e
the liberty for which I chiefly care, the liberty to bind myself.
Complete anarchy would not merely make it impossible to have
any discipline or fidelity; it would also make it impossible
to have any fun. To take an obvious instance, it would not be
worth while to bet if a bet were not binding. The dissolution
of all contracts would not only ruin morality but spoil sport.
Now betting and such sports are only the stunted and twisted
shapes of the original instinct of man for adventure and romance,
of which much has been said in these pages. And the perils, rewards,
punishments, and fulfilments of an adventure must be real, or
the adventure is only a shifting and heartless nightmare. If I bet
I must be made to pay, or there is no poetry in betting. If I challenge
I must be made to fight, or there is no poetry in challenging.
If I vow to be faithful I must be cursed when I am unfaithful,
or there is no fun in vowing. You could not even make a fairy tale
from the experiences of a man who, when he was swallowed by a whale,
might find himself at the top of the Eiffel Tower, or when he
was turned into a frog might begin to behave like a flamingo.
For the purpose even of the wildest romance results must be real;
results must be irrevocable. Christian marriage is the great
example of a real and irrevocable result; and that is why it
is the chief subject and centre of all our romantic writing.
And this is my last instance of the things that I should ask,
and ask imperatively, of any social paradise; I should ask to be kept
to my bargain, to have my oaths and engagements taken seriously;
I should ask Utopia to avenge my honour on myself.

All my modern Utopian friends look at each other rather doubtfully,
for their ultimate hope is the dissolution of all special ties.
But again I seem to hear, like a kind of echo, an answer from beyond
the world. "You will have real obligations, and therefore real
adventures when you get to my Utopia. But the hardest obligation
and the steepest adventure is to get there."

VIII THE ROMANCE OF ORTHODOXY

It is customary to complain of the bustle and strenuousness
of our epoch. But in truth the chief mark of our epoch is
a profound laziness and fatigue; and the fact is that the real
laziness is the cause of the apparent bustle. Take one quite
external case; the streets are noisy with taxicabs and motorcars;
but this is not due to human activity but to human repose.