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 bye-laws 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 mediæval 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 mediæval 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 mediæval
profligacy was more fixed than modern marriage. I am not here discussing
either modern or mediæval 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 mediæval 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 city of Homer.
Even our patriotism is something more subtle than the undivided lover 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 mediævalism 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 mediæval 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 break-down 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 for
ever 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 mediæval estates; just as
no more was heard of the standard wages of the mediæval 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.
THE TRAGEDIES OF MARRIAGE
_VII.--The Tragedies of Marriage_
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 an inconsistency.