pecial. 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.

XVII.

_ON THE CASINO TERRACE._

I have always regarded Monte Carlo as an Influence for Good. It helps to
keep so many young men off the Stock Exchange.

Let me guard against an obvious but unjust suspicion. These remarks are
not uttered under the exhilarating effect of winning at the tables.
Quite the contrary. It is the Bank that has broken the Man to-day
at Monte Carlo. They are rather due to the chastening and
thought-compelling influence of persistent loss, not altogether
unbalanced b