{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_62467/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_62467","id":"gutenberg_62467","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/62467","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Sociology","Divorce"],"text":"DIVORCE\n                               _versus_\n                               DEMOCRACY\n\n                                  BY\n                           G. K. CHESTERTON\n\n                  _Reprinted from \u201cNash\u2019s Magazine\u201d_\n\n                          [Illustration: IHS\n\n                         Loqure ut profifiliis\n                               ciscantur\n                                Israel]\n\n                                London\n                            THE SOCIETY OF\n                           SS. PETER & PAUL\n                 _Publishers to the Church of England_\n\n                    32 George St., Hanover Square,\n                        and 302 Regent St., W.\n                                 1916\n\n\n\n\nPreface\n\n\nI have been asked to put forward in pamphlet form this rather hasty\nessay as it appeared in \u201cNash\u2019s Magazine\u201d; and I do so by the kind\npermission of the editor. The rather chaotic quality of its journalism\nit is now impossible to alter. The convictions upon which it is based\nare unaltered and unalterable. Indeed, in so far as circumstances have\nsince affected them, they are greatly strengthened. In so far as there\nwas something sporadic and seemingly irrelevant in the writing, it was\npartly because I was contending against an evil that was diffused and\nindefinable, at once tentative and ubiquitous. Since then that disease\nhas come to a head and burst; primarily in the North of Europe. By that\nhistoric habit which generally makes one European people the\nstandard-bearer of a social tendency, which made the Empire a Roman\nEmpire and the Revolution a French Revolution, the North Germans have\nbecome the peculiar champions of that modern change which would make the\nState infinitely superior to the Family. It is even asserted that\nPrussian political authority is now encouraging the abandonment of\ncommon morality for the support of population; and even if this horrible\nthing be untrue, it is highly significant that it can be plausibly said\nof Prussia, and certainly of no other Christian State. And in the new\nlight of action it is possible to trace more clearly the trend towards\ndivorce, as also that trend towards the other pagan institution of\nslavery, which would certainly have accompanied it. But the enslaving\nforce in Europe struck too early; and the whole movement has been\nbrought to a standstill.\n\nThe same circumstances have given an importance to a formula of my own\nwhich I still think rather important. It may be summarised as the\npatriotism of the household. In the experience of nationality we do not\nadmit that any excess of despair can come into the same logical world as\ndesertion. No amount of tragedy need amount to treason. The Christian\nview of marriage conceives of the home as self-governing in a manner\nanalogous to an independent state; that is, that it may include internal\nreform and even internal rebellion; but because of the bond, not against\nit. In this way it is itself a sort of standing reformer of the State;\nfor the State is judged by whether its arrangements bear helpfully or\nbear hardly on the human fulness and fertility of the free family. Thus\nthe Wicked Ten in Rome were condemned and cast down because their public\npowers permitted a wrong against the purity of a private family. Thus\nthe medi\u00e6val revolt against the Poll Tax began by the authority of an\nofficial insulting the authority of a father. Men do not now, any more\nthan then, become sinless by receiving a post in a bureaucracy; and if\nthe domestic affairs of the poor were once put into the hands of mere\nlawyers and inspectors, the poor would soon find themselves in positions\nfrom which there is no exit save by the sword of Virginius and the\nhammer of Wat Tyler. As for the section of the rich who are still\nseeking a servile solution, they, of course, are still seeking the\nextension of divorce. It is only \u201c_divide et impera_\u201d; and they want the\ndivision of sex for the division of labour. The very same economic\ncalculation which makes them encourage tyranny in the shop makes them\nencourage licence in the family. But now the free families of five great\nnations have risen against them; and their plot has failed.\n\n                                                       G. K. CHESTERTON\n\n\n\n\nDivorce _versus_ Democracy\n\n\nOn this question of divorce I do not profess to be impartial, for I have\nnever perceived any intelligent meaning in the word. I merely (and most\nmodestly) profess to be right. I also profess to be representative: that\nis, democratic. Now, one may believe in democracy or disbelieve in it.