No policy can succeed if it be not in accord with national character.
If I have misjudged that, what is written here is vain. It may be asked,
can any one abstract from the chaos which is Irish history a prevailing
mood or tendency recurring again and again, and assert these are
fundamental? It is difficult to define national character, even in
long-established States whose history lies open to the world; but it is
most difficult in Ireland, which for centuries has not acted by its own
will from its own centre, where national activity was mainly by way
of protest against external domination, or a readjustment of itself to
external power. We can no more deduce the political character of the
Irish from the history of the past seven hundred years than we can
estimate the quality of genius in an artist whom we have only seen when
grappling with a burglar. The political character of a people emerges
only when they are shaping in freedom their own civilization. To get a
clue in Ireland we must slip by those seven centuries of struggle and
study national origins, as the lexicographer, to get the exact meaning
of a word, traces it to its derivation. The greatest value our early
history and literature has for us is the value of a clue to character,
to be returned to again and again in the maze of our infinitely more
complicated life and era.
In every nation which has been allowed free development, while it has
the qualities common to all humanity, it will be found that some one
idea was predominant, and in its predominance regrouped about itself
other ideas. With our neighbors I believe the idea of personal liberty
has been the inspiring motive of all that is best in its political
development, whatever the reactions and oppressions may have been. In
ancient Attica the idea of beauty, proportion, or harmony in life so
pervaded the minds of the citizens that the surplus revenues of the
State were devoted to the beautifying of the city. We find that love for
beauty in its art, its literature, its architecture; and to Plato, the
highest mind in the Athenian State, Deity itself appeared as Beauty in
its very essence. That mighty mid-European State, whose ambitions have
upset the world, seems to conceive of the State as power. Other races
have had a passion for justice, and have left codes of law which have
profoundly affected the life of nations which grew up long after they
were dead. The cry of ancient Israel for righteousness rings out above
all other passions, and its laws are essentially the laws of a people
who desired that morality should prevail. We have to discover for
ourselves the ideas which lie at the root of national character, and so
inculcate these principles that they will pervade the nation and make it
a spiritual solidarity, and unite the best minds in their service, and
so control those passionate and turbulent elements which are the cause
of the downfall and wreckage of nations by internal dissensions. I
desire as much as any one to preserve our national identity, and to make
it worthy of preservation, and this can only be done by the domination
of some inspiring ideal which will draw all hearts to it; which may at
first have that element of strangeness in it which Ben Jonson said was
in all excellent beauty, and which will later become--as all high things
we love do finally become--familiar to us, and nearer and closer to us
than the beatings of our own hearts.
When ideals which really lie at the root of our being are first
proclaimed, all that is external in life protests. So were many great
reformers martyred, but they left their ideals behind them in the
air, and men breathed them and they became part of their very being.
Nationality is a state of consciousness, a mood of definite character in
our intellectual being, and it is not perceived first except in profound
meditation; it does not become apparent from superficial activities any
more than we could, by looking at the world and the tragic history
of mankind, discover that the Kingdom of Heaven is within us. That
knowledge comes to those who go within themselves, and not to those who
seek without for the way, the truth, and the life. But, once proclaimed,
the incorruptible spiritual element in man intuitively recognizes it
as truth, and it has a profound effect on human action. There is, I
believe, a powerful Irish character which has begun to reassert itself
in modern times, and this character is in essentials what it was two
thousand years ago. We discover its first manifestation in the ancient
clans. The clan was at once aristocratic and democratic. It was
aristocratic in leadership and democratic in its economic basis. The
most powerful character was elected as chief, while the land was the
property of the clan. That social order indicates the true political
character of the Irish. Races which last for thousands of years do not
change in essentials. They change in circumstance. They may grow better
or worse, but throughout their history the same fundamentals appear and
reassert themselves. We can see later in Irish literature or politics,
as powerful personalities emerged and expressed themselves, how the
ancient character persisted. Swift, Goldsmith, Berkeley, O'Grady, Shaw,
Wilde, Parnell, Davitt, Plunkett, and many others, however they differed
from each other, in so far as they betrayed a political character, were
intensely democratic in economic theory, adding that to an aristocratic
freedom of thought. That peculiar character, I believe, still persists
among our people in the mass, and it is by adopting a policy which
will enable it to manifest once more that we will create an Irish
civilization, which will fit our character as the glove fits the hand.
During the last quarter of a century of comparatively peaceful life the
co-operative principle has once more laid hold on the imagination of the
Irish townsman and the Irish countryman. The communal character is still
preserved. It still wills to express itself in its external aspects in
a communal civilization, in an economic brotherhood. That movement alone
provides in Ireland for the aristocratic and democratic elements in
Irish character. It brings into prominence the aristocracy of character
and intelligence which it is really the Irish nature to love, and its
economic basis is democratic. A large part of our failure to achieve
anything memorable in Ireland is due to the fact that, influenced by the
example of our great neighbors, we reversed the natural position of the
aristocratic and democratic elements in the national being. Instead of
being democratic in our economic life, with the aristocracy of character
and intelligence to lead us, we became meanly individualistic in our
economics and meanly democratic in leadership. That is, we allowed
individualism--the devilish doctrine of every man for himself--to be the
keynote of our economic life; where, above all things, the general good
and not the enrichment of the individual should be considered. For our
leaders we chose energetic, common-place types, and made them represent
us in the legislature; though it is in leadership above all that we
need, not the aristocracy of birth, but the aristocracy of character,
intellect, and will. We had not that aristocracy to lead us. We chose
instead persons whose ideas were in no respect nobler than the
average to be our guides, or rather to be guided by us. Yet when the
aristocratic character appeared, however imperfect, how it was adored!
