tely after this righteousness all other kinds of help
would be at our service. So, too, I would brush aside the officious
interferer in co-operative affairs, who would offer on behalf of the
State to do for us what we should, and could, do far better ourselves.
We can build up a rural civilization in Ireland, shaping it to our
hearts' desires, warming it with life, but our rulers and officials
can never be warmer than a stepfather, and have no "large, divine, and
comfortable words" for us; they tinker at the body when it is the soul
which requires to be healed and made whole. The soul of Ireland has to
be kindled, and it can be kindled only by the thought of great deeds and
not by the hope of petty parsimonies or petty gains.

Now, great deeds are never done vicariously. They are done directly and
personally. No country has grown to greatness mainly by the acts of
some great ruler, but by the aggregate activities of all its people.
Therefore, every Irish community should make its own ideals and
should work for them. As great work can be done in a parish as in the
legislative assemblies with a nation at gaze. Do people say: "It is
easier to work well with a nation at gaze?" I answer that true greatness
becomes the North Pole of humanity, and when it appears all the needles
of Being point to it. You of the young generation, who have not yet lost
the generous ardour of youth, believe it is as possible to do great work
and make noble sacrifices, and to roll the acceptable smoke of offering
to Heaven by your work in an Irish parish, as in any city in the world.
Like the Greek architects--who saw in their dreams hills crowned with
white marble pillared palaces and images of beauty, until these rose up
in actuality--so should you, not forgetting national ideals, still most
of all set before yourselves the ideal of your own neighborhood. How can
you speak of working for all Ireland, which you have not seen, if you do
not labor and dream for the Ireland before your eyes, which you see as
you look out of your own door in the morning, and on which you walk up
and down through the day?

"What dream shall we dream or what labor shall we undertake?" you may
ask, and it is right that those who exhort should be asked in what
manner and how precisely they would have the listener act or think. I
answer: the first thing to do is to create and realize the feeling for
the community, and break up the evil and petty isolation of man from
man