Now, the modern Evolutionists have made no real use of the idea of
evolution, especially in the matter of social prediction. They always
fall into what is (from their logical point of view) the error of
supposing that evolution knows what it is doing. They predict the State
of the future as a fruit rounded and polished. But the whole point of
evolution (the only point there is in it) is that no State will ever be
rounded and polished, because it will always contain some organs that
outlived their use, and some that have not yet fully found theirs. If we
wish to prophesy what will happen, we must imagine things now moderate
grown enormous; things now local grown universal; things now promising
grown triumphant; primroses bigger than sunflowers, and sparrows
stalking about like flamingoes.
In other words, we must ask what modern institution has a future before
it? What modern institution may have swollen to six times its present
size in the social heat and growth of the future? I do not think the
Garden City will grow: but of that I may speak in my next and last
article of this series. I do not think even the ordinary Elementary
School, with its compulsory education, will grow. Too many unlettered
people hate the teacher for teaching; and too many lettered people
hate the teacher for not teaching. The Garden City will not bear much
blossom; the young idea will not shoot, unless it shoots the teacher.
But the one flowering tree on the estate, the one natural expansion
which I think will expand, is the institution we call the Prison.