that unity and identity are visible day by
day in buildings and manufactures, things which are handled and seen,
and in transactions which daily bring that unity to mind. The old
poetic ideal of a United Ireland was and could only be a geographical
expression, and not a human reality, so long as men were individualist
in economics and were competing and struggling with each other for
mastery.

By the co-operative commonwealth more is meant than a series of
organizations for economic purposes. We hope to create finally, by the
close texture of our organizations, that vivid sense of the identity of
interest of the people in this island which is the basis of citizenship,
and without which there can be no noble national life. Our great
nation-states have grown so large, so myriad are their populations, so
complicated are their interests, that most people in them really feel no
sense of brotherhood with each other. We have yet to create inside our
great nation-states social and economic organizations, which will
make this identity of interest real and evident, and not seem merely
a metaphor, as it does to most people today. The more the co-operative
movement does this for its members, the more points of contact they find
in it, the more will we tend to make out of it and its branches real
social organisms, which will become as closely knit psychically as
physically the cells in a human body are knit together. Our Irish
diversities of interest have made us world-famous; but such industrial
and agricultural organizations would swallow up these antagonisms, as
the serpents created by the black art of the Egyptian magicians were
swallowed up by the rod Aaron cast on the floor, and which was made
animate by the white magic of the Lord.

XIII.

It will appear to the idealist who has contemplated the heavens more
closely than the earth that the policy I advocate is one which only
tardily could be put into operation, and would be paltry and inadequate
as a basis for society. The idealist with the Golden Age already in his
heart believes he has only to erect the Golden Banner and display it for
multitudes to array themselves beneath its folds; therefore he advocates
not, as I do, a way to the life, but the life itself. I am sympathetic
with idealists in a hurry, but I do not think the world can be changed
suddenly by some heavenly alchemy, as St. Paul was smitten by a light
from the overworld. Such light from heaven i