{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_8104/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_8104","id":"gutenberg_8104","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/8104","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Politics","Cooperation","Ireland -- Economic conditions","Ireland -- Politics and government"],"text":"Produced by Jake Jaqua\n\n\n\n\n\nTHE NATIONAL BEING\n\nSome Thoughts on an Irish Polity\n\nBy \"A.E.\" [George William Russell]\n\n\n\nTo The Right Hon. Sir Horace Plunkett\n\nA good many years ago you grafted a slip of poetry on your economic\ntree. I do not know if you expected a hybrid. This essay may not be\neconomics in your sense of the word. It certainly is not poetry in my\nsense. The Marriage of Heaven and Earth was foretold by the ancient\nprophets. I have seen no signs of that union taking place, but I have\nbeen led to speculate how they might be brought within hailing distance\nof each other. In my philosophy of life, we are all responsible for\nthe results of our actions and their effects on others. This book is\na consequence of your grafting operation, and so I dedicate it to\nyou.--A.E.\n\n\n\n\n\nI.\n\n\n\nIn the year nineteen hundred and fourteen Anno Domini, amid a world\nconflict, the birth of the infant State of Ireland was announced. Almost\nunnoticed this birth, which in other times had been cried over the\nearth with rejoicings or anger. Mars, the red planet of war, was in the\nascendant when it was born. Like other births famous in history, the\nchild had to be hidden away for a time, and could not with pride be\nshown to the people as royal children were wont to be shown. Its enemies\nwere unforgiving, and its friends were distracted with mighty happenings\nin the world. Hardly did they know whether it would not be deformed if\nit survived: whether this was the Promised, or another child yet to\nbe conceived in the womb of the Mother of Parliaments. Battles were\nthreatened between two hosts, secular champions of two spiritual\ntraditions, to decide its fate. That such a conflict threatened showed\nindeed that there was something of iron fibre in the infant, without\nwhich in their make-up individuals or nations do nothing worthy of\nremembrance. Hercules wrestled with twin serpents in his cradle, and\nthere were twin serpents of sectarianism ready to strangle this infant\nState of ours if its guardians were not watchful, or if the infant was\nnot itself strong enough to destroy them.\n\nIt is about the State of Ireland, its character and future, I have here\nwritten some kind of imaginative meditation. The State is a physical\nbody prepared for the incarnation of the soul of a race. The body of the\nnational soul may be spiritual or secular, aristocratic or democratic,\ncivil or militarist predominantly. One or other will be most powerful,\nand the body of the race will by reflex action affect its soul, even\nas through heredity the inherited tendencies and passions of the flesh\naffect the indwelling spirit. Our brooding over the infant State must\nbe dual, concerned not only with the body but the soul. When we essay\nself-government in Ireland our first ideas will, in all probability, be\nborrowed from the Mother of Parliaments, just as children before they\ngrow to have a character of their own repeat the sentiments of their\nparents. After a time, if there is anything in the theory of Irish\nnationality, we will apply original principles as they are from time\nto time discovered to be fundamental in Irish character. A child in the\nsame way makes discoveries about itself. The mood evoked by picture or\npoem reveals a love of beauty; the harsh treatment of an animal provokes\nan outburst of pity; some curiosity of nature draws forth the spirit of\nscientific inquiry, and so, as the incidents of life reveal the innate\naffinities of a child to itself, do the adventures of a nation gradually\nreveal to it its own character and the will which is in it.\n\nFor all our passionate discussions over self-government we have\nhad little speculation over our own character or the nature of the\ncivilization we wished to create for ourselves. Nations rarely, if ever,\nstart with a complete ideal. Certainly we have no national ideals, no\nprinciples of progress peculiar to ourselves in Ireland, which are a\ncommon possession of our people. National ideals are the possession of a\nfew people only. Yet we must spread them in wide commonalty over Ireland\nif we are to create a civilization worthy of our hopes and our ages of\nstruggle and sacrifice to attain the power to build. We must spread them\nin wide commonalty because it is certain that democracy will prevail\nin Ireland. The aristocratic classes with traditions of government, the\nmanufacturing classes with economic experience, will alike be secondary\nin Ireland to the small farmers and the wage-earners in the towns. We\nmust rely on the ideas common among our people, and on their power\nto discern among their countrymen the aristocracy of character and\nintellect.