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