto dei limiti entro i quali i nostri istinti morali possono, anche solo per amor di discussione, trattare questo rimedio disperato come un normale oggetto di desiderio. Il divorzio è per noi nel migliore dei casi un fallimento, di cui ci preoccupiamo più di trovare e curare la causa che di completarne gli effetti; e consideriamo un sistema che produce molti divorzi come consideriamo un sistema che spinge gli uomini ad annegarsi e a spararsi. Per esempio, è forse la più comune lagnanza contro la legge esistente che i poveri non possano permettersi di avvalersene. È un argomento al quale normalmente presterei ascolto con speciale simpatia. Ma per quanto condannerei che la legge sia un lusso, il mio primo pensiero sarà naturalmente che il divorzio e la morte sono lussi soltanto in un senso piuttosto raro. Non condoglierei in primo luogo col povero per l’alto prezzo dell’acido prussico; o per il fatto che tutti i precipizi di conveniente altezza suicida fossero proprietà privata dei latifondisti. Ci sono altri alti prezzi e altri alti precipizi che attaccherei per primi. Ammetterei in astratto che ciò che è salsa per l’oca è salsa per il papero; che ciò che è buono per il ricco è buono per il povero; ma la mia prima e più forte impressione sarebbe che la salsa all’acido prussico non è buona per nessuno. Temo che, sull’impulso del momento, tirerei indietro per le falde della giacca un povero impiegato o artigiano, se stesse saltando dalla Rupe di Shakespeare, anche se le sabbie di Dover fossero cosparse dei resti dei duchi e dei banchieri che avevano già fatto il gran salto.

Ma sotto un aspetto, lo concederò di cuore, il culto del divorzio si è distinto dal mero culto della morte. Il culto della morte è morto. Quelli che conoscevo in gioventù come giovani pessimisti sono ora attempati ottimisti. E, ciò che più conta al presente, persino quando era vivo era limitato; era cosa di una sola cricca in una sola classe. Conosciamo la regola nella vecchia commedia, che quando l’eroina impazziva in raso bianco, la confidente impazziva in mussola bianca. Ma quando, in qualche tragedia del temperamento artistico, il pittore si suicidava in velluto, non si sottintendeva mai che l’idraulico dovesse suicidarsi in fustagno. Non si è mai sostenuto che la cameriera di Hedda Gabler dovesse morire tra i tormenti sul tappeto (per quanto arduo possa essere stato il suo periodo di servizio); o che il maggiordomo della signora Tanqueray dovesse fare il folle alla romana e morire sul proprio trinciante. Quella particolare forma di fare il folle, alla romana o altrimenti, era un privilegio oligarchico nell’epoca decadente; e persino come tale è in gran parte passata con quell’epoca. Il pessimismo, che non fu mai popolare, non è più neppure di moda. Una sorte assai diversa ha atteso l’altra moda; l’altra forma alquanto lugubre di libertà. Se il divorzio è una malattia, non dev’essere più una malattia alla moda come l’appendicite; dev’essere resa un’epidemia come il vaiolo. Come già abbiamo visto, giornali e uomini pubblici oggi fanno grande sfoggio della necessità di rendere il povero libero di ottenere un divorzio. Ora, perché sono così mortalmente ansiosi che egli sia libero di ottenere un divorzio, e per nulla ansiosi che egli sia libero di ottenere qualsiasi altra cosa? Perché le stesse persone sono felici, anzi quasi ilari, quando egli ottiene un divorzio, loro che inorridiscono quando egli ottiene da bere? Che ne sia del suo denaro, che ne sia dei suoi figli, dove egli lavori, quando cessi di lavorare, sono cose sempre meno sotto il suo controllo personale. Uffici di collocamento, tessere assicurative, opere assistenziali, e cento forme di ispezione e sorveglianza di polizia si sono combinate, nel bene o nel male, per fissarlo sempre più rigidamente a un certo posto nella società. Gli è sempre meno permesso di andare a cercare un nuovo impiego; perché gli è permesso di andare a cercare una nuova moglie? È sempre più costretto a riconoscere un codice musulmano riguardo ai liquori; perché gli è reso così facile sfuggire al suo vecchio codice cristiano riguardo al sesso? Qual è il significato di questa misteriosa immunità, di questo speciale permesso di adulterio; e perché il fuggire con la moglie del vicino dev’essere l’unica euforia ancora aperta a lui? Perché deve amare come gli aggrada; quando non gli è permesso neppure di vivere come gli aggrada?

The answer is, I regret to say, that this social campaign, in most though by no means all of its most prominent campaigners, relies in this matter on a very smug and pestilent piece of cant. There are some advocates of democratic divorce who are really advocates of general democratic freedom; but they are the exceptions; I might say, with all respect, that they are the dupes. The omnipresence of the thing in the press and in political society is due to a motive precisely opposite to the motive professed. The modern rulers, who are simply the rich men, are really quite consistent in their attitude to the poor man. It is the same spirit which takes away his children under the pretence of order, which takes away his wife under the pretence of liberty. That which wishes, in the words of the comic song, to break up the happy home, is primarily anxious not to break up the much more unhappy factory. Capitalism, of course, is at war with the family, for the same reason which has led to its being at war with the Trade Union. This indeed is the only sense in which it is true that capitalism is connected with individualism. Capitalism believes in collectivism for itself and individualism for its enemies. It desires its victims to be individuals, or (in other words) to be atoms. For the word atom, in its clearest meaning (which is none too clear) might be translated as “individual.” If there be any bond, if there be any brotherhood, if there be any class loyalty or domestic discipline, by which the poor can help the poor, these emancipators will certainly strive to loosen that bond or lift that discipline in the most liberal fashion. If there be such a brotherhood, these individualists will redistribute it in the form of individuals; or in other words smash it to atoms.

The masters of modern plutocracy know what they are about. They are making no mistake; they can be cleared of the slander of inconsistency. A very profound and precise instinct has let them to single out the human household as the chief obstacle to their inhuman progress. Without the family we are helpless before the State, which in our modern case is the Servile State. To use a military metaphor, the family is the only formation in which the charge of the rich can be repulsed. It is a force that forms twos as soldiers form fours; and, in every peasant country, has stood in the square house or the square plot of land as infantry have stood in squares against cavalry. How this force operates this, and why, I will try to explain in the last of these articles. But it is when it is most nearly ridden down by the horsemen of pride and privilege, as in Poland or Ireland, when the battle grows most desperate and the hope most dark, that men begin to understand why that wild oath in its beginnings was flung beyond the bonds of the world; and what would seem as passing as a vision is made permanent as a vow.

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La risposta è, mi duole dirlo, che questa campagna sociale, nella maggior parte anche se non certo in tutti i suoi più eminenti fautori, si regge in questa materia su una ciancia tanto compiaciuta quanto pestilenziale. Vi sono alcuni sostenitori del divorzio democratico che in realtà sono sostenitori di una generale libertà democratica; ma sono l’eccezione; direi, con tutto il rispetto, che sono gli ingannati. L’onnipresenza della cosa sulla stampa e nella società politica è dovuta a un movente esattamente contrario a quello dichiarato. I governanti moderni, che altro non sono se non gli uomini ricchi, sono in verità del tutto coerenti nel loro atteggiamento verso l’uomo povero. È lo stesso spirito che gli sottrae i figli col pretesto dell’ordine, e che gli sottrae la moglie col pretesto della libertà. Ciò che desidera, per dirla con le parole della canzonetta comica, spezzare il felice focolare domestico, è anzitutto ansioso di non spezzare la ben più infelice fabbrica. Il capitalismo, s’intende, è in guerra con la famiglia, per la stessa ragione che l’ha portato a essere in guerra col Sindacato Union. Questo, in effetti, è l’unico senso in cui è vero che il capitalismo è connesso all’individualismo. Il capitalismo crede nel collettivismo per sé e nell’individualismo per i suoi nemici. Vuole che le sue vittime siano individui, ovvero (in altre parole) che siano atomi. Poiché la parola atomo, nel suo significato più chiaro (che non è affatto troppo chiaro) si potrebbe tradurre con “individuo”. Se esiste un vincolo, se esiste una fratellanza, se esiste una qualche lealtà di classe o disciplina domestica, per cui il povero possa aiutare il povero, questi emancipatori certamente si adopereranno per allentare quel vincolo o rimuovere quella disciplina nel modo più liberale. Se esiste una tale fratellanza, questi individualisti la ridistribuiranno sotto forma di individui; ovvero, in altre parole, la ridurranno in atomi.

I padroni della plutocrazia moderna sanno bene ciò che fanno. Non commettono errore alcuno; possono essere scagionati dalla calunnia dell’incoerenza. Un istinto profondissimo e precisissimo li ha portati a individuare il focolare umano quale principale ostacolo al loro disumano progresso. Senza la famiglia siamo impotenti dinanzi allo Stato, che nel nostro caso moderno è lo Stato Servile. Per usare una metafora militare, la famiglia è l’unica formazione in cui la carica dei ricchi può essere respinta. È una forza che si dispone a due a due come i soldati si dispongono a quattro; e, in ogni paese contadino, ha resistito nella casa quadrata o nel quadrato appezzamento di terra come la fanteria ha resistito in quadrato contro la cavalleria. Come operi questa forza, e perché, cercherò di spiegarlo nell’ultimo di questi articoli. Ma è quando essa è più prossima a essere calpestata dai cavalieri della superbia e del privilegio, come in Polonia o in Irlanda, quando la battaglia si fa più disperata e la speranza più oscura, che gli uomini cominciano a comprendere perché quel giuramento selvaggio, nei suoi esordi, fu scagliato oltre i confini del mondo; e ciò che parrebbe fugace come una visione è reso permanente come un voto.

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III

THE SUPERSTITION OF DIVORCE (3)

There has long been a curiously consistent attempt to conceal the fact that France is a Christian country. There have been Frenchmen in the plot, no doubt, 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 writer. I began to read Balzac long after I had read the admirers of Balzac; and they had never given me a hint of this truth. I had read that his books were bound in yellow and “quite impudently French”; though I may have been cloudy about why being French should be impudent in a Frenchman. I had read the truer description of “the grimy wizard of the Comedie Humaine,” and have lived to learn the truth of it; Balzac certainly is a genius of the type of that artist he himself describes, who could draw a broomstick so that one knew it had swept the room after a murder. The furniture of Balzac is more alive than the figures of many dramas. For this I was prepared; but not for a certain spiritual assumption which I recognised at once as a historical phenomenon. The morality of a great writer is not the morality he teaches, but the morality he takes for granted. The Catholic type of Christian ethics runs through Balzac’s books, exactly as the Puritan type of Christian ethics runs through Bunyan’s books. What his professed opinions were I do not know, any more than I know Shakespeare’s; but I know that both those great creators of a multitudinous world made it, as compared with other and later writers, on the same fundamental moral plan as the universe of Dante. There can be no doubt about it for any one who can apply as a test the truth I have mentioned; that the fundamental things in a man are not the things he explains, but rather the things he forgets to explain. But here and there Balzac does explain; and with that intellectual concentration Mr. George Moore has acutely observed in that novelist when he is a theorist. And the other day I found in one of Balzac’s novels this passage; which, whether or no it would precisely hit Mr. George Moore’s mood at this moment, strikes me as a perfect prophecy of this epoch, and might also be a motto for this book: “With the solidarity of the family society has lost that elemental force which Montesquieu defined and called ‘honour.’ Society has isolated its members the better to govern them, and has divided in order to weaken.”

Throughout our youth and the years before the War, the current criticism followed Ibsen in describing the domestic system as a doll’s house and the domestic woman as a doll. Mr. Bernard Shaw varied the metaphor by saying that mere custom kept the woman in the home as it keeps the parrot in the cage; and the plays and tales of the period made vivid sketches of a woman who also resembled a parrot in other particulars, rich in raiment, shrill in accent and addicted to saying over and over again what she had been taught to say. Mr. Granville Barker, the spiritual child of Mr. Bernard Shaw, commented in his clever play of “The Voysey Inheritance” on tyranny, hypocrisy and boredom, as the constituent elements of a “happy English home.” Leaving the truth of this aside for the moment, it will be well to insist that the conventionality thus criticised would be even more characteristic of a happy French home. It is not the Englishman’s house, but the Frenchman’s house that is his castle. It might be further added, touching the essential ethical view of the sexes at least, that the Irishman’s house is his castle; though it has been for some centuries a besieged castle. Anyhow, those conventions which were remarked as making domesticity dull, narrow and unnaturally meek and submissive, are particularly powerful among the Irish and the French. From this it will surely be easy, for any lucid and logical thinker, to deduce the fact that the French are dull and narrow, and that the Irish are unnaturally meek and submissive. Mr. Bernard Shaw, being an Irishman who lives among English men, may be conveniently taken as the type of the difference; and it will no doubt be found that the political friends of Mr. Shaw, among Englishmen, will be of a wilder revolutionary type than those whom he would have found among Irishmen. We are in a position to compare the meekness of the Fenians with the fury of the Fabians. This deadening monogamic ideal may even, in a larger sense define and distinguish all the flat subserviency of Clare from all the flaming revolt of Clapham. Nor need we now look far to understand why revolutions have been unknown in the history of France; or why they happen so persistently in the vaguer politics of England. This rigidity and respectability must surely be the explanation of all that incapacity for any civil experiment or explosion, which has always marked that sleepy hamlet of very private houses which we call the city of Paris. But the same things are true not only of Parisians but of peasants; they are even true of other peasants in the great Alliance. Students of Serbian traditions tell us that the peasant literature lays a special and singular curse on the violation of marriage; and this may well explain the prim and sheepish pacifism complained of in that people.

In plain words, there is clearly something wrong in the calculation by which it was proved that a housewife must be as much a servant as a housemaid; or which exhibited the domesticated man as being as gentle as the primrose or as conservative as the Primrose League. It is precisely those who have been conservative about the family who have been revolutionary about the state. 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 reforms. Nor is there seriously any difficulty in discovering the cause of this. It is simply that in such a society the government, in dealing with the family, deals with something almost as permanent and self-renewing as itself. There can be a continuous family policy, like a continuous foreign policy. In peasant countries the family fights, it may almost be said that the farm fights. I do not mean merely that it riots in evil and exceptional times; though this is not unimportant. It was a savage but a sane feature when, in the Irish evictions, the women poured hot water from the windows; it was part of a final falling back on private tools as public weapons. That sort of thing is not only war to the knife, but almost war to the fork and spoon. It was in this grim sense perhaps that Parnell, in that mysterious pun, said that Kettle was a household word in Ireland (it certainly ought to be after its subsequent glories), and in a more general sense it is certain that meddling with the housewife will ultimately mean getting into hot water. But it is not of such crises of bodily struggle that I speak, but of a steady and peaceful pressure from below of a thousand families upon the framework of government. For this a certain spirit of defence and enclosure is essential; and even feudalism was right in feeling that any such affair of honour must be a family affair. It was a true artistic instinct that pictured the pedigree on a coat that protects the body. The free peasant has arms if he has not armorial bearings. He has not an escutcheon; but he has a shield. Nor do I see why, in a freer and happier society than the present, or even the past, it should not be a blazoned shield. For that is true of pedigree which is true of property; the wrong is not in its being imposed on men, but rather in its being denied to them. Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists; and so aristocracy sins not in planting a family tree, but in not planting a family forest.

Anyhow, it is found in practice that the domestic citizen can stand a siege, even by the State; because he has those who will stand by him through thick and thin—especially thin. Now those who hold that the State can be made fit to own all and administer all, can consistently disregard this argument; but it may be said with all respect that the world is more and more disregarding them. If we could find a perfect machine, and a perfect man to work it, it might be a good argument for State Socialism, though an equally good argument for personal despotism. But most of us, I fancy, are now agreed that something of that social pressure from below which we call freedom is vital to the health of the State; and this it is which cannot be fully exercised by individuals, but only by groups and traditions. Such groups have been many; there have been monasteries; there may be guilds; but there is only one type among them which all human beings have a spontaneous and omnipresent inspiration to build for themselves; and this type is the family.

I had intended this article to be the last of those outlining the elements of this debate; but I shall have to add a short concluding section on the way in which all this is missed in the practical (or rather unpractical) proposals about divorce. Here I will only say that they suffer from the modern and morbid weaknesses of always sacrificing the normal to the abnormal. As a fact the “tyranny, hypocrisy and boredom” complained of are not domesticity, but the decay of domesticity. The case of that particular complaint, in Mr. Granville Barker’s play, is itself a proof. The whole point of “The Voysey Inheritance” was that there was no Voysey inheritance. The only heritage of that family was a highly dishonourable debt. Naturally their family affections had decayed when their whole ideal of property and probity had decayed; and there was little love as well as little honour among thieves. It has yet to be proved that they would have been as much bored if they had had a positive and not a negative heritage; and had worked a farm instead of a fraud. And the experience of mankind points the other way.

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III

LA SUPERSTIZIONE DEL DIVORZIO (3)

C’è stato a lungo un tentativo curiosamente coerente di celare il fatto che la Francia è un paese cristiano. Ci sono stati francesi nella congiura, senza dubbio, e senza dubbio ci sono stati francesi—benché io stesso abbia trovato soltanto inglesi—nel tentativo derivato di celare il fatto che Balzac fosse uno scrittore cristiano. Cominciai a leggere Balzac molto tempo dopo aver letto gli ammiratori di Balzac; ed essi non mi avevano mai dato un accenno di questa verità. Avevo letto che i suoi libri erano rilegati in giallo e “del tutto sfrontatamente francesi”; benché possa essere stato nel vago sul perché l’essere francese dovesse essere sfrontato in un francese. Avevo letto la più veritiera descrizione del “sudicio mago della Comédie Humaine”, e sono vissuto per apprenderne la verità; Balzac è certamente un genio del tipo di quell’artista che egli stesso descrive, capace di disegnare un manico di scopa così che si sapeva che aveva spazzato la stanza dopo un omicidio. Il mobilio di Balzac è più vivo delle figure di molti drammi. A questo ero preparato; ma non a una certa assunzione spirituale che riconobbi subito come fenomeno storico. La moralità di un grande scrittore non è la moralità che egli insegna, ma la moralità che egli dà per scontata. Il tipo cattolico dell’etica cristiana attraversa i libri di Balzac, esattamente come il tipo puritano dell’etica cristiana attraversa i libri di Bunyan. Quali fossero le sue opinioni professate non lo so, non più di quanto conosca quelle di Shakespeare; ma so che entrambi quei grandi creatori di un mondo moltitudinario lo fecero, in confronto ad altri e più tardi scrittori, sul medesimo fondamentale piano morale dell’universo di Dante. Non ci può essere alcun dubbio su ciò per chiunque sappia applicare come banco di prova la verità che ho menzionato; che le cose fondamentali in un uomo non sono le cose che egli spiega, ma piuttosto le cose che dimentica di spiegare. Ma qua e là Balzac spiega davvero; e con quella concentrazione intellettuale che il signor George Moore ha acutamente osservato in quel romanziere quando è teorico. E l’altro giorno ho trovato in uno dei romanzi di Balzac questo brano; il quale, che colga o no precisamente l’umore del signor George Moore in questo momento, mi colpisce come una perfetta profezia di quest’epoca, e potrebbe anche essere un motto per questo libro: “Con la solidarietà della famiglia la società ha perduto quella forza elementare che Montesquieu definì e chiamò ‘onore.’ La società ha isolato i suoi membri per meglio governarli, e ha diviso per indebolire.”

Per tutta la nostra giovinezza e gli anni prima della Guerra, la critica corrente seguiva Ibsen nel descrivere il sistema domestico come una casa di bambole e la donna domestica come una bambola. Il signor Bernard Shaw variava la metafora dicendo che la mera consuetudine teneva la donna nel focolare come tiene il pappagallo nella gabbia; e le opere teatrali e i racconti del periodo davano vividi schizzi di una donna che somigliava a un pappagallo anche in altri particolari, ricca di vesti, stridula d’accento e incline a ripetere più e più volte ciò che le era stato insegnato a dire. Il signor Granville Barker, il figlio spirituale del signor Bernard Shaw, commentava nella sua abile commedia “L’eredità dei Voysey” la tirannia, l’ipocrisia e la noia, come elementi costitutivi di un “felice focolare inglese”. Lasciando da parte per il momento la verità di ciò, sarà bene insistere che la convenzionalità così criticata sarebbe ancor più caratteristica di un felice focolare francese. Non è la casa dell’inglese, ma la casa del francese a essere il suo castello. Si potrebbe aggiungere inoltre, riguardo almeno alla veduta etica essenziale dei sessi, che la casa dell’irlandese è il suo castello; benché sia stata per alcuni secoli un castello assediato. Comunque sia, quelle convenzioni che si notavano come rendenti la domesticità cupa, angusta e innaturalmente mite e sottomessa, sono particolarmente potenti tra gli irlandesi e i francesi. Da ciò sarà di sicuro facile, per qualsiasi pensatore lucido e logico, dedurre il fatto che i francesi sono cupi e angusti, e che gli irlandesi sono innaturalmente miti e sottomessi. Il signor Bernard Shaw, essendo un irlandese che vive tra inglesi, può essere convenientemente preso come il tipo della differenza; e si troverà senza dubbio che gli amici politici del signor Shaw, tra gli inglesi, saranno di un tipo rivoluzionario più selvaggio di quelli che egli avrebbe trovato tra gli irlandesi. Siamo in grado di paragonare la mitezza dei Feniani con la furia dei Fabiani. Questo mortifero ideale monogamico può persino, in un senso più largo, definire e distinguere tutta la piatta subordinazione di Clare da tutta la fiammeggiante rivolta di Clapham. Né dobbiamo ora guardare lontano per comprendere perché le rivoluzioni siano state sconosciute nella storia della Francia; o perché avvengano così persistentemente nella più vaga politica dell’Inghilterra. Questa rigidità e rispettabilità dev’essere di sicuro la spiegazione di tutta quell’incapacità per qualsiasi esperimento o esplosione civile, che ha sempre contraddistinto quel sonnolento borgo di case assai private che chiamiamo la Città di Parigi. Ma le stesse cose sono vere non soltanto dei parigini ma dei contadini; sono vere persino di altri contadini nella grande Alleanza. Gli studiosi delle tradizioni serbe ci dicono che la letteratura contadina getta una speciale e singolare maledizione sulla violazione del matrimonio; e questo può ben spiegare il pacifismo compìto e pecoresco lamentato in quel popolo.

In parole povere, c’è chiaramente qualcosa di sbagliato nel calcolo mediante il quale si dimostrava che una massaia dev’essere serva tanto quanto una domestica; o che esibiva l’uomo addomesticato come tanto gentile quanto la primula o tanto conservatore quanto la Primrose League. Sono precisamente coloro che sono stati conservatori riguardo alla famiglia ad essere stati rivoluzionari riguardo allo Stato. Coloro che vengono biasimati per la bigotteria o la borghese compiacenza delle loro convenzioni di matrimonio sono in realtà quelli biasimati per l’irrequietezza e la violenza delle loro riforme politiche. Né c’è seriamente alcuna difficoltà nello scoprire la causa di ciò. È semplicemente che in una tale società il governo, nel trattare con la famiglia, tratta con qualcosa di quasi altrettanto permanente e capace di rinnovarsi da sé quanto esso stesso. Ci può essere una politica familiare continua, come una politica estera continua. Nei paesi contadini la famiglia combatte, si può quasi dire che la fattoria combatte. Non intendo soltanto che essa si ribella in tempi cattivi ed eccezionali; benché ciò non sia senza importanza. Fu un tratto selvaggio ma sano quando, negli sfratti irlandesi, le donne versavano acqua bollente dalle finestre; era parte di un ripiego finale su strumenti privati come armi pubbliche. Quella sorta di cosa non è soltanto guerra al coltello, ma quasi guerra alla forchetta e al cucchiaio. Fu in questo cupo senso forse che Parnell, in quel misterioso gioco di parole, disse che Kettle era una parola di casa in Irlanda (dovrebbe certamente esserlo dopo le sue glorie successive), e in un senso più generale è certo che l’immischiarsi con la massaia significherà alla fine cacciarsi in acqua bollente. Ma non è di tali crisi di lotta corporea che parlo, bensì di una pressione costante e pacifica dal basso di mille famiglie sull’intelaiatura del governo. Per questo è essenziale un certo spirito di difesa e di recinto; e persino il feudalesimo aveva ragione nel sentire che ogni simile affare d’onore dovesse essere un affare di famiglia. Fu un vero istinto artistico quello che raffigurò il lignaggio su un giubbone che protegge il corpo. Il libero contadino ha armi se non ha insegne araldiche. Non ha uno scudo gentilizio; ma ha uno scudo. Né vedo perché, in una società più libera e più felice della presente, o persino del passato, non dovrebbe essere uno scudo blasonato. Poiché ciò che è vero della proprietà è vero del lignaggio; il torto non sta nell’esser esso imposto agli uomini, ma piuttosto nell’esser loro negato. Troppo capitalismo non significa troppi capitalisti, ma troppo pochi capitalisti; e così l’aristocrazia pecca non nel piantare un albero genealogico, ma nel non piantare una foresta genealogica.

