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