try; the English loved poetry
more, perhaps, than any other people before they came under the shadow
of the chimney-pot and the shadow of the chimney-pot hat. It is not
Ireland which is mad and mystic; it is Manchester which is mad and
mystic, which is incredible, which is a wild exception among human
things. Ireland has no need to play the silly game of the science of
races; Ireland has no need to pretend to be a tribe of visionaries
apart. In the matter of visions, Ireland is more than a nation, it is a
model nation.

XIV On Certain Modern Writers and the Institution of the Family

The family may fairly be considered, one would think, an ultimate human
institution. Every one would admit that it has been the main cell and
central unit of almost all societies hitherto, except, indeed, such
societies as that of Lacedaemon, which went in for "efficiency," and
has, therefore, perished, and left not a trace behind. Christianity,
even enormous as was its revolution, did not alter this ancient and
savage sanctity; it merely reversed it. It did not deny the trinity of
father, mother, and child. It merely read it backwards, making it run
child, mother, father. This it called, not the family, but the Holy
Family, for many things are made holy by being turned upside down. But
some sages of our own decadence have made a serious attack on the
family. They have impugned it, as I think wrongly; and its defenders
have defended it, and defended it wrongly. The common defence of the
family is that, amid the stress and fickleness of life, it is peaceful,
pleasant, and at one. But there is another defence of the family which
is possible, and to me evident; this defence is that the family is not
peaceful and not pleasant and not at one.

It is not fashionable to say much nowadays of the advantages of the
small community. We are told that we must go in for large empires and
large ideas. There is one advantage, however, in the small state, the
city, or the village, which only the wilfully blind can overlook. The
man who lives in a small community lives in a much larger world. He
knows much more of the fierce varieties and uncompromising divergences
of men. The reason is obvious. In a large community we can choose our
companions. In a small community our companions are chosen for us.
Thus in all extensive and highly civilized societies groups come into
existence founded upon what is called sympathy, and shut out the real
world