\nIt would be grossly unfair to conceal the fact that there are\ndifficulties on both sides. The difficulty of believing in democracy is\nthat it is so hard to believe--like God and most other good things. The\ndifficulty of disbelieving in democracy is that there is nothing else to\nbelieve in. I mean there is nothing else on earth or in earthly\npolitics. Unless an aristocracy is selected by gods, it must be selected\nby men. It may be negatively and passively permitted, but either heaven\nor humanity must permit it; otherwise it has no more moral authority\nthan a lucky pickpocket. It is baby talk to talk about \u201cSupermen\u201d or\n\u201cNature\u2019s Aristocracy\u201d or \u201cThe Wise Few.\u201d \u201cThe Wise Few\u201d must be either\nthose whom others think wise--who are often fools; or those who think\nthemselves wise--who are always fools.\n\nWell, if one happens to believe in democracy as I do, as a large trust\nin the active and passive judgment of the human conscience, one can have\nno hesitation, no \u201cimpartiality,\u201d about one\u2019s view of divorce; and\nespecially about one\u2019s view of the extension of divorce among the\ndemocracy. A democrat in any sense must regard that extension as the\nlast and vilest of the insults offered by the modern rich to the modern\npoor. The rich do largely believe in divorce; the poor do mainly believe\nin fidelity. But the modern rich are powerful and the modern poor are\npowerless. Therefore for years and decades past the rich have been\npreaching their own virtues. Now that they have begun to preach their\nvices too, I think it is time to kick.\n\nThere is one enormous and elementary objection to the popularising of\ndivorce, which comes before any consideration of the nature of marriage.\nIt is like an alphabet in letters too large to be seen. It is this: That\neven if the democracy approved of divorce as strongly and deeply as the\ndemocracy does (in fact) disapprove of it--any man of common sense must\nknow that nowadays the thing will be worked probably against the\ndemocracy, but quite certainly by the plutocracy. People seem to forget\nthat in a society where power goes with wealth and where wealth is in an\nextreme state of inequality, extending the powers of the law means\nsomething entirely different from extending the powers of the public.\nThey seem to forget that there is a great deal of difference between\nwhat laws define and what laws do. A poor woman in a poor public-house\nwas broken with a ruinous fine for giving a child a sip of shandy-gaff.\nNobody supposed that the law verbally stigmatised the action for being\ndone by a poor person in a poor public-house. But most certainly nobody\nwill dare to pretend that a rich man giving a boy a sip of champagne\nwould have been punished so heavily--or punished at all. I have seen the\nthing done frequently in country houses; and my host and hostess would\nhave been very much surprised if I had gone outside and telephoned for\nthe police. The law theoretically condemns any one who tries to\nfrustrate the police or even fails to assist them. Yet the rich\nmotorists are allowed to keep up an organised service of anti-police\ndetectives--wearing a conspicuous uniform--for the avowed purpose of\nshowing motorists how to avoid capture. No one supposes again that the\nlaw says in so many words that the right to organise for the evasion of\nlaws is a privilege of the rich but not of the poor. But take the same\npractical test. What would the police say, what would the world say, if\nmen stood about the streets in green and yellow uniforms, notoriously\nfor the purpose of warning pickpockets of the presence of a\nplain-clothes officer? What would the world say if recognised officials\nin peaked caps watched by night to warn a burglar that the police were\nwaiting for him? Yet there is no distinction of principle between the\nevasion of that police-trap and the other police-trap--the police-trap\nwhich prevents a motorist from killing a child like a chicken; which\nprevents the most frivolous kind of murder, the most piteous kind of\nsudden death.