I
I have said that all Irish nationality is implicit in the definition of
Tone, and that later teachers have simply made one or other of its
truths explicit. It was characteristic of Tone that he stated his case
in terms of practical politics. But the statement was none the less a
complete statement. To claim independence as the indefeasible right of
Ireland is to claim everything for Ireland, all spiritual exaltation and
all worldly pomp to which she is entitled. Independence one must
understand to include spiritual and intellectual independence as well as
political independence; or rather, true political independence requires
spiritual and intellectual independence as its basis, or it tends to
become unstable, a thing resting merely on interests which change with
time and circumstance.
I make a distinction between spiritual and intellectual independence
corresponding to the distinction which exists between the spiritual and
the intellectual parts in man. The distinction is not easy to express,
but it is a real distinction. The soul is not the mind, though it acts
by way of the mind, and it is through the mind one gets such glimpses of
the soul as are possible. Obviously, a great and beautiful soul may
sometimes have to express itself through a very ordinary mind, and a
mean or a wicked soul may sometimes express itself through a regal mind;
and these possibilities are full of confusion for us, so that when we
think we know a man, it is sometimes only his intellect we know, the
dialectician or the rhetorician or the idiot in him, and not the strange
immortal thing behind. We can learn to know a man’s mind, but we can
rarely be quite sure that we know his soul. That is a book which only
God reads plainly.
Now I think that one may speak of a national soul and of a national
mind, and distinguish one from the other, and that this is not merely
figurative speaking. When I was a child I believed that there was
actually a woman called Erin, and had Mr. Yeats’ “Kathleen Ni Houlihan”
been then written and had I seen it, I should have taken it not as an
allegory, but as a representation of a thing that might happen any day
in any house. This I no longer believe as a physical possibility, nor
can I convince myself that a friend of mine is right in thinking that
there is actually a mystical entity which is the soul of Ireland, and
which expresses itself through the mind of Ireland. But I believe that
there is really a spiritual tradition which is the soul of Ireland, the
thing which makes Ireland a living nation, and that there is such a
spiritual tradition corresponding to every true nationality. This
spiritual thing is distinct from the intellectual facts in which chiefly
it makes its revelation, and it is distinct from them in a way analogous
to that in which a man’s soul is distinct from his mind. Like other
spiritual things, it is independent of the material, whereas the mind is
to a large extent dependent upon the material.
I have sometimes thought (but I do not put this forward as a settled
belief which I am prepared to defend) that spiritually England and the
United States are one nation, while intellectually they are apart. I am
sure that spiritually the Walloons of Belgium are one nation with the
French, and that spiritually the Austrians are one nation with the
Germans. The spiritual thing which is the essential thing in nationality
would seem to reside chiefly in language (if by language we understand
literature and folklore as well as sounds and idioms), and to be
preserved chiefly by language; but it reveals itself in all the arts,
all the institutions, all the inner life, all the actions and goings
forth of the nation. It expresses itself fully and magnificently in a
great free nation like ancient Greece or modern Germany; it expresses
itself only partially and unworthily in an enslaved nation like Ireland.
But the soul of the enslaved and broken nation may conceivably be a more
splendid thing than the soul of the great free nation; and that is one
reason why the enslavements of old and glorious nations that have taken
place so often in history are the most terrible things that have ever
happened in the world.
If nationality be regarded as the sum of the facts, spiritual and
intellectual, which mark off one nation from another, and freedom as the
condition which allows those facts full scope and development, it will
be seen that both the spiritual and intellectual fact, nationality, and
the physical condition, freedom, enter into a proper definition of
independence or nationhood. Freedom is a condition which can be lost and
won and lost again; nationality is a life which, if once lost, can never
be recovered. A nation is a stubborn thing, very hard to kill; but a
dead nation does not come back to life, any more than a dead man. There
will never again be a Ligurian nation, nor an Aztec nation, nor a
Cornish nation.
Irish nationality is an ancient spiritual tradition, and the Irish
nation could not die as long as that tradition lived in the heart of one
faithful man or woman. But had the last repositor of the Gaelic
tradition, the last unconquered Gael, died, the Irish nation was no
more. Any free state that might thereafter be erected in Ireland,
whatever it might call itself, would certainly not be the historic Irish
nation.