Comunque sia, si trova nella pratica che il cittadino domestico può sostenere un assedio, persino da parte dello Stato; perché ha coloro che gli staranno accanto nella buona e nella cattiva sorte—specialmente nella cattiva. Ora coloro che sostengono che lo Stato può esser reso atto a possedere tutto e amministrare tutto, possono coerentemente ignorare questo argomento; ma si può dire con tutto il rispetto che il mondo li ignora sempre più. Se potessimo trovare una macchina perfetta, e un uomo perfetto per farla funzionare, potrebbe essere un buon argomento per il socialismo di Stato, benché un argomento altrettanto buono per il dispotismo personale. Ma la maggior parte di noi, immagino, è ora d’accordo che qualcosa di quella pressione sociale dal basso che chiamiamo libertà è vitale per la salute dello Stato; e questo è ciò che non può essere pienamente esercitato dagli individui, ma soltanto da gruppi e tradizioni. Tali gruppi sono stati molti; ci sono stati monasteri; ci possono essere gilde; ma c’è un solo tipo tra essi che tutti gli esseri umani hanno una spontanea e onnipresente ispirazione a costruire per sé; e questo tipo è la famiglia.

Avevo inteso che questo articolo fosse l’ultimo di quelli che delineano gli elementi di questo dibattito; ma dovrò aggiungere una breve sezione conclusiva sul modo in cui tutto ciò viene mancato nelle proposte pratiche (o piuttosto impratiche) riguardo al divorzio. Qui dirò soltanto che esse soffrono delle moderne e morbose debolezze del sacrificare sempre il normale all’anormale. Di fatto la “tirannia, ipocrisia e noia” di cui ci si lagna non sono la domesticità, ma il decadimento della domesticità. Il caso di quella particolare lagnanza, nella commedia del signor Granville Barker, è esso stesso una prova. Tutto il punto de “L’eredità dei Voysey” era che non c’era alcuna eredità Voysey. L’unica eredità di quella famiglia era un debito altamente disonorevole. Naturalmente i loro affetti familiari si erano decomposti quando tutto il loro ideale di proprietà e probità si era decomposto; e c’era poco amore non meno che poco onore tra i ladri. Resta ancora da provare che sarebbero stati altrettanto annoiati se avessero avuto un’eredità positiva e non negativa; e avessero lavorato una fattoria invece che una frode. E l’esperienza dell’umanità indica il senso opposto.

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IV

THE SUPERSTITION OF DIVORCE (4)

I have touched before now on a famous or infamous Royalist who suggested that the people should eat grass; an unfortunate remark perhaps for a Royalist to make; since the regimen is only recorded of a Royal Personage. But there was certainly a simplicity in the solution worthy of a sultan or even a savage chief; and it is this touch of autocratic innocence on which I have mainly insisted touching the social reforms of our day, and especially the social reform known as divorce. I am primarily more concerned with the arbitrary method than with the anarchic result. Very much as the old tyrant would turn any number of men out to grass, so the new tyrant would turn any number of women into grass-widows. Anyhow, to vary the legendary symbolism, it never seems to occur to the king in this fairy tale that the gold crown on his head is a less, and not a more, sacred and settled ornament than the gold ring on the woman’s finger. This change is being achieved by the summary and even secret government which we now suffer; and this would be the first point against it, even if it were really an emancipation; and it is only in form an emancipation. I will not anticipate the details of its defence, which can be offered by others, but I will here conclude for the present by roughly suggesting the practical defences of divorce, as generally given just at present, under four heads. And I will only ask the reader to note that they all have one thing in common; the fact that each argument is also used for all that social reform which plain men are already calling slavery.

First, it is very typical of the latest practical proposals that they are concerned with the case of those who are already separated, and the steps they must take to be divorced. There is a spirit penetrating all our society to-day by which the exception is allowed to alter the rule; the exile to deflect patriotism, the orphan to depose parenthood, and even the widow or, in this case as we have seen the grass widow, to destroy the position of the wife. There is a sort of symbol of this tendency in that mysterious and unfortunate nomadic nation which has been allowed to alter so many things, from a crusade in Russia to a cottage in South Bucks. We have been told to treat the wandering Jew as a pilgrim, while we still treat the wandering Christian as a vagabond. And yet the latter is at least trying to get home, like Ulysses; whereas the former is, if anything, rather fleeing from home, like Cain. He who is detached, disgruntled, non descript, intermediate is everywhere made the excuse for altering what is common, corporate, traditional and popular. And the alteration is always for the worse. The mermaid never becomes more womanly, but only more fishy. The centaur never becomes more manly, but only more horsy. The Jew cannot really internationalise Christendom; he can only denationalise Christendom. The proletarian does not find it easy to become a small proprietor; he is finding it far easier to become a slave. So the unfortunate man, who cannot tolerate the woman he has chosen from all the women in the world, is not encouraged to return to her and tolerate her, but encouraged to choose another woman whom he may in due course refuse to tolerate. And in all these cases the argument is the same; that the man in the intermediate state is unhappy. Probably he is unhappy, since he is abnormal; but the point is that he is permitted to loosen the universal bond which has kept millions of others normal. Because he has himself got into a hole, he is allowed to burrow in it like a rabbit and undermine a whole countryside.

Next we have, as we always have touching such crude experiments, an argument from the example of other countries, and especially of new countries. Thus the Eugenists tell me solemnly that there have been very successful Eugenic experiments in America. And they rigidly retain their solemnity (while refusing with many rebukes to believe in mine) when I tell them that one of the Eugenic experiments in America is a chemical experiment; which consists of changing a black man into the allotropic form of white ashes. It is really an exceedingly Eugenic experiment; since its chief object is to discourage an inter-racial mixture of blood which is not desired. But I do not like this American experiment, however American; and I trust and believe that it is not typically American at all. It represents, I conceive, only one element in the complexity of the great democracy; and goes along with other evil elements; so that I am not at all surprised that the same strange social sections, which permit a human being to be burned alive, also permit the exalted science of Eugenics. It is the same in the milder matter of liquor laws; and we are told that certain rather crude colonials have established prohibition Laws, which they try to evade; just as we are told they have established divorce laws, which they are now trying to repeal. For in this case of divorce, at least, the argument from distant precedents has recoiled crushingly upon itself. There is already an agitation for less divorce in America, even while there is an agitation for more divorce in England.

Again, when an argument is based on a need of population, it will be well if those supporting it realise where it may carry them. It is exceedingly doubtful whether population is one of the advantages of divorce; but there is no doubt that it is one of the advantages of polygamy. It is already used in Germany as an argument for polygamy. But the very word will teach us to look even beyond Germany for something yet more remote and repulsive. Mere population, along with a sort of polygamous anarchy, will not appear even as a practical ideal to any one who considers, for instance, how consistently Europe has held the headship of the human race, in face of the chaotic myriads of Asia. If population were the chief test of progress and efficiency, China would long ago have proved itself the most progressive and efficient state. 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 comes. “Man is a weed in those regions.” Many Europeans, fearing for the garden of the world, have fancied that in some future fatality those weeds may spring up and choke it. But no Europeans have really wished that the flowers should become like the weeds. Even if it were true, therefore, that the loosening of the tie necessarily increased the population; even if this were not contradicted, as it is, by the facts of many countries, we should have strong historical grounds for not accepting the deduction. We should still be suspicious of the paradox that we may encourage large families by abolishing the family.

Lastly, I believe it is part of the defence of the new proposal that even its defenders have found its principle a little too crude. I hear they have added provisions which modify the principle; and which seem to be in substance, first, that a man shall be made responsible for a money payment to the wife he deserts, and second, that the matter shall once again be submitted in some fashion to some magistrate. For my purpose here, it is enough to note that there is something of the unmistakable savour of the sociology we resist, in these two touching acts of faith, in a cheque-book and in a lawyer. Most of the fashionable reformers of marriage would be faintly shocked at any suggestion that a poor old charwoman might possibly refuse such money, or that a good kind magistrate might not have the right to give such advice. For the reformers of marriage are very respectable people, with some honourable exceptions; and nothing could fit more smoothly into the rather greasy groove of their respectability than the suggestion that treason is best treated with the damages, gentlemen, heavy damages, of Mr. Serjeant Buzfuz; or that tragedy is best treated by the spiritual arbitrament of Mr. Nupkins.

One word should be added to this hasty sketch of the elements of the case. I have deliberately left out the loftiest aspect and argument, that which sees marriage as a divine institution; and that for the logical reason that those who believe in this would not believe in divorce; and I am arguing with those who do believe in divorce. I do not ask them to assume the worth of my creed or any creed; and I could wish they did not so often ask me to assume the worth of their worthless, poisonous plutocratic modern society. But if it could be shown, as I think it can, that a long historical view and a patient political experience can at last accumulate solid scientific evidence of the vital need of such a vow, then I can conceive no more tremendous tribute than this, to any faith, which made a flaming affirmation from the darkest beginnings, of what the latest enlightenment can only slowly discover in the end.

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IV

LA SUPERSTIZIONE DEL DIVORZIO (4)

Ho già accennato in altre occasioni a un famoso o famigerato realista che suggerì che il popolo mangiasse erba; osservazione sfortunata forse per un realista da farsi; giacché quel regime è registrato soltanto di un Personaggio Reale. Ma c’era certamente una semplicità nella soluzione degna di un sultano o persino di un capo selvaggio; ed è questo tocco di innocenza autocratica su cui ho principalmente insistito riguardo alle riforme sociali dei nostri giorni, e specialmente la riforma sociale nota come divorzio. Mi preoccupa principalmente più il metodo arbitrario che il risultato anarchico. Proprio come il vecchio tiranno avrebbe mandato al pascolo un numero qualsiasi di uomini, così il nuovo tiranno trasformerebbe un numero qualsiasi di donne in vedove bianche. Comunque sia, per variare il simbolismo leggendario, non sembra mai venire in mente al re di questa fiaba che la corona d’oro sul suo capo è un ornamento meno, e non più, sacro e stabile dell’anello d’oro al dito della donna. Questo mutamento viene attuato dal governo sommario e persino segreto che ora subiamo; e questo sarebbe il primo punto contro di esso, anche se fosse davvero un’emancipazione; ed è soltanto nella forma un’emancipazione. Non anticiperò i dettagli della sua difesa, che possono essere offerti da altri, ma qui concluderò per il momento suggerendo a grandi linee le difese pratiche del divorzio, come generalmente date proprio al presente, sotto quattro capi. E chiederò soltanto al lettore di notare che tutte hanno una cosa in comune; il fatto che ogni argomento è usato anche per tutta quella riforma sociale che gli uomini semplici stanno già chiamando schiavitù.

Primo, è molto tipico delle più recenti proposte pratiche che esse si occupino del caso di coloro che sono già separati, e dei passi che devono compiere per divorziare. C’è uno spirito che penetra oggi tutta la nostra società, per cui all’eccezione è concesso di alterare la regola; all’esule di deflettere il patriottismo, all’orfano di deporre la paternità, e persino alla vedova o, in questo caso come abbiamo visto alla vedova bianca, di distruggere la posizione della moglie. C’è una sorta di simbolo di questa tendenza in quella misteriosa e sventurata nazione nomade a cui è stato concesso di alterare tante cose, da una crociata in Russia a un cottage nel South Bucks. Ci è stato detto di trattare l’ebreo errante come un pellegrino, mentre ancora trattiamo il cristiano errante come un vagabondo. Eppure quest’ultimo sta almeno cercando di tornare a casa, come Ulisse; mentre il primo sta, semmai, piuttosto fuggendo da casa, come Caino. Colui che è distaccato, scontento, indefinibile, intermedio è ovunque fatto scusa per alterare ciò che è comune, corporativo, tradizionale e popolare. E l’alterazione è sempre in peggio. La sirena non diventa mai più femminile, ma solo più pesciforme. Il centauro non diventa mai più virile, ma solo più cavallino. L’ebreo non può realmente internazionalizzare la cristianità; può soltanto snazionalizzare la cristianità. Il proletario non trova facile diventare un piccolo proprietario; sta trovando assai più facile diventare uno schiavo. Così lo sventurato uomo, che non riesce a tollerare la donna che ha scelto fra tutte le donne del mondo, non è incoraggiato a tornare da lei e a tollerarla, ma è incoraggiato a scegliere un’altra donna che a suo tempo potrà rifiutarsi di tollerare. E in tutti questi casi l’argomento è il medesimo; che l’uomo nello stato intermedio è infelice. Probabilmente è infelice, poiché è anormale; ma il punto è che gli è permesso di allentare il vincolo universale che ha tenuto normali milioni di altri. Poiché egli stesso si è cacciato in un buco, gli è consentito di scavarvi come un coniglio e di minare tutta una campagna.

Poi abbiamo, come sempre abbiamo riguardo a tali esperimenti grezzi, un argomento tratto dall’esempio di altri paesi, e specialmente di paesi nuovi. Così gli eugenisti mi dicono solennemente che ci sono stati esperimenti eugenici di grande successo in America. E conservano rigidamente la loro solennità (mentre rifiutano con molti rimproveri di credere alla mia) quando dico loro che uno degli esperimenti eugenici in America è un esperimento chimico; consistente nel trasformare un uomo nero nella forma allotropica di bianca cenere. È davvero un esperimento estremamente eugenico; poiché il suo scopo principale è scoraggiare una mescolanza interrazziale di sangue che non è desiderata. Ma non mi piace questo esperimento americano, per quanto americano; e confido e credo che non sia affatto tipicamente americano. Esso rappresenta, immagino, soltanto un elemento nella complessità della grande democrazia; e si accompagna ad altri elementi malvagi; sicché non mi sorprende affatto che le stesse strane sezioni sociali, che permettono che un essere umano sia bruciato vivo, permettano anche l’esaltata scienza dell’Eugenetica. Lo stesso avviene nella più mite questione delle leggi sui liquori; e ci viene detto che certi coloniali piuttosto rozzi hanno stabilito leggi proibizioniste, che cercano di eludere; proprio come ci viene detto che hanno stabilito leggi sul divorzio, che ora stanno cercando di abrogare. Poiché in questo caso del divorzio, almeno, l’argomento dei precedenti lontani ha rinculato schiacciante su se stesso. C’è già un’agitazione per meno divorzio in America, mentre c’è un’agitazione per più divorzio in Inghilterra.

Di nuovo, quando un argomento è fondato su un bisogno di popolazione, sarà bene che coloro che lo sostengono si rendano conto di dove esso possa condurli. È estremamente dubbio che la popolazione sia uno dei vantaggi del divorzio; ma non c’è dubbio che sia uno dei vantaggi della poligamia. Esso è già usato in Germania come argomento per la poligamia. Ma la parola stessa ci insegnerà a guardare persino oltre la Germania per qualcosa di ancor più remoto e ripugnante. La mera popolazione, insieme a una sorta di anarchia poligama, non apparirà nemmeno come un ideale pratico a chiunque consideri, per esempio, con quanta coerenza l’Europa abbia tenuto la testa della razza umana, di fronte alle miriadi caotiche dell’Asia. Se la popolazione fosse la prova principale del progresso e dell’efficienza, la Cina si sarebbe da tempo dimostrata lo Stato più progressivo ed efficiente. De Quincey riassunse tutta quell’enorme situazione in una frase che è forse più impressionante e persino agghiacciante di tutte le prospettive dell’architettura d’oriente e degli scorci di visione d’oppio in mezzo ai quali essa compare. “L’uomo è un’erbaccia in quelle regioni.” Molti europei, temendo per il giardino del mondo, hanno immaginato che in qualche futura fatalità quelle erbacce possano spuntare e soffocarlo. Ma nessun europeo ha realmente desiderato che i fiori divenissero come le erbacce. Anche se fosse vero, dunque, che l’allentamento del vincolo aumenti necessariamente la popolazione; anche se questo non fosse contraddetto, come lo è, dai fatti di molti paesi, avremmo forti fondamenti storici per non accettare la deduzione. Saremmo ancora sospettosi del paradosso che possiamo incoraggiare le famiglie numerose abolendo la famiglia.

Infine, credo faccia parte della difesa della nuova proposta che persino i suoi difensori abbiano trovato il suo principio un po’ troppo grezzo. Sento che hanno aggiunto disposizioni che modificano il principio; e che sembrano essere in sostanza, primo, che un uomo sarà reso responsabile di un pagamento di denaro alla moglie che abbandona, e secondo, che la questione sarà di nuovo sottoposta in qualche modo a qualche magistrato. Per il mio scopo qui, basta notare che c’è qualcosa dell’inconfondibile sapore della sociologia a cui resistiamo, in questi due commoventi atti di fede, in un libretto degli assegni e in un avvocato. La maggior parte dei riformatori alla moda del matrimonio sarebbe lievemente scandalizzata da qualsiasi insinuazione che una povera vecchia sguattera potesse forse rifiutare tale denaro, o che un buon e gentile magistrato potesse non avere il diritto di dare tale consiglio. Poiché i riformatori del matrimonio sono persone assai rispettabili, con alcune onorevoli eccezioni; e nulla potrebbe incastrarsi più agevolmente nel piuttosto untuoso solco della loro rispettabilità che l’insinuazione che il tradimento è trattato meglio coi danni, signori, con pesanti danni, del signor Sergente Buzfuz; o che la tragedia è trattata meglio col spirituale arbitrato del signor Nupkins.

Una parola dovrebbe essere aggiunta a questo frettoloso schizzo degli elementi del caso. Ho deliberatamente lasciato fuori l’aspetto e l’argomento più elevato, quello che vede il matrimonio come un’istituzione divina; e ciò per la logica ragione che coloro che credono in questo non crederebbero nel divorzio; e io sto discutendo con coloro che credono davvero nel divorzio. Non chiedo loro di assumere il valore del mio credo o di alcun credo; e vorrei che essi non chiedessero così spesso a me di assumere il valore della loro senza valore, velenosa, plutocratica società moderna. Ma se si potesse mostrare, come credo si possa, che una lunga veduta storica e una paziente esperienza politica possono alla fine accumulare solide prove scientifiche del vitale bisogno di un tale voto, allora non posso concepire tributo più tremendo di questo, per qualsiasi fede, che fece una fiammeggiante affermazione fin dai più oscuri inizi, di ciò che il più tardo illuminismo può soltanto lentamente scoprire alla fine.

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V

THE STORY OF THE FAMlLY

The most ancient of human institutions has an authority that may seem as wild as anarchy. Alone among all such institutions it begins with a spontaneous attraction; and may be said strictly and not sentimentally to be founded on love instead of fear. The attempt to compare it with coercive institutions complicating later history has led to infinite illogicality in later times. It is as unique as it is universal. There is nothing in any other social relations in any way parallel to the mutual attraction of the sexes. By missing this simple point, the modern world has fallen into a hundred follies. The idea of a general revolt of women against men has been proclaimed with flags and processions, like a revolt of vassals against their lords, of niggers against nigger-drivers, of Poles against Prussians or Irishmen against Englishmen; for all the world as if we really believed in the fabulous nation of the Amazons. The equally philosophical idea of a general revolt of men against women has been put into a romance by Sir Walter Besant, and into a sociological book by Mr. Belfort Bax. But at the first touch of this truth of an aboriginal attraction, all such comparisons collapse and are seen to be comic. A Prussian does not feel from the first that he can only be happy if he spends his days and nights with a Pole. An Englishman does not think his house empty and cheerless unless it happens to contain an Irishman. A white man does not in his romantic youth dream of the perfect beauty of a black man. A railway magnate seldom writes poems about the personal fascination of a railway porter. All the other revolts against all the other relations are reasonable and even inevitable, because those relations are originally only founded upon force or self interest. Force can abolish what force can establish; self-interest can terminate a contract when self-interest has dictated the contract. But the love of man and woman is not an institution that can be abolished, or a contract that can be terminated. It is something older than all institutions or contracts, and something that is certain to outlast them all. All the other revolts are real, because there remains a possibility that the things may be destroyed, or at least divided. You can abolish capitalists; but you cannot abolish males. Prussians can go out of Poland or negroes can be repatriated to Africa; but a man and a woman must remain together in one way or another; and must learn to put up with each other somehow.

These are very simple truths; that is why nobody nowadays seems to take any particular notice of them; and the truth that follows next is equally obvious. There is no dispute about the purpose of Nature in creating such an attraction. It would be more intelligent to call it the purpose of God; for Nature can have no purpose unless God is behind it. To talk of the purpose of Nature is to make a vain attempt to avoid being anthropomorphic, merely by being feminist. It is believing in a goddess because you are too sceptical to believe in a god. But this is a controversy which can be kept apart from the question, if we content ourselves with saying that the vital value ultimately found in this attraction is, of course, the renewal of the race itself. The child is an explanation of the father and mother and the fact that it is a human child is the explanation of the ancient human ties connecting the father and mother. The more human, that is the less bestial, is the child, the more lawful and lasting are the ties. So far from any progress in culture or the sciences tending to loosen the bond, any such progress must logically tend to tighten it. The more things there are for the child to learn, the longer he must remain at the natural school for learning them; and the longer his teachers must at least postpone the dissolution of their partnership. This elementary truth is hidden to-day in vast masses of vicarious, indirect and artificial work, with the fundamental fallacy of which I shall deal in a moment. Here I speak of the primary position of the human group, as it has stood through unthinkable ages of waxing and waning civilisations; often unable to delegate any of its work, always unable to delegate all of it. In this, I repeat, it will always be necessary for the two teachers to remain together, in proportion as they have anything to teach. One of the shapeless sea-beasts, that merely detaches itself from its offspring and floats away, could float away to a submarine divorce court, or an advanced club founded on free-love for fishes. The sea-beast might do this, precisely because the sea beast’s offspring need do nothing; because it has not got to learn the polka or the multiplication table. All these are truisms but they are also truths, and truths that will return; for the present tangle of semi-official substitutes is not only a stop-gap, but one that is not big enough to stop the gap. If people cannot mind their own business, it cannot possibly be made economical to pay them to mind each other’s business; and still less to mind each other’s babies. It is simply throwing away a natural force and then paying for an artificial force; as if a man were to water a plant with a hose while holding up an umbrella to protect it from the rain. The whole really rests on a plutocratic illusion of an infinite supply of servants. When we offer any other system as a “career for women,” we are really proposing that an infinite number of them should become servants, of a plutocratic or bureaucratic sort. Ultimately, we are arguing that a woman should not be a mother to her own baby, but a nursemaid to somebody else’s baby. But it will not work, even on paper. We cannot all live by taking in each other’s washing, especially in the form of pinafores. In the last resort, the only people who either can or will give individual care, to each of the individual children, are their individual parents. The expression as applied to those dealing with changing crowds of children is a graceful and legitimate flourish of speech.

