If the Center Holds: Exploring an Enduring Metaphor

The phrase “if the center holds” has its conceptual roots in the broader cultural and literary assertion that social, political, or ideological cohesion can be sustained only so long as the core remains intact. This phrase is often considered a response to William Butler Yeats’s famous lines from his poem “The Second Coming,” in which he prophesies that “the centre cannot hold,” implying an irreversible spiritual or cultural unraveling. The contradictory statement “if the center holds” presupposes that even in moments of uncertainty or crisis, there remains a stable pivot, a moral or structural nexus, that prevents total collapse.