Ireland gave to Parnell--an aristocratic character--the love which
springs from the deeps of its being, a love which it gave to none other
in our time.
With our great neighbors what are our national characteristics were
reversed. They are an individualistic race. This individualism has
expressed itself in history and society in a thousand ways. Being
individualistic in economics, they were naturally democratic in
politics. They have a genius for choosing forcible average men as
leaders. They mistrust genius in high places, Intensely individualistic
themselves, they feared the aristocratic character in politics. They
desired rather that general principles should be asserted to encircle
and keep safe their own national eccentricity. They have gradually
infected us with something of their ways, and as they were not truly our
ways we never made a success of them. It is best for us to fall back on
what is natural with us, what is innate in character, what was visible
among us in the earliest times, and what, I still believe, persists
among us--a respect for the aristocratic intellect, for freedom of
thought, ideals, poetry, and imagination, as the qualities to be looked
for in leaders, and a bias for democracy in our economic life. We were
more Irish truly in the heroic ages. We would not then have taken, as we
do today, the huckster or the publican and make them our representative
men, and allow them to corrupt the national soul. Did not the whole
vulgar mob of our politicians lately unite to declare to the world
that Irish nationality was impossible except it was floated on a sea of
liquor? The image of Kathleen ni Houlihan anciently was beauty in the
hearts of poets and dreamers. We often thought her unwise, but never did
we find her ignoble; never was she without a flame of idealism in her
eyes, until this ignoble crew declared alcohol to be the only possible
basis of Irish nationality.
In the remote past we find the national instincts of our people fully
manifested. We find in this early literature a love for the truth-teller
and for the hero. Indeed they did not choose as chieftains of their
clans men whom the bards could not sing. They reverenced wisdom, whether
in king, bard, or ollav, and at the same time there was a communal basis
for economic life. This heroic literature is, as our Standish O'Grady
declared, rather prophecy than history. It reveals what the highest
spirits deemed the highest, and what was said lay so close to the
heart of the race that it is still remembered and read. That literature
discloses the character of the national being, still to be manifested in
a civilization, and it must flame out before the tale which began among
the gods is closed. Whatever brings this communal character into our
social order, and at the same time desires the independent aristocratic
intellect, is in accord with the national tradition. The co-operative
movement is the modern expression of that mood. It is already making a
conquest of the Irish mind, and in its application to life predisposing
our people to respect for the man of special attainments, independent
character, and intellect. A social order which has made its economics
democratic in character needs such men above all things. It needs
aristocratic thinkers to save the social order from stagnation, the
disease which eats into all harmonious life. We shall succeed or fail in
Ireland as we succeed or fail to make democracy prevail in our
economic life, and aristocratic ideals to prevail in our political and
intellectual life.
In all things it is best for a people to obey the law of their own
being. The lion can never become the ox, and "one law for the lion and
the ox is oppression."
Now that the hammer of Thor is wrecking our civilizations, is destroying
the body of European nationalities, the spirit is freer to reshape the
world nearer to the heart's desire. Necessity will drive us along with
the rest to recast our social order and to fix our ideals. Necessity and
our own hearts should lead us to a brotherhood in industry. It should
be horrible to us the thought of the greedy profiteer, the pursuit of
wealth for oneself rather than the union of forces for the good of all
and the creation of a brotherly society. The efforts of individuals to
amass for themselves great personal wealth should be regarded as ignoble
by society, and as contrary to the national spirit, as it is indeed
contrary to all divine teaching. Our ideal should be economic harmony
and intellectual diversity. We should regard as alien to the national
spirit all who would make us think in flocks, and discipline us to an
unintellectual commonalty of belief. The life of the soul is a personal
adventure, a quest for the way and the truth and the life. It may be we
shall find the ancient ways to be the true ways, but if we are led to
the truth blindfolded and without personal effort, we are like those
whom the Scripture condemns for entering into Paradise, not by the
straight gate, but over the wall, like thieves and robbers. If we seek
it for ourselves and come to it, we shall be true initiates and masters
in the guild.
No people seem to have greater natural intelligence than the Irish. No
people have been so unfortunately cursed with organizations which led
them to abnegate personal thought, and Ireland is an intellectual
desert where people read nothing and think nothing; where not fifty in a
hundred thousand could discern the quality of thought in the Politics
of Aristotle or the Republic of Plato as being in any way deeper than
a leading article in one of their daily papers. And we, whose external
life is so mean, whose ignorance of literature is so great, are yet
flattered by the suggestion that we have treasures of spiritual and
intellectual life which should not be debased by external influences,
and so it comes about that good literature is a thing unpurchasable
except in some half-dozen of the larger towns. Any system which would
suppress the aristocratic, fearless, independent intellect should be
regarded as contrary to the Irish genius and inimical to the national
being.