He is led into contradictions. One of them touches upon his feeling of "class consciousness." Terry at times, as a transcendental moralist, rises above this feeling, but his special instinct as a "labour" man often asserts itself against and in contradiction to his passion for the oneness of the race. In my intimate association with him I sometimes saw that, much as he liked me, he felt that I was of another "class." In the work which resulted in my book, The Spirit of Labour, I frequently came in discouraging contact with this "class" distrust of me—in him and in others. Marie alone seemed free of it, in her relation to me, and yet she wrote:
"I think we have a peculiar sympathy for each other, and yet I realise that in some subtle way there is not that perfect understanding there ought to be. Just think of what extremes we two come from—how different our social environment! I know you understand as nearly as is possible for one of your class, and yet I doubt if you can really sympathise with the ideas of anarchism which springs naturally from only one class—the labour class. Do you not hesitate sometimes and doubt that all men are worthy of the better things of life, the coalheaver as well as the banker and artist? Even I hesitate sometimes, when I see the coarseness and ignorance of these poor plodders of earth, and when I think of all the really great things that slavery has accomplished. But who knows how much greater things might be, if done freely by free men? When I remember that these poor plodders have never had a chance, I relent and feel so sorry and so hopeless. How often Terry and I have walked along the boulevards, admiring the beautiful homes of the rich. Oh, it used to make me wild! I felt that I belonged to humanity, and yet I could only enter these beautiful homes as a servant, an object of contempt—an object of contempt supposed, moreover, to have morals, and religion, too!"
Of "class consciousness," Terry wrote: "Class feeling has always been a deep problem to me: it emanates from profound depths. This reflection concerns you. Many of your 'labour' friends here seem to regret that there were many things they could not tell you; not that they had any conscious lack of faith in you as an individual; indeed, they had great faith in you as a person. Their distrust of you was a class distrust; they dreaded to betray the interests of their class. They felt a fundamental antagonism, not to you as an individual, but to you as a member of your class. From their Social Sinai they enunciate the eleventh commandment, 'Thou shalt not be a Scab!', and the other ten commandments do not seem to them so important. But you, they think, cannot feel this commandment as they do, so passionately, so fully. To them, it is the keynote of solidarity; to you, partly at least, a principle of division, of separation.
"No wonder our class—the thinkers among them—rejects the morality of your class—property morality, and the rest meant only to make property morality as strong as a law of God. I made at one time the fatal mistake of the many simple labourers who are organically honest. I spent most of my best life in seeking a solution of our hard lot from those above me. After a loss of many feathers and some brave plumage, but no down, I must in all humility beat my way back to the traditional lost ideals of our organically incorporated class.... Perhaps the most conscienceless class who seek to solve the insoluble is the 'cultured' class. But most of them seem to me like artistic undertakers officiating at the 'wake' of Life. With their platitudes, their prudery, and their chastity, they make for death. These languid ones desire to have life served up to them in many courses. Greed lies at the bottom of their being, and so they preach content to the masses, though for the workers they have nothing in their shallow souls but contempt. This cultured leisure class has had the time and cunning to perpetrate one great and tragic trick. They have made social falsehoods so complicated that they themselves neither understand nor wish to understand.... Why is it that in all the great authors I detect an air of condescension, marking their contempt for those who make and keep them what they are? With what fine contempt the 'rube' is surveyed by the faker who has plucked him! Must I put these classic souls of art in the same category? The art for art's sake people—these make me sick. It is at best an argumentative confusion springing from the fact that in the perfect work of art there is such a fusion of form and substance as to resist dissociation and defy analysis. Perhaps this fact accounts for Tolstoi's contempt for some of the classic art. It seems to me that most classic art is one of two things: either it smacks of smug content and over-fed geniality or it is permeated with a profound pessimism. The philosophers are worse than the artists; they are the ringleaders of the betrayers of humanity. Art at least makes the atonement of beauty for its mistakes, but this cannot be said of philosophy.
