XI

THE HOMELESSNESS OF JONES

Thus the Future of which we spoke at the beginning has
(in England at least) always been the ally of tyranny.
The ordinary Englishman has been duped out of his old possessions,
such as they were, and always in the name of progress.
The destroyers of the abbeys took away his bread and gave him
a stone, assuring him that it was a precious stone, the white
pebble of the Lord's elect. They took away his maypole and his
original rural life and promised him instead the Golden Age
of Peace and Commerce inaugurated at the Crystal Palace. And now
they are taking away the little that remains of his dignity
as a householder and the head of a family, promising him
instead Utopias which are called (appropriately enough)
"Anticipations" or "News from Nowhere." We come back, in fact,
to the main feature which has already been mentioned.
The past is communal: the future must be individualist.
In the past are all the evils of democracy, variety and violence
and doubt, but the future is pure despotism, for the future
is pure caprice. Yesterday, I know I was a human fool,
but to-morrow I can easily be the Superman.

The modern Englishman, however, is like a man who should
be perpetually kept out, for one reason after another,
from the house in which he had meant his married life to begin.
This man (Jones let us call him) has always desired
the divinely ordinary things; he has married for love,
he has chosen or built a small house that fits like a coat;