\n\nWell, the Poor Man\u2019s Divorce Law will be applied exactly as all these\nothers are applied. Everybody must know that it would mean in practice\nthat well-dressed men, doctors, magistrates, and inspectors, would have\nmore power over the family lives of ill-dressed men, navvies, plumbers,\nand potmen. Nobody can have the impudence to pretend that it would mean\nthat navvies, plumbers, and potmen would (either individually or\ncollectively) have more power over the family lives of doctors,\nmagistrates, and inspectors. Nobody dare assert that because divorce is\na State affair, therefore the poor citizen will have any power, direct\nor indirect, to divorce a duchess from a duke or a banker from a\nbanker\u2019s wife. But no one will call it inconceivable that the power of\nrich families over poor families, which is already great, the power of\nthe duke as landlord, the power of the banker as money-lender, might be\nconsiderably increased by arming magistrates with more powers of\ninterference in private life. For the dukes and bankers often are\nmagistrates, always the friends and relatives of magistrates. The\nnavvies are not. The navvy will be the subject of the new experiments;\ncertainly never the experimentalist. It is the poor man who will show to\nthe imaginative eye of science all those horrors which, according to\nnewspaper correspondents, cry aloud for divorce--drunkenness, madness,\ncruelty, incurable disease. If he is slow in working for his master, he\nwill be \u201cdefective.\u201d If he is worn out by working for his master, he\nwill be \u201cdegenerate.\u201d If he, at some particular opportunity, prefers to\nwork for himself to working for his master, he will be obviously insane.\nIf he never has any opportunity of working for any masters he will be\n\u201cunemployable.\u201d All the bitter embarrassments and entanglements\nincidental to extreme poverty will be used to break conjugal happiness,\nas they are already used to break parental authority. Marriage will be\ncalled a failure wherever it is a struggle; just as parents in modern\nEngland are sent to prison for neglecting the children whom they cannot\nafford to feed.\n\nI will take but one instance of the enormity and silliness which is\nreally implied in these proposals for the extension of divorce. Take the\ncase quoted by many contributors to the discussion in the papers--the\ncase of what is called \u201ccruelty.\u201d Now what is the real meaning of this\nas regards the prosperous and as regards the struggling classes of the\ncommunity? Let us take the prosperous classes first. Every one knows\nthat those who are really to be described as gentlemen all profess a\nparticular tradition, partly chivalrous, partly merely modern and\nrefined--a tradition against \u201claying hands upon a woman, save in a way\nof kindness.\u201d I do not mean that a gentleman hates the cowing of a woman\nby brute force: any one must hate that. I mean he has a ritual, taboo\nkind of feeling about the laying on of a finger. If a gentleman (real or\nimitation) has struck his wife ever so lightly, he feels he has done one\nof those things that thrill the thoughts with the notion of a\nborder-line; something like saying the Lord\u2019s Prayer backwards, touching\na hot kettle, reversing the crucifix, or \u201cbreaking the pledge.\u201d The\nwife may forgive the husband more easily for this than for many things;\nbut the husband will find it hard to forgive himself. It is a purely\nclass sentiment, like the poor folks\u2019 dislike of hospitals. What is the\neffect of this class sentiment on divorce among the higher classes?\n\nThe first effect, of course, is greatly to assist those faked divorces\nso common among the fashionable. I mean that where there is a collusion,\na small pat or push can be remembered, exaggerated, or invented; and yet\nseem to the solemn judges a very solemn thing in people of their own\nsocial class. But outside these cases, the test is not wholly\ninappropriate as applied to the richer classes. For, all gentlemen\nfeeling or affecting this special horror, it does really look bad if a\ngentleman has broken through it; it does look like madness or a personal\nhatred and persecution. It may even look like worse things. If a man\nwith luxurious habits, in artistic surroundings, is cruel to his wife,\nit may be connected with some perversion of sex cruelty, such as was\nalleged (I know not how truly) in the case of the millionaire Thaw. We\nneed not deny that such cases are cases for separation, if not for\ndivorce.\n\nBut this test of technical cruelty, which is rough and ready as applied\nto the rich, is absolutely mad and meaningless as applied to the poor. A\npoor woman does not judge her husband as a bully by whether he has ever\nhit out. One might as well say that a schoolboy judges whether another\nschoolboy is a bully by whether he has ever hit out. The poor wife, like\nthe schoolboy, judges him as a bully by whether he is a bully. She knows\nthat while wife-beating may really be a crime, wife-hitting is sometimes\nvery like just self-defence. No one knows better than she does that her\nhusband often has a great deal to put up with; sometimes she means him\nto; sometimes she is justified. She comes and tells all this to\nmagistrates again and again; in police court after police court women\nwith black eyes try to explain the thing to judges with no eyes. In\nstreet after street women turn in anger on the hapless knight-errant who\nhas interrupted an instantaneous misunderstanding. In these people\u2019s\nlives the rooms are crowded, the tempers are torn to rags, the natural\nexits are forbidden. In such societies it is as abominable to punish or\ndivorce people for a blow as it would be to punish or divorce a\ngentleman for slamming the door. Yet who can doubt, if ever divorce is\napplied to the populace, it would be applied in the spirit which takes\nthe blow quite seriously? If any one doubts it, he does not know what\nworld he is living in.