Nevertheless, as a personal document, the Everhard Manuscript is of
inestimable value. But here again enter error of perspective, and
vitiation due to the bias of love. Yet we smile, indeed, and forgive
Avis Everhard for the heroic lines upon which she modelled her husband.
We know to-day that he was not so colossal, and that he loomed among the
events of his times less largely than the Manuscript would lead us to
believe.

We know that Ernest Everhard was an exceptionally strong man, but not so
exceptional as his wife thought him to be. He was, after all, but one of
a large number of heroes who, throughout the world, devoted their lives
to the Revolution; though it must be conceded that he did unusual
work, especially in his elaboration and interpretation of working-class
philosophy. "Proletarian science" and "proletarian philosophy" were his
phrases for it, and therein he shows the provincialism of his mind--a
defect, however, that was due to the times and that none in that day
could escape.

But to return to the Manuscript. Especially valuable is it in
communicating to us the FEEL of those terrible times. Nowhere do we find
more vividly portrayed the psychology of the persons that lived in
that turbulent period embraced between the years 1912 and 1932--their
mistakes and ignorance, their doubts and fears and misapprehensions,
their ethical delusions, their violent passions, their inconceivable
sordidness and selfishness. These are the things that are so hard for
us of this enlightened age to understand. History tells us that these
things were, and biology and psychology tell us why they were; but
history and biology and psychology do not make these things alive. We
accept them as facts, but we are left without sympathetic comprehension
of them.