king of any actual society, yet are necessary
to keep alive the deeper ideals of humankind, to arouse perpetually the
instinct for something better than what we have, something deeply
better, something radically better, not the mere improvements,
palliatives, of the practical man and the conservative, bourgeois
reformer.

CHAPTER XV

_Terry's Finish_

Terry had given Marie life, and she had finally used this vitality to
free herself from him and his too exigent idealism. The result of his
relation to her seems from this point of view pathetically ironical; but
it is only a symbol of the ironical pathos of his relation to society in
general; he and his kind act as a stimulant and a tonic to the society
which rejects and crushes them. The anarchist is in a double sense the
victim of society. He is, in the first place, generally a "labour"
victim, is generally the maimed result of our factory system; and, in
the second place, his philosophy, needed by society, reacts against
himself and turns the world against him. So he is a double victim, a
reiterated social sacrifice.

When I went to Chicago this last time I found Terry, as I have said,
despondent and disillusioned; and intensely savage in his rejection, not
only of capitalistic society, but apparently of all society. In a way,
he had left his old moorings, the "proletariat" no longer appealed to
him. This mood was not a part of his philosophy: it was an expression of
his disappointment, of his disillusionment. He talked about his own life
and Marie's with an almost brutal frankness. He seemed to take a sad
pleasure in stripping the illusion of human worth and beauty to the bare
bones. In spite of his words, in spite of his previous letters, it
seemed clear to me that Marie had not lost her hold on him entirely, and
that he deeply felt her defection. Through her he had failed socially
and personally. Around her much of his life, intellectual and personal,
had been wound. Lingeringly he talked of her, of her qualities; he
seemed to try to steel himself against all need of human relation;
incidentally he rejected me and other friends, finding us wanting.
Marie, too, was not perfect, and must be "passed up"; but his mind
rested, in spite of himself, on this woman and his life with her. Some
of the things he said and wrote to me about this time indicate his
present mood toward me, Marie, the anarchists, proletariat, and the
world in general.

A year or two ag