upon us by
beings greater than ourselves for an unknown purpose? Even when no facts
of experience were denied, might not what had seemed logical proof be but
a mechanism of change, an automatic impulse? Once in London, at a dinner
party, where all the guests were intimate friends, I had written upon a
piece of paper, "In five minutes York Powell will talk of a burning
house," thrust the paper under my neighbour's plate, and imagined my fire
symbol, and waited in silence. Powell shifted conversation from topic to
topic and within the five minutes was describing a fire he had seen as a
young man. When Locke's French translator Coste asked him how, if there
were no "innate ideas," he could explain the skill shown by a bird in
making its nest, Locke replied, "I did not write to explain the actions of
dumb creatures," and his translator thought the answer "very good, seeing
that he had named his book _A Philosophical Essay upon Human
Understanding_." Henry More, upon the other hand, considered that the
bird's instinct proved the existence of the Anima Mundi, with its ideas
and memories. Did modern enlightenment think with Coste that Locke had the
better logic, because it was not free to think otherwise?

V

I ceased to read modern books that were not books of belief older than any
European Church, and founded that interested me, I tried to trace it back
to its earliest use, believing that there must be a tradition of belief
older than any European Church, and founded upon the experience of the
world before the modern bias. It was this search for a tradition that
urged George Pollexfen and myself to study the visions and thoughts of the
country people, and some country conversation repeated by one or the other
often gave us a day's discussion. These visions, we soon discovered, were
very like those we called up by symbol. Mary Battle, looking out of the
window at Rosses Point, saw coming from Knocknarea, where Queen Maeve,
according to local folklore, is buried under a great heap of stones, "the
finest woman you ever saw travelling right across from the mountains and
straight to here."--I quote a record written at the time. "She looked very
strong, but not wicked" (that is to say, not cruel). "I have seen the
Irish Giant" (some big man shown at a fair). "And though he was a fine man
he was nothing to her, for he was round and could not have stepped out so
soldierly ... she had no stomach on her but was slight and broad in t