"Herbert Spencer, for instance, who represents the high-water mark of a philosophy that will not hold water, pours out the vials of his bottled-up wrath on the poor unfortunates of London who are compelled 'to make a living' by tips in opening the carriage doors or holding the horses of the wealthy. He had nothing but loathing for the pregnant girl who tries to break her 'fall' by taking advantage of the 'poor laws.' For the workingman, who sincerely tries, at least, to settle the 'affairs of State' in the pot-house over a mug of ale, Spencer had nothing but contempt; but to the parliamentary people who settle the same 'affairs' over champagne and prostitutes, he played the lick-spittle.... The recantation of his 'Social Statics' is the worst case of intellectual cowardice on record.... He went down with final contempt for the workers who served him, gave him his daily bread, made his ink, pen, and paper and bound the twenty volumes of his philosophy of falsehood! May his 'works' rest in oblivion!...
"In dismissing Spencer, it is worthy of note that the very thing which made him pause in the righting of social wrongs is the thing which will cause the Revolution, namely, the complicated nature of social falsehoods. In recanting his published truth on the land question, he admitted that, although the legal title to land was obtained by murder and dispossession of original occupants, the matter was now too complicated to be dealt with. If this be so, if justice cannot be done because of the difficulties in the way, then all hail to the simplicity and elemental justice of a Red Revolution!...
"Yes, sometimes I feel like the crudest of the revolutionists, although I call myself a philosophical anarchist. Sometimes the jails seem to yearn for my reception, and I question my right to be at large. Nothing but a decreasing cowardice leaves me at liberty. And if I could not do more for my soul behind the bars than I have done in front of them, then I am fit only for durance vile. I, who have out-fasted the very flies till they fled my room, dread but one thing in the life of a prison—that I should have no time for reflection and repose! but out of a born anarchist it would make of me a compulsory Socialist, condemned to work for the State—a veritable dungeon of disgrace.
"It is not so much that I love life, though as a rule the poor, who are so close to life, worship it in a way that puts all other things to scorn. I know nothing that reaches farther up or deeper down than this. It is only in the gutter that life is truly worshipped. And that is why I search for my last faith there—in the gutter, whence all faith really springs.
"And yet to have faith even in the gutter is an act of deep imagination. In the rotting rooms beneath me lives a worker with a family of six girls and one boy. Capitalism has crucified his carcass for fifty years and now 'laid him off.' He has been looking for work for the last month. I watch the insanity in his restless, aimless movements, and I feel desperate enough to try to get him a job. Unfortunately, he does not drink; so his pipe, ever in his mouth, is the only obstacle between him and the mad-house, or the poor-house. Every morning at six o'clock, his sandwich dinner concealed in his pocket, he makes a brave show of walking away briskly in his hopeless search for work; for there are too many younger men. His assumed activity is only put on till he turns the first corner, for he tries to conceal his lameness and decrepitude, especially from his wife, who strains her gaze after him. Just before starting off he takes the superfluous precaution to put some shoe-blacking on his hair which shows white about the temples. He comes back after a six hours' search, about noon, his neglected dinner still in his pocket. He has tramped ten or twelve miles with no open shop for him. He does not blame anyone, but regards it all as an accident that has happened to him in some unfortunate way. He broods over this till I can see it in his eyes; but I don't dare say anything to him. He is too old, and I might only make his trouble worse. If I were a sculptor I would put him before the world in a material almost as hard and I hope more enduring than itself. His arms never hang down by his side, but seem to be set in the position required by his last job, shovelling. It reminds me of the time, thirty years ago, when I was laid off, and the madness first got in and crouched behind my eyes....
"Yes, I suppose I am mad. It is true that if I cannot have the intellectual red that heralds the approach of Dawn, then I want the red light of Terror that ushers in the Night. My feelings have been clamouring for many years against my cowardly better judgment. I believe some day they will break loose and throw me, as from a catapult, even up against the stone wall of atrocity we call Society."