\n\nCivilizations are externalizations of the soul and character of\nraces. They are majestic or mean according to the treasure of beauty,\nimagination, will, and thought laid up in the soul of the people. That\ngreat mid-European State, which while I write is at bay surrounded by\nenemies, did not arrive at that pitch of power which made it dominant in\nEurope simply by militarism. That military power depended on and was\nfed by a vigorous intellectual life, and the most generally diffused\neducation and science existing perhaps in the world. The national being\nhad been enriched by a long succession of mighty thinkers. A great\nsubjective life and centuries of dream preceded a great objective\nmanifestation of power and wealth. The stir in the German Empire which\nhas agitated Europe was, at its root, the necessity laid on a powerful\nsoul to surround itself with equal external circumstance. That necessity\nis laid on all nations, on all individuals, to make their external life\ncorrespond in some measure to their internal dream. A lover of beauty\nwill never contentedly live in a house where all things are devoid of\ntaste. An intellectual man will loathe a disordered society.\n\nWe may say with certainty that the external circumstances of people are\na measure of their inner life. Our mean and disordered little country\ntowns in Ireland, with their drink-shops, their disregard of cleanliness\nor beauty, accord with the character of the civilians who inhabit them.\nWhenever we develop an intellectual life these things will be altered,\nbut not in priority to the spiritual mood. House by house, village by\nvillage, the character of a civilization changes as the character of the\nindividuals change. When we begin to build up a lofty world within the\nnational soul, soon the country becomes beautiful and worthy of respect\nin its externals. That building up of the inner world we have neglected.\nOur excited political controversies, our playing at militarism, have\ntended to bring men's thoughts from central depths to surfaces. Life\nis drawn to its frontiers away from its spiritual base, and behind the\nsurfaces we have little to fall back on. Few of our notorieties could\nbe trusted to think out any economic or social problem thoroughly\nand efficiently. They have been engaged in passionate attempts at the\nreadjustment of the superficies of things. What we require more than\nmen of action at present are scholars, economists, scientists, thinkers,\neducationalists, and litterateurs, who will populate the desert depths\nof national consciousness with real thought and turn the void into a\nfullness. We have few reserves of intellectual life to draw upon when\nwe come to the mighty labor of nation-building. It will be indignantly\ndenied, but I think it is true to say that the vast majority of people\nin Ireland do not know the difference between good and bad thinking,\nbetween the essential depths and the shallows in humanity. How could\npeople, who never read anything but the newspapers, have any genuine\nknowledge of any subject on earth or much imagination of anything\nbeautiful in the heavens?\n\nWhat too many people in Ireland mistake for thoughts are feelings. It\nis enough to them to vent like or dislike, inherited prejudices or\npassions, and they think when they have expressed feeling they have\ngiven utterance to thought. The nature of our political controversies\nprovoked passion, and passion has become dominant in our politics.\nPassion truly is a power in humanity, but it should never enter into\nnational policy. It is a dangerous element in human life, though it is\nan essential part of our strangely compounded nature. But in national\nlife it is the most dangerous of all guides. There are springs of power\nin ourselves which in passion we draw on and are amazed at their depth\nand intensity, yet we do not make these the master light of our being,\nbut rather those divine laws which we have apprehended and brooded upon,\nand which shine with clear and steady light in our souls. As creatures\nrise in the scale of being the dominant factor in life changes. In\nvegetation it may be appetite; instinct in bird and beast for man a life\nat once passionate and intellectual; but the greater beings, the stars\nand planets, must wheel in the heavens under the guidance of inexorable\nand inflexible law. Now the State is higher in the scale of being\nthan the individual, and it should be dominated solely by moral and\nintellectual principles. These are not the outcome of passion or\nprejudice, but of arduous thought. National ideals must be built up\nwith the same conscious deliberation of purpose as the architect of the\nParthenon conceived its lofty harmony of shining marble lines, or as the\narchitect of Rheims Cathedral designed its intricate magnificence and\nmystery. Nations which form their ideals and marry them in the hurry of\npassion are likely to repent without leisure, and they will not be able\nto divorce