mpulse. 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 count