G K Chesterton

The Defendant G K Chesterton

If a prosperous modern man, with a high hat and a frock-coat, were to solemnly pledge himselfbefore all his clerks and friends to count the leaves on every third tree in Holland Walk, to hop up tothe City on one leg every Thursday, to repeat the whole of Mill's 'Liberty' seventy-six times, tocollect 300 dandelions in fields belonging to anyone of the name of Brown, to remain for thirty-onehours holding his left ear in his right hand, to sing the names of all his aunts in order of age on thetop of an omnibus, or make any such unusual undertaking, we should immediately conclude that theman was mad, or, as it is sometimes expressed, was 'an artist in life.' Yet these vows are not moreextraordinary than the vows which in the Middle Ages and in similar periods were made, not byfanatics merely, but by the greatest figures in civic and national civilization-by kings, judges, poets, and priests. One man swore to chain two mountains together, and the great chain hung there, it wassaid, for ages as a monument of that mystical folly. Another swore that he would find his way toJerusalem with a patch over his eyes, and died looking for it. It is not easy to see that these twoexploits, judged from a strictly rational standpoint, are any saner than the acts above suggested. Amountain is commonly a stationary and reliable object which it is not necessary to chain up at nightlike a dog. And it is not easy at first sight to see that a man pays a very high compliment to the HolyCity by setting out for it under conditions which render it to the last degree improbable that he willever get there. But about this there is one striking thing to be noticed. If men behaved in that way in our time, weshould, as we have said, regard them as symbols of the 'decadence.' But the men who did thesethings were not decadent; they belonged generally to the most robust classes of what is generallyregarded as a robust age. Again, it will be urged that if men essentially sane performed suchinsanities, it was under the capricious direction of a superstitious religious system. This, again, willnot hold water; for in the purely terrestrial and even sensual departments of life, such as love andlust, the medieval princes show the same mad promises and performances, the same misshapenimagination and the same monstrous self-sacrifice. Here we have a contradiction, to explain which itis necessary to think of the whole nature of vows from the beginning. And if we consider seriouslyand correctly the nature of vows, we shall, unless I am much mistaken, come to the conclusion thatit is perfectly sane, and even sensible, to swear to chain mountains together, and that, if insanity isinvolved at all, it is a little insane not to do so