s 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."

CHAPTER 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 motor-cars; but this is not due to human activity but
to human repose. There would be less bustle if there were more activity,
if people were simply walking about. Our world would be more silent if
it were more strenuous. And this which is true of the apparent physical
bustle is true also of the appa