V

LA STORIA DELLA FAMIGLIA

L’istituzione più antica dell’uomo ha un’autorità che può sembrare selvaggia quanto l’anarchia. Essa sola tra tutte le istituzioni del genere inizia con una spontanea attrazione; e si può dire, strettamente e non sentimentalmente, che sia fondata sull’amore anziché sulla paura. Il tentativo di paragonarla alle istituzioni coercitive che complicano la successiva storia ha portato a infinite illogicità nei tempi successivi. È unica quanto universale. Non c’è nulla in nessun’altra relazione sociale che sia anche solo lontanamente paragonabile all’attrazione reciproca dei sessi. Per aver trascurato questo semplice punto, il mondo moderno è caduto in cento follie. L’idea di una rivolta generale delle donne contro gli uomini è stata proclamata con bandiere e processioni, come se fosse la rivolta dei vassalli contro i loro signori, degli schiavi africani contro chi li sfrutta, dei polacchi contro i prussiani o degli irlandesi contro gli inglesi; come se davvero credessimo nella favolosa nazione delle Amazzoni. L’idea altrettanto filosofica di una rivolta generale degli uomini contro le donne è stata messa in un romanzo da Sir Walter Besant, e in un libro sociologico dal signor Belfort Bax. Ma al primo contatto con questa verità di un’attrazione primordiale, tutti questi paragoni crollano e si vede che sono comici. Un prussiano non sente fin dall’inizio che può essere felice solo se trascorre i suoi giorni e le sue notti con un polacco. Un inglese non pensa che la sua casa sia vuota e desolata a meno che non contenga per caso un irlandese. Un bianco non sogna nella sua giovinezza romantica la perfetta bellezza di un nero. Un magnate delle ferrovie raramente scrive poesie sulla personale fascinazione di un facchino. Tutte le altre rivolte contro tutte le altre relazioni sono ragionevoli e persino inevitabili, perché quelle relazioni si fondano originariamente solo su forza o interesse personale. La forza può abolire ciò che la forza ha stabilito; l’interesse personale può terminare un contratto quando è stato dettato dall’interesse personale. Ma l’amore tra uomo e donna non è un istituto che può essere abolito, né un contratto che può essere terminato. È qualcosa di più antico di tutti gli istituti o i contratti, e qualcosa che li sopravviverà sicuramente. Tutte le altre rivolte sono reali, perché rimane la possibilità che le cose possano essere distrutte, o almeno divise. Puoi abolire i capitalisti; ma non puoi abolire gli uomini. I prussiani possono uscire dalla Polonia o i negri possono essere rimpatriati in Africa; ma un uomo e una donna devono rimanere insieme in un modo o nell’altro; e devono imparare a sopportarsi in qualche modo.

Queste sono verità molto semplici; ecco perché oggi nessuno sembra prestarvi alcuna particolare attenzione; e la verità che segue è altrettanto ovvia. Non c’è disputa sullo scopo della Natura nel creare una tale attrazione. Sarebbe più intelligente chiamarla lo scopo di Dio; perché la Natura non può avere uno scopo a meno che Dio non sia dietro di essa. Parlare dello scopo della Natura è fare un tentativo vano per evitare di essere antropomorfi, limitandosi ad essere femministi. È credere in una dea perché si è troppo scettici per credere in un dio. Ma questa è una controversia che può essere tenuta separata dalla questione, se ci accontentiamo di dire che il valore vitale alla fine trovato in questa attrazione è, naturalmente, il rinnovamento della razza stessa. Il bambino è la spiegazione del padre e della madre e il fatto che sia un bambino umano è la spiegazione dei legami umani antichi che collegano il padre e la madre. Più il bambino è umano, cioè meno bestiale, più i legami sono legittimi e duraturi. Lungi dallo sciogliere il vincolo, qualsiasi progresso nella cultura o nelle scienze tende logicamente ad allentarlo. Più cose ci sono da imparare per il bambino, più a lungo deve rimanere alla scuola naturale per apprenderle; e più a lungo i suoi insegnanti devono almeno rimandare la dissoluzione della loro partnership. Questa verità elementare è oggi nascosta in enormi masse di lavoro vicario, indiretto e artificiale, con la fallacia fondamentale di cui mi occuperò tra un momento. Qui parlo della posizione primaria del gruppo umano, come si è mantenuta attraverso età inimmaginabili di civiltà nascenti ed evanescenti; spesso incapace di delegare alcun lavoro, sempre incapace di delegarne tutto. In questo, lo ripeto, sarà sempre necessario che i due insegnanti rimangano insieme, in proporzione a ciò che hanno da insegnare. Uno dei mostri informi del mare, che si stacca semplicemente dalla sua prole e galleggia via, potrebbe allontanarsi verso un tribunale divorzista sottomarino, o un club avanzato fondato sul libero amore per i pesci. La bestia marina potrebbe farlo, proprio perché la prole della bestia marina non ha bisogno di fare nulla; perché non deve imparare la polca o la tabella pitagorica. Tutte queste sono verità banali ma sono anche verità, e verità che torneranno; perché l’attuale groviglio di sostituti semi-ufficiali è non solo una soluzione temporanea, ma una che non è abbastanza grande da colmare il vuoto. Se le persone non possono occuparsi dei propri affari, non può essere possibile renderlo economico pagare loro per occuparsi degli affari altrui; e ancor meno per prendersi cura dei bambini altrui. È semplicemente buttare via una forza naturale e poi pagare per una forza artificiale; come se un uomo annaffiasse una pianta con un tubo mentre tiene sollevato un ombrello per proteggerla dalla pioggia. Tutto si basa realmente su un’illusione plutocratica di un approvvigionamento infinito di servi. Quando proponiamo qualsiasi altro sistema come “carriera per le donne”, stiamo in realtà proponendo che un numero infinito di loro diventi servitori, di tipo plutocratico o burocratico. In definitiva, stiamo sostenendo che una donna non dovrebbe essere madre del proprio bambino, ma tata del bambino di qualcun altro. Ma non funzionerà, nemmeno sulla carta. Non possiamo tutti vivere lavando i panni gli uni degli altri, specialmente sotto forma di grembiuli. In ultima analisi, le uniche persone che possono o vogliono dare cure individuali a ciascuno dei bambini sono i loro genitori. L’espressione applicata a coloro che si occupano di folle mutevoli di bambini è un tocco elegante e legittimo del discorso.

This triangle of truisms, of father, mother and child, cannot be destroyed; it can only destroy those civilisations which disregard it. Most modern reformers are merely bottomless sceptics, and have no basis on which to rebuild; and it is well that such reformers should realise that there is something they cannot reform. You can put down the mighty from their seat; you can turn the world upside down, and there is much to be said for the view that it may then be the right way up. But you cannot create a world in which the baby carries the mother. You cannot create a world in which the mother has not authority over the baby. You can waste your time in trying, by giving votes to babies or proclaiming a republic of infants in arms. You can say, as an educationist said the other day, that small children should “criticise, question authority and suspend their judgment.” I do not know why he did not go on to say that they should earn their own living, pay income tax to the state, and die in battle for the fatherland; for the proposal evidently is that children shall have no childhood. But you can, if you find entertainment in such games, organise “representative government” among little boys and girls, and tell them to take their legal and constitutional responsibilities as seriously as possible. In short, you can be crazy; but you cannot be consistent. You cannot really carry your own principle back to the aboriginal group, and really apply it to the mother and the baby. You will not act on your own theory in the simplest and most practical of all possible cases. You are not quite so mad as that.

This nucleus of natural authority has always existed in the midst of more artificial authorities. It has always been regarded as something in the literal sense individual; that is, as an absolute that could not really be divided. A baby was not even a baby apart from its mother; it was something else, most probably a corpse. It was always recognised as standing in a peculiar relation to government; simply because it was one of the few things that had not been made by government; and could to some extent come into existence with out the support of government. Indeed the case for it is too strong to be stated. For the case for it is that there is nothing like it; and we can only find faint parallels to it in those more elaborate and painful powers and institutions that are its inferiors. Thus the only way of conveying it is to compare it to a nation; although, compared to it, national divisions are as modern and formal as national anthems. Thus I may often use the metaphor of a city; though in its presence a citizen is as recent as a city clerk. It is enough to note here that everybody does know by intuition and admit by implication that a family is a solid fact, having a character and colour like a nation. The truth can be tested by the most modern and most daily experiences. A man does say “That is the sort of thing the Browns will like”; however tangled and interminable a psychological novel he might compose on the shades of difference between Mr. and Mrs. Brown. A woman does say “I don’t like Jemima seeing so much of the Robinsons”; and she does not always, in the scurry of her social or domestic duties, pause to distinguish the optimistic materialism of Mrs. Robinson from the more acid cynicism which tinges the hedonism of Mr. Robinson. There is a colour of the household inside, as conspicuous as the colour of the house outside. That colour is a blend, and if any tint in it predominate it is generally that preferred by Mrs. Robinson. But, like all composite colours, it is a separate colour; as separate as green is from blue and yellow. Every marriage is a sort of wild balance; and in every case the compromise is as unique as an eccentricity. Philanthropists walking in the slums often see the compromise in the street, and mistake it for a fight. When they interfere, they are thoroughly thumped by both parties; and serve them right, for not respecting the very institution that brought them into the world.

The first thing to see is that this enormous normality is like a mountain; and one that is capable of being a volcano. Every abnormality that is now opposed to it is like a mole-hill; and the earnest sociological organisers of it are exceedingly like moles. But the mountain is a volcano in another sense also; as suggested in that tradition of the southern fields fertilised by lava. It has a creative as well as a destructive side; and it only remains, in this part of the analysis, to note the political effect of this extra-political institution, and the political ideals of which it has been the champion; and perhaps the only permanent champion.

The ideal for which it stands in the state is liberty. It stands for liberty for the very simple reason with which this rough analysis started. It is the only one of these institutions that is at once necessary and voluntary. It is the only check on the state that is bound to renew itself as eternally as the state, and more naturally than the state. Every sane man recognises that unlimited liberty is, anarchy, or rather is nonentity. The civic idea of liberty is to give the citizen a province of liberty; a limitation within which a citizen is a king. This is the only way in which truth can ever find refuge from public persecution, and the good man survive the bad government. But the good man by himself is no match for the city. There must be balanced against it another ideal institution, and in that sense an immortal institution. So long as the state is the only ideal institution the state will call on the citizen to sacrifice himself, and therefore will not have the smallest scruple in sacrificing the citizen. The state consists of coercion; and must always be justified from its own point of view in extending the bounds of coercion; as, for instance, in the case of conscription. The only thing that can be set up to check or challenge this authority is a voluntary law and a voluntary loyalty. That loyalty is the protection of liberty, in the only sphere where liberty can fully dwell. It is a principle of the constitution that the King never dies. It is the whole principle of the family that the citizen never dies. There must be a heraldry and heredity of freedom; a tradition of resistance to tyranny. A man must be not only free, but free-born.

Questo triangolo di truismi, di padre, madre e figlio, non può essere distrutto; può soltanto distruggere quelle civiltà che lo ignorano. La maggior parte dei riformatori moderni sono meri scettici senza fondo, e non hanno base su cui ricostruire; ed è bene che tali riformatori si rendano conto che c’è qualcosa che non possono riformare. Puoi rovesciare i potenti dai loro troni; puoi mettere il mondo alla rovescia, e c’è molto da dire a favore dell’opinione che allora potrebbe essere dritto per il verso giusto. Ma non puoi creare un mondo in cui il bimbo porti la madre. Non puoi creare un mondo in cui la madre non abbia autorità sul bimbo. Puoi sprecare il tuo tempo a tentare, dando voti ai bimbi o proclamando una repubblica di lattanti in braccio. Puoi dire, come disse l’altro giorno un pedagogo, che i bambini piccoli dovrebbero “criticare, mettere in dubbio l’autorità e sospendere il giudizio”. Non so perché non abbia proseguito dicendo che dovrebbero guadagnarsi da vivere, pagare l’imposta sul reddito allo Stato, e morire in battaglia per la patria; poiché la proposta evidentemente è che i bambini non abbiano alcuna infanzia. Ma puoi, se trovi divertimento in tali giochi, organizzare un “governo rappresentativo” tra i bambini e le bambine, e dir loro di prendere le loro responsabilità legali e costituzionali con la massima serietà possibile. In breve, puoi essere pazzo; ma non puoi essere coerente. Non puoi realmente riportare il tuo stesso principio fino al gruppo aborigeno, e applicarlo davvero alla madre e al bimbo. Non agirai secondo la tua stessa teoria nel più semplice e più pratico di tutti i casi possibili. Non sei del tutto così pazzo.

Questo nucleo di autorità naturale è sempre esistito in mezzo ad autorità più artificiali. È sempre stato considerato qualcosa in senso letterale individuale; cioè, come un assoluto che non poteva realmente essere diviso. Un bimbo non era nemmeno un bimbo separato dalla madre; era qualcos’altro, molto probabilmente un cadavere. Fu sempre riconosciuto come stante in una peculiare relazione col governo; semplicemente perché era una delle poche cose che non erano state fatte dal governo; e poteva in qualche misura venire all’esistenza senza il sostegno del governo. Invero la causa a suo favore è troppo forte per essere esposta. Poiché la causa a suo favore è che non c’è nulla di simile ad esso; e possiamo trovarne soltanto deboli paralleli in quei poteri e istituzioni più elaborati e penosi che ne sono gli inferiori. Così l’unico modo di renderlo è paragonarlo a una nazione; benché, in confronto ad esso, le divisioni nazionali siano moderne e formali quanto gli inni nazionali. Così posso spesso usare la metafora di una città; benché al suo cospetto un cittadino sia recente quanto un impiegato di città. Basta notare qui che ognuno sa per intuizione e ammette per implicazione che una famiglia è un fatto solido, avente un carattere e un colore come una nazione. La verità può essere messa alla prova dalle più moderne e quotidiane esperienze. Un uomo dice davvero “Quella è il genere di cosa che piacerà ai Brown”; per quanto aggrovigliato e interminabile sia il romanzo psicologico che potrebbe comporre sulle sfumature di differenza tra il signore e la signora Brown. Una donna dice davvero “Non mi piace che Jemima frequenti tanto i Robinson”; e non sempre, nella fretta dei suoi doveri sociali o domestici, si ferma a distinguere l’ottimistico materialismo della signora Robinson dal più acido cinismo che tinge l’edonismo del signor Robinson. C’è un colore della famiglia all’interno, cospicuo quanto il colore della casa all’esterno. Quel colore è una mescolanza, e se qualche tinta in esso predomina è generalmente quella preferita dalla signora Robinson. Ma, come tutti i colori compositi, è un colore a sé; distinto quanto il verde lo è dal blu e dal giallo. Ogni matrimonio è una sorta di selvaggio equilibrio; e in ogni caso il compromesso è unico quanto un’eccentricità. I filantropi che passeggiano nei bassifondi vedono spesso il compromesso in strada, e lo scambiano per una lotta. Quando interferiscono, vengono sonoramente picchiati da entrambe le parti; e ben gli sta, per non aver rispettato la stessa istituzione che li ha portati al mondo.

La prima cosa da vedere è che questa enorme normalità è come una montagna; e una che è capace di essere un vulcano. Ogni anormalità che ora vi si oppone è come una collinetta di talpa; e i seri organizzatori sociologici di essa sono estremamente simili a talpe. Ma la montagna è un vulcano anche in un altro senso; come suggerito in quella tradizione dei campi meridionali fertilizzati dalla lava. Ha un lato creativo non meno che distruttivo; e non resta, in questa parte dell’analisi, che notare l’effetto politico di questa istituzione extra-politica, e gli ideali politici di cui essa è stata la campionessa; e forse l’unica campionessa permanente.

L’ideale per cui essa sta nello Stato è la libertà. Sta per la libertà per la ragione assai semplice con cui è iniziata questa rozza analisi. È l’unica di queste istituzioni che sia al tempo stesso necessaria e volontaria. È l’unico freno allo Stato che sia tenuto a rinnovarsi tanto eternamente quanto lo Stato, e più naturalmente dello Stato. Ogni uomo sano riconosce che la libertà illimitata è anarchia, o piuttosto è nullità. L’idea civica della libertà è dare al cittadino una provincia di libertà; una limitazione entro la quale un cittadino è un re. Questo è l’unico modo in cui la verità possa mai trovare rifugio dalla persecuzione pubblica, e l’uomo buono sopravvivere al cattivo governo. Ma l’uomo buono da solo non è pari alla città. Deve esserci, contrapposta ad essa, un’altra istituzione ideale, e in quel senso un’istituzione immortale. Finché lo Stato è l’unica istituzione ideale, lo Stato chiamerà il cittadino a sacrificarsi, e perciò non avrà il minimo scrupolo a sacrificare il cittadino. Lo Stato consiste di coercizione; e deve sempre essere giustificato dal proprio punto di vista nell’estendere i confini della coercizione; come, per esempio, nel caso della coscrizione. L’unica cosa che si può erigere per frenare o sfidare questa autorità è una legge volontaria e una lealtà volontaria. Quella lealtà è la protezione della libertà, nell’unica sfera in cui la libertà può pienamente dimorare. È un principio della costituzione che il Re non muore mai. È tutto il principio della famiglia che il cittadino non muore mai. Deve esserci un’araldica e un’ereditarietà della libertà; una tradizione di resistenza alla tirannia. Un uomo deve essere non soltanto libero, ma libero per nascita.

Indeed, there is something in the family that might loosely be called anarchist; and more correctly called amateur. As there seems something almost vague about its voluntary origin, so there seems something vague about its voluntary organisation. The most vital function it performs, perhaps the most vital function that anything can perform, is that of education; but its type of early education is far too essential to be mistaken for instruction. In a thousand things it works rather by rule of thumb than rule of theory. To take a commonplace and even comic example, I doubt if any text-book or code of rules has ever contained any directions about standing a child in a corner. Doubtless when the modern process is complete, and the coercive principle of the state has entirely extinguished the voluntary element of the family, there will be some exact regulation or restriction about the matter. Possibly it will say that the corner must be an angle of at least ninety-five degrees. Possibly it will say that the converging line of any ordinary corner tends to make a child squint. In fact I am certain that if I said casually, at a sufficient number of tea-tables, that corners made children squint, it would rapidly become a universally received dogma of popular science. For the modern world will accept no dogmas upon any authority; but it will accept any dogmas on no authority. Say that a thing is so, according to the Pope or the Bible, and it will be dismissed as a superstition without examination. But preface your remark merely with “they say” or “don’t you know that?” or try (and fail) to remember the name of some professor mentioned in some newspaper; and the keen rationalism of the modern mind will accept every word you say. This parenthesis is not so irrelevant as it may appear, for it will be well to remember that when a rigid officialism breaks in upon the voluntary compromises of the home, that officialism itself will be only rigid in its action and will be exceedingly limp in its thought. Intellectually it will be at least as vague as the amateur arrangements of the home, and the only difference is that the domestic arrangements are in the only real sense practical, that is, they are founded on experiences that have been suffered. The others are what is now generally called scientific; that is, they are founded on experiments that have not yet been made. As a matter of fact, instead of invading the family with the blundering bureaucracy that mismanages the public services, it would be far more philosophical to work the reform the other way round. It would be really quite as reasonable to alter the laws of the nation so as to resemble the laws of the nursery. The punishments would be far less horrible, far more humorous, and far more really calculated to make men feel they had made fools of themselves. It would be a pleasant change if a judge, instead of putting on the black cap, had to put on the dunce’s cap; or if we could stand a financier in his own corner.

Of course this opinion is rare, and reactionary—whatever that may mean. Modern education is founded on the principle that a parent is more likely to be cruel than anybody else. It passes over the obvious fact that he is less likely to be cruel than anybody else. Anybody may happen to be cruel; but the first chances of cruelty come with the whole colourless and indifferent crowd of total strangers and mechanical mercenaries, whom it is now the custom to call in as infallible agents of improvement; policemen, doctors, detectives, inspectors, instructors, and so on. They are automatically given arbitrary power because there are here and there such things as criminal parents; as if there were no such things as criminal doctors or criminal school-masters. A mother is not always judicious about her child’s diet, so it is given into the control of Dr. Crippen. A father is thought not to teach his sons the purest morality; so they are put under the tutorship of Eugene Aram. These celebrated criminals are no more rare in their respective professions than the cruel parents are in the profession of parenthood. But indeed the case is far stronger than this; and there is no need to rely on the case of such criminals at all. The ordinary weaknesses of human nature will explain all the weaknesses of bureaucracy and business government all over the world. The official need only be an ordinary man to be more indifferent to other people’s children than to his own; and even to sacrifice other people’s family prosperity to his own. He may be bored; he may be bribed; he may be brutal, for any one of the thousand reasons that ever made a man a brute. All this elementary common sense is entirely left out of account in our educational and social systems of today. It is assumed that the hireling will not flee, and that solely because he is a hireling. It is denied that the shepherd will lay down his life for the sheep; or for that matter, even that the she-wolf will fight for the cubs. We are to believe that mothers are inhuman; but not that officials are human. There are unnatural parents, but there are no natural passions; at least, there are none where the fury of King Lear dared to find them— in the beadle. Such is the latest light on the education of the young; and the same principle that is applied to the child is applied to the husband and wife. Just as it assumes that a child will certainly be loved by anybody except his mother, so it assumes that a man can be happy with anybody except the one woman he has himself chosen for his wife.

Thus the coercive spirit of the state prevails over the free promise of the family, in the shape of formal officialism. But this is not the most coercive of the coercive elements in the modern commonwealth. An even more rigid and ruthless external power is that of industrial employment and unemployment. An even more ferocious enemy of the family is the factory. Between these modern mechanical things the ancient natural institution is not being reformed or modified or even cut down; it is being torn in pieces. It is not only being torn in pieces in the sense of a true metaphor, like a living thing caught in a hideous clockwork of manufacture. It is being literally torn in pieces, in that the husband may go to one factory, the wife to another, and the child to a third. Each will become the servant of a separate financial group, which is more and more gaining the political power of a feudal group. But whereas feudalism received the loyalty of families, the lords of the new servile state will receive only the loyalty of individuals; that is, of lonely men and even of lost children.

It is sometimes said that Socialism attacks the family; which is founded on little beyond the accident that some Socialists believe in free-love. I have been a Socialist, and I am no longer a Socialist, and at no time did I believe in free-love. It is true, I think in a large and unconscious sense, that State Socialism encourages the general coercive claim I have been considering. But if it be true that Socialism attacks the family in theory, it is far more certain that Capitalism attacks it in practice. It is a paradox, but a plain fact, that men never notice a thing as long as it exists in practice. Men who will note a heresy will ignore an abuse. Let any one who doubts the paradox imagine the newspapers formally printing along with the Honours’ List a price list, for peerages and knighthoods; though everybody knows they are bought and sold. So the factory is destroying the family in fact; and need depend on no poor mad theorist who dreams of destroying it in fancy. And what is destroying it is nothing so plausible as free love; but something rather to be described as an enforced fear. It is economic punishment more terrible than legal punishment, which may yet land us in slavery as the only safety.

From its first days in the forest this human group had to fight against wild monsters; and so it is now fighting against these wild machines. It only managed to survive then, and it will only manage to survive now, by a strong internal sanctity; a tacit oath or dedication deeper than that of the city or the tribe. But though this silent promise was always present, it took at a certain turning point of our history a special form which I shall try to sketch in the next chapter. That turning point was the creation of Christendom by the religion which created it. Nothing will destroy the sacred triangle; and even the Christian faith, the most amazing revolution that ever took place in the mind, served only in a sense to turn that triangle upside down. It held up a mystical mirror in which the order of the three things was reversed; and added a holy family of child, mother and father to the human family of father, mother and child.

