omics of the ancient clans have vanished almost out
of memory, but the mood in which they were established reappears in
those who would create a communal or co-operative life in the nation
into which those ancient clans long since have melted. The instinct in
the clans to waive aside the weak and to seek for an aristocratic and
powerful character in their leaders reappears in the rising generation,
who turn from the utterer of platitudes to men of real intellect and
strong will. The object of democratic organization is to bring out the
aristocratic character in leadership, the vivid original personalities
who act and think from their own will and their own centres, who bring
down fire from the heaven of their spirits and quicken and vivify the
mass, and make democracies also to be great and fearless and free. A
nation is dead where men acknowledge only conventions. We must find out
truth for ourselves, becoming first initiates and finally masters in the
guild of life. The intellect of Ireland is in chains where it ought to
be free, and we have individualism in our economics which ought to
be co-ordinated and sternly disciplined out of the iniquity of free
profiteering. To quicken the intellect and imagination of Ireland,
to co-ordinate our economic life for the general good, should be the
objects of national policy, and will subserve the evolutionary purpose.
The free imagination and the aspiring mind alone climb into the higher
spheres and deflect for us the ethereal currents. It is the multitude
of aristocratic thinkers who give glory to a people and make them of
service to other nations, and it is by the character of the social
order and the quality of brotherhood in it our civilization will endure.
Without love we are nothing.

XX.

I beseech audience from the churches for these thoughts on our Irish
polity, and would recall to them their early history, how when the
fiery spirit of their Lord first manifested on earth, life, near to It,
reflected It as in a glowing glass, and impulses of true living arose.
Material possessions were held in common. There was no fierce talk of
Thine and Mine. His ancient law counseled poverty to the spirit, lest
the gates of Paradise should grow narrow before it like the eye of a
needle. I believe the fading hold the heavens have over the world is due
to the neglect of the economic basis of spiritual life. What profound
spiritual life can there be when the social order al