Page:The Anarchists - A Picture of Civilization at the Close of the Nineteenth Century.djvu/11



work of art must speak for the artist who created it; the labor of the thoughtful student who stands back of it permits him to say what impelled him to give his thought voice.

The subject of the work just finished requires me to accompany it with a few words.

First of all, this: Let him who does not know me and who would, perhaps, in the following pages, look for such sensational disclosures as we see in those mendacious speculations upon the gullibility of the public from which the latter derives its sole knowledge of the Anarchistic movement, not take the trouble to read beyond the first page.

In no other field of social life does there exist. to-day a more lamentable confusion, a more naive superficiality, a more portentous ignorance than in that of Anarchism. The very utterance of the word is like the flourish of a red rag; in blind wrath the majority dash against it without taking time for calm examination and consideration. They will tear Rh