Davis was the first of modern Irishmen to make explicit the truth that a
nationality is a spirituality. Tone had postulated the great primal
truth that Ireland must be free. Davis, accepting that and developing
it, stated the truth in its spiritual aspect, that Ireland must be
herself; not merely a free self-governing state, but authentically the
Irish nation, bearing all the majestic marks of her nationhood. That the
nation may live, the Irish life, both the inner life and the outer life,
must be conserved. Hence the language, which is the main repository of
the Irish life, the folklore, the literature, the music, the art, the
social customs, must be conserved. Davis fully realised, with the Gaelic
poets, that a nationality connotes a civilisation, and that a
civilisation is a body of traditions. He is thus the lineal ancestor of
the spiritual movement embodied in our day in the Gaelic League. Tone
had set the feet of Ireland on a steep; Davis bade her in her journey
remember her old honour and her old sanctity, the fame of Tara and of
Clonmacnois. Tone is the Irish nation in action, gay and heroic and
terrible; Davis stands by the nation’s hearthside, a faithful sentinel.
Ireland is one. Tone had insisted upon the political unity of Ireland.
Davis thought of Ireland as a spiritual unity. He recognised that the
thing which makes her one is her history, that all her men and women are
the heirs of a common past, a past full of spiritual, emotional, and
intellectual experiences, which knits them together indissolubly. The
nation is thus not a mere agglomeration of individuals, but a living,
organic thing, with a body and a soul; twofold in nature, like man, yet
one.
Davis’s teaching on this head is resumed thus in one of his most lyric
paragraphs:
“This country of ours is no sand bank, thrown up by some recent
caprice of earth. It is an ancient land, honoured in the
archives of civilisation, traceable into antiquity by its piety,
its valour, and its sufferings. Every great European race has
sent its stream to the river of Irish mind. Long wars, vast
organisations, subtle codes, beacon crimes, leading virtues, and
self-mighty men were here. If we live influenced by wind and sun
and tree, and not by the passions and deeds of the past, we are
a thriftless and a hopeless people.”
And in another passage he gives the Gaelic League its watchwords:
“Men are ever valued most for peculiar and original qualities. A
man who can only talk commonplace, and act according to routine,
has little weight. To speak, look, and do what your own soul
from its depths orders you are credentials of greatness which
all men understand and acknowledge. Such a man’s dictum has more
influence than the reasoning of an imitative or common-place
man. He fills his circle with confidence. He is self-possessed,
firm, accurate, and daring. Such men are the pioneers of
civilisation and the rulers of the human heart.
“Why should not nations be judged thus? Is not a full indulgence
of its natural tendencies essential to a _people’s_
greatness?...
“The language which grows up with a people is conformed to their
organs, descriptive of their climate, constitution, and manners,
mingled inseparably with their history and their soil, fitted
beyond any other language to express their prevalent thoughts in
the most natural and efficient way.
“To impose another language on such a people is to send their
history adrift among the accidents of translation--’tis to tear
their identity from all places--’tis to substitute arbitrary
signs for picturesque and suggestive names--’tis to cut off the
entail of feeling, and separate the people from their
forefathers by a deep gulf--’tis to corrupt their very organs,
and abridge their power of expression.
“The language of a nation’s youth is the only easy and full
speech for its manhood and for its age. And when the language of
its cradle goes, itself craves a tomb....
“A people without a language of its own is only half a nation. A
nation should guard its language more than its territories--’tis
a surer barrier, and more important frontier, than fortress or
river.”
The insistence on the spiritual fact of nationality is Davis’s
distinctive contribution to political thought in Ireland, but it is not
the whole of Davis. It has become common to regard him as the type of
the “intellectual Nationalist,” who is distinguished from that other and
more troublesome person, the political irreconcilable. And there is a
passage of Gavan Duffy’s which lends countenance to this. But the view
is a false one as regards Davis and a false one as regards the
irreconcilables. Davis accepts the political doctrine of the
irreconcilables, and the irreconcilables accept the spiritual teaching
of Davis. The two teachings are facets of one truth. And Davis saw the
whole truth. He saw that Ireland must be independent of England. It is
necessary for me to prove this.