those ideals without prolonged domestic squabbles and public\ncleansing of dirty linen. If we are to build a body for the soul\nof Ireland it ought not to be a matter of reckless estimates or\njerry-building. We have been told, during my lifetime at least, not\nto criticize leaders, to trust leaders, and so intellectual discussion\nceased and the high principles on which national action should be based\nbecame less and less understood, less and less common possessions. The\nnation was not conceived of as a democracy freely discussing its laws\nbut as a secret society with political chiefs meeting in the dark and\nissuing orders. No doubt our political chieftains loved their country,\nbut love has many degrees of expression from the basest to the highest.\nThe basest love will wreck everything, even the life of the beloved, to\ngratify ignoble desires. The highest love conspires with the imaginative\nreason to bring about every beautiful circumstance around the beloved\nwhich will permit of the highest development of its life. There is no\nreal love apart from this intellectual brooding. Men who love Ireland\nignobly brawl about her in their cups, quarrel about her with their\nneighbor, allow no freedom of thought of her or service of her other\nthan their own, take to the cudgel and the rifle, and join sectarian\norders or lodges to ensure that Ireland will be made in their own\nignoble image. Those who love Ireland nobly desire for her the highest\nof human destinies. They would ransack the ages and accumulate wisdom to\nmake Irish life seem as noble in men's eyes as any the world has known.\nThe better minds in every race, eliminating passion and prejudice, by\nthe exercise of the imaginative reason have revealed to their countrymen\nideals which they recognized were implicit in national character. It\nis such discoveries we have yet to make about ourselves to unite us to\nfulfill our destiny. We have to discover what is fundamental in Irish\ncharacter, the affections, leanings, tendencies towards one or more of\nthe eternal principles which have governed and inspired all great human\neffort, all great civilizations from the dawn of history. A nation is\nbut a host of men united by some God-begotten mood, some hope of liberty\nor dream of power or beauty or justice or brotherhood, and until that\nmaster idea is manifested to us there is no shining star to guide the\nship of our destinies.\n\nOur civilization must depend on the quality of thought engendered in\nthe national being. We have to do for Ireland--though we hope with\nless arrogance--what the long and illustrious line of German thinkers,\nscientists, poets, philosophers, and historians did for Germany, or what\nthe poets and artists of Greece did for the Athenians: and that is, to\ncreate national ideals, which will dominate the policy of statesmen,\nthe actions of citizens, the universities, the social organizations, the\nadministration of State departments, and unite in one spirit urban and\nrural life. Unless this is done Ireland will be like Portugal, or any\nof the corrupt little penny-dreadful nationalities which so continually\ndisturb the peace of the world with internal revolutions and external\nbrawlings, and we shall only have achieved the mechanism of nationality,\nbut the spirit will have eluded us.\n\nWhat I have written hereafter on the national being, my thoughts on an\nIrish polity, are not to be taken as an attempt to deal with more than\na few essentials. I offer it to my countrymen, to start thought\nand discussion upon the principles which should prevail in an Irish\ncivilization. If to readers in other countries the thought appears\nprimitive or elementary, I would like them to remember that we are at\nthe beginning of our activity as a nation, and we have yet to settle\nfundamentals. Races hoary with political wisdom may look with disdain on\nthe attempts at political thinking by a new self-governing nationality,\nor the theories of civilization discussed about the cradle of an infant\nState. To childhood may be forgiven the elemental character of its\nthought and its idealistic imaginations. They may not persist in\ndeveloped manhood; but if youth has never drawn heaven and earth\ntogether in its imaginations, manhood will ever be undistinguished. This\nbook only begins a meditation in which, I hope, nobler imaginations and\nfiner intellects than mine will join hereafter, and help to raise the\nsoul of Ireland nigher to the ideal and its body nigher to its soul.\n\n\n\n\n\nII.