nifesting in humanity I do not know, but they have been
hinted at in the Scriptures, the oracles of the Oversoul, which speak of
the whole creation laboring upwards and the entry of humanity into the
Divine Mind, and of the re-introcession of That Itself with all Its
myriad unity into Deity, so that God might be all in all. I believe
profoundly that men do not hold the ideas of liberty or solidarity,
which have moved them so powerfully, merely as phantasies which are
pleasant to the soul or make ease for the body; but because, whether
they struggle passionately for liberty or to achieve a solidarity, in
working for these two ideals, which seem in conflict, they are divinely
supported, in unison with the divine nature, and energies as real as
those the scientist studies--as electricity, as magnetism, heat or
light--do descend into the soul and reinforce it with elemental energy.
We are here for the purposes of soul, and there can be no purpose in
individualizing the soul if essential freedom is denied to it and there
is only a destiny. Wherever essential freedom, the right of the spirit
to choose its own heroes and its own ideals, is denied, nations rise
in rebellion. But the spirit in man is wrought in a likeness to Deity,
which is that harmony and unity of Being which upholds the universe;
and by the very nature of the spirit, while it asserts its freedom,
its impulses lead it to a harmony with all life, to a solidarity or
brotherhood with it.

All these ideals of freedom, of brotherhood, of power, of justice, of
beauty, which have been at one time or another the fundamental idea in
civilizations, are heaven-born, and descended from the divine world,
incarnating first in the highest minds in each race, perceived by them
and transmitted to their fellow-citizens; and it is the emergence or
manifestation of one or other of these ideals in a group which is the
beginning of a nation; and the more strongly the ideal is held the more
powerful becomes the national being, because the synchronous vibration
of many minds in harmony brings about almost unconsciously a psychic
unity, a coalescing of the subconscious being of many. It is that inner
unity which constitutes the national being.

The idea of the national being emerged at no recognizable point in
our history in Ireland. It is older than any name we know. It is not
earth-born, but the synthesis of many heroic and beautiful moments, and
these, it must be remembered, are d