This, again, will not
hold water; for in the purely terrestrial and even sensual departments
of life, such as love and lust, the medieval princes show the same mad
promises and performances, the same misshapen imagination and the same
monstrous self-sacrifice. Here we have a contradiction, to explain which
it is necessary to think of the whole nature of vows from the beginning.
And if we consider seriously and correctly the nature of vows, we shall,
unless I am much mistaken, come to the conclusion that it is perfectly
sane, and even sensible, to swear to chain mountains together, and that,
if insanity is involved at all, it is a little insane not to do so.
The man who makes a vow makes an appointment with himself at some
distant time or place. The danger of it is that himself should not keep
the appointment. And in modern times this terror of one's self, of the
weakness and mutability of one's self, has perilously increased, and is
the real basis of the objection to vows of any kind. A modern man
refrains from swearing to count the leaves on every third tree in
Holland Walk, not because it is silly to do so (he does many sillier
things), but because he has a profound conviction that before he had got
to the three hundred and seventy-ninth leaf on the first tree he would
be excessively tired of the subject and want to go home to tea.
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