Religion and Sex
Chesterton, G.K.
$ THE COMMONWEAL November iz, 1924 RELIGION AND By G. IC...
...Love is subject to law because it is subject to life...
...It is like swaggering about with a medal without going to the war...
...Whenever there happen to be more women than men they begin to talk of polygamy...
...But the practical result of our conviction and our confidence is thIs...
...A constructivc work of manhood follows naturally on the creative work of youth...
...But the point is that wc want what is practical in the sense that we want to make something, to create Christian famIlies...
...It is, perhaps) the one artistic work in which collaboration is a success and indeed a necessity...
...There may be a something to be said for that description of it...
...But where men arc trained by tradition to regard this process as normal, and not to expect any other, there is far less likelihood of tragic entanglements than in the love that is called free...
...It is a more mystical idea...
...but it is necessary to make clear at the start that it is not something suggested to us by the social conditions around us...
...We cannot control the emotional attitude of others in a condition of sexual anarchy any more than in a condition of domestic loyalty...
...There is a pendant to thc principle professed by all who call themselves Catholics...
...That love which makes youth beautiful, and is the natural spring of so much song and - romance, has for its final aim and issue a creative act, the founding of a family...
...Men are divided from their wives and children in a shipwreck, and those opportunists treat our industrial society as one continual shipwreck...
...He means that we have a plan of our house and garden and are always trying to restore and rebuild it according to that plan...
...For where it is real it makes society healthy...
...In short, we do not in the icast believe in the greater happiness promised to mankind by the dissolution of life-long loyalties...
...The passion of a man in his youth has found its right road and reached its right goal, and though love need not be over, the search for love is over...
...until the house is buried under falling crees and the fields are flooded and all the work of man is washed away...
...But if my tailor, tells me that all the cloth now in stock is of a bright mustard yellow decorated with scarlet skulls and~ crossbones, I shall defer as long as possible the use of this for a new dress-coat, and even put myself and the tailor to some trouble to procure cloth of some other kind...
...When they say—"Your ideal of marriage may be an ideal, but it cannot be a reality," we say— "It is an ideal in a diseased society, it is a reality in a healthy society...
...the founding of a family means a family, the training, teaching a family...
...But the point here is that these people have a new sexual plan or purpose with every superficial turn of events...
...The founding of a family arts, is an awful responsibility...
...That is why they cannot understand the basis of Christian idealism in many matters, and especially in the matter of sex...
...If my tennis court is flooded (it seems not improbable at present) I can of course turn it into an ornamental lake...
...Whenever there are rather more children than is convenient for sweaters to support by decent wages they at once begin to talk of tricks that are a sort of substitute for inf anticide...
...This continuity is secured, not by "marriage laws," which our modern plutocracics can pull about as they please, but by a voluntary vow or invocation of God made by both parties, that they will help each other in this work until death...
...Now nobody can understand the Christian theory of sex who does not understand this idea of man having a plan which he wishes to impose upon circumstances, instead of waiting for the circumstances to see what his plan is to be...
...It also takes two to make a lovcn' agreement that their love shall be put before their quarrels...
...This crcadye act, like all creative acts, does involve a loss of freedom...
...It is true, not merely in a mctaphorical, not even merely in a mystical, but also in a material sense, that it is conic that we may have life and that we may havc it more abundantly...
...So much for the general theory of marriage that passion is purified by its own fruitfulness, when that fruitfulness is its dignified and decent aid...
...that is, merely the thing that is most easy...
...There is a difference between the customer who gets what he wants so far as he can and the customer who gets what he doesn't want because he can...
...that when people say to us—"Your system is quite unsuited to the modem world," we answcr—"If that is so things look rathcr rotten for the poor old modem world...
...And that is what our poor friend means when he says that we are not practical...
...But the worst of a shipwreck is that the ship so often goes down...
...Now there is a kind of man who will eagerly wear the yellow coat because of the existence of the yellow doth...
...This creative act is in itself a free act...
...Thus is the coming of passion used wIth the least dcgrcc of destruction...
...While it is a creative act like SEX November 12, 1914...
...And that is an undignified position for a man...
...For those who believe in God and also believe in the meaning of words it is final and irrevocable...
...So much of the principle is, or was until very lately, common to all who call themselves Christians...
...By the test of this aim and achievement all the things condemned by the Christian ethics fall into their vanous degrees of error...
...Nevertheless he means something, and it is something like this...
...To allow the search to stray in such a fashion as to destroy other homes healthily established is, by this definition, obviously wrong...
...Or I can take the trouble to drain the field and dam the flood' and remain faithful to the abstract dogmatic ideal of lawn tennis...
...But it does mean that, in a gencral sense, we may judge the loves of men by another mystical metaphor which is also a material fact—and by their fruits we shall know them...
