Chapter 9

It will be interesting to watch the process of the word and see what happens to it. I do not think it will last long, for the whole civilisation to which it applies and in which it has a meaning is breaking up, like mist before a rising wind. It is not a word you could translate into any other language, and the English society to which it attaches is changing in a whirl. I wonder what posterity will make of it? What will posterity make of this strange habit, suddenly arisen within fifty years (and soon to die), of …