Post-Prandial Philosophy

16. The Political Pupa

I have picked up on the moor the chrysalis of a common English

butterfly. As I sit on the heather and turn it over attentively, while

it wriggles in my hands, I can't help thinking how closely it resembles

the present condition of our British commonwealth. It is a platitude,

indeed, to say that "this is an age of transition." But it would be

truer and more graphic perhaps to put it that this is an age in which

England, and for the matter of that every other European country as

well, is passing through something like the chrysalis stage in its

evolution.

But, first of all, do you clearly understand what a chrysalis is driving

at? It means more than it seems; the change that goes on within that

impassive case is a great deal more profound than most people imagine.

When the caterpillar is just ready to turn into a butterfly it lies by

for a while, full of internal commotion, and feels all its organs slowly

melting one by one into a sort of indistinguishable protoplasmic pulp;

chaos precedes the definite re-establishment of a fresh form of order.

Limbs and parts and nervous system all disappear for a time, and then

gradually grow up again in new and altered types. The caterpillar, if it

philosophised on its own state at all (which seems to be very little the

habit of well-conducted caterpillars, as of well-conducted young

ladies), might easily be excused for forming just at first the

melancholy impression that a general dissolution was coming over it

piecemeal. It must begin by feeling legs and eyes and nervous centres

melt away by degrees into a common indistinguishable organic pulp, out

of which the new organs only slowly form themselves in obedience to the

law of some internal impulse. But when the process is all over, and--hi,

presto!--the butterfly emerges at last from the chrysalis condition,

what does it find but that instead of having lost everything it has new

and stronger legs in place of the old and feeble ones; it has nerves and

brain more developed than before; it has wings for flight instead of

mere creeping little feet to crawl with? What seemed like chaos was

really nothing more than the necessary kneading up of all component

parts into a plastic condition which precedes every fresh departure in

evolution. The old must fade before the new can replace it.

Now I am not going to work this perhaps somewhat fanciful analogy to

death, or pretend it is anything more than a convenient metaphor. Still,

taken as such, it is not without its luminosity. For a metaphor, by

supplying us with a picturable representation, often enables us really

to get at the hang of the thing a vast deal better than the most solemn

argument. And I fancy communities sometimes pass through just such a

chrysalis stage, when it seems to the timid and pessimistic in their

midst as if every component element of the State (but especially the one

in which they themselves and their friends are particularly interested)

were rushing violently down a steep place to eternal perdition. Chaos

appears to be swallowing up everything. "The natural relations of

classes" disappear. Faiths melt; churches dissolve; morals fade; bonds

fail; a universal magma of emancipated opinion seems to take the place

of old-established dogma. The squires and the parsons of the

period--call them scribes or augurs--wring their hands in despair, and

cry aloud that they don't know what the world is coming to. But, after

all, it is only the chrysalis stage of a new system. The old social

order must grow disjointed and chaotic before the new social order can

begin to evolve from it. The establishment of a plastic consistency in

the mass is the condition precedent of the higher development.

Not, of course, that this consideration will ever afford one grain of

comfort to the squires and the parsons of each successive epoch; for

what _they_ want is not the reasonable betterment of the whole social

organism, but the continuance of just this particular type of squiredom

and parsonry. That is what they mean by "national welfare;" and any

interference with it they criticise in all ages with the current

equivalent for the familiar Tory formula that "the country is going to

the devil."

Sometimes these great social reconstructions of which I speak are forced

upon communities by external factors interfering with their fixed

internal order, as happened when the influx of northern barbarians broke

up the decaying and rotten organism of the Roman Empire. Sometimes,

again, they occur from internal causes, in an acute, and so to speak,

inflammatory condition, as at the French Revolution. But sometimes, as

in our own time and country, they are slowly brought about by organic

development, so as really to resemble in all essential points the

chrysalis type of evolution. Politically, socially, theologically,

ethically, the old fixed beliefs seem at such periods to grow fluid or

plastic. New feelings and habits and aspirations take their place. For a

while a general chaos of conflicting opinions and nascent ideas is

produced. The mass for the moment seems formless and lawless. Then new

order supervenes, as the magma settles down and begins to crystallise;

till at last, I'm afraid, the resulting social organism becomes for the

most part just as rigid, just as definite, just as dogmatic, just as

exacting, as the one it has superseded. The caterpillar has grown into a

particular butterfly.

Through just such a period of reconstruction Europe in general and

Britain in particular are now in all likelihood beginning to pass. And

they will come out at the other end translated and transfigured. Laws

and faiths and morals will all of them have altered. There will be a new

heaven and a new earth for the men and women of the new epoch. Strange

that people should make such a fuss about a detail like Home Rule, when

the foundations of society are all becoming fluid. Don't flatter

yourself for a moment that your particular little sect or your

particular little dogma is going to survive the gentle cataclysm any

more than my particular little sect or my particular little dogma. All

alike are doomed to inevitable reconstruction. "We can't put the

Constitution into the melting-pot," said Mr. John Morley, if I recollect

his words aright. But at the very moment when he said it, in my humble

opinion, the Constitution was already well into the melting-pot, and

even beginning to simmer merrily. Federalism, or something extremely

like it, may with great probability be the final outcome of that

particular melting; though anything else is perhaps just as probable,

and in any case the melting is general, not special. The one thing we

can guess with tolerable certainty is that the melting-pot stage has

begun to overtake us, socially, ethically, politically,

ecclesiastically; and that what will emerge from the pot at the end of

it must depend at last upon the relative strength of those unknown

quantities--the various formative elements.

Being the most optimistic of pessimists, however, I will venture (after

this disclaimer of prophecy) to prophesy one thing alone: 'Twill be a

butterfly, not a grub, that comes out of our chrysalis.

Beyond that, I hold all prediction premature. We may guess and we may

hope, but we can have no certainty. Save only the certainty that no

element will outlive the revolution unchanged--not faiths, nor classes,

nor domestic relations, nor any other component factor of our complex

civilisation. All are becoming plastic in the organic plasm; all are

losing features in the common mass of the melting-pot. For that reason,

I never trouble my head for a moment when people object to me that this,

that, or the other petty point of detail in Bellamy's Utopia or William

Morris's Utopia, or my own little private and particular Utopia, is

impossible, or unrealisable, or wicked, or hateful. For these, after

all, are mere Utopias; their details are the outcome of individual

wishes; what will emerge must be, not a Utopia at all, either yours or

mine, but a practical reality, full of shifts and compromises most

unphilosophical and illogical--a practical reality distasteful in many

ways to all us Utopia-mongers. "The Millennium by return of post" is no

more realisable to-day than yesterday. The greatest of revolutions can

only produce that unsatisfactory result, a new human organisation.

Yet, it is something, after all, to believe at least that the grub will

emerge into a full-fledged butterfly. Not, perhaps, quite as glossy in

the wings as we could wish; but a butterfly all the same, not a crawling

caterpillar.