In formulating an Irish polity we have to take into account the change
in world conditions. A theocratic State we shall have no more. Every
nation, and our own along with them, is now made up of varied sects,
and the practical dominance of one religious idea would let loose
illimitable passions, the most intense the human spirit can feel. The
way out of the theocratic State was by the drawn sword and was lit by
the martyr's fires. The way back is unthinkable for all Protestant
fears or Catholic aspirations. Aristocracies, too, become impossible
as rulers. The aristocracy of character and intellect we may hope shall
finally lead us, but no aristocracy so by birth will renew its authority
over us. The character of great historic personages is gradually
reflected in the mass. The divine right of kings is followed by the
idea of the divine right of the people, and democracies finally become
ungovernable save by themselves. They have seen and heard too much
of pride and greatness not to have become, in some measure, proud and
defiant of all authority except their own. It may be said the history of
democracies is not one to fill us with confidence, but the truth is the
world has yet to see the democratic State, and of the yet untried we
may think with hope. Beneath the Athenian and other ancient democratic
States lay a substratum of humanity in slavery, and the culture, beauty,
and bravery of these extraordinary peoples were made possible by the
workers in an underworld who had no part in the bright civic life.
We have no more a real democracy in the world today. Democracy in
politics has in no country led to democracy in its economic life. We
still have autocracy in industry as firmly seated on its throne as
theocratic king ruling in the name of a god, or aristocracy ruling by
military power; and the forces represented by these twain, superseded
by the autocrats of industry, have become the allies of the power which
took their place of pride. Religion and rank, whether content or not
with the subsidiary place they now occupy, are most often courtiers of
Mammon and support him on his throne. For all the talk about democracy
our social order is truly little more democratic than Rome was under the
Caesars, and our new rulers have not, with all their wealth, created
a beauty which we could imagine after-generations brooding over with
uplifted heart.
The people in theocratic States like Egypt or Chaldea, ruled in the
name of gods, saw rising out of the plains in which they lived an
architecture so mysterious and awe-inspiring that they might well
believe the master-minds who designed the temples were inspired from the
Oversoul. The aristocratic States reflected the love of beauty which is
associated with aristocracies. The oligarchies of wealth in our time,
who have no divine sanction to give dignity to their rule nor traditions
of lordly life like the aristocracies, have not in our day created
beauty in the world. But whatever of worth the ancient systems produced
was not good enough to make permanent their social order. Their
civilizations, like ours, were built on the unstable basis of a vast
working-class with no real share in the wealth and grandeur it helped
to create. The character of his kingdom was revealed in dream to
Nebuchadnezzar by an image with a golden head and feet of clay, and that
image might stand as symbol of the empires the world has known. There is
in all a vast population living in an underworld of labor whose freedom
to vote confers on them no real power, and who are most often scorned
and neglected by those who profit by their labors. Indifference turns
to fear and hatred if labor organizes and gathers power, or makes one
motion of its myriad hands towards the sceptre held by the autocrats of
industry. When this class is maddened and revolts, civilization
shakes and totters like cities when the earthquake stirs beneath their
foundations. Can we master these arcane human forces? Can we, by any
device, draw this submerged humanity into the light and make them real
partners in the social order, not partners merely in the political life
of the nation, but, what is of more importance, in its economic life?
If we build our civilization without integrating labor into its economic
structure, it will wreck that civilization, and it will do that more
swiftly today than two thousand years ago, because there is no longer
the disparity of culture between high and low which existed in past
centuries. The son of the artisan, if he cares to read, may become
almost as fully master of the wisdom of Plato or Aristotle as if he
had been at a university. Emerson will speak to him of his divinity;
Whitman, drunken with the sun, will chant to him of his inheritance of
the earth. He is elevated by the poets and instructed by the economists.
But there are not thrones enough for all who are made wise in our social
order, and failing even to serve in the social heaven these men will
spread revolt and reign in the social hell. They are becoming too many
for higher places to be found for them in the national economy. They are
increasing to a multitude which must be considered, and the framers of
a national polity must devise a life for them where their new-found
dignity of spirit will not be abased. Men no more will be content under
rulers of industry they do not elect themselves than they were under
political rulers claiming their obedience in the name of God. They will
not for long labor in industries where they have no power to fix
the conditions of their employment, as they were not content with a
political system which allowed them no power to control legislation.
Ireland must begin its imaginative reconstruction of a civilization by
first considering that type which, in the earlier civilizations of the
world, has been slave, serf, or servile, working either on land or at
industry, and must construct with reference to it. These workers must be
the central figures, and how their material, intellectual, and spiritual
needs are met must be the test of value of the social order we evolve.