WHAT, ACCORDING TO G. K. CHESTERTON, IS A “RASH VOW”?

G. K. Chesterton in his essay “A Defense of Rash Vows” explains the nature of vows, what stimulate people to make a vow, what characteristics of a person are responsible for keeping a word and making “the vow a truly sane thing” (52). The vow is a promise and “the man who makes a vow makes an appointment with himself at some distant time or place” (49). The “rash vow”, according to Chesterton, is a promise that …

…train self-discipline, decrease the weakness and mutability of human being; that th! e vow of marriage is the vow of love, where “free-love” term is not acceptable because “the nature of love to bind itself, and the institution of marriage merely paid the average man the compliment of taking him as his word” (51); that “the man who made a vow, however wild, gave a healthy and natural expression to the greatness of a great moment” (50).