e Middle Ages;
Beauvois: The Discovery of the New World by the Irish; Cantwell:
Pre-Columbian Discoveries of America; Daly: The Legend of St.
Brandan, Celtic Review, vol. I, A Sequel to the Voyage of St.
Brandan, Celtic Review, Jan. 13, 1909; Hardiman: The History of
Galway; Hull: Irish Episodes of Icelandic History; Joyce: The Voyage
of Maelduin; Nutt: The Voyage of Bran; Stokes: The Voyage of Maelduin
(_Revue Celtique_, vol. 9), Voyage of Snedgus (_Revue Celtique_, vol.
9), Voyage of the Hui Corra (_Revue Celtigue_, vol. 14); Moran:
Brendaniana.

IRISH LOVE OF LEARNING

By REV. P.S. DINNEEN, M.A., R.U.I.

"The distinguishing property of man," says Cicero, "is to search for
and follow after truth. Therefore, when disengaged from our necessary
cares and concerns, we desire to see, to hear, and to learn, and we
esteem knowledge of things obscure or wonderful as indispensable to
our happiness." (_De Officiis_ I., 4).

I claim for the Irish race that throughout their history they have
cut down their bodily necessities to the quick, in order to devote
time and energy to the pursuit of knowledge; that they have engaged
in intellectual pursuits, not infrequently of a high order, on a low
basis of material comfort; that they have persevered in the quest of
learning under unparalleled hardships and difficulties, even in the
dark night of "a nation's eclipse", when a school was an unlawful
assembly and school-teaching a crime. I claim, moreover, that, when
circumstances were favorable, no people have shown a more adventurous
spirit or a more chivalrous devotion in the advancement and spread of
learning.

Love of learning implies more than a natural aptitude for acquiring
information. It connotes a zest for knowledge that is recondite and
attainable only at the expense of ease, of leisure, of the comforts
and luxuries of life, and a zeal for the cultivation of the mental
faculties. It is of the soul and not of the body; it refines,
elevates, adorns. It is allied to sensibility, to keenness of vision,
to the close observation of mental phenomena. Its possessor becomes a
citizen of the known world. His mind broadens; he compares,
contrasts, conciliates; he brings together the new and the old, the
near and the distant, the permanent and the transitory, and weaves
from them all the web of systematized human thought.

I am not here concerned with the extent of Ireland's contribution to
the sum of human learning, nor wit