\n\nIt is common to meet nowadays men who talk of what they call Free Love\nas if it were something like Free Silver--a new and ingenious political\nscheme. They seem to forget that it is as easy to judge what it would be\nlike as to judge of what legal marriage would be like. \u201cFree Love\u201d has\nbeen going on in every town and village since the beginning of the\nworld; and the first fact that every man of the world knows about it is\nplain enough. It never does produce any of the wild purity and perfect\nfreedom its friends attribute to it. If any paper had the pluck to head\na column \u201cIs Concubinage a Failure?\u201d instead of \u201cIs Marriage a Failure?\u201d\nthe answer \u201cYes\u201d would be given by the personal memory of many men, and\nby the historic memory of all. Modern people perpetually quote some wild\nexpression of monks in the wilderness (when a whole civilisation was\nmaddened by remorse) about the perilous quality of Woman, about how she\nwas a spectre and a serpent and a destroying fire. Probably the\nestablishment of nuns, situated a few miles off, described Man also as a\nserpent and a spectre; but their works have not come down to us.\n\nNow all this old-world wit against Benedick the married man was sensible\nenough. But so was the bachelorhood of the old monks, who said it,\nsensible enough. It is perfectly true that to entangle yourself with\nanother soul in the most tender and tragic degree is to make, in all\nrational possibility, a martyr or a fool of yourself. Most of the modern\ndenunciations of marriage might have been copied direct from the maddest\nof the monkish diaries. The attack on marriage is an argument for\ncelibacy. It is not an argument for divorce. For that entanglement which\ncelibacy avowedly avoids, divorce merely reduplicates and repeats. It\nmay have been a sort of solemn comfort to a gentleman of Africa to\nreflect that he had no wife. It cannot be anything but a discomfort to a\ngentleman of America to wonder which wife he really has. If progress\nmeans, as in the ludicrous definition of Herbert Spencer, \u201can advance\nfrom the simple to the complex,\u201d then certainly divorce is a part of\nprogress. Nothing can be conceived more complex than the condition of a\nman who has settled down finally four or five times. Nothing can be\nconceived more complex than the position of a profligate who has not\nonly had ten _liaisons_, but ten legal _liaisons_. There is a real sense\nin which free love might free men. But freer divorce would catch them in\nthe most complicated net ever woven in this wicked world.\n\nThe tragedy of love is in love, not in marriage. There is no unhappy\nmarriage that might not be an equally unhappy concubinage, or a far more\nunhappy seduction. Whether the tie be legal or no, matters something to\nthe faithless party; it matters nothing to the faithful one. The pathos\nreposes upon the perfectly simple fact that if any one deliberately\nprovokes either passions or affections, he is responsible for them as\nlong as they go on, as the man is responsible for letting loose a flood\nor setting fire to a city. His remedy is not to provoke them, like the\nhermit. His punishment, when he deserves punishment, is to spend the\nrest of his life in trying to undo any ill he has done. His escape is\ndespair--which is called, in this connection, divorce. For every healthy\nman feels one fundamental fact in his soul. He feels that he must have\na life, and not a series of lives. He would rather the human drama were\na tragedy than that it were a series of Music-hall Turns and Potted\nPlays. A man wishes to save the souls of all the men that he has been:\nof the dirty little schoolboy; of the doubtful and morbid youth; of the\nlover; of the husband. Re-incarnation has always seemed to me a cold\ncreed; because each incarnation must forget the other. It would be worse\nstill if this short human life were broken up into yet shorter lives,\neach of which was in its turn forgotten.