...as, for instance, in the Fall of Man...
...We do not propose to tear up our original plan and follow a chapter of accidents...
...Why he wants it, and what it really is, we will consider in a moment...
...But if I do not really want a sky-light or a fire escape, I am being dictated to by a tree...
...It is a work for a lifetime, and most married lives are too short for it...
...It is the undignified posItion of most modern men...
...It takes two to make a quarrel, especially a lovers' quarrel...
...petuating itself as affection, and the life of man is made whole...
...He is an opportunist in another sense than mine...
...To maneunc in some scientific fashion, so as to filch the pleasure without taking the responsibilities of the act, is logically and inherently wrong...
...There is about every grtat work something final, but it is quite true that this work is felt to have a peculiar sort of finality...
...We all believe in cutting our coat according to our cloth, in the sense that nobody can cut a coat with no cloth...
...Now it is possible to go through life being perpetually played upon by circumstances in this way...
...he means that we are not always patching our house and altering our garden to fit a falling log or a shower of rain...
...They are always being deflected by the flood or the falling tree, especially that tree of knowledge which is the symbol of the Fall, and which has certainly made a hole in the house, in the sense of the home...
...The Christian desires to create the conditions in which Christian marriage is most workable and worthy of itself...
...THE COMMONWEAL 9 that of an artist it is also a collective act Ukc that of a small community...
...A very large number of humane and healthy-minded people nowadays are opportunists...
...They are opportunists, not merely in the sense of getbig what they want in the way that is most practical, but of trying to want the thing that is most practical...
...We do not say perfectly healthy, far we believe in other things besides marriage...
...often it is no more than undignificd and ridiculous...
...Love is really too free for the purposes of the free lovers...
...We are 2iready in the happy state in which they work in different offices, so it is easy to reach the happier state in which they live in different homes...
...we do not feel the slIghtest respect for the crude and sentimental rhetoric ~n which it is rcconimcndcd to us...
...in a sense beyond that in which all sane people are opportunists...
...Stated in its human terms the plan is substantially this...
...Of course this does not mean that the love has not its own spiritual value, wherc honorable accident prevents it from being fruitful...
...Generally the poor old theologians and theorists have to explain to him what he means...
...and only Catholics, perhaps, have troubled rationally and philosophically to define it...
...But they only want what is practicable, in the sense of what is easiest at thc momcnt...
...but, in a very others...
...When wives and husbands happen to be separated by all our industrial work and business worry, it is easier to propose that they should be divorced by new laws and new moralities...
...It is by no means true, however, that only Catholics havc felt it...
...passion is givcn a remarkable chance of per...
...When those who were afraid of over-population this year are afraid of race suicide next year, they will propound a new philosophy of sex to enforce the most random re-population...
...not to accept whatever is most workable in very unworthy conditions...
...To purchase the mcre sterile pleasure from a sterile class is wrong...
...THE COMMONWEAL November iz, 1924 RELIGION AND By G. IC CHESTERTON THE honest man, who says he wishes Christianity to be merely practical, and not theoretical or theological, is seldom good at explaining exactly what he means...
...Thus is the passing away of passion accepted with the icast degrec of disillusion...
...The old...
...That is what he means by our unpracticality, and he is right...
...in that sense we can say if we like that the man who makes a house makes a prison...
...We cannot rid life of tragedy without ridding it of liberty...
...If wc look at the real lIterature of Bohemian or irresponsible love, we shall find it one continual wail and raving lament over false mistresses and torturing love affairs...
...But by is not merely the terrible sense, of like all creative In other words the feeding of and watching of definition the agreement of the two concern of the two...
...There arc tragedies in it, as there arc cqually tragedies outside it...
...The man who has built a housc cannot rccover that castle in the air that he made and re-made while he was merely planning the house...
...We believe, wIthout a shadow of doubt or hesitadon, that whcrc conditions approximate to this ideal humanity is most happy...
...It might be put shortly by saying that we would substitutc, for the half-truth of love for lovc's sake, the larger truth of love for life's sakc...
...If a tree falls -on the house and makes a hole in the roof, I can turn the hole into a sky-light and the tree into a fire escape...
...That is why there is so much mere verbal repetition about what he says...
...it is something suggested to us by God and our common conscience and sense of the general honor of mankind...
...To prolong the search in a sentimental fashion, long after it has any relation to the real work of a man, is an error in varying degrees...
...To cultintc a perversion in the mind wJi[ch actually removes the desire for the fruitful act is horribly wrong...
...turpe senilis amor...
...In other words there is a difference between getting what you want, under certain conditions, and allowing the conditions to tell you what to get, and even what you want...
Vol. 1 • November 1924 • No. 1
