XV
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 anyone 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 anyone 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
