Key Passages

Poul Anderson's Psychotechnic History has two key defining passages to which I return.

Naysmith reflects that the defeat of the gang is not a happy ending:

"Because it was a job which never really ended. The enemy was old and strong and crafty, it took a million forms and it could never quite be slain. For it was man himself - the madness and sorrow of the human soul, the revolt of a primitive against the unnatural state called civilization and freedom."
-"Un-Man," XIV, p. 97.

Dalgetty reflects that Bancroft's group do not think of themselves as murderers, kidnappers or servants of political gangsterism but:

"The enemy - the old and protean enemy, who had been fought down as fascist, Nazi, Shintoist, Communist, Atomist, Americanist, and God knew what else for a bloody century - had grown craftier with time. Now he could fool even himself."
-"The Sensitive Man," II, p. 109.

I take it that Naysmith's old enemy who is man himself and Dalgetty's old and protean enemy are identical. In any case, both are crafty. But I disagree with Dalgetty on one point. The enemy has deceived himself from the beginning.