\n\nIf you are a democrat who likes also to be an honest man--if (in other\nwords) you want to know what the people want and not merely what you can\nsomehow induce them to ask for--then there is no doubt at all that this\nis what they want. You can only realise it by looking for human nature\nelsewhere than in election reports; but when you have once looked for it\nyou see it and you never forget it. From the fact that every one thinks\nit natural that young men and women should carve names on trees, to the\nfact that every one thinks it unnatural that old men and women should be\nseparated in workhouses, millions and millions of daily details prove\nthat people do regard the relation as normally permanent; not as a\nvision, but as a vow.\n\nNow for the exceptions, true or false. I would note a strange and even\nsilly oversight in the discussion of such exceptions, which has haunted\nmost arguments for further divorce. The ordinary emancipated prig or\npoet who urges this side of the question always talks to one tune.\n\u201cMarriage may be the best for most men,\u201d he says, \u201cbut there are\nexceptional natures that demand a more undulating experience; constancy\nwill do for the common herd, but there are complex natures and complex\ncases where no one could recommend constancy. I do not ask (at the\npresent Stage of Progress) for the abolition of marriage; I hereby ask\nthat it may be remitted in such individual and extreme examples.\u201d\n\nNow it is perfectly astounding to me that any one who has walked about\nthis world should make such a blunder about the breed we call mankind.\nSurely it is plain enough that if you ask for dreadful exceptions, you\nwill get them--too many of them. Let me take once again a rough parable.\nSuppose I advertised in the papers that I had a place for any one who\nwas too stupid to be a clerk. Probably I should receive no replies;\npossibly one. Possibly also (nay, probably) it would be from the one man\nwho was not stupid at all. But suppose I had advertised that I had a\nplace for any one who was too clever to be a clerk. My office would be\ninstantly besieged by all the most hopeless fools in the four kingdoms.\nTo advertise for exceptions is simply to advertise for egoists. To\nadvertise for egoists is to advertise for idiots. It is exactly the bore\nwho does think that his case is interesting. It is precisely the really\ncommon person who does think that his case is uncommon. It is always the\ndull man who does think himself rather wild. To ask solely for strange\nexperiences of the soul is simply to let loose all the imbecile asylums\nabout one\u2019s ears. Whatever other theory is right, this theory of the\nexceptions is obviously wrong--or (what matters more to our modern\natheists) is obviously unbusinesslike. It is, moreover, to any one with\npopular political sympathies, a very deep and subtle sort of treason. By\nthus putting a premium on the exceptional we grossly deceive the\nunconsciousness of the normal. It seems strangely forgotten that the\nindifference of a nation is sacred as well as its differences. Even\npublic apathy is a kind of public opinion--and in many cases a very\nsensible kind. If I ask everybody to vote about Mineral Meals and do not\nget a single ballot-paper returned, I may say that the citizens have not\nvoted. But they have.\n\nThe principle held by the populace, against which this plutocratic\nconspiracy is being engineered, is simply the principle expressed in the\nPrayer Book in the words \u201cfor better, for worse.\u201d It is the principle\nthat all noble things have to be paid for, even if you only pay for them\nwith a promise. One does not take one\u2019s interest out of England as one\ntakes it out of Consols. A man is not an Englishman unless he can endure\neven the decay and death of England. And just as every citizen is a\npotential soldier, so every wife or husband is a potential hospital\nnurse--or even asylum attendant. For though we should all approve of\ncertain tragedies being mitigated by a celibate separation--yet the more\nreal love and honour there has been in the marriage, the less real\nmitigation there will be in the parting. But this sound public instinct\nboth about patriotism and marriage also insists that the first vow or\nobligation shall be mitigated, not merely erased and forgotten. Many a\ngood woman has loved and refused a doubtful man, with the proviso that\nshe would marry no one else; the old institution of marriage has the\nsame feeling about the tragedy that is post-matrimonial. The thing\nremains real; it binds one to something. If I am exiled from England I\nwill go and live on an island somewhere and be as jolly as I can. I will\nnot become a patriot of any other land.\n\n[Illustration]","title":"Divorce versus Democracy","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":3984}