relation. The world of
Georgian England was a world of Homes; the world of the coming time will
still have its Homes, its real Mothers, the custodians of the human
succession, and its cared-for children, the inheritors of the future,
but in addition to this Home world, frothing tumultuously over and
amidst these stable rocks, there will be an enormous complex of
establishments, and hotels, and sterile households, and flats, and all
the elaborate furnishing and appliances of a luxurious extinction.

And since in the present social chaos there does not yet exist any
considerable body of citizens--comparable to the agricultural and
commercial middle class of England during the period of limited
monarchy--that will be practically unanimous in upholding any body of
rules of moral restraint, since there will probably not appear for some
generations any body propounding with wide-reaching authority a new
definitely different code to replace the one that is now likely to be
increasingly disregarded, it follows that the present code with a few
interlined qualifications and grudging legal concessions will remain
nominally operative in sentiment and practice while being practically
disregarded, glossed, or replaced in numberless directions. It must be
pointed out that in effect, what is here forecast for questions of
_menage_ and moral restraints has already happened to a very large
extent in religious matters. There was a time when it was held--and I
think rightly--that a man's religious beliefs, and particularly his
method of expressing them, was a part not of his individual but of his
social life. But the great upheavals of the Reformation resulted finally
in a compromise, a sort of truce, that has put religious belief very
largely out of intercourse and discussion. It is conceded that within
the bounds of the general peace and security a man may believe and
express his belief in matters of religion as he pleases, not because it
is better so, but because for the present epoch there is no way nor
hope of attaining unanimous truth. There is a decided tendency that
will, I believe, prevail towards the same compromise in the question of
private morals. There is a convention to avoid all discussion of creeds
in general social intercourse; and a similar convention to avoid the
point of status in relation to marriage, one may very reasonably
anticipate, will be similarly recognized.

But this impending dissolution of a common standar