The Superstition of DivorceChesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Religion
The Superstition of Divorce
Chesterton, G. K. (Gilbert Keith)
Divorce
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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