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