government, not
because it was a government. Richard II. would have blamed Bolingbroke
not as a disturber of the peace, but as a usurper. Anarchy, then, in
the useful sense of the word, is a thing utterly distinct from any
rebellion, right or wrong. It is not necessarily angry; it is not, in
its first stages, at least, even necessarily painful. And, as I said
before, it is often entirely silent.

Anarchy is that condition of mind or methods in which you cannot stop
yourself. It is the loss of that self-control which can return to the
normal. It is not anarchy because men are permitted to begin uproar,
extravagance, experiment, peril. It is anarchy when people cannot
_end_ these things. It is not anarchy in the home if the whole family
sits up all night on New Year's Eve. It is anarchy in the home if
members of the family sit up later and later for months afterwards. It
was not anarchy in the Roman villa when, during the Saturnalia, the
slaves turned masters or the masters slaves. It was (from the
slave-owners' point of view) anarchy if, after the Saturnalia, the
slaves continued to behave in a Saturnalian manner; but it is
historically evident that they did not. It is not anarchy to have a
picnic; but it is anarchy to lose all memory of mealtimes. It would, I
think, be anarchy if (as is the disgusting suggestion of some) we all
took what we liked off the sideboard. That is the way swine would eat
if swine had sideboards; they have no immovable feasts; they are
uncommonly progressive, are swine. It is this inability to return
within rational limits after a legitimate extravagance that is the
really dangerous disorder. The modern world is like Niagara. It is
magnificent, but it is not strong. It is as weak as water--like
Niagara. The objection to a cataract is not that it is deafening or
dangerous or even destructive; it is that it cannot stop. Now it is
plain that this sort of chaos can possess the powers that rule a
society as easily as the society so ruled. And in modern England it is
the powers that rule who are chiefly possessed by it--who are truly
possessed by devils. The phrase, in its sound old psychological sense,
is not too strong. The State has suddenly and quietly gone mad. It is
talking nonsense; and it can't stop.

Now it is perfectly plain that government ought to have, and must
have, the same sort of right to use exceptional methods occasionally
that the private householder has to have a picnic or to si