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