birth: the trust and the labor union, all the "movements" and
institutions, will condition it. "Just as the talent of the painter is
formed or deformed--in any case, is modified--under the very influence of
the work he produces, so each of our states, at the moment of its issue,
modifies our personality, being indeed the new form we are just assuming.
It is then right to say that what we do depends on what we are; but it is
necessary to add also, that we are, to a certain extent, what we do, and
that we are creating ourselves continually."

What I have called culture enters into political life as a very powerful
condition. It is a way of creating ourselves. Make a blind struggle
luminous, drag an unconscious impulse into the open day, see that men are
aware of their necessities, and the future is in a measure controlled.
The culture of to-day is for the future an historical condition. That is
its political importance. The mental habits we are forming, our
philosophies and magazines, theaters, debates, schools, pulpits and
newspapers become part of an active past which as Bergson says "follows
us at every instant; all that we have felt, thought, and willed from our
earliest infancy is there, leaning over the present which is about to
join it, pressing against the portals of consciousness that would fain
leave it outside."

Socialists claim that because the McNamara brothers had no
"class-consciousness," because they were without a philosophy of society
and an understanding of the labor movement their sense of wrong was bound
to seek out dynamite. That is a profound truth backed by abundant
evidence. If you turn, for example, to Spargo's Life of Karl Marx you see
that all through his career Marx struggled with the mere
insurrectionists. It was the men without the Marxian vision of growth and
discipline who were forever trying to lead little marauding bands against
the governments of Europe. The fact is worth pondering: the Marxian
socialists, openly declaring that all authority is a temporary
manifestation of social conditions, have waged what we must call a war of
culture against the powers of the world. They have tried to arouse in
workingmen the consciousness of an historical mission--the patience of
that labor is one of the wonders of the age. But the McNamaras had a
culture that could help them not at all. They were Catholics, Democrats
and old-fashioned trade-unionists. Religion told them that authority was
absolut