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 looks to most people unusual, extraordinary, and ridiculous, often not improbable or impossible to incarnate in real life. The author shows some examples of "rash vows," that may seems to be crazy, such as "to count the leaves on every third tree in Holland Walk, to hop up to the City on one leg every Thursday, to repeat the whole of Mill's 'Liberty' seventy-six time, to collect 300 dandelions in fields belonging to anyone of the name of Brown" (48). Chesterton argues that such mad oaths 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).
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