lution that turns everything upside down. But
this is almost literally a revolution that turns everything inside
out.

If a wary reactionary of the tradition of Metternich had wished in the
nineteenth century to reverse the democratic tendency, he would
naturally have begun by depriving the democracy of its margin of more
dubious powers over more distant things. He might well begin, for
instance, by removing the control of foreign affairs from popular
assemblies; and there is a case for saying that a people may
understand its own affairs, without knowing anything whatever about
foreign affairs. Then he might centralise great national questions,
leaving a great deal of local government in local questions. This
would proceed so for a long time before it occurred to the blackest
terrorist of the despotic ages to interfere with a man's own habits in
his own house. But the new sociologists and legislators are, by the
nature of their theory, bound to begin where the despots leave off,
even if they leave off where the despots begin. For them, as they
would put it, the first things must be the very fountains of life,
love and birth and babyhood; and these are always covered fountains,
flowing in the quiet courts of the home. For them, as Mr. H.G. Wells
put it, life itself may be regarded merely as a tissue of births. Thus
they are coerced by their own rational principle to begin all coercion
at the other end; at the inside end. What happens to the outside end,
the external and remote powers of the citizen, they do not very much
care; and it is probable that the democratic institutions of recent
centuries will be allowed to decay in undisturbed dignity for a
century or two more. Thus our civilisation will find itself in an
interesting situation, not without humour; in which the citizen is
still supposed to wield imperial powers over the ends of the earth,
but has admittedly no power over his own body and soul at all. He will
still be consulted by politicians about whether opium is good for
China-men, but not about whether ale is good for him. He will be
cross-examined for his opinions about the danger of allowing Kamskatka
to have a war-fleet, but not about allowing his own child to have a
wooden sword. About all, he will be consulted about the delicate
diplomatic crisis created by the proposed marriage of the Emperor of
China, and not allowed to marry as he pleases.

Part of this prophecy or probability has already been accom