\n\n\n\nThe building up of a civilization is at once the noblest and the most\npractical of all enterprises, in which human faculties are exalted to\ntheir highest, and beauties and majesties are manifested in multitude as\nthey are never by solitary man or by disunited peoples. In the highest\ncivilizations the individual citizen is raised above himself and made\npart of a greater life, which we may call the National Being. He enters\ninto it, and it becomes in oversoul to him, and gives to all his works\na character and grandeur and a relation to the works of his\nfellow-citizens, so that all he does conspires with the labors of\nothers for unity and magnificence of effect. So ancient Egypt, with its\ntemples, sphinxes, pyramids, and symbolic decorations, seems to us as\nif it had been created by one grandiose imagination; for even the lesser\ncraftsmen, working on the mummy case for the tomb, had much of the\nmystery and solemnity in their work which is manifest in temple and\npyramid. So the city States in ancient Greece in their day were united\nby ideals to a harmony of art and architecture and literature. Among the\nAthenians at their highest the ideal of the State so wrought upon the\nindividual that its service became the overmastering passion of life,\nand in that great oration of Pericles, where he told how the Athenian\nideal inspired the citizens so that they gave their bodies for the\ncommonwealth, it seems to have been conceived of as a kind of oversoul,\na being made up of immortal deeds and heroic spirits, influencing the\nliving, a life within their life, molding their spirits to its likeness.\nIt appears almost as if in some of these ancient famous communities the\nnational ideal became a kind of tribal deity, that began first with\nsome great hero who died and was immortalized by the poets, and whose\ncharacter, continually glorified by them, grew at last so great in song\nthat he could not be regarded as less than a demi-god. We can see in\nancient Ireland that Cuchulain, the dark sad man of the earlier tales,\nwas rapidly becoming a divinity, a being who summed up in himself all\nthat the bards thought noblest in the spirit of their race; and\nif Ireland had a happier history no doubt one generation of bardic\nchroniclers after another would have molded that half-mythical figure\ninto the Irish ideal of all that was chivalrous, tender, heroic, and\nmagnanimous, and it would have been a star to youth, and the thought of\nit a staff to the very noblest. Even as Cuchulain alone at the ford held\nit against a host, so the ideal would have upheld the national soul in\nits darkest hours, and stood in many a lonely place in the heart. The\nnational soul in a theocratic State is a god; in an aristocratic age\nit assumes the character of a hero; and in a democracy it becomes a\nmultitudinous being, definite in character if the democracy is a real\nsocial organism. But where the democracy is only loosely held together\nby the social order, the national being is vague in character, is a mood\ntoo feeble to inspire large masses of men to high policies in times of\npeace, and in times of war it communicates frenzy, panic, and delirium.\n\nNone of our modern States create in us such an impression of being\nspiritually oversouled by an ideal as the great States of the ancient\nworld. The leaders of nations too have lost that divine air that many\nleaders of men wore in the past, and which made the populace rumor them\nas divine incarnations. It is difficult to know to what to attribute\nthis degeneration. Perhaps the artists who create ideals are to blame.\nIn ancient Ireland, in Greece, and in India, the poets wrote about great\nkings and heroes, enlarging on their fortitude of spirit, their chivalry\nand generosity, creating in the popular mind an ideal of what a great\nman was like; and men were influenced by the ideal created, and strove\nto win the praise of the bards and to be recrowned by them a second time\nin great poetry. So we had Cuchulain and Oscar in Ireland; Hector of\nTroy, Theseus in Greece; Yudisthira, Rama, and Arjuna in India, all\nbard-created heroes molding the minds of men to their image. It is the\ngreat defect of our modern literature that it creates few such types.\nHow hardly could one of our modern public men be made the hero of an\nepic. It would be difficult to find one who could be the subject of a\ngenuine lyric. Whitman, himself the most democratic poet of the modern\nworld, felt this deficiency in the literature of the later democracies,\nand lamented the absence of great heroic figures. The poets have dropped\nout of the divine procession, and sing a solitary song. They inspire\nnobody to be great, and failing any finger-post in literature pointing\nto true greatness our democracies too often take the huckster from his\nstall, the drunkard from his pot, the lawyer from his court, and\nthe company promoter from the director's chair, and elect them as\nrepresentative men. We certainly do this in Ireland. It is--how many\nhundred years since greatness guided us? In Ireland our history begins\nwith the most ancient of any in a mythical era when earth mingled with\nheaven. The gods departed, the half-gods also, hero and saint after\nthat, and we have dwindled down to a petty peasant nationality, rural\nand urban life alike mean in their externals. Yet the cavalcade, for all\nits tattered habiliments, has not lost spiritual dignity. There is still\nsome incorruptible spiritual atom in our people. We are still