unhappily kept apart. In dealing with this, as with
all large Irish problems, it had better be frankly recognised that there
are in the country two races, two creeds, and, what is too little
considered, two separate spheres of economic interest and pursuit.
Socially two separate classes have naturally, nay inevitably, arisen out
of these distinctions. One class has superior advantages in many ways of
great importance. The other class is far more numerous, produces far the
greater proportion of the nation's wealth, and is, therefore, from the
national point of view, of greater importance. But both are necessary.
Both must be adequately provided for in the supreme matter of higher
education. Above all, the two classes must be educated to regard
themselves as united by the bond of a common country--a sentiment which,
if genuine, would treat differences arising from whatever cause, not as
a difficulty in the way of national progress, but rather as affording a
variety of opportunities for national expansion.

I do not concern myself as to the exact form which the new institution
or institutions which are to give us the absolutely essential advantage
of higher education should take. If in view of the difference in the
requirements to which I have alluded, and the complicated pedagogic and
administrative considerations which have to be taken into account,
schemes of co-education of Protestants and Roman Catholics are difficult
of immediate accomplishment, let that ideal be postponed. The two creeds
can meet in the playground now: they can meet everywhere in after life.
Ireland will bring them together soon enough if Ireland is given a
chance, and when the time is ripe for their coming together in higher
education they will come together. If the time is not now ripe for this
ideal there is no justification for postponing educational reform until
the relations between the two creeds have been elevated to a plane
which, in my opinion, they will never reach except through the aid of
that culture which a widely diffused higher education alone can afford.

* * * * *

When I was beginning to write this chapter I chanced to pick up the
_Chesterfield Letters_. I opened the book at the two hundredth epistle,
and, curiously enough, almost the first sentence which caught my eye
ran: 'Education more than nature is the cause of that difference you see
in the character of men.' I felt myself at first in stron