aterpillar hath eaten; and the little house and
garden of our friend Jones is in a bad way.

*****

II. THE FALLACY OF THE UMBRELLA STAND

When Lord Morley said that the House of Lords must be either mended
or ended, he used a phrase which has caused some confusion; because
it might seem to suggest that mending and ending are somewhat similar
things. I wish specially to insist on the fact that mending and ending
are opposite things. You mend a thing because you like it; you end a
thing because you don't. To mend is to strengthen. I, for instance,
disbelieve in oligarchy; so I would no more mend the House of Lords
than I would mend a thumbscrew. On the other hand, I do believe in the
family; therefore I would mend the family as I would mend a chair; and
I will never deny for a moment that the modern family is a chair that
wants mending. But here comes in the essential point about the mass of
modern advanced sociologists. Here are two institutions that have always
been fundamental with mankind, the family and the state. Anarchists, I
believe, disbelieve in both. It is quite unfair to say that Socialists
believe in the state, but do not believe in the family; thousands of
Socialists believe more in the family than any Tory. But it is true
to say that while anarchists would end both, Socialists are specially
engaged in mending (that is, strengthening and renewing) the state; and
they are not specially engaged in strengthening and renewing the family.
They are not doing anything to define the functions of father, mother,
and child, as such; they are not tightening the machine up again; they
are not blackening in again the fading lines of the old drawing. With
the state they are doing this; they are sharpening its machinery,
they are blackening in its black dogmatic lines, they are making mere
government in every way stronger and in some ways harsher than before.
While they leave the home in ruins, they restore the hive, especially
the stings. Indeed, some schemes of labor and Poor Law reform recently
advanced by distinguished Socialists, amount to little more than putting
the largest number of people in the despotic power of Mr. Bumble.
Apparently, progress means being moved on--by the police.

The point it is my purpose to urge might perhaps be suggested thus:
that Socialists and most social reformers of their color are vividly
conscious of the line between the kind of things that belong to the
state and the kind