—/—

Invero, c’è nella famiglia qualcosa che si potrebbe alla buona chiamare anarchico; e più correttamente dilettantesco. Come pare esservi qualcosa di quasi vago nella sua origine volontaria, così pare esservi qualcosa di vago nella sua organizzazione volontaria. La funzione più vitale che essa svolge, forse la più vitale funzione che alcunché possa svolgere, è quella dell’educazione; ma il suo tipo di prima educazione è troppo essenziale per essere scambiato per istruzione. In mille cose essa opera più per regola empirica che per regola di teoria. Per prendere un esempio comune e persino comico, io dubito che alcun manuale o codice di regole abbia mai contenuto direttive sul mettere un bambino in un angolo. Senza dubbio, quando il moderno processo sarà compiuto, e il principio coercitivo dello Stato avrà interamente estinto l’elemento volontario della famiglia, vi sarà qualche esatta regolamentazione o restrizione in materia. Forse dirà che l’angolo dev’essere di almeno novantacinque gradi. Forse dirà che la linea convergente di un qualunque angolo ordinario tende a far strabuzzare gli occhi a un bambino. In effetti sono certo che se dicessi con noncuranza, a un numero sufficiente di tavoli da tè, che gli angoli fanno strabuzzare gli occhi ai bambini, ciò diverrebbe rapidamente un dogma universalmente accolto della scienza popolare. Perché il mondo moderno non accetterà alcun dogma su alcuna autorità; ma accetterà qualunque dogma su nessuna autorità. Dite che una cosa è così, secondo il Papa o la Bibbia, e sarà liquidata come superstizione senza esame. Ma premettete alla vostra osservazione soltanto un «si dice» o un «non sapete che?» oppure provate (e fallite) a ricordare il nome di qualche professore menzionato in qualche giornale; e il tagliente razionalismo della mente moderna accetterà ogni vostra parola. Questa parentesi non è così irrilevante come può apparire, perché sarà bene ricordare che quando un rigido ufficialismo irrompe nei volontari compromessi della casa, quell’ufficialismo stesso sarà rigido soltanto nella sua azione e sarà oltremodo flaccido nel suo pensiero. Intellettualmente sarà almeno tanto vago quanto gli assetti dilettanteschi della casa, e l’unica differenza è che gli assetti domestici sono nell’unico senso reale pratici, cioè sono fondati su esperienze che sono state sofferte. Gli altri sono ciò che ora comunemente si chiama scientifico; cioè sono fondati su esperimenti che non sono ancora stati fatti. In verità, invece di invadere la famiglia con la maldestra burocrazia che malgoverna i pubblici servizi, sarebbe assai più filosofico operare la riforma al contrario. Sarebbe davvero altrettanto ragionevole modificare le leggi della nazione così da farle somigliare alle leggi della nursery. Le punizioni sarebbero assai meno orribili, assai più umoristiche, e assai più realmente calcolate per far sentire agli uomini di aver fatto la figura degli sciocchi. Sarebbe un piacevole cambiamento se un giudice, invece di mettersi il berretto nero, dovesse mettersi il berretto d’asino; o se potessimo mettere un finanziere nel suo proprio angolo.

Naturalmente questa opinione è rara, e reazionaria—qualunque cosa ciò significhi. L’educazione moderna è fondata sul principio che un genitore è più probabilmente crudele di chiunque altro. Trascura l’ovvio fatto che egli è meno probabilmente crudele di chiunque altro. Chiunque può darsi che sia crudele; ma le prime probabilità di crudeltà vengono con l’intera incolore e indifferente folla di perfetti estranei e di mercenari meccanici, che ora è consuetudine chiamare come infallibili agenti di miglioramento; poliziotti, medici, detective, ispettori, istruttori, e così via. A costoro è automaticamente dato un potere arbitrario perché esistono qua e là cose come genitori criminali; come se non esistessero cose come medici criminali o maestri di scuola criminali. Una madre non è sempre giudiziosa riguardo alla dieta del suo bambino, e così esso è affidato al controllo del dottor Crippen. Un padre è ritenuto incapace di insegnare ai suoi figli la più pura moralità; e così essi sono posti sotto la tutela di Eugene Aram. Questi celebri criminali non sono più rari nelle loro rispettive professioni di quanto i genitori crudeli lo siano nella professione della genitorialità. Ma in verità il caso è assai più forte di questo; e non c’è alcun bisogno di fare affidamento sul caso di simili criminali. Le ordinarie debolezze della natura umana spiegheranno tutte le debolezze della burocrazia e del governo degli affari in tutto il mondo. Basta che il funzionario sia un uomo ordinario per essere più indifferente ai figli altrui che ai propri; e persino per sacrificare la prosperità della famiglia altrui alla propria. Può essere annoiato; può essere corrotto; può essere brutale, per una qualunque delle mille ragioni che mai fecero di un uomo un bruto. Tutto questo elementare buon senso è interamente lasciato fuori dal conto nei nostri sistemi educativi e sociali di oggi. Si dà per scontato che il mercenario non fuggirà, e ciò unicamente perché è un mercenario. Si nega che il pastore deporrà la sua vita per le pecore; o, se è per questo, persino che la lupa combatterà per i suoi cuccioli. Dobbiamo credere che le madri sono disumane; ma non che i funzionari sono umani. Vi sono genitori snaturati, ma non vi sono passioni naturali; o almeno, non ve ne sono là dove la furia di King Lear osò trovarle— nel bidello. Tale è l’ultima luce sull’educazione dei giovani; e lo stesso principio che si applica al bambino si applica al marito e alla moglie. Proprio come esso presume che un bambino sarà certamente amato da chiunque tranne che da sua madre, così presume che un uomo possa essere felice con chiunque tranne che con l’unica donna che egli stesso ha scelto per moglie.

Così lo spirito coercitivo dello Stato prevale sulla libera promessa della famiglia, sotto la forma di formale ufficialismo. Ma questo non è il più coercitivo degli elementi coercitivi nel moderno commonwealth. Un potere esterno ancora più rigido e spietato è quello dell’occupazione e della disoccupazione industriale. Un nemico ancora più feroce della famiglia è la fabbrica. Tra queste moderne cose meccaniche l’antica istituzione naturale non viene riformata o modificata o nemmeno ridimensionata; viene fatta a pezzi. Non solo viene fatta a pezzi nel senso di una vera metafora, come una cosa vivente colta in un orrendo meccanismo di manifattura. Viene letteralmente fatta a pezzi, in ciò che il marito può andare in una fabbrica, la moglie in un’altra, e il figlio in una terza. Ciascuno diverrà il servo di un separato gruppo finanziario, che sempre più va acquistando il potere politico di un gruppo feudale. Ma laddove il feudalesimo riceveva la lealtà delle famiglie, i signori del nuovo Stato servile riceveranno soltanto la lealtà degli individui; cioè di uomini solitari e persino di bambini perduti.

Talvolta si dice che il Socialismo attacca la famiglia; cosa fondata su poco più che sul caso che alcuni Socialisti credano nel libero amore. Io sono stato Socialista, e non sono più Socialista, e in nessun tempo credetti nel libero amore. È vero, penso in un senso ampio e inconscio, che il Socialismo di Stato incoraggia la generale pretesa coercitiva che sono venuto considerando. Ma se è vero che il Socialismo attacca la famiglia in teoria, è assai più certo che il Capitalismo la attacca in pratica. È un paradosso, ma un semplice fatto, che gli uomini non notano mai una cosa finché essa esiste in pratica. Uomini che noteranno un’eresia ignoreranno un abuso. Chiunque dubiti del paradosso immagini i giornali stampare formalmente insieme all’Elenco delle Onorificenze un listino prezzi, per titoli nobiliari e cavalierati; benché tutti sappiano che sono comprati e venduti. Così la fabbrica sta distruggendo la famiglia di fatto; e non ha bisogno di dipendere da alcun povero teorico folle che sogna di distruggerla per fantasia. E ciò che la sta distruggendo non è nulla di così plausibile come il libero amore; ma qualcosa che si può piuttosto descrivere come una paura imposta. È una punizione economica più terribile della punizione legale, che potrebbe ancora gettarci nella schiavitù come unica salvezza.

Fin dai suoi primi giorni nella foresta questo gruppo umano dovette lottare contro mostri selvaggi; e così ora sta lottando contro queste macchine selvagge. Riuscì a sopravvivere allora, e riuscirà a sopravvivere ora, soltanto per una forte santità interna; un tacito giuramento o dedizione più profondo di quello della città o della tribù. Ma sebbene questa silenziosa promessa fosse sempre presente, essa prese a un certo punto di svolta della nostra storia una forma speciale che tenterò di abbozzare nel prossimo capitolo. Quel punto di svolta fu la creazione della Cristianità da parte della religione che la creò. Nulla distruggerà il sacro triangolo; e persino la fede cristiana, la più stupefacente rivoluzione che mai ebbe luogo nella mente, servì solo in un senso a capovolgere quel triangolo. Essa levò in alto uno specchio mistico in cui l’ordine delle tre cose era rovesciato; e aggiunse una sacra famiglia di figlio, madre e padre alla famiglia umana di padre, madre e figlio.

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VI

THE STORY OF THE VOW

Charles Lamb, with his fine fantastic instinct for combinations that are also contrasts, has noted somewhere a contrast between St. Valentine and valentines. 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 Ages. The paradox lends itself to his treatment, and there is a truth in his view of it. Perhaps it may seem even more of a paradox to say there is no paradox. In such cases unification appears more provocative than division; and it may seem idly contradictory to deny the contradiction. And yet in truth there is no contradiction. In the deepest sense there is a very real similarity, which puts St. Valentine and his valentines on one side, and most of the modern world on the other. I should hesitate to ask even a German professor to collect, collate and study carefully all the valentines in the world, with the object of tracing a philosophical principle running through them. But if he did, I have no doubt about the philosophic principle he would find. However trivial, however imbecile, however vulgar or vapid or stereotyped the imagery of such things might be, it would always involve one idea, the same idea that makes lovers laboriously chip their initials on a tree or a rock, in a sort of monogram of monogamy. It may be a cockney trick to tie one’s love on a tree; though Orlando did it, and would now doubtless be arrested by the police for breaking the byelaws of the Forest of Arden. 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 Parthenon, across the face of the Sphinx, or in any other nook or corner where it may chance to arrest the sentimental interest of posterity. But like many other popular things, of the sort that can generally be found in Shakespeare, there is a meaning in it that would probably be missed by a less popular poet, like Shelley. There is a very permanent truth in the fact that two free persons deliberately tie themselves to a log of wood. And it is the idea of tying oneself to something that runs through all this old amorous allegory like a pattern of fetters. There is always the notion of hearts chained together, or skewered together, or in some manner secured; there is a security that can only be called captivity. That it frequently fails to secure itself has nothing to do with the present point. The point is that every philosophy of sex must fail, which does not account for its ambition of fixity, as well as for its experience of failure. There is nothing to make Orlando commit himself on the sworn evidence of the nearest tree. He is not bound to be bound; he is under constraint, but nobody constrains him to be under constraint. In short, Orlando took a vow to marry precisely as Valentine took a vow not to marry. Nor could any ascetic, without being a heretic, have asserted in the wildest reactions of asceticism, that the vow of Orlando was not lawful as well as the vow of Valentine. But it is a notable fact that even when it was not lawful, it was still a vow. Through all that mediaeval culture, which has left us the legend of romance, there ran this pattern of a chain, which was felt as binding even where it ought not to bind. The lawless loves of mediaeval legends all have their own law, and especially their own loyalty, as in the tales of Tristram or Lancelot. In this sense we might say that mediaeval profligacy was more fixed than modern marriage. I am not here discussing either modern or mediaeval ethics, in the matter of what they did say or ought to say of such things. I am only noting as a historical fact the insistence of the mediaeval imagination, even at its wildest, upon one particular idea. That idea is the idea of the vow. It might be the vow which St. Valentine took; it might be a lesser vow which he regarded as lawful; it might be a wild vow which he regarded as quite lawless. But the whole society which made such festivals and bequeathed to us such traditions was full of the idea of vows; and we must recognise this notion, even if we think it nonsensical, as the note of the whole civilisation. And Valentine and the valentine both express it for us; even more if we feel them both as exaggerated, or even as exaggerating opposites. Those extremes meet; and they meet in the same place. Their trysting place is by the tree on which the lover hung his love-letters. And even if the lover hung himself on the tree, instead of his literary compositions, even that act had about it also an indefinable flavour of finality.

It is often said by the critics of Christian origins that certain ritual feasts, processions or dances are really of pagan origin. They might as well say that our legs are of pagan origin. Nobody ever disputed that humanity was human before it was Christian; and no Church manufactured the legs with which men walked or danced, either in a pilgrimage or a ballet. What can really be maintained, so as to carry not a little conviction, is this: that where such a Church has existed it has preserved not only the processions but the dances; not only the cathedral but the carnival. One of the chief claims of Christian civilisation is to have preserved things of pagan origin. In short, in the old religious countries men continue to dance; while in the new scientific cities they are often content to drudge.

But when this saner view of history is realised, there does remain something more mystical and difficult to define. Even heathen things are Christian when they have been preserved by Christianity. Chivalry is something recognisably different even from the virtus of Virgil. Charity is something exceedingly different from the plain pity of Homer. Even our patriotism is something more subtle than the undivided love of the city; and the change is felt in the most permanent things, such as the love of landscape or the love of woman. To define the differentiation in all these things will always be hopelessly difficult. But I would here suggest one element in the change which is perhaps too much neglected; which at any rate ought not to be neglected; the nature of a vow. I might express it by saying that pagan antiquity was the age of status; that Christian mediaevalism was the age of vows; and that sceptical modernity has been the age of contracts; or rather has tried to be, and has failed.

VI

LA STORIA DEL VOTO

Charles Lamb, col suo fine e fantastico istinto per le combinazioni che sono anche contrasti, ha notato in qualche luogo un contrasto tra San Valentino e i biglietti di San Valentino. Vi è una comica incongruenza in flirt tanto vivaci e frivoli che ancora dipendono dalla data e dal titolo di un vescovo asceta e celibe dei Secoli Bui. Il paradosso si presta al suo trattamento, e vi è una verità nella sua veduta di esso. Forse potrà sembrare ancora più un paradosso dire che non vi è alcun paradosso. In tali casi l’unificazione appare più provocatoria della divisione; e può sembrare oziosamente contraddittorio negare la contraddizione. Eppure in verità non vi è alcuna contraddizione. Nel senso più profondo vi è una assai reale somiglianza, che pone San Valentino e i suoi biglietti da una parte, e gran parte del mondo moderno dall’altra. Esiterei a chiedere anche a un professore tedesco di raccogliere, collazionare e studiare accuratamente tutti i biglietti di San Valentino del mondo, con lo scopo di rintracciare un principio filosofico che li attraversi. Ma se lo facesse, non ho alcun dubbio sul principio filosofico che troverebbe. Per quanto banale, per quanto imbecille, per quanto volgare o insulsa o stereotipata potesse essere l’immagine di simili cose, essa implicherebbe sempre un’unica idea, la stessa idea che spinge gli amanti a intagliare laboriosamente le loro iniziali su un albero o su una roccia, in una sorta di monogramma della monogamia. Può essere una trovata da cockney legare il proprio amore a un albero; sebbene Orlando lo facesse, e ora senza dubbio verrebbe arrestato dalla polizia per aver violato i regolamenti della Foresta di Arden. Non mi preme qui in modo speciale lodare l’abitudine di incidere il proprio nome e indirizzo privato a grandi lettere sulla facciata del Partenone, sul volto de la Sfinge, o in ogni altro cantuccio o angolo dove per caso possa attirare l’interesse sentimentale dei posteri. Ma come molte altre cose popolari, del genere che generalmente si trova in Shakespeare, vi è in essa un significato che probabilmente sfuggirebbe a un poeta meno popolare, come Shelley. Vi è una assai permanente verità nel fatto che due persone libere deliberatamente si legano a un pezzo di legno. Ed è l’idea di legarsi a qualcosa che scorre attraverso tutta questa vecchia amorosa allegoria come un motivo di ceppi. Vi è sempre la nozione di cuori incatenati insieme, o infilzati insieme, o in qualche modo assicurati; vi è una sicurezza che può solo chiamarsi cattività. Che essa frequentemente non riesca ad assicurarsi non ha nulla a che fare col presente punto. Il punto è che ogni filosofia del sesso deve fallire, se non rende conto della sua ambizione di fissità, tanto bene quanto della sua esperienza di fallimento. Non c’è nulla che costringa Orlando a impegnarsi sulla giurata testimonianza dell’albero più vicino. Egli non è tenuto a essere legato; è sotto costrizione, ma nessuno lo costringe a essere sotto costrizione. In breve, Orlando fece voto di sposarsi esattamente come Valentino fece voto di non sposarsi. Né alcun asceta, senza essere un eretico, avrebbe potuto asserire nelle più selvagge reazioni dell’ascetismo, che il voto di Orlando non fosse lecito tanto quanto il voto di Valentino. Ma è un notevole fatto che anche quando non era lecito, era pur sempre un voto. Attraverso tutta quella cultura medievale, che ci ha lasciato la leggenda del romanzo cavalleresco, correva questo motivo di una catena, che era sentito come vincolante anche là dove non avrebbe dovuto vincolare. Gli amori senza legge delle leggende medievali hanno tutti la loro propria legge, e specialmente la loro propria lealtà, come nei racconti di Tristano o di Lancillotto. In questo senso potremmo dire che la dissolutezza medievale era più fissa del matrimonio moderno. Non sto qui discutendo né l’etica moderna né quella medievale, riguardo a ciò che dissero o avrebbero dovuto dire di tali cose. Sto solo notando come fatto storico l’insistenza dell’ immaginazione medievale, anche al suo più selvaggio, su una particolare idea. Quell’idea è l’idea del voto. Poteva essere il voto che San Valentino fece; poteva essere un voto minore che egli riteneva lecito; poteva essere un voto selvaggio che egli riteneva del tutto illecito. Ma l’intera società che fece tali feste e ci trasmise tali tradizioni era piena dell’idea dei voti; e dobbiamo riconoscere questa nozione, anche se la riteniamo insensata, come la nota dell’intera civiltà. E Valentino e il biglietto di San Valentino entrambi la esprimono per noi; ancor più se li sentiamo entrambi come esagerati, o persino come esageranti opposti. Quegli estremi si incontrano; e si incontrano nello stesso luogo. Il loro luogo di convegno è presso l’albero al quale l’amante appese le sue lettere d’amore. E anche se l’amante si impiccasse all’albero, invece delle sue composizioni letterarie, anche quell’atto avrebbe in sé anche un indefinibile sapore di finalità.

Spesso si dice dai critici delle origini cristiane che certe feste rituali, processioni o danze sono in realtà di origine pagana. Tanto varrebbe dire che le nostre gambe sono di origine pagana. Nessuno ha mai contestato che l’umanità fosse umana prima di essere cristiana; e nessuna Chiesa fabbricò le gambe con cui gli uomini camminavano o danzavano, sia in un pellegrinaggio sia in un balletto. Ciò che davvero si può sostenere, sì da recare non poca convinzione, è questo: che dove tale Chiesa è esistita essa ha preservato non solo le processioni ma le danze; non solo la cattedrale ma il carnevale. Una delle principali rivendicazioni della civiltà cristiana è di aver preservato cose di origine pagana. In breve, nei vecchi paesi religiosi gli uomini continuano a danzare; mentre nelle nuove città scientifiche si contentano spesso di sgobbare.

Ma quando questa più sana veduta della storia è compresa, rimane pur qualcosa di più mistico e difficile da definire. Anche le cose pagane sono cristiane quando sono state preservate dal Cristianesimo. La cavalleria è qualcosa di riconoscibilmente diverso persino dalla virtus di Virgilio. La Carità è qualcosa di estremamente diverso dalla semplice pietà di Omero. Persino il nostro patriottismo è qualcosa di più sottile dell’indiviso amore della città; e il mutamento è sentito nelle cose più permanenti, come l’amore per il paesaggio o l’amore per la donna. Definire la differenziazione in tutte queste cose sarà sempre irrimediabilmente difficile. Ma vorrei qui suggerire un elemento nel mutamento che forse è troppo trascurato; che ad ogni modo non dovrebbe essere trascurato; la natura di un voto. Potrei esprimerlo dicendo che l’antichità pagana fu l’età dello status; che il medievalismo cristiano fu l’età dei voti; e che la modernità scettica è stata l’età dei contratti; o piuttosto ha tentato di esserlo, ed è fallita.

The outstanding example of status was slavery. Needless to say slavery does not mean tyranny; indeed it need only be regarded relatively to other things to be regarded as charity. The idea of slavery is that large numbers of men are meant and made to do the heavy work of the world, and that others, while taking the margin of profits, must nevertheless support them while they do it. The point is not whether the work is excessive or moderate, or whether the condition is comfortable or uncomfortable. The point is that his work is chosen for the man, his status fixed for the man; and this status is forced on him by law. As Mr. Balfour said about Socialism, that is slavery and nothing else is slavery. The slave might well be, and often was, far more comfortable than the average free labourer, and certainly far more lazy than the average peasant. He was a slave because he had not reached his position by choice, or promise, or bargain, but merely by status.

It is admitted that when Christianity had been for some time at work in the world, this ancient servile status began in some mysterious manner to disappear. I suggest here that one of the forms which the new spirit took was the importance of the vow. Feudalism, for instance, differed from slavery chiefly because feudalism was a vow. The vassal put his hands in those of his lord, and vowed to be his man; but there was an accent on the noun substantive as well as on the possessive pronoun. By swearing to be his man, he proved he was not his chattel. Nobody exacts a promise from a pickaxe, or expects a poker to swear everlasting friendship with the tongs. Nobody takes the word of a spade; and nobody ever took the word of a slave. It marks at least a special stage of transition that the form of freedom was essential to the fact of service, or even of servitude. In this way it is not a coincidence that the word homage actually means manhood. And if there was vow instead of status even in the static parts of Feudalism, it is needless to say that there was a wilder luxuriance of vows in the more adventurous part of it. The whole of what we call chivalry was one great vow. Vows of chivalry varied infinitely from the most solid to the most fantastic; 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 Jerusalem. As I have remarked, this rule of loyalty, even in the unruly exceptions which proved the rule, ran through all the romances and songs of the troubadours; and there were always vows even when they were very far from being marriage vows. The idea is as much present in what they called the Gay Science, of love, as in what they called the Divine Science, of theology. The modern reader will smile at the mention of these things as sciences; and will turn to the study of sociology, ethnology and psycho-analysis; for if these are sciences (about which I would not divulge a doubt) at least nobody would insult them by calling them either gay or divine.

I mean here to emphasise the presence, and not even to settle the proportion, of this new notion in the middle ages. But the critic will be quite wrong if he thinks it enough to answer that all these things affected only a cultured class, not corresponding to the servile class of antiquity. When we come to workmen and small tradesmen, we find the same vague yet vivid presence of the spirit that can only be called the vow. In this sense there was a chivalry of trades as well as a chivalry of orders of knighthood; just as there was a heraldry of shop-signs as well as a heraldry of shields. Only it happens that in the enlightenment and liberation of the sixteenth century, the heraldry of the rich was preserved, and the heraldry of the poor destroyed. 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 Lombardy. Of all those democratic glories nothing can now glitter in the sun; except the sign of the golden usury that has devoured them all. The point here, however, is that the trade or craft had not only something like the crest, but something like the vow of knighthood. There was in the position of the guildsman the same basic notion that belonged to knights and even to monks. It was the notion of the free choice of a fixed estate. We can realise the moral atmosphere if we compare the system of the Christian guilds, not only with the status of the Greek and Roman slaves, but with such a scheme as that of the Indian castes. The oriental caste has some of the qualities of the occidental guild; especially the valuable quality of tradition and the accumulation of culture. Men might be proud of their castes, as they were proud of their guilds. But they had never chosen their castes, as they have chosen their guilds. They had never, within historic memory, even collectively created their castes, as they collectively created their guilds. Like the slave system, the caste system was older than history. The heathens of modern Asia, as much as the heathens of ancient Europe, lived by the very spirit of status. Status in a trade has been accepted like status in a tribe; and that in a tribe of beasts and birds rather than men. The fisherman continued to be a fisherman as the fish continued to be a fish; and the hunter would no more turn into a cook than his dog would try its luck as a cat. Certainly his dog would not be found prostrated before the mysterious altar of Pasht, barking or whining a wild, lonely, and individual vow that he at all costs would become a cat. Yet that was the vital revolt and innovation of vows, as compared with castes or slavery; as when a man vowed to be a monk, or the son of a cobbler saluted the shrine of St. Joseph, the patron saint of carpenters. When he had entered the guild of the carpenters he did indeed find himself responsible for a very real loyalty and discipline; but the whole social atmosphere surrounding his entrance was full of the sense of a separate and personal decision. There is one place where we can still find this sentiment; the sentiment of something at once free and final. We can feel it, if the service is properly understood, before and after the marriage vows at any ordinary wedding in any ordinary church.

L’esempio eminente di status era la schiavitù. Inutile dire che la schiavitù non significa tirannia; anzi, basta considerarla relativamente ad altre cose per considerarla come carità. L’idea della schiavitù è che gran numero di uomini sono destinati e fatti a compiere il pesante lavoro del mondo, e che altri, mentre prendono il margine dei profitti, devono nondimeno mantenerli mentre lo compiono. Il punto non è se il lavoro sia eccessivo o moderato, o se la condizione sia comoda o scomoda. Il punto è che il suo lavoro è scelto per l’uomo, il suo status fissato per l’uomo; e questo status gli è imposto dalla legge. Come disse il signor Balfour a proposito del Socialismo, quella è schiavitù e nient’altro è schiavitù. Lo schiavo poteva bene essere, e spesso era, assai più comodo del comune bracciante libero, e certamente assai più pigro del comune contadino. Era uno schiavo perché non aveva raggiunto la sua posizione per scelta, o promessa, o patto, ma unicamente per status.

Si ammette che quando il Cristianesimo ebbe operato per qualche tempo nel mondo, questo antico status servile cominciò in qualche misterioso modo a scomparire. Suggerisco qui che una delle forme che il nuovo spirito prese fu l’importanza del voto. Il feudalesimo, per esempio, differiva dalla schiavitù principalmente perché il feudalesimo era un voto. Il vassallo poneva le sue mani in quelle del suo signore, e votava di essere il suo uomo; ma vi era un accento sul sostantivo tanto quanto sul pronome possessivo. Giurando di essere il suo uomo, egli provava di non essere il suo bene mobile. Nessuno esige una promessa da un piccone, o si aspetta che un attizzatoio giuri eterna amicizia con le molle. Nessuno prende la parola di una vanga; e nessuno mai prese la parola di uno schiavo. Segna almeno uno speciale stadio di transizione il fatto che la forma della libertà fosse essenziale al fatto del servizio, o persino della servitù. In questo modo non è una coincidenza che la parola omaggio significhi in realtà virilità. E se vi era voto invece di status persino nelle parti statiche del Feudalesimo, è inutile dire che vi era un più selvaggio rigoglio di voti nella parte più avventurosa di esso. L’intera di ciò che chiamiamo cavalleria era un solo grande voto. I voti di cavalleria variavano infinitamente dal più solido al più fantastico; dal voto di dare tutte le spoglie della conquista ai poveri al voto di astenersi dal radersi finché non si scorgesse la prima immagine di Gerusalemme. Come ho osservato, questa regola di lealtà, persino nelle indisciplinate eccezioni che confermavano la regola, correva attraverso tutti i romanzi e i canti dei trovatori; e vi erano sempre voti anche quando erano ben lungi dall’essere voti matrimoniali. L’idea è altrettanto presente in ciò che chiamavano la Gaia Scienza, dell’amore, quanto in ciò che chiamavano la Divina Scienza, della teologia. Il lettore moderno sorriderà alla menzione di queste cose come scienze; e si volgerà allo studio della sociologia, dell’etnologia e della psicoanalisi; poiché se queste sono scienze (sulle quali non divulgherei un dubbio) almeno nessuno le insulterebbe chiamandole o gaie o divine.

Intendo qui sottolineare la presenza, e non già stabilire la proporzione, di questa nuova nozione nel medioevo. Ma il critico avrà del tutto torto se pensa che basti rispondere che tutte queste cose riguardavano soltanto una classe colta, non corrispondente alla classe servile dell’antichità. Quando veniamo agli operai e ai piccoli commercianti, troviamo la stessa vaga eppur vivida presenza dello spirito che può solo chiamarsi il voto. In questo senso vi era una cavalleria dei mestieri tanto quanto una cavalleria degli ordini cavallereschi; proprio come vi era un’araldica delle insegne di bottega tanto quanto un’araldica degli scudi. Solo che accade che nel- l’illuminazione e liberazione del sedicesimo secolo, l’araldica dei ricchi fu preservata, e l’araldica dei poveri distrutta. E vi è un sinistro simbolismo nel fatto che quasi l’unico emblema ancora appeso sopra una bottega è quello delle tre palle di Lombardia. Di tutte quelle glorie democratiche nulla può ora brillare al sole; tranne l’insegna dell’aurea usura che le ha tutte divorate. Il punto qui, tuttavia, è che il commercio o il mestiere aveva non solo qualcosa come lo stemma, ma qualcosa come il voto di cavalleria. Vi era nella posizione del membro di gilda la stessa fondamentale nozione che apparteneva ai cavalieri e persino ai monaci. Era la nozione della libera scelta di uno stato fisso. Possiamo cogliere l’atmosfera morale se paragoniamo il sistema delle gilde cristiane, non solo con lo status degli schiavi greci e romani, ma con uno schema come quello delle caste indiane. La casta orientale ha alcune delle qualità della gilda occidentale; specialmente la preziosa qualità della tradizione e dell’accumulo di cultura. Gli uomini potevano essere fieri delle loro caste, come erano fieri delle loro gilde. Ma non avevano mai scelto le loro caste, come hanno scelto le loro gilde. Non avevano mai, entro la memoria storica, nemmeno collettivamente creato le loro caste, come collettivamente crearono le loro gilde. Come il sistema schiavista, il sistema delle caste era più antico della storia. I pagani dell’Asia moderna, non meno dei pagani dell’antica Europa, vivevano proprio dello spirito dello status. Lo status in un mestiere è stato accettato come lo status in una tribù; e ciò in una tribù di bestie e di uccelli piuttosto che di uomini. Il pescatore continuava a essere pescatore come il pesce continuava a essere pesce; e il cacciatore non si sarebbe più mutato in cuoco di quanto il suo cane tenterebbe la sorte come gatto. Certamente il suo cane non si troverebbe prostrato dinanzi al misterioso altare di Pasht, abbaiando o guaendo un selvaggio, solitario e individuale voto che egli a ogni costo sarebbe divenuto un gatto. Eppure quella fu la vitale rivolta e innovazione dei voti, in confronto alle caste o alla schiavitù; come quando un uomo votava di farsi monaco, o il figlio di un ciabattino salutava il sacrario di San Giuseppe, il santo patrono dei carpentieri. Quando era entrato nella gilda dei carpentieri egli si trovava invero responsabile di una assai reale lealtà e disciplina; ma l’intera atmosfera sociale che circondava il suo ingresso era piena del senso di una decisione separata e personale. Vi è un luogo dove possiamo ancora trovare questo sentimento; il sentimento di qualcosa a un tempo libero e definitivo. Possiamo sentirlo, se il servizio è propriamente compreso, prima e dopo i voti matrimoniali a ogni ordinaria cerimonia nuziale in ogni ordinaria chiesa.

Such, in very vague outline, has been the historical nature of vows; and the unique part they played in that mediaeval civilisation out of which modern civilisation rose—or fell. We can now consider, a little less cloudily than it is generally considered nowadays, whether we really think vows are good things; whether they ought to be broken; and (as would naturally follow) whether they ought to be made. But we can never judge it fairly till we face, as I have tried to suggest, this main fact of history; that the personal pledge, feudal or civic or monastic, was the way in which the world did escape from the system of slavery in the past. For the modern breakdown of mere contract leaves it still doubtful if there be any other way of escaping it in the future.

The idea, or at any rate the ideal, of the thing called a vow is fairly obvious. It is to combine the fixity that goes with finality with the self-respect that only goes with freedom. The man is a slave who is his own master, and a king who is his own ancestor. For all kinds of social purposes he has the calculable orbit of the man in the caste or the servile state; but in the story of his own soul he is still pursuing, at great peril, his own adventure. As seen by his neighbours, he is as safe as if immured in a fortress; but as seen by himself he may be forever careering through the sky or crashing towards the earth in a flying-ship. What is socially humdrum is produced by what is individually heroic; and a city is made not merely of citizens but knight-errants. It is needless to point out the part played by the monastery in civilising Europe in its most barbaric interregnum; and even those who still denounce the monasteries will be found denouncing them for these two extreme and apparently opposite eccentricities. They are blamed for the rigid character of their collective routine; and also for the fantastic character of their individual fanaticism. For the purposes of this part of the argument, it would not matter if the marriage vow produced the most austere discomforts of the monastic vow. The point for the present is that it was sustained by a sense of free will; and the feeling that its evils were not accepted but chosen. The same spirit ran through all the guilds and popular arts and spontaneous social systems of the whole civilisation. It had all the discipline of an army; but it was an army of volunteers.

The civilisation of vows was broken up when Henry the Eighth broke his own vow of marriage. Or rather, it was broken up by a new cynicism in the ruling powers of Europe, of which that was the almost accidental expression in England. The monasteries, that had been built by vows, were destroyed. The guilds, that had been regiments of volunteers were dispersed. The sacramental nature of marriage was denied; and many of the greatest intellects of the new movement, like Milton, already indulged in a very modern idealisation of divorce. 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 England; with all its sympathy with personal liberty, and all its utter lack of sympathy with popular life. Marriage not only became less of a sacrament but less of a sanctity. It threatened to become not only a contract, but a contract that could not be kept. For this one question has retained a strange symbolic supremacy amid all the similar questions, which seems to perpetuate the coincidence of the origin. It began with divorce for a king; and it is now ending in divorces for a whole kingdom.

The modern era that followed can be called the era of contract; but it can still more truly be called the era of leonine contract. The nobles of the new time first robbed the people, and then offered to bargain with them. It would not be an exaggeration to say that they first robbed the people, and then offered to cheat them. For their rents were competitive rents, their economics competitive economics, their ethics competitive ethics; they applied not only legality but pettifogging. No more was heard of the customary rents of the mediaeval estates; just as no more was heard of the standard wages of the mediaeval guilds. The object of the whole process was to isolate the individual poor man in his dealings with the individual rich man; and then offer to buy and sell with him, though it must necessarily be himself that was bought and sold. In the matter of labour, that is, though a man was supposed to be in the position of a seller, he was more and more really in the possession of a slave. Unless the tendency be reversed, he will probably become admittedly a slave. That is to say, the word slave will never be used; for it is always easy to find an inoffensive word; but he will be admittedly a man legally bound to certain social service, in return for economic security. In other words, the modern experiment of mere contract has broken down. Trusts as well as Trades’ Unions express the fact that it has broken down. Social reform, Socialism, Guild Socialism, Syndicalism, even organised philanthropy, are so many ways of saying that it has broken down. The substitute for it may be the old one of status; but it must be something having some of the stability of status. So far history has found only one way of combining that sort of stability with any sort of liberty. In this sense there is a meaning in the much misused phrase about the army of industry. But the army must be stiffened either by the discipline of conscripts or by the vows of volunteers.

If we may extend the doubtful metaphor of an army of industry to cover the yet weaker phrase about captains of industry, there is no doubt about what those captains at present command. They work for a centralised discipline in every department. They erect a vast apparatus of supervision and inspection; they support all the modern restrictions touching drink and hygiene. They may be called the friends of temperance or even of happiness; but even their friends would not call them the friends of freedom. There is only one form of freedom which they tolerate; and that is the sort of sexual freedom which is covered by the legal fiction of divorce. If we ask why this liberty is alone left, when so many liberties are lost, we shall find the answer in the summary of this chapter. They are trying to break the vow of the knight as they broke the vow of the monk. They recognise the vow as the vital antithesis to servile status, the alternative and therefore the antagonist. Marriage makes a small state within the state, which resists all such regimentation. That bond breaks all other bonds; that law is found stronger than all later and lesser laws. They desire the democracy to be sexually fluid, because the making of small nuclei is like the making of small nations. Like small nations, they are a nuisance to the mind of imperial scope. In short, what they fear, in the most literal sense, is home rule.

Men can always be blind to a thing so long as it is big enough. It is so difficult to see the world in which we live, that I know that many will see all I have said here of slavery as a nonsensical nightmare. But if my association of divorce with slavery seems only a far-fetched and theoretical paradox, I should have no difficulty in replacing it by a concrete and familiar picture. Let them merely remember the time when they read “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and ask themselves whether the oldest and simplest of the charges against slavery has not always been the breaking up of families.

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Tale, in assai vago contorno, è stata la natura storica dei voti; e la parte unica che essi giocarono in quella medievale civiltà dalla quale la civiltà moderna sorse—o cadde. Possiamo ora considerare, un poco meno nebulosamente di quanto generalmente si consideri oggigiorno, se davvero pensiamo che i voti siano cose buone; se debbano essere infranti; e (come naturalmente seguirebbe) se debbano essere fatti. Ma non potremo mai giudicarlo con equità finché non affronteremo, come ho cercato di suggerire, questo fatto centrale della storia; che il pegno personale, feudale o civico o monastico, fu il modo in cui il mondo sfuggì al sistema della schiavitù nel passato. Poiché il moderno crollo del mero contratto lascia ancora dubbio se vi sia alcun altro modo di sfuggirvi nel futuro.

L’idea, o comunque l’ideale, della cosa chiamata voto è abbastanza ovvia. È di combinare la fissità che va con la finalità col rispetto di sé che va soltanto con la libertà. L’uomo è uno schiavo che è padrone di sé stesso, e un re che è antenato di sé stesso. Per ogni sorta di scopi sociali egli ha l’orbita calcolabile dell’uomo nella casta o nello Stato servile; ma nella storia della sua propria anima egli sta ancora inseguendo, a grande rischio, la sua propria avventura. Come veduto dai suoi vicini, egli è sicuro come se murato in una fortezza; ma come veduto da sé stesso egli può eternamente sfrecciare per il cielo o precipitare verso la terra in una nave volante. Ciò che è socialmente monotono è prodotto da ciò che è individualmente eroico; e una città è fatta non solo di cittadini ma di cavalieri erranti. È inutile far notare la parte giocata dal monastero nel civilizzare l’Europa nel suo più barbaro interregno; e persino coloro che ancora denunciano i monasteri li si troverà denunciarli per queste due estreme e apparentemente opposte eccentricità. Sono biasimati per il rigido carattere della loro collettiva routine; e anche per il fantastico carattere del loro individuale fanatismo. Ai fini di questa parte dell’argomento, non importerebbe se il voto matrimoniale producesse i più austeri disagi del voto monastico. Il punto per ora è che esso era sostenuto da un senso di libero arbitrio; e dal sentimento che i suoi mali non erano accettati ma scelti. Lo stesso spirito correva attraverso tutte le gilde e le arti popolari e i sistemi sociali spontanei dell’intera civiltà. Aveva tutta la disciplina di un esercito; ma era un esercito di volontari.

La civiltà dei voti fu disgregata quando Enrico Ottavo infranse il suo proprio voto di matrimonio. O piuttosto, fu disgregata da un nuovo cinismo nei poteri regnanti d’Europa, di cui quello fu la quasi accidentale espressione in Inghilterra. I monasteri, che erano stati costruiti da voti, furono distrutti. Le gilde, che erano state reggimenti di volontari, furono disperse. La natura sacramentale del matrimonio fu negata; e molti dei più grandi intelletti del nuovo movimento, come Milton, già indulgevano a una assai moderna idealizzazione del divorzio. Il progresso di questa sorta di emancipazione avanzò passo dopo passo col progresso di quell’ascendente aristocratico che ha fatto la storia dell’Inghilterra moderna; con tutta la sua simpatia per la libertà personale, e tutta la sua totale mancanza di simpatia per la vita popolare. Il matrimonio non solo divenne meno un sacramento ma meno una santità. Minacciò di divenire non solo un contratto, ma un contratto che non poteva essere mantenuto. Poiché quest’unica questione ha conservato una strana simbolica supremazia tra tutte le questioni simili, che sembra perpetuare la coincidenza dell’origine. Cominciò con un divorzio per un re; e ora sta finendo in divorzi per un intero regno.

L’era moderna che seguì può chiamarsi l’era del contratto; ma può ancor più veramente chiamarsi l’era del contratto leonino. I nobili del nuovo tempo dapprima derubarono il popolo, e poi offrirono di contrattare con esso. Non sarebbe un’esagerazione dire che dapprima derubarono il popolo, e poi offrirono di ingannarlo. Poiché le loro rendite erano rendite competitive, la loro economia economia competitiva, la loro etica etica competitiva; essi applicavano non solo la legalità ma il cavillo. Non si udì più delle rendite consuetudinarie dei possedimenti medievali; proprio come non si udì più dei salari standard delle gilde medievali. L’oggetto dell’intero processo era di isolare il singolo povero nei suoi rapporti col singolo ricco; e poi offrire di comprare e vendere con lui, benché dovesse necessariamente essere lui stesso a essere comprato e venduto. In materia di lavoro, cioè, benché un uomo si supponesse nella posizione di un venditore, egli era sempre più realmente nel possesso di uno schiavo. A meno che la tendenza non si inverta, egli probabilmente diverrà dichiaratamente uno schiavo. Vale a dire, la parola schiavo non verrà mai usata; poiché è sempre facile trovare una parola inoffensiva; ma egli sarà dichiaratamente un uomo legalmente vincolato a un certo servizio sociale, in cambio di sicurezza economica. In altre parole, il moderno esperimento del mero contratto è fallito. I Trust tanto quanto i Sindacati esprimono il fatto che è fallito. La riforma sociale, il Socialismo, il Socialismo delle gilde, il Sindacalismo, persino la filantropia organizzata, sono altrettanti modi di dire che è fallito. Il sostituto di esso potrà essere il vecchio dello status; ma dovrà essere qualcosa che abbia parte della stabilità dello status. Finora la storia ha trovato un solo modo di combinare quella sorta di stabilità con qualsiasi sorta di libertà. In questo senso vi è un significato nella tanto abusata frase sull’esercito dell’industria. Ma l’esercito dev’essere irrigidito o dalla disciplina dei coscritti o dai voti dei volontari.

Se possiamo estendere la dubbia metafora di un esercito dell’industria per coprire la frase ancor più debole sui capitani d’industria, non vi è alcun dubbio su ciò che quei capitani comandano al presente. Essi lavorano per una disciplina centralizzata in ogni dipartimento. Erigono un vasto apparato di supervisione e ispezione; sostengono tutte le moderne restrizioni riguardanti l’alcol e l’igiene. Possono essere chiamati amici della temperanza o persino della felicità; ma nemmeno i loro amici li chiamerebbero amici della libertà. Vi è una sola forma di libertà che essi tollerano; ed è quella sorta di libertà sessuale che è coperta dalla finzione legale del divorzio. Se domandiamo perché questa libertà è sola lasciata, quando tante libertà sono perdute, troveremo la risposta nel sommario di questo capitolo. Essi stanno cercando di infrangere il voto del cavaliere come infransero il voto del monaco. Riconoscono il voto come la vitale antitesi allo status servile, l’alternativa e perciò l’antagonista. Il Matrimonio fa un piccolo Stato dentro lo Stato, che resiste a ogni tale irreggimentazione. Quel legame spezza tutti gli altri legami; quella legge si trova più forte di tutte le leggi posteriori e minori. Essi desiderano che la democrazia sia sessualmente fluida, perché il fare piccoli nuclei è come il fare piccole nazioni. Come le piccole nazioni, esse sono un fastidio per la mente di scopo imperiale. In breve, ciò che essi temono, nel senso più letterale, è il governo della casa.

Gli uomini possono sempre essere ciechi a una cosa fintanto che essa è abbastanza grande. È così difficile vedere il mondo in cui viviamo, che io so che molti vedranno tutto ciò che ho detto qui della schiavitù come un insensato incubo. Ma se la mia associazione del divorzio con la schiavitù sembra solo un paradosso forzato e teorico, non avrei alcuna difficoltà a sostituirlo con un quadro concreto e familiare. Ricordino soltanto il tempo in cui lessero «La capanna dello zio Tom», e si domandino se la più antica e semplice delle accuse contro la schiavitù non sia stata sempre la disgregazione delle famiglie.

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VII

THE TRAGEDIES OF MARRlAGE

There is one view very common among the liberal-minded which is exceedingly fatiguing to the clear-headed. It is symbolised in the sort of man who says, “These ruthless bigots will refuse to bury me in consecrated ground, because I have always refused to be baptised.” A clear-headed person can easily conceive his point of view, in so far as he happens to think that baptism does not matter. But the clear-headed will be completely puzzled when they ask themselves why, if he thinks that baptism does not matter, he should think that burial does matter. If it is in no way imprudent for a man to keep himself from a consecrated font, how can it be inhuman for other people to keep him from a consecrated field? It is surely much nearer to mere superstition to attach importance to what is done to a dead body than to a live baby. I can understand a man thinking both superstitious, or both sacred; but I cannot see why he should grumble that other people do not give him as sanctities what he regards as superstitions. He is merely complaining of being treated as what he declares himself to be. It is as if a man were to say, “My persecutors still refuse to make me king, out of mere malice because I am a strict republican.” Or it is as if he said, “These heartless brutes are so prejudiced against a teetotaler, that they won’t even give him a glass of brandy.”

The fashion of divorce would not be a modern fashion if it were not full of this touching fallacy. A great deal of it might be summed up as a most illogical and fanatical appetite for getting married in churches. It is as if a man should practice polygamy out of sheer greed for wedding cake. Or it is as if he provided his household with new shoes, entirely by having them thrown after the wedding carriage when he went off with a new wife. There are other ways of procuring cake or purchasing shoes; and there are other ways of setting up a human establishment. What is unreasonable is the request which the modern man really makes of the religious institutions of his fathers The modern man wants to buy one shoe without the other; to obtain one half of a supernatural revelation without the other. The modern man wants to eat his wedding cake and have it, too.

I am not basing this book on the religious argument, 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 complaints. As a matter of fact nobody does propose that some ferocious Anti-Semite like M. Drumont should be buried as a Jew with all the rites of the Synagogue. But the broad-minded were furious because Tolstoi, who had denounced Russian orthodoxy quite as ferociously, was not buried as orthodox, with all the rites of the Russian Church. Nobody does insist that a man who wishes to have fifty wives when Mahomet allowed him five must have his fifty with the full approval of Mahomet’s religion. But the broad-minded are extremely bitter because a Christian who wishes to have several wives when his own promise bound him to one, is not allowed to violate his vow at the same altar at which he made it. Nobody does insist on Baptists totally immersing people who totally deny the advantages of being totally immersed. Nobody ever did expect Mormons to receive the open mockers of the Book of Mormon, nor Christian Scientists to let their churches be used for exposing Mrs. Eddy as an old fraud. It is only of the forms of Christianity making the Catholic claim that such inconsistent claims are made. And even the inconsistency is, I fancy, a tribute to the acceptance of the Catholic idea in a catholic fashion. 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 Church; and though he may have made a few dozen Mormon marriages in a wandering and entertaining life, he will really have nowhere to go to if he does not somehow find his way back to the churchyard. But all this concerns the general theological question and not the matter involved here, which is merely historical and social. The point here is that it is at least superficially inconsistent to ask institutions for a formal approval, which they can only give by inconsistency.

I have put first the question of what is marriage. And we are now in a position to ask more clearly what is divorce. It is not merely the negation or neglect of marriage; for any one can always neglect marriage. It is not the dissolution of the legal obligation of marriage, or even the legal obligation of monogamy; for the simple reason that no such obligation exists. Any man in modern London may have a hundred wives if he does not call them wives; or rather, if he does not go through certain more or less mystical ceremonies in order to assert that they are wives. He might create a certain social coolness round his household, a certain fading of his general popularity. But that is not created by law, and could not be prevented by law. As the late Lord Salisbury very sensibly observed about boycotting in Ireland, “How can you make a law to prevent people going out of the room when somebody they don’t like comes into it?” We cannot be forcibly introduced to a polygamist by a policeman. It would not be an assertion of social liberty, but a denial of social liberty, if we found ourselves practically obliged to associate with all the profligates in society. But divorce is not in this sense mere anarchy. On the contrary divorce is in this sense respectability; and even a rigid excess of respectability. Divorce in this sense might indeed be not unfairly called snobbery. The definition of divorce, which concerns us here, is that it is the attempt to give respectability, and not liberty. It is the attempt to give a certain social status, and not a legal status. It is indeed supposed that this can be done by the alteration of certain legal forms; and this will be more or less true according to the extent to which law as such overawed public opinion, or was valued as a true expression of public opinion. If a man divorced in the large-minded fashion of Henry the Eighth pleaded his legal title among the peasantry of Ireland, for instance, I think he would find a difference still existing between respectability and religion. But the peculiar point here is that many are claiming the sanction of religion as well as of respectability. They would attach to their very natural and sometimes very pardonable experiments a certain atmosphere, and even glamour, which has undoubtedly belonged to the status of marriage in historic Christendom. But before they make this attempt, it would be well to ask why such a dignity ever appeared or in what it consisted. And I fancy we shall find ourselves confronted with the very simple truth, that the dignity arose wholly and entirely out of the fidelity; and that the glamour merely came from the vow. People were regarded as having a certain dignity because they were dedicated in a certain way; as bound to certain duties and, if it be preferred, to certain discomforts. It may be irrational to endure these discomforts; it may even be irrational to respect them. But it is certainly much more irrational to respect them, and then artificially transfer the same respect to the absence of them. It is as if we were to expect uniforms to be saluted when armies were disbanded; and ask people to cheer a soldier’s coat when it did not contain a soldier. If you think you can abolish war, abolish it; but do not suppose that when there are no wars to be waged, there will still be warriors to be worshipped. If it was a good thing that the monasteries were dissolved, let us say so and dismiss them. But the nobles who dissolved the monasteries did not shave their heads, and ask to be regarded as saints solely on account of that ceremony. The nobles did not dress up as abbots and ask to be credited with a potential talent for working miracles, because of the austerity of their vows of poverty and chastity. They got inside the houses, but not the hoods, and still less the haloes. They at least knew that it is not the habit that makes the monk. They were not so superstitious as those moderns, who think it is the veil that makes the bride.

VII

LE TRAGEDIE DEL MATRIMONIO

Vi è una veduta assai comune tra le persone di mente liberale che è oltremodo faticosa per le persone di mente chiara. È simboleggiata nella sorta d’uomo che dice: «Questi spietati bigotti rifiuteranno di seppellirmi in terra consacrata, perché io ho sempre rifiutato di essere battezzato.» Una persona di mente chiara può facilmente concepire il suo punto di vista, nella misura in cui gli accade di pensare che il battesimo non importi. Ma le persone di mente chiara resteranno completamente sconcertate quando si domanderanno perché, se egli pensa che il battesimo non importi, dovrebbe pensare che la sepoltura importi. Se non è affatto imprudente per un uomo tenersi lontano da un fonte consacrato, come può essere disumano per altri tenerlo lontano da un campo consacrato? È certo assai più prossimo alla mera superstizione attribuire importanza a ciò che si fa a un corpo morto che a un bimbo vivo. Posso comprendere un uomo che pensi entrambe le cose superstiziose, o entrambe sacre; ma non riesco a vedere perché egli debba lagnarsi che altri non gli diano come santità ciò che egli considera superstizioni. Egli si sta meramente lagnando di essere trattato come ciò che egli stesso dichiara di essere. È come se un uomo dicesse: «I miei persecutori ancora rifiutano di farmi re, per pura malizia perché io sono un rigido repubblicano.» Oppure è come se dicesse: «Questi bruti senza cuore sono così prevenuti contro un astemio, che non vogliono nemmeno dargli un bicchiere di brandy.»

La moda del divorzio non sarebbe una moda moderna se non fosse piena di questa toccante fallacia. Gran parte di essa potrebbe riassumersi come un appetito quanto mai illogico e fanatico di sposarsi nelle chiese. È come se un uomo praticasse la poligamia per pura ingordigia di torta nuziale. Oppure è come se provvedesse la sua casa di scarpe nuove, interamente facendosele gettare dietro alla carrozza nuziale quando parte con una nuova moglie. Vi sono altri modi di procurarsi la torta o di comprare le scarpe; e vi sono altri modi di mettere su una casa umana. Ciò che è irragionevole è la richiesta che l’uomo moderno davvero avanza alle istituzioni religiose dei suoi padri. L’uomo moderno vuole comprare una scarpa senza l’altra; ottenere una metà di una rivelazione soprannaturale senza l’altra. L’uomo moderno vuole mangiare la sua torta nuziale e insieme conservarla.

Non sto basando questo libro sull’argomento religioso, e perciò non mi fermerò a indagare perché le vecchie istituzioni cattoliche del Cristianesimo sembrino essere fatte in special modo oggetto di queste irragionevoli lamentele. In verità nessuno propone che qualche feroce antisemita come il signor Drumont debba essere sepolto come ebreo con tutti i riti della Sinagoga. Ma i larghi di mente erano furiosi perché Tolstoj, che aveva denunciato l’ortodossia russa altrettanto ferocemente, non fu sepolto come ortodosso, con tutti i riti della Chiesa russa. Nessuno insiste che un uomo il quale desideri avere cinquanta mogli quando Maometto gliene permetteva cinque debba avere le sue cinquanta con la piena approvazione della religione di Maometto. Ma i larghi di mente sono estremamente amareggiati perché un cristiano che desidera avere parecchie mogli quando la sua propria promessa lo vincolava a una, non è ammesso a violare il suo voto al medesimo altare al quale lo fece. Nessuno insiste che i Battisti immergano totalmente persone che totalmente negano i vantaggi dell’essere totalmente immersi. Nessuno mai si aspettò che i Mormoni accogliessero gli aperti schernitori del Libro di Mormon, né che gli Scientisti Cristiani lasciassero usare le loro chiese per smascherare la signora Eddy come una vecchia impostora. È solo delle forme del Cristianesimo che avanzano la pretesa cattolica che tali pretese incoerenti si fanno. E persino l’incoerenza è, io credo, un tributo all’accettazione dell’idea cattolica in modo cattolico. Può darsi che gli uomini abbiano un oscuro senso che nessuno ha bisogno di appartenere alla religione mormone e che ognuno alla fine appartiene alla Chiesa; e per quanto egli possa aver contratto qualche dozzina di matrimoni mormoni in una vita errabonda e divertente, egli non avrà davvero alcun luogo dove andare se non ritroverà in qualche modo la via del ritorno al cimitero della chiesa. Ma tutto ciò riguarda la questione teologica generale e non la materia qui in causa, che è meramente storica e sociale. Il punto qui è che è almeno superficialmente incoerente chiedere alle istituzioni un’approvazione formale, che esse possono soltanto dare per incoerenza.

Ho posto per prima la questione di che cosa sia il matrimonio. E siamo ora in grado di chiedere più chiaramente che cosa sia il divorzio. Non è meramente la negazione o la trascuranza del matrimonio; poiché chiunque può sempre trascurare il matrimonio. Non è la dissoluzione dell’obbligo legale del matrimonio, e nemmeno dell’obbligo legale della monogamia; per la semplice ragione che nessun tale obbligo esiste. Qualunque uomo nella Londra moderna può avere cento mogli se non le chiama mogli; o piuttosto, se non compie certe cerimonie più o meno mistiche per asserire che esse sono mogli. Egli potrebbe creare una certa freddezza sociale intorno alla sua casa, un certo appassire della sua generale popolarità. Ma ciò non è creato dalla legge, e non potrebbe essere impedito dalla legge. Come il defunto Lord Salisbury molto sensatamente osservò a proposito del boicottaggio in Irlanda: «Come si può fare una legge per impedire alla gente di uscire dalla stanza quando vi entra qualcuno che non le piace?» Non possiamo essere presentati a forza a un poligamo da un poliziotto. Non sarebbe un’affermazione di libertà sociale, ma una negazione di libertà sociale, se ci trovassimo praticamente obbligati a frequentare tutti i dissoluti della società. Ma il divorzio non è in questo senso mera anarchia. Al contrario il divorzio è in questo senso rispettabilità; e persino un rigido eccesso di rispettabilità. Il divorzio in questo senso potrebbe invero non ingiustamente chiamarsi snobismo. La definizione del divorzio, che qui ci concerne, è che esso è il tentativo di dare rispettabilità, e non libertà. È il tentativo di dare un certo status sociale, e non uno status legale. Si suppone invero che ciò si possa fare con l’alterazione di certe forme legali; e questo sarà più o meno vero a seconda della misura in cui la legge come tale intimidiva l’opinione pubblica, o era valutata come una vera espressione dell’opinione pubblica. Se un uomo divorziato alla larga maniera di Enrico Ottavo facesse valere il suo titolo legale tra i contadini d’Irlanda, per esempio, penso che troverebbe una differenza ancora esistente tra rispettabilità e religione. Ma il punto peculiare qui è che molti stanno rivendicando la sanzione della religione tanto quanto della rispettabilità. Essi vorrebbero attaccare ai loro assai naturali e talvolta assai perdonabili esperimenti una certa atmosfera, e persino un certo fascino, che ha indubbiamente appartenuto allo status del matrimonio nella Cristianità storica. Ma prima di fare questo tentativo, sarebbe bene domandarsi perché tale dignità mai apparve o in che cosa consistette. E credo che ci troveremo di fronte alla assai semplice verità, che la dignità sorse interamente e completamente dalla fedeltà; e che il fascino veniva meramente dal voto. Le persone erano considerate come aventi una certa dignità perché erano dedicate in un certo modo; come vincolate a certi doveri e, se si preferisce, a certi disagi. Può essere irrazionale sopportare questi disagi; può persino essere irrazionale rispettarli. Ma è certamente assai più irrazionale rispettarli, e poi artificialmente trasferire il medesimo rispetto alla loro assenza. È come se ci aspettassimo che le uniformi fossero salutate quando gli eserciti fossero sciolti; e chiedessimo alla gente di acclamare la giubba di un soldato quando essa non contenesse un soldato. Se pensate di poter abolire la guerra, abolitela; ma non supponete che quando non vi saranno più guerre da combattere, vi saranno ancora guerrieri da venerare. Se fu una cosa buona che i monasteri fossero sciolti, diciamolo pure e congediamoli. Ma i nobili che sciolsero i monasteri non si rasarono il capo, né chiesero di essere considerati santi unicamente in ragione di quella cerimonia. I nobili non si travestirono da abati né chiesero che si accreditasse loro un potenziale talento per operare miracoli, per via dell’austerità dei loro voti di povertà e castità. Entrarono dentro le case, ma non i cappucci, e ancor meno le aureole. Essi almeno sapevano che non è l’abito che fa il monaco. Non erano così superstiziosi come quei moderni, che pensano sia il velo a fare la sposa.

What is respected, in short, is the fidelity to the ancient flag of the family, and a readiness to fight for what I have noted as its unique type of freedom. I say readiness to fight, for fortunately the fight itself is the exception rather than the rule. The soldier is not respected because he is doomed to death, but because he is ready for death; and even ready for defeat. The married man or woman is not doomed to evil, sickness or poverty; but is respected for taking a certain step for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness or in health. But there is one result of this line of argument which should correct a danger in some arguments on the same side.

It is very essential that a stricture on divorce, which is in fact simply a defence of marriage, should be independent of sentimentalism, especially in the form called optimism. A man justifying a fight for national independence or civic freedom is neither sentimental nor optimistic. He explains the sacrifice, but he does not explain it away. He does not say that bayonet wounds are pin-pricks, or mere scratches of the thorns on a rose of pleasure. He does not say that the whole display of firearms is a festive display of fireworks. On the contrary, when he praises it most, he praises it as pain rather than pleasure. He increases the praise with the pain; it is his whole boast that militarism, and even modern science, can produce no instrument of torture to tame the soul of man. It is idle, in speaking of war, to pit the realistic against the romantic, in the sense of the heroic; for all possible realism can only increase the heroism; and therefore, in the highest sense, increase the romance. Now I do not compare marriage with war, but I do compare marriage with law or liberty or patriotism or popular government, or any of the human ideals which have often to be defended by war. Even the wildest of those ideals, which seem to escape from all the discipline of peace, do not escape from the discipline of war. The Bolshevists may have aimed at pure peace and liberty; but they have been compelled, for their own purpose, first to raise armies and then to rule armies. In a word, how ever beautiful you may think your own visions of beatitude, men must suffer to be beautiful, and even suffer a considerable interval of being ugly. And I have no notion of denying that mankind suffers much from the maintenance of the standard of marriage; as it suffers much from the necessity of criminal law or the recurrence of crusades and revolutions. The only question here is whether marriage is indeed, as I maintain, an ideal and an institution making for popular freedom; I do not need to be told that anything making for popular freedom has to be paid for in vigilance and pain, and a whole army of martyrs.

Hence I am far indeed from denying the hard cases which exist here, as in all matters involving the idea of honour. For indeed I could not deny them without denying the whole parallel of militant morality on which my argument rests. But this being first understood, it will be well to discuss in a little more detail what are described as the tragedies of marriage. And the first thing to note about the most tragic of them is that they are not tragedies of marriage at all They are tragedies of sex; and might easily occur in a highly modern romance in which marriage was not mentioned at all. It is generally summarised by saying that the tragic element is the absence of love. But it is often forgotten that another tragic element is often the presence of love. The doctors of divorce, with an air of the frank and friendly realism of men of the world, are always recommending and rejoicing in a sensible separation by mutual consent. But if we are really to dismiss our dreams of dignity and honour, if we are really to fall back on the frank realism of our experience as men of the world, then the very first thing that our experience will tell us is that it very seldom is a separation by mutual consent; that is, that the consent very seldom is sincerely and spontaneously mutual. By far the commonest problem in such cases is that in which one party wishes to end the partnership and the other does not. And of that emotional situation you can make nothing but a tragedy, whichever way you turn it. With or without marriage, with or without divorce, with or without any arrangements that anybody can suggest or imagine, it remains a tragedy. The only difference is that by the doctrine of marriage it remains both a noble and a fruitful tragedy; like that of a man who falls fighting for his country, or dies testifying to the truth. But the truth is that the innovators have as much sham optimism about divorce as any romanticist can have had about marriage. They regard their story, when it ends in the divorce court, through as rosy a mist of sentimentalism as anybody ever regarded a story ending with wedding bells. Such a reformer is quite sure that when once the prince and princess are divorced by the fairy godmother, they will live happily ever after. I enjoy romance, but I like it to be rooted in reality; and any one with a touch of reality knows that nine couples out of ten, when they are divorced, are left in an exceedingly different state. It will be safe to say in most cases that one partner will fail to find happiness in an infatuation, and the other will from the first accept a tragedy. In the realm of reality and not romance, it is commonly a case of breaking hearts as well as breaking promises; and even dishonour is not always a remedy for remorse.

Ciò che è rispettato, in breve, è la fedeltà all’antica bandiera della famiglia, e una prontezza a battersi per ciò che ho notato come il suo tipo unico di libertà. Dico prontezza a battersi, poiché per fortuna la lotta stessa è l’eccezione piuttosto che la regola. Il soldato non è rispettato perché è condannato alla morte, ma perché è pronto alla morte; e persino pronto alla sconfitta. L’uomo o la donna sposati non sono condannati al male, alla malattia o alla povertà; ma sono rispettati per aver compiuto un certo passo nel bene e nel male, nella ricchezza e nella povertà, nella malattia e nella salute. Ma vi è un risultato di questa linea di argomentazione che dovrebbe correggere un pericolo in alcuni argomenti dalla stessa parte.

È assai essenziale che una critica al divorzio, che è di fatto semplicemente una difesa del matrimonio, sia indipendente dal sentimentalismo, specialmente nella forma chiamata ottimismo. Un uomo che giustifica una lotta per l’indipendenza nazionale o la libertà civica non è né sentimentale né ottimista. Egli spiega il sacrificio, ma non lo spiega via. Non dice che le ferite di baionetta sono punture di spillo, o meri graffi delle spine su una rosa di piacere. Non dice che l’intera esibizione di armi da fuoco è una festosa esibizione di fuochi d’artificio. Al contrario, quando la loda di più, la loda come dolore piuttosto che come piacere. Accresce la lode con il dolore; è tutto il suo vanto che il militarismo, e persino la scienza moderna, non possano produrre alcuno strumento di tortura per domare l’anima dell’uomo. È vano, parlando di guerra, contrapporre il realistico al romantico, nel senso dell’eroico; poiché ogni realismo possibile può soltanto accrescere l’eroismo; e perciò, nel senso più alto, accrescere il romanzesco. Ora io non paragono il matrimonio alla guerra, ma paragono il matrimonio alla legge o alla libertà o al patriottismo o al governo popolare, o a uno qualunque degli ideali umani che spesso devono essere difesi con la guerra. Persino il più selvaggio di quegli ideali, che sembrano sfuggire a tutta la disciplina della pace, non sfugge alla disciplina della guerra. I Bolscevichi possono aver mirato alla pura pace e libertà; ma sono stati costretti, per il loro proprio scopo, dapprima a levare eserciti e poi a governare eserciti. In una parola, per quanto belle possiate ritenere le vostre proprie visioni di beatitudine, gli uomini devono soffrire per essere belli, e persino soffrire un considerevole intervallo di essere brutti. E io non ho alcuna intenzione di negare che l’umanità soffra molto dal mantenimento dello standard del matrimonio; come soffre molto dalla necessità della legge penale o dal ricorrere delle crociate e delle rivoluzioni. L’unica questione qui è se il matrimonio sia davvero, come io sostengo, un ideale e un’istituzione che opera per la libertà popolare; non ho bisogno che mi si dica che qualunque cosa operi per la libertà popolare deve essere pagata in vigilanza e dolore, e con un intero esercito di martiri.

Sono dunque assai lontano dal negare i casi difficili che esistono qui, come in ogni materia che coinvolga l’idea dell’onore. Poiché invero non potrei negarli senza negare l’intero parallelo della moralità militante su cui poggia il mio argomento. Ma inteso prima questo, sarà bene discutere in un poco più di dettaglio ciò che è descritto come le tragedie del matrimonio. E la prima cosa da notare sulla più tragica di esse è che esse non sono affatto tragedie del matrimonio. Sono tragedie del sesso; e potrebbero facilmente accadere in un romanzo quanto mai moderno in cui il matrimonio non fosse affatto menzionato. Generalmente si riassume dicendo che l’elemento tragico è l’assenza dell’amore. Ma spesso si dimentica che un altro elemento tragico è spesso la presenza dell’amore. I dottori del divorzio, con un’aria del franco e amichevole realismo degli uomini di mondo, stanno sempre raccomandando e rallegrandosi di una sensata separazione per mutuo consenso. Ma se dobbiamo davvero congedare i nostri sogni di dignità e onore, se dobbiamo davvero ripiegare sul franco realismo della nostra esperienza di uomini di mondo, allora la primissima cosa che la nostra esperienza ci dirà è che assai di rado si tratta di una separazione per mutuo consenso; cioè, che il consenso assai di rado è sinceramente e spontaneamente mutuo. Di gran lunga il problema più comune in tali casi è quello in cui una parte desidera porre fine alla società e l’altra no. E di quella situazione emotiva non si può fare altro che una tragedia, in qualunque modo la si rivolti. Con o senza matrimonio, con o senza divorzio, con o senza qualsiasi accordo che chiunque possa suggerire o immaginare, essa rimane una tragedia. L’unica differenza è che per la dottrina del matrimonio essa rimane insieme una nobile e feconda tragedia; come quella di un uomo che cade combattendo per il suo paese, o muore testimoniando la verità. Ma la verità è che gli innovatori hanno tanto falso ottimismo sul divorzio quanto qualsiasi romanticista poté mai avere sul matrimonio. Essi guardano alla loro storia, quando finisce nel tribunale del divorzio, attraverso una foschia sentimentale rosea come chiunque mai guardò a una storia che finisce con campane nuziali. Tale riformatore è del tutto certo che una volta che il principe e la principessa siano divorziati dalla fata madrina, essi vivranno felici e contenti per sempre. Io godo del romanzesco, ma mi piace che sia radicato nella realtà; e chiunque con un tocco di realtà sa che nove coppie su dieci, quando divorziano, restano in uno stato oltremodo diverso. Sarà prudente dire che nella maggior parte dei casi un partner non riuscirà a trovare la felicità in un’infatuazione, e l’altro fin dal principio accetterà una tragedia. Nel regno della realtà e non del romanzesco, è comunemente un caso di cuori spezzati tanto quanto di promesse infrante; e persino il disonore non è sempre un rimedio al rimorso.

The next limitation to be laid down in the matter affects certain practical forms of discomforts on a level rather lower than love or hatred. The cases most commonly quoted concern what is called “drink” and what is called “cruelty.” They are always talked about as matters of fact; though in practice they are very decidedly matters of opinion. It is not a flippancy, but a fact, 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 teetotaler. For the very definition of drunkenness may depend on the dogma of teetotalism. Drunkenness, it has been very truly observed, “may mean anything from delirium tremens to having a stronger head than the official appointed to conduct the examination.” Mr Bernard Shaw once professed, apparently seriously, that any man drinking wine or beer at all was incapacitated from managing a motorcar; and still more, therefore, one would suppose, from managing a wife. The scales are weighted here, of course, with all those false weights of snobbishness which are the curse of justice in this country. The working class is forced to conduct almost in public a normal and varying festive habit, which the upper class can afford to conduct in private; and a certain section of the middle class, that which happens to concern itself most with local politics and social reforms, really has or affects a standard quite abnormal and even alien. They might go any lengths of injustice in dealing with the working man or working woman accused of too hearty a taste in beer. To mention but one matter out of a thousand, the middle class reformers are obviously quite ignorant of the hours at which working people begin to work. Because they themselves, at eleven o’clock in the morning, have only recently finished breakfast and the full moral digestion of the Daily Mail, they think a char-woman drinking beer at that hour is one of those arising early in the morning to follow after strong drink. Most of them really do not know that she has already done more than half a heavy day’s work, and is partaking of a very reasonable luncheon. The whole problem of proletarian drink is entangled in a network of these misunderstandings; and there is no doubt whatever that, when judged by these generalisations, the poor will be taken in a net of injustices. And this truth is as certain in the case of what is called cruelty as of what is called drink. 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 lady. It is a class test; it may be a class superiority; but it is not an act of equal justice between the classes. It leaves out a thousand things; the provocation, the atmosphere, the harassing restrictions of space, the nagging which Dickens described as the terrors of “temper in a cart,” the absence of certain taboos of social training, the tradition of greater roughness even in the gestures of affection. To make all marriage or divorce, in the case of such a man, turn upon a blow is like blasting the whole life of a gentleman because he has slammed the door. Often a poor man cannot slam the door; partly because the model villa might fall down; but more because he has nowhere to go to; the smoking-room, the billiard room and the peacock music-room not being yet attached to his premises.

I say this in passing, to point out that while I do not dream of suggesting that there are only happy marriages, there will quite certainly, as things work nowadays, be a very large number of unhappy and unjust divorces. They will be cases in which the innocent partner will receive the real punishment of the guilty partner, through being in fact and feeling the faithful partner. For instance, it is insisted that a married person must at least find release from the society of a lunatic; but it is also true that the scientific reformers, with their fuss about “the feeble-minded,” are continually giving larger and looser definitions of lunacy. The process might begin by releasing somebody from a homicidal maniac, and end by dealing in the same way with a rather dull conversationalist. But in fact nobody does deny that a person should be allowed some sort of release from a homicidal maniac. The most extreme school of orthodoxy only maintains that anybody who has had that experience should be content with that release. In other words, it says he should be content with that experience of matrimony, and not seek another. It was put very wittily, I think, by a Roman Catholic friend of mine, who said he approved of release so long as it was not spelt with a hyphen.

