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The Superstition of Divorce
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'The Superstition of Divorce" stroke a timely note in treating of this difficult subject with logic and a clear exposition of the historical background of the institution of marriage! Witty and epigrammatic as would be expected of this famous essayist, the little work brings valuable testimony as to the permanent values of the tradition of family and home, founded upon centuries of orthodox marriage laws. From such an author the arguments will appeal to a thoughtful and conservative element of readers here and abroad.
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Ā
I. THE SUPERSTITION OF DIVORCE (1)
Ā
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.Ā 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.Ā But if I
followed my instinct towards an infinite number of windows, it would end in
having no walls.Ā 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.Ā 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.Ā 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.Ā 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.Ā The man, like the mouse, undermines what
he cannot understand.Ā 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.Ā 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.Ā 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.Ā 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.Ā
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.Ā
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.Ā 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.Ā 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.Ā 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.Ā 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.Ā 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.Ā It is equally obvious that Paderewski and Jack Johnson are not
twins, and probably have not played together at their mother's knee.Ā There is
indeed a very important admission, or addition, to be realised here. What is
true is this:Ā 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?"Ā And suppose this higher philosophy of the hatchet becomes
prevalent in colleges and cultivated circles, as even more foolish philosophies
have done.Ā 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.Ā 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.Ā But even then
it is barely picking up the shreds and scraps of the subject to talk about a
reliance on texts.Ā 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.Ā 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.Ā Fraternity may be a
sentimental metaphor; I may be suffering a delusion when I hail a Montenegrin
peasant as my long lost brother.Ā 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."Ā 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.Ā 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.Ā Ought a man to break a promise? Ought a man to make
a promise?Ā 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.Ā 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.Ā 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.Ā 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.Ā The shortest
way of putting the problem is to ask whether being free includes being free to
bind oneself.Ā For the vow is a tryst with oneself.
I may be misunderstood if I say,
for brevity, that marriage is an affair of honour.Ā The sceptic will be
delighted to assent, by saying it is a fight.Ā 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.Ā 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.
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 q...
Table of contents
- 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 FAMlLY
- VI. THE STORY OF THE VOW
- VII. THE TRAGEDIES OF MARRlAGE
- VIII. THE VISTA OF DIVORCE
- IX. CONCLUSION