[The idea //that ‘being in love’ is the only reason for remaining married] really leaves no room for marriage
as a contract or promise at all.
If love is the whole thing, then the promise can add nothing;
and if it adds nothing, then it should not be made.
The curious thing is that lovers themselves, while they remain really in love, know this better than those //who talk about love.
As Chesterton pointed out, [those //who are in love] have a natural inclination /to bind themselves by promises.
[Love songs all over the world] are full of vows of eternal constancy.
The Christian law is not forcing upon the passion of love [something //which is foreign to that passion’s own nature]:
it is demanding that lovers should take seriously something //which their passion of itself impels them to do.
And, of course, the promise, made /when I am in love
and because I am in love, [to be true to the beloved /as long as I live], commits me to being true
/even if I cease to be in love.
A promise must be about things //that I can do, about actions:
no one can promise to go on feeling in a certain way.
He might as well promise never to have a headache or always to feel hungry.
From Mere Christianity
Compiled in A Year with C.S. Lewis
Mere Christianity. Copyright © 1952, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. Copyright renewed © 1980, C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers. A Year With C.S. Lewis: Daily Readings from His Classic Works. Copyright © 2003 by C. S. Lewis Pte. Ltd. All rights reserved. Used with permission of HarperCollins Publishers.