To put it roughly, we are prepared in some cases to listen to the man who complains of having a wife. But we are not prepared to listen, at such length, to the same man when he comes back and complains that he has not got a wife. Now in practice at this moment the great mass of the complaints are precisely of this kind. The reformers insist particularly on the pathos of a man’s position when he has obtained a separation without a divorce. Their most tragic figure is that of the man who is already free of all those ills he had, and is only asking to be allowed to fly to others that he knows not of. I should be the last to deny that, in certain emotional circumstances, his tragedy may be very tragic indeed. But his tragedy is of the emotional kind which can never be entirely eliminated; and which he has himself, in all probability, inflicted on the partner he has left. We may call it the price of maintaining an ideal or the price of making a mistake; but anyhow it is the point of our whole distinction in the matter; it is here that we draw the line, and I have nowhere denied that it is a line of battle. The battle joins on the debatable ground, not of the man’s doubtful past but of his still more doubtful future. In a word, the divorce controversy is not really a controversy about divorce. It is a controversy about re-marriage; or rather about whether it is marriage at all.

And with that we can only return to the point of honour which I have compared here to a point of patriotism; since it is both the smallest and the greatest kind of patriotism. Men have died in torments during the last five years for points of patriotism far more dubious and fugitive. Men like the Poles or the Serbians, through long periods of their history, may be said rather to have lived in torments. I will never admit that the vital need of the freedom of the family, as I have tried to sketch it here, is not a cause as valuable as the freedom of any frontier. But I do willingly admit that the cause would be a dark and terrible one, if it really asked these men to suffer torments. As I have stated it, on its most extreme terms, it only asks them to suffer abnegations. And those negative sufferings I do think they may honourably be called upon to bear, for the glory of their own oath and the great things by which the nations live. In relation to their own nation most normal men will feel that this distinction between release and “re-lease” is neither fanciful nor harsh, but very rational and human. A patriot may be an exile in another country; but he will not be a patriot of another country. He will be as cheerful as he can in an abnormal position; he may or may not sing his country’s songs in a strange land; but he will not sing the strange songs as his own. And such may fairly be also the attitude of the citizen who has gone into exile from the oldest of earthly cities.

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La prossima limitazione da porre in materia riguarda certe forme pratiche di disagi a un livello piuttosto più basso dell’amore o dell’odio. I casi più comunemente citati concernono ciò che si chiama «alcol» e ciò che si chiama «crudeltà». Se ne parla sempre come di questioni di fatto; benché in pratica siano assai decisamente questioni di opinione. Non è una frivolezza, ma un fatto, che la sventura della donna che ha sposato un ubriacone possa dover essere bilanciata contro la sventura dell’uomo che ha sposato un’astemia. Poiché la definizione stessa di ubriachezza può dipendere dal dogma dell’astemismo. L’ubriachezza, si è assai giustamente osservato, «può significare qualunque cosa, dal delirium tremens all’avere una testa più salda di quella del funzionario incaricato di condurre l’esame.» Il signor Bernard Shaw una volta professò, apparentemente sul serio, che qualunque uomo bevesse vino o birra fosse inabilitato a condurre un’automobile; e ancor più, dunque, si supporrebbe, a condurre una moglie. Le bilance sono qui truccate, s’intende, con tutti quei falsi pesi di snobismo che sono la maledizione della giustizia in questo paese. La classe operaia è costretta a condurre quasi in pubblico una normale e variabile abitudine festiva, che la classe superiore può permettersi di condurre in privato; e una certa sezione della classe media, quella che si occupa più che mai di politica locale e di riforme sociali, ha davvero o affetta uno standard del tutto anormale e persino alieno. Essi potrebbero andare a qualunque lunghezza d’ingiustizia nel trattare l’operaio o l’operaia accusati di un gusto troppo cordiale per la birra. Per menzionare una sola cosa fra mille, i riformatori della classe media sono evidentemente del tutto ignari delle ore in cui la gente lavoratrice comincia a lavorare. Poiché essi stessi, alle undici in punto del mattino, hanno solo di recente finito la colazione e la piena digestione morale del Daily Mail, pensano che una donna delle pulizie che beve birra a quell’ora sia una di coloro che si levano di buon mattino per correr dietro alle bevande forti. La maggior parte di loro davvero non sa che ella ha già fatto più di metà di una pesante giornata di lavoro, e sta prendendo un assai ragionevole spuntino. L’intero problema del bere proletario è impigliato in una rete di questi malintesi; e non v’è alcun dubbio di sorta che, quando giudicati con queste generalizzazioni, i poveri saranno presi in una rete di ingiustizie. E questa verità è tanto certa nel caso di ciò che si chiama crudeltà quanto in quello di ciò che si chiama alcol. Nove volte su dieci il giudizio su uno sterratore per aver percosso una donna è giusto press’a poco quanto un giudizio su di lui per non essersi tolto il cappello davanti a una signora. È una prova di classe; potrà essere una superiorità di classe; ma non è un atto di eguale giustizia tra le classi. Tralascia mille cose: la provocazione, l’atmosfera, le assillanti ristrettezze di spazio, il brontolio che Dickens descrisse come i terrori del «cattivo umore in un carretto», l’assenza di certi tabù dell’educazione sociale, la tradizione di una maggiore rudezza persino nei gesti dell’affetto. Far dipendere ogni matrimonio o divorzio, nel caso di un tal uomo, da un colpo è come dare alle fiamme l’intera vita di un gentiluomo perché ha sbattuto la porta. Spesso un pover’uomo non può sbattere la porta; in parte perché la villetta modello potrebbe crollare; ma più perché non ha alcun luogo dove andare; la sala per fumatori, la sala da biliardo e la sala di musica del pavone non essendo ancora annesse ai suoi locali.

Dico questo di passaggio, per far notare che, mentre io non sogno di suggerire che vi siano solo matrimoni felici, vi sarà quasi certamente, per come vanno le cose oggigiorno, un assai gran numero di divorzi infelici e ingiusti. Saranno casi in cui il partner innocente riceverà la vera punizione del partner colpevole, per il fatto di essere di fatto e di sentimento il partner fedele. Per esempio, si insiste che una persona sposata debba almeno trovare liberazione dalla compagnia di un pazzo; ma è anche vero che i riformatori scientifici, col loro can can sui «deboli di mente», danno di continuo definizioni più larghe e più vaghe della pazzia. Il processo potrebbe cominciare col liberare qualcuno da un maniaco omicida, e finire col trattare allo stesso modo un conversatore alquanto noioso. Ma di fatto nessuno nega che a una persona debba essere concessa qualche sorta di liberazione da un maniaco omicida. La più estrema scuola di ortodossia sostiene soltanto che chiunque abbia avuto quell’esperienza dovrebbe accontentarsi di quella liberazione. In altre parole, dice che egli dovrebbe accontentarsi di quell’esperienza del matrimonio, e non cercarne un’altra. Fu detto assai argutamente, credo, da un mio amico cattolico romano, che disse di approvare la liberazione (release) purché non fosse scritta con un trattino.

Per dirla rozzamente, siamo disposti in certi casi a dare ascolto all’uomo che si lagna di avere una moglie. Ma non siamo disposti a dare ascolto, a tale lunghezza, al medesimo uomo quando torna e si lagna di non avere una moglie. Ora in pratica in questo momento la gran massa delle lagnanze è precisamente di questo genere. I riformatori insistono particolarmente sul pathos della posizione di un uomo quando ha ottenuto una separazione senza un divorzio. La loro figura più tragica è quella dell’uomo che è già libero di tutti quei mali che aveva, e chiede soltanto che gli sia concesso di volare verso altri che egli non conosce. Sarei l’ultimo a negare che, in certe circostanze emotive, la sua tragedia possa essere davvero assai tragica. Ma la sua tragedia è del genere emotivo che non può mai essere interamente eliminato; e che egli stesso, con ogni probabilità, ha inflitto al partner che ha lasciato. Possiamo chiamarlo il prezzo del mantenere un ideale o il prezzo del commettere un errore; ma comunque è il punto dell’intera nostra distinzione in materia; è qui che tracciamo la linea, e in nessun luogo ho negato che essa sia una linea di battaglia. La battaglia s’ingaggia sul terreno conteso, non del dubbio passato dell’uomo ma del suo ancor più dubbio futuro. In una parola, la controversia sul divorzio non è realmente una controversia sul divorzio. È una controversia sul ri-matrimonio; o piuttosto sul se sia affatto un matrimonio.

E con ciò possiamo soltanto tornare al punto d’onore che ho qui paragonato a un punto di patriottismo; poiché esso è insieme la più piccola e la più grande specie di patriottismo. Uomini sono morti fra i tormenti negli ultimi cinque anni per punti di patriottismo assai più dubbi e fuggevoli. Uomini come i Polacchi o i Serbi, per lunghi periodi della loro storia, si può dire piuttosto siano vissuti fra i tormenti. Non ammetterò mai che il vitale bisogno della libertà della famiglia, come ho cercato di abbozzarlo qui, non sia una causa altrettanto preziosa quanto la libertà di qualsiasi frontiera. Ma ammetto volentieri che la causa sarebbe oscura e terribile, se davvero chiedesse a questi uomini di soffrire tormenti. Come l’ho enunciata, nei suoi termini più estremi, essa chiede loro soltanto di soffrire abnegazioni. E quelle sofferenze negative penso davvero che essi possano onorevolmente essere chiamati a sopportare, per la gloria del loro proprio giuramento e per le grandi cose per cui le nazioni vivono. In relazione alla loro propria nazione la maggior parte degli uomini normali sentirà che questa distinzione tra la liberazione (release) e la «ri-locazione» (re-lease) non è né fantasiosa né dura, ma assai razionale e umana. Un patriota può essere un esule in un altro paese; ma non sarà un patriota di un altro paese. Sarà allegro quanto può in una posizione anormale; potrà o non potrà cantare i canti del suo paese in una terra straniera; ma non canterà i canti stranieri come propri. E tale può ben essere anche l’atteggiamento del cittadino che è andato in esilio dalla più antica delle città terrene.

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VIII

THE VISTA OF DIVORCE

The case for divorce combines all the advantages of having it both ways; and of drawing the same deduction from right or left, and from black or white. Whichever way the programme works in practice, it can still be justified in theory. If there are few examples of divorce, it shows how little divorce need be dreaded; if there are many, it shows how much it is required. The rarity of divorce is an argument in favour of divorce; and the multiplicity of divorce is an argument against marriage. Now, in truth, if we were confined to considering this alternative in a speculative manner, if there were no concrete facts but only abstract probabilities, we should have no difficulty in arguing our case. The abstract liberty allowed by the reformers is as near as possible to anarchy, and gives no logical or legal guarantee worth discussing. The advantages of their reform do not accrue to the innocent party, but to the guilty party; especially if he be sufficiently guilty. A man has only to commit the crime of desertion to obtain the reward of divorce. And if they are entitled to take as typical the most horrible hypothetical cases of the abuse of the marriage laws, surely we are entitled to take equally extreme possibilities in the abuse of their own divorce laws. If they, when looking about for a husband, so often hit upon a homicidal maniac, 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 pleases. But in fact there is no necessity for us to argue thus in the abstract; for the amiable gentleman in question undoubtedly exists in the concrete. Of course, he is no new figure; he is a very recurrent type of rascal; his name has been Lothario or Don Juan; and he has often been represented as a rather romantic rascal. The point of divorce reform, it cannot be too often repeated, is that the rascal should not only be regarded as romantic, but regarded as respectable. He is not to sow his wild oats and settle down; he is merely to settle down to sowing his wild oats. They are to be regarded as tame and inoffensive oats; almost, if one may say so, as Quaker oats. But there is no need, as I say, to speculate about whether the looser view of divorce might prevail; for it is already prevailing. 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 lawyers; and about the undisguised haste of the “hustling judges” who carry on the work. It is a form of hilarity which would seem to recall the gaiety of a grave-digger in a city swept by a pestilence. But a few details occasionally flash by in the happy dance; from time to time the court is moved by a momentary curiosity about the causes of the general violation of oaths and promises; as if there might, here and there, be a hint of some sort of reason for ruining the fundamental institution of society. And nobody who notes those details, or considers those faint hints of reason, can doubt for a moment that masses of these men and women are now simply using divorce in the spirit of free-love. They are very seldom the sort of people who have once fallen tragically into the wrong place, and have now found their way triumphantly to the right place. They are almost always people who are obviously wandering from one place to another, and will probably leave their last shelter exactly as they have left their first. But it seems to amuse them to make again, if possible in a church, a promise they have already broken in practice and almost avowedly disbelieve in principle.

In face of this headlong fashion, it is really reasonable to ask the divorce reformers what is their attitude towards the old monogamous ethic of our civilisation; and whether they wish to retain it in general, or to retain it at all. Unfortunately even the sincerest and most lucid of them use language which leaves the matter a little doubtful. Mr. E. S. P. Haynes is one of the most brilliant and most fair-minded controversialists on that side; and he has said, for instance, that he agrees with me in supporting the ideal of indissoluble or, at least, of undissolved marriage. Mr. Haynes is one of the few friends of divorce who are also real friends of democracy; and I am sure that in practice this stands for a real sympathy with the home, especially the poor home. Unfortunately, on the theoretic side, the word “ideal” is far from being an exact term, and is open to two almost opposite interpretations. For many would say that marriage is an ideal as some would say that monasticism is an ideal, in the sense of a counsel of perfection. Now certainly we might preserve a conjugal ideal in this way. A man might be reverently pointed out in the street as a sort of saint, merely because he was married. A man might wear a medal for monogamy; or have letters after his name similar to V.C. or D.D.; let us say L.W. for “Lives With His Wife,” or N.D.Y. for “Not Divorced Yet.” We might, on entering some strange city, be struck by a stately column erected to the memory of a wife who never ran away with a soldier, or the shrine and image of a historical character, who had resisted the example of the man in the “New Witness” ballade in bolting with the children’s nurse. Such high artistic hagiology would be quite consistent with Mr. Haynes’ divorce reform; with re-marriage after three years, or three hours. It would also be quite consistent with Mr. Haynes’ phrase about preserving an ideal of marriage. What it would not be consistent with is the perfectly plain, solid, secular and social usefulness which I have here attributed to marriage. It does not create or preserve a natural institution, normal to the whole community, to balance the more artificial and even more arbitrary institution of the state; which is less natural even if it is equally necessary. It does not defend a voluntary association, but leaves the only claim on life, death and loyalty with a more coercive institution. It does not stand, in the sense I have tried to explain, for the principle of liberty. In short, it does not do any of the things which Mr. Haynes himself would especially desire to see done. For humanity to be thus spontaneously organised from below, it is necessary that the organisation should be almost as universal as the official organisation from above. The tyrant must find not one family but many families defying his power; he must find mankind not a dust of atoms, but fixed in solid blocks of fidelity. And those human groups must support not only themselves but each other. In this sense what some call individualism is as corporate as communism. It is a thing of volunteers; but volunteers must be soldiers. It is a defence of private persons; but we might say that the private persons must be private soldiers. The family must be recognised as well as real; above all, the family must be recognised by the families. To expect individuals to suffer successfully for a home apart from the home, that is for something which is an incident but not an institution, is really a confusion between two ideas; it is a verbal sophistry almost in the nature of a pun. Similarly, for instance, we cannot prove the moral force of a peasantry by pointing to one peasant; we might almost as well reveal the military force of infantry by pointing to one infant.

VIII

LA PROSPETTIVA DEL DIVORZIO

Le ragioni a favore del divorzio combinano tutti i vantaggi del poter avere la cosa in entrambi i modi; e del trarre la medesima deduzione tanto da destra quanto da sinistra, e dal bianco come dal nero. In qualunque modo il programma funzioni nella pratica, esso può comunque essere giustificato in teoria. Se vi sono pochi esempi di divorzio, ciò dimostra quanto poco il divorzio debba essere temuto; se ve ne sono molti, ciò dimostra quanto esso sia necessario. La rarità del divorzio è un argomento in favore del divorzio; e la molteplicità del divorzio è un argomento contro il matrimonio. Ora, in verità, se ci limitassimo a considerare questa alternativa in maniera speculativa, se non vi fossero fatti concreti ma soltanto astratte probabilità, non avremmo alcuna difficoltà a sostenere la nostra tesi. La libertà astratta concessa dai riformatori è quanto più possibile vicina all’anarchia, e non offre alcuna garanzia logica o legale che valga la pena discutere. I vantaggi della loro riforma non ricadono sulla parte innocente, bensì sulla parte colpevole; specialmente se essa sia sufficientemente colpevole. A un uomo basta commettere il delitto dell’abbandono per ottenere il premio del divorzio. E se essi hanno il diritto di prendere come tipici i più orribili casi ipotetici di abuso delle leggi sul matrimonio, di certo noi abbiamo il diritto di prendere possibilità altrettanto estreme nell’abuso delle loro stesse leggi sul divorzio. Se essi, cercandosi un marito, tanto spesso s’imbattono in un maniaco omicida, di certo noi possiamo garbatamente presentar loro la figura assai più umana del gentiluomo che sposa quante donne gli aggrada e se ne disfa tutte le volte che gli piace. Ma in realtà non v’è alcuna necessità di ragionare così in astratto; giacché l’amabile gentiluomo in questione esiste senza dubbio nel concreto. Naturalmente egli non è una figura nuova; è un tipo di mascalzone assai ricorrente; il suo nome è stato Lotario o Don Giovanni; ed è stato spesso rappresentato come un mascalzone piuttosto romantico. Il nocciolo della riforma del divorzio, non lo si ripeterà mai abbastanza, è che il mascalzone non debba soltanto essere considerato romantico, ma considerato rispettabile. Egli non deve seminare la sua avena selvatica e poi mettere la testa a posto; deve semplicemente mettere la testa a posto nel seminare la sua avena selvatica. Essa va considerata come avena mite e inoffensiva; quasi, se così si può dire, come avena da quaccheri. Ma non v’è bisogno, come dico, di speculare se la visione più permissiva del divorzio possa prevalere; giacché essa sta già prevalendo. I giornali sono pieni di una sorprendente ilarità circa la rapidità con cui centinaia o migliaia di famiglie umane vengono disgregate dagli avvocati; e circa la non dissimulata fretta dei «giudici solerti» che portano avanti l’opera. È una forma di ilarità che parrebbe richiamare l’allegria di un becchino in una città flagellata da una pestilenza. Ma di tanto in tanto qualche dettaglio balena nella lieta danza; di tempo in tempo il tribunale è mosso da una momentanea curiosità circa le cause della generale violazione di giuramenti e promesse; come se potesse esservi, qua e là, un accenno di qualche sorta di ragione per rovinare l’istituzione fondamentale della società. E nessuno che noti quei dettagli, o consideri quei fievoli accenni di ragione, può dubitare per un istante che masse di questi uomini e donne stiano ora semplicemente usando il divorzio nello spirito del libero amore. Assai di rado sono il genere di persone che una volta erano tragicamente cadute nel posto sbagliato, e hanno ora trovato trionfalmente la via verso il posto giusto. Sono quasi sempre persone che palesemente vagano da un luogo all’altro, e probabilmente lasceranno il loro ultimo rifugio esattamente come hanno lasciato il primo. Ma pare divertirle il fare di nuovo, se possibile in una chiesa, una promessa che hanno già infranto nella pratica e in cui, quasi dichiaratamente, non credono per principio.

Di fronte a questa moda precipitosa, è davvero ragionevole domandare ai riformatori del divorzio quale sia il loro atteggiamento verso la vecchia etica monogamica della nostra civiltà; e se desiderino conservarla in generale, oppure conservarla affatto. Purtroppo persino i più sinceri e lucidi tra loro adoperano un linguaggio che lascia la questione un poco dubbia. Il signor E. S. P. Haynes è uno dei più brillanti e più equanimi polemisti di quella parte; ed egli ha detto, per esempio, di concordare con me nel sostenere l’ideale del matrimonio indissolubile o, quanto meno, non disciolto. Il signor Haynes è uno dei pochi amici del divorzio che siano anche veri amici della democrazia; e sono certo che nella pratica ciò equivalga a una reale simpatia per la casa, specialmente la casa dei poveri. Purtroppo, sul versante teorico, la parola «ideale» è tutt’altro che un termine esatto, ed è aperta a due interpretazioni quasi opposte. Poiché molti direbbero che il matrimonio è un ideale come alcuni direbbero che il monachesimo è un ideale, nel senso di un consiglio di perfezione. Ora, certamente potremmo preservare un ideale coniugale in questo modo. Un uomo potrebbe essere indicato con riverenza per la strada come una sorta di santo, semplicemente perché è sposato. Un uomo potrebbe portare una medaglia per la monogamia; o avere delle sigle dopo il proprio nome simili a V.C. o D.D.; diciamo V.C.M. per «Vive Con la Moglie», oppure N.A.D. per «Non Ancora Divorziato». Potremmo, entrando in qualche città straniera, restare colpiti da una maestosa colonna eretta alla memoria di una moglie che mai fuggì con un soldato, o dal sacrario e dall’effigie di un personaggio storico che avesse resistito all’esempio dell’uomo della ballata sul «New Witness», il quale se la svignò con la bambinaia dei bambini. Una così alta agiografia artistica sarebbe del tutto coerente con la riforma del divorzio del signor Haynes; con il nuovo matrimonio dopo tre anni, o tre ore. Sarebbe anche del tutto coerente con la frase del signor Haynes sul preservare un ideale del matrimonio. Ciò con cui non sarebbe coerente è la perfettamente semplice, solida, laica e sociale utilità che ho qui attribuito al matrimonio. Essa non crea né preserva un’istituzione naturale, normale all’intera comunità, atta a bilanciare l’istituzione più artificiale e persino più arbitraria dello Stato; il quale è meno naturale anche se è ugualmente necessario. Essa non difende un’associazione volontaria, ma lascia l’unico diritto sulla vita, sulla morte e sulla lealtà a un’istituzione più coercitiva. Essa non rappresenta, nel senso che ho cercato di spiegare, il principio della libertà. In breve, non fa nessuna delle cose che lo stesso signor Haynes desidererebbe soprattutto veder fatte. Affinché l’umanità sia così spontaneamente organizzata dal basso, è necessario che l’organizzazione sia quasi altrettanto universale quanto l’organizzazione ufficiale dall’alto. Il tiranno deve trovare non una famiglia ma molte famiglie che sfidano il suo potere; deve trovare il genere umano non una polvere di atomi, bensì saldo in solidi blocchi di fedeltà. E quei gruppi umani devono sostenere non soltanto sé stessi ma l’un l’altro. In questo senso ciò che alcuni chiamano individualismo è tanto corporativo quanto il comunismo. È una cosa di volontari; ma i volontari devono essere soldati. È una difesa di persone private; ma potremmo dire che le persone private devono essere soldati semplici. La famiglia dev’essere riconosciuta oltre che reale; soprattutto, la famiglia dev’essere riconosciuta dalle famiglie. Attendersi che gli individui soffrano con successo per una casa separata dalla casa, ossia per qualcosa che è un episodio ma non un’istituzione, è davvero una confusione tra due idee; è un sofisma verbale quasi nella natura di un gioco di parole. Similmente, per esempio, non possiamo provare la forza morale di un contadinato additando un solo contadino; potremmo quasi altrettanto bene rivelare la forza militare della fanteria additando un solo fante.

I take it, however, that the advocates of divorce do not mean that marriage is to remain ideal only in the sense of being almost impossible. They do not mean that a faithful husband is only to be admired as a fanatic. The reasonable men among them do really mean that a divorced person shall be tolerated as something unusually unfortunate, not merely that a married person shall be admired as some thing unusually blessed and inspired. But whatever they desire, it is as well that they should realise exactly what they do; and in this case I should like to hear their criticisms in the matter of what they see. They must surely see that in England at present, as in many parts of America in the past, the new liberty is being taken in the spirit of licence as if the exception were to be the rule, or, rather, perhaps the absence of rule. This will especially be made manifest if we consider that the effect of the process is accumulative like a snowball, and returns on itself like a snowball. The obvious effect of frivolous divorce will be frivolous marriage. If people can be separated for no reason they will feel it all the easier to be united for no reason. A man might quite clearly foresee that a sensual infatuation would be fleeting, and console himself with the knowledge that the connection could be equally fleeting. There seems no particular reason why he should not elaborately calculate that he could stand a particular lady’s temper for ten months; or reckon that he would have enjoyed and exhausted her repertoire of drawing-room songs in two years. The old joke about choosing the wife to fit the furniture or the fashions might quite logically return, not as an old joke but as a new solemnity; indeed, it will be found that a new religion is generally the return of an old joke. A man might quite consistently see a woman as suited to the period of the hobble skirt, and as less suited to the threatened recurrence of the crinoline. These fancies are fantastic enough, but they are not a shade more fantastic than the facts of many a divorce controversy as urged in the divorce courts. And this is to leave out altogether the most fantastic fact of all: the winking at widespread and conspicuous collusion. Collusion has become not so much an illegal evasion as a legal fiction, and even a legal institution, as it is admirably satirised in Mr. Somerset Maugham’s brilliant play of “Home and Beauty.” The fact was very frankly brought before the public, by a man who was eminently calculated to disarm satire by sincerity. Colonel Wedgewood is a man who can never be too much honoured, by all who have any hope of popular liberties still finding champions in the midst of parliamentary corruption. He is one of the very few men alive who have shown both military and political courage; the courage of the camp and the courage of the forum. And doubtless he showed a third type of social courage, in avowing the absurd expedient which so many others are content merely to accept and employ. It is admittedly a frantic and farcical thing that a good man should find or think it necessary to pretend to commit a sin. Some of the divorce moralists seem to deduce from this that he ought really to commit the sin. They may possibly be aware, however, that there are some who do not agree with them.

For this latter fact is the next step in the speculative progress of the new morality. The divorce advocates must be well aware that modern civilisation still contains strong elements, not the least intelligent and certainly not the least vigorous, which will not accept the new respectability as a substitute for the old religious vow. The Roman Catholic Church, the Anglo-Catholic school, the conservative peasantries, and a large section of the popular life everywhere, will regard the riot of divorce and re-marriage as they would any other riot of irresponsibility. The consequence would appear to be that two different standards will appear in ordinary morality, and even in ordinary society. Instead of the old social distinction between those who are married and those who are unmarried, there will be a distinction between those who are married and those who are really married. Society might even become divided into two societies, which is perilously approximate to Disraeli’s famous exaggeration about England divided into two nations. But whether England be actually so divided or not, this note of the two nations is the real note of warning in the matter. It is in this connection perhaps, that we have to consider most gravely and doubtfully the future of our own country.

Anarchy cannot last, but anarchic communities cannot last either. Mere lawlessness cannot live, but it can destroy life. The nations of the earth always return to sanity and solidarity; but the nations which return to it first are the nations which survive. We in England cannot afford to allow our social institutions to go to pieces, as if this ancient and noble country were an ephemeral colony. We cannot afford it comparatively, even if we could afford it positively. We are surrounded by vigorous nations mainly rooted in the peasant or permanent ideals; notably in the case of France and Ireland. I know that the detested and detestably undemocratic parliamentary clique, which corrupts France as it does England, was persuaded or bribed by a Jew named Naquet to pass a crude and recent divorce law, which was full of the hatred of Christianity. But only a very superficial critic of France can be unaware that French parliamentarism is superficial. The French nation as a whole, the most rigidly respectable nation in the world, will certainly go on living by the old standards of domesticity. When Frenchmen are not Christians they are heathens; the heathens who worshipped the household gods. It might seem strange to say, for instance, that an atheist like M. Clemenceau has for his chief ideal a thing called piety. But to understand this it is only necessary to know a little Latin— and a little French.

Suppongo, tuttavia, che i fautori del divorzio non intendano che il matrimonio debba rimanere ideale soltanto nel senso di essere quasi impossibile. Non intendono che un marito fedele debba essere ammirato soltanto come un fanatico. Gli uomini ragionevoli tra loro intendono davvero che una persona divorziata sia tollerata come qualcosa di insolitamente sventurato, non semplicemente che una persona sposata sia ammirata come qualcosa di insolitamente benedetto e ispirato. Ma qualunque cosa desiderino, è bene che si rendano conto esattamente di ciò che fanno; e in questo caso vorrei udire le loro critiche riguardo a ciò che vedono. Devono di certo vedere che in Inghilterra attualmente, come in molte parti dell’America in passato, la nuova libertà viene presa nello spirito della licenza, come se l’eccezione dovesse essere la regola, o, piuttosto, forse l’assenza di regola. Ciò si renderà manifesto soprattutto se consideriamo che l’effetto del processo è cumulativo come una palla di neve, e ritorna su sé stesso come una palla di neve. L’ovvio effetto del divorzio frivolo sarà il matrimonio frivolo. Se le persone possono essere separate senza alcuna ragione, tanto più facile parrà loro essere unite senza alcuna ragione. Un uomo potrebbe assai chiaramente prevedere che un’infatuazione sensuale sarebbe fugace, e consolarsi con la consapevolezza che il legame potrebbe essere ugualmente fugace. Non pare esservi alcuna ragione particolare per cui egli non dovrebbe calcolare minuziosamente di poter sopportare il carattere di una certa dama per dieci mesi; o stimare che avrebbe goduto ed esaurito il suo repertorio di canzoni da salotto in due anni. La vecchia facezia sullo scegliere la moglie che s’intoni ai mobili o alle mode potrebbe assai logicamente ritornare, non come una vecchia facezia ma come una nuova solennità; anzi, si scoprirà che una nuova religione è generalmente il ritorno di una vecchia facezia. Un uomo potrebbe assai coerentemente vedere una donna come adatta all’epoca della gonna a fascia, e meno adatta al minacciato ritorno della crinolina. Queste fantasticherie sono già abbastanza fantastiche, ma non sono di un’ombra più fantastiche dei fatti di molte controversie di divorzio così come vengono perorate nei tribunali del divorzio. E ciò senza contare affatto il fatto più fantastico di tutti: il chiudere un occhio su una collusione diffusa e cospicua. La collusione è divenuta non tanto un’evasione illegale quanto una finzione legale, e persino un’istituzione legale, come è mirabilmente satireggiata nella brillante commedia del signor Somerset Maugham «Casa e Bellezza». Il fatto fu assai francamente portato dinanzi al pubblico da un uomo che era eminentemente atto a disarmare la satira con la sincerità. Il colonnello Wedgewood è un uomo che non potrà mai essere onorato abbastanza da tutti coloro che nutrono qualche speranza che le libertà popolari trovino ancora dei campioni in mezzo alla corruzione parlamentare. Egli è uno dei pochissimi uomini viventi che abbiano mostrato tanto il coraggio militare quanto quello politico; il coraggio dell’accampamento e il coraggio del foro. E senza dubbio egli mostrò un terzo tipo di coraggio sociale, nel confessare l’assurdo espediente che tanti altri si accontentano semplicemente di accettare e adoperare. È indubbiamente una cosa forsennata e farsesca che un uomo dabbene trovi o creda necessario fingere di commettere un peccato. Alcuni dei moralisti del divorzio paiono dedurne che egli dovrebbe davvero commettere il peccato. Può darsi, tuttavia, che siano consapevoli che vi sono alcuni che non concordano con loro.

Poiché quest’ultimo fatto è il passo successivo nel progresso speculativo della nuova moralità. I fautori del divorzio devono essere ben consapevoli che la civiltà moderna contiene ancora elementi forti, non i meno intelligenti e certamente non i meno vigorosi, che non accetteranno la nuova rispettabilità come surrogato del vecchio voto religioso. La Chiesa cattolica romana, la scuola anglo-cattolica, i contadinati conservatori, e un’ampia parte della vita popolare ovunque, considereranno la sregolatezza del divorzio e del nuovo matrimonio come considererebbero qualsiasi altra sregolatezza di irresponsabilità. La conseguenza parrebbe essere che due diversi criteri appariranno nella moralità ordinaria, e persino nella società ordinaria. Invece della vecchia distinzione sociale tra coloro che sono sposati e coloro che non lo sono, vi sarà una distinzione tra coloro che sono sposati e coloro che sono davvero sposati. La società potrebbe persino dividersi in due società, il che si avvicina pericolosamente alla famosa esagerazione di Disraeli sull’Inghilterra divisa in due nazioni. Ma che l’Inghilterra sia effettivamente così divisa o no, questa nota delle due nazioni è la vera nota d’allarme nella questione. È forse a questo proposito che dobbiamo considerare nel modo più grave e più incerto il futuro del nostro stesso paese.

L’anarchia non può durare, ma nemmeno le comunità anarchiche possono durare. La mera illegalità non può vivere, ma può distruggere la vita. Le nazioni della terra ritornano sempre al senno e alla solidarietà; ma le nazioni che vi ritornano per prime sono le nazioni che sopravvivono. Noi in Inghilterra non possiamo permetterci di lasciare che le nostre istituzioni sociali vadano in pezzi, come se questo antico e nobile paese fosse una colonia effimera. Non possiamo permettercelo relativamente, anche se potessimo permettercelo assolutamente. Siamo circondati da nazioni vigorose radicate principalmente negli ideali contadini o permanenti; segnatamente nel caso della Francia e dell’Irlanda. So che la detestata e detestabilmente antidemocratica cricca parlamentare, che corrompe la Francia come corrompe l’Inghilterra, fu persuasa o corrotta da un ebreo di nome Naquet a far passare una rozza e recente legge sul divorzio, che era colma dell’odio verso il Cristianesimo. Ma solo un critico assai superficiale della Francia può ignorare che il parlamentarismo francese è superficiale. La nazione francese nel suo insieme, la nazione più rigidamente rispettabile del mondo, continuerà certamente a vivere secondo i vecchi criteri della vita domestica. Quando i Francesi non sono cristiani sono pagani; i pagani che adoravano gli dèi domestici. Potrebbe sembrare strano dire, per esempio, che un ateo come Monsieur Clemenceau abbia per suo ideale principale una cosa chiamata pietas. Ma per comprenderlo è solo necessario conoscere un poco di latino… e un poco di francese.

A short time ago, as I am well aware, it would have sounded very strange to represent the old religious and peasant communities either as a model or a menace. It was counted a queer thing to say, in the days when my friends and I first said it; in the days of my youth when the republic of France and the religion of Ireland were regarded as alike ridiculous and decadent. But many things have happened since then; and it will not now be so easy to persuade even newspaper readers that Foch is a fool, either because he is a Frenchman or because he is a Catholic. The older tradition, even in the most unfashionable forms, has found champions in the most unexpected quarters. Only the other day Dr. Saleeby, a distinguished scientific critic who had made himself the special advocate of all the instruction and organisation that is called social science, 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 Bradford. He gave his testimony from an entirely rationalistic and even materialistic point of view; indeed, he carried rationalism so far as to give the preference to Roscommon because the women are still mammals. To a mind of the more traditional type it might seem sufficient to say they are still mothers. To a memory that lingers over the legends and lyrical movements of mankind, it might seem no great improvement to imagine a song that ran “My mammal bids me bind my hair,” or “I’m to be Queen of the May, mammal, I’m to be Queen of the May.” But indeed the truth to which he testified is all the more arresting, because for him it was materialistic and not mystical. The brute biological advantage, as well as other advantages, was with those for whom that truth was a truth; and it was all the more instinctive and automatic where that truth was a tradition. The sort of place where mothers are still something more than mammals is the only sort of place where they still are mammals. There the people are still healthy animals; healthy enough to hit you if you call them animals. I also have, on this merely controversial occasion, used throughout the rationalistic and not the religious appeal. But it is not unreasonable to note that the materialistic advantages are really found among those who most repudiate materialism. This one stray testimony is but a type of a thousand things of the same kind, which will convince any one with the sense of social atmospheres that the day of the peasantries is not passing but rather arriving. It is the more complex types of society that are now entangled in their own complexities. Those who tell us, with a monotonous metaphor, that we cannot put the clock back, seem to be curiously unconscious of the fact that their own clock has stopped. And there is nothing so hopeless as clockwork when it stops. A machine cannot mend itself; it requires a man to mend it; and the future lies with those who can make living laws for men and not merely dead laws for machinery. Those living laws are not to be found in the scatter-brained scepticism which is busy in the great cities, dissolving what it cannot analyse. The primary laws of man are to be found in the permanent life of man; in those things that have been common to it in every time and land, though in the highest civilisation they have reached an enrichment like that of the divine romance of Cana in Galilee. We know that many critics of such a story say that its elements are not permanent; but indeed it is the critics who are not permanent. A hundred mad dogs of heresy have worried man from the beginning; but it was always the dog that died. We know there is a school of prigs who disapprove of the wine; and there may now be a school of prigs who disapprove of the wedding. For in such a case as the story of Cana, it may be remarked that the pedants are prejudiced against the earthly elements as much as, or more than, the heavenly elements. It is not the supernatural that disgusts them, so much as the natural. And those of us who have seen all the normal rules and relations of humanity uprooted by random speculators, as if they were abnormal abuses and almost accidents, will understand why men have sought for something divine if they wished to preserve anything human. They will know why common sense, cast out from some academy of fads and fashions conducted on the lines of a luxurious madhouse, has age after age sought refuge in the high sanity of a sacrament.

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Poco tempo fa, come ben so, sarebbe suonato assai strano rappresentare le vecchie comunità religiose e contadine o come un modello o come una minaccia. Era ritenuta una cosa bislacca da dirsi, ai tempi in cui i miei amici ed io per primi la dicemmo; ai tempi della mia giovinezza in cui la repubblica di Francia e la religione d’Irlanda erano considerate del pari ridicole e decadenti. Ma molte cose sono accadute da allora; e ora non sarà più tanto facile persuadere persino i lettori di giornali che Foch è uno sciocco, vuoi perché è francese vuoi perché è cattolico. La tradizione più antica, persino nelle forme meno alla moda, ha trovato campioni negli ambienti più inaspettati. Solo l’altro giorno il dottor Saleeby, un illustre critico scientifico che si era fatto speciale patrocinatore di tutta l’istruzione e l’organizzazione che si chiama scienza sociale, sbalordì tanto gli amici quanto i nemici affermando che le famiglie contadine dell’ovest dell’Irlanda erano assai più soddisfacenti e prospere di quelle covate da tutta la benevola sociologia di Bradford. Egli rese la sua testimonianza da un punto di vista interamente razionalistico e persino materialistico; anzi, spinse il razionalismo fino al punto di dare la preferenza a Roscommon perché le donne vi sono ancora mammifere. A una mente del tipo più tradizionale potrebbe parere sufficiente dire che esse sono ancora madri. A una memoria che indugia sulle leggende e sui moti lirici del genere umano, potrebbe non parere un gran miglioramento immaginare una canzone che facesse «La mia mammifera mi chiede di raccogliere i capelli», oppure «Sarò la Regina di Maggio, mammifera, sarò la Regina di Maggio». Ma invero la verità cui egli rese testimonianza è tanto più impressionante, poiché per lui era materialistica e non mistica. Il bruto vantaggio biologico, oltre ad altri vantaggi, stava dalla parte di coloro per i quali quella verità era una verità; ed era tanto più istintivo e automatico là dove quella verità era una tradizione. Il genere di luogo in cui le madri sono ancora qualcosa di più che mammifere è l’unico genere di luogo in cui esse sono ancora mammifere. Là la gente è ancora fatta di sani animali; abbastanza sana da colpirti se la chiami animali. Anch’io ho, in questa occasione meramente polemica, adoperato in tutto l’appello razionalistico e non quello religioso. Ma non è irragionevole notare che i vantaggi materialistici si trovano realmente tra coloro che più ripudiano il materialismo. Questa singola testimonianza sparsa non è che un esempio di mille cose dello stesso genere, che convinceranno chiunque abbia il senso delle atmosfere sociali che il giorno dei contadinati non sta tramontando bensì piuttosto sorgendo. Sono i tipi più complessi di società quelli che ora si trovano impigliati nelle proprie complessità. Coloro che ci dicono, con una monotona metafora, che non possiamo riportare indietro l’orologio, paiono curiosamente inconsapevoli del fatto che il loro proprio orologio si è fermato. E non v’è nulla di così senza speranza quanto un meccanismo a orologeria quando si arresta. Una macchina non può ripararsi da sé; occorre un uomo per ripararla; e il futuro appartiene a coloro che sanno fare leggi vive per gli uomini e non semplicemente leggi morte per i macchinari. Quelle leggi vive non si trovano nello scetticismo scervellato che s’affaccenda nelle grandi città, dissolvendo ciò che non sa analizzare. Le leggi primarie dell’uomo si trovano nella vita permanente dell’uomo; in quelle cose che le sono state comuni in ogni tempo e terra, benché nella più alta civiltà abbiano raggiunto un arricchimento come quello del divino idillio di Cana di Galilea. Sappiamo che molti critici di una simile storia dicono che i suoi elementi non sono permanenti; ma invero sono i critici a non essere permanenti. Cento cani rabbiosi dell’eresia hanno azzannato l’uomo fin dal principio; ma è sempre stato il cane a morire. Sappiamo che vi è una scuola di saccenti che disapprovano il vino; e vi potrebbe ora essere una scuola di saccenti che disapprovano le nozze. Poiché in un caso come la storia di Cana, si può osservare che i pedanti hanno pregiudizi contro gli elementi terreni tanto quanto, o più che, contro gli elementi celesti. Non è tanto il soprannaturale a disgustarli, quanto il naturale. E quelli tra noi che hanno visto tutte le regole e relazioni normali dell’umanità sradicate da speculatori a casaccio, come se fossero abusi anomali e quasi accidenti, comprenderanno perché gli uomini abbiano cercato qualcosa di divino se desideravano preservare qualcosa di umano. Sapranno perché il buon senso, scacciato da qualche accademia di mode e capricci condotta sulla falsariga di un lussuoso manicomio, abbia epoca dopo epoca cercato rifugio nell’alto senno di un sacramento.

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IX

CONCLUSION

This is a pamphlet and not a book; and the writer of a pamphlet not only deals with passing things, but generally with things which he hopes will pass. In that sense it is the object of a pamphlet to be out of date as soon as possible. It can only survive when it does not succeed. The successful pamphlets are necessarily dull; and though I have no great hopes of this being successful, I dare say it is dull enough for all that. It is designed merely to note certain fugitive proposals of the moment, and compare them with certain recurrent necessities of the race; but especially the necessity for some spontaneous social formation freer than that of the state. If it were more in the nature of a work of literature, with anything like an ambition of endurance, I might go deeper into the matter, and give some suggestions about the philosophy or religion of marriage, and the philosophy or religion of all these rather random departures from it. Some day perhaps I may try to write something about the spiritual or psychological quarrel between faith and fads. Here I will only say, in conclusion, that I believe the universal fallacy here is a fallacy of being universal. There is a sense in which it is really a human if heroic possibility to love everybody; and the young student will not find it a bad preliminary exercise to love somebody. But the fallacy I mean is that of a man who is not even content to love everybody, but really wishes to be everybody. He wishes to walk down a hundred roads at once; to sleep in a hundred houses at once; to live a hundred lives at once. To do something like this in the imagination is one of the occasional visions of art and poetry, to attempt it in the art of life is not only anarchy but inaction. Even in the arts it can only be the first hint and not the final fulfillment; a man cannot work at once in bronze and marble, or play the organ and the violin at the same time. The universal vision of being such a Briareus is a nightmare of nonsense even in the merely imaginative world; and ends in mere nihilism in the social world. If a man had a hundred houses, there would still be more houses than he had days in which to dream of them; if a man had a hundred wives, there would still be more women than he could ever know. He would be an insane sultan jealous of the whole human race, and even of the dead and the unborn. I believe that behind the art and philosophy of our time there is a considerable element of this bottomless ambition and this unnatural hunger; and since in these last words I am touching only lightly on things that would need much larger treatment, I will admit that the rending of the ancient roof of man is probably only a part of such an endless and empty expansion. I asked in the last chapter what those most wildly engaged in the mere dance of divorce, as fantastic as the dance of death, really expected for themselves or for their children. And in the deepest sense I think this is the answer; that they expect the impossible, that is the universal. They are not crying for the moon, which is a definite and therefore a defensible desire. They are crying for the world; and when they had it, they would want another one. In the last resort they would like to try every situation, not in fancy but in fact, but they cannot refuse any and therefore cannot resolve on any. In so far as this is the modern mood, it is a thing so deadly as to be already dead. What is vitally needed everywhere, in art as much as in ethics, in poetry as much as in politics, is choice; a creative power in the will as well as in the mind. Without that self-limitation of somebody, nothing living will ever see the light.

IX

CONCLUSIONE

Questo è un pamphlet e non un libro; e chi scrive un pamphlet non solo tratta di cose passeggere, ma in genere di cose che egli spera passeranno. In quel senso è scopo di un pamphlet essere superato al più presto possibile. Può sopravvivere solo quando non riesce. I pamphlet riusciti sono necessariamente noiosi; e per quanto io non nutra grandi speranze che questo riesca, oso dire che è comunque abbastanza noioso. È concepito soltanto per annotare certe fugaci proposte del momento, e paragonarle con certe ricorrenti necessità della stirpe; ma specialmente la necessità di qualche spontanea formazione sociale più libera di quella dello stato. Se fosse più nella natura di un’opera letteraria, con qualcosa come un’ambizione di durata, potrei andare più a fondo nella questione, e dare qualche suggerimento sulla filosofia o religione del matrimonio, e sulla filosofia o religione di tutte queste piuttosto casuali deviazioni da esso. Un giorno forse tenterò di scrivere qualcosa sulla querela spirituale o psicologica tra la fede e le mode. Qui dirò soltanto, in conclusione, che credo che la fallacia universale sia qui una fallacia dell’essere universali. V’è un senso in cui è davvero una possibilità umana, se pure eroica, amare tutti; e lo studente giovane non troverà un cattivo esercizio preliminare amare qualcuno. Ma la fallacia che intendo è quella dell’uomo che non è nemmeno pago di amare tutti, ma desidera davvero essere tutti. Egli desidera percorrere cento strade insieme; dormire in cento case insieme; vivere cento vite insieme. Fare qualcosa di simile nell’immaginazione è una delle occasionali visioni dell’arte e della poesia; tentarlo nell’arte della vita non è soltanto anarchia ma inazione. Anche nelle arti può essere solo il primo accenno e non l’adempimento finale; un uomo non può lavorare a un tempo nel bronzo e nel marmo, o suonare l’organo e il violino allo stesso tempo. La visione universale di essere un tale Briareo è un incubo di insensatezza perfino nel mondo meramente immaginativo; e finisce in mero nichilismo nel mondo sociale. Se un uomo avesse cento case, vi sarebbero ancora più case dei giorni che avrebbe per sognarle; se un uomo avesse cento mogli, vi sarebbero ancora più donne di quante potrebbe mai conoscerne. Sarebbe un folle sultano geloso dell’intera razza umana, e perfino dei morti e dei non nati. Credo che dietro l’arte e la filosofia del nostro tempo vi sia un considerevole elemento di questa sconfinata ambizione e di questa fame innaturale; e poiché in queste ultime parole tocco soltanto lievemente cose che richiederebbero un ben più ampio trattamento, ammetterò che lo squarcio dell’antico tetto dell’uomo è probabilmente solo una parte di una tale espansione senza fine e vuota. Chiesi nell’ultimo capitolo che cosa coloro che sono più selvaggiamente impegnati nella mera danza del divorzio, fantastica quanto la danza della morte, davvero si aspettassero per sé o per i loro figli. E nel senso più profondo io credo che questa sia la risposta: che si aspettano l’impossibile, cioè l’universale. Non piangono per la luna, che è un desiderio definito e perciò difendibile. Piangono per il mondo; e quando l’avessero, ne vorrebbero un altro. In ultima istanza vorrebbero provare ogni situazione, non in fantasia ma di fatto, ma non possono rifiutarne alcuna e perciò non possono risolversi su alcuna. In quanto ciò è lo stato d’animo moderno, è cosa tanto letale da essere già morta. Ciò di cui vi è vitale bisogno dappertutto, nell’arte quanto nell’etica, nella poesia quanto nella politica, è la scelta; un potere creativo nella volontà non meno che nella mente. Senza quell’auto-limitazione di qualcuno, nulla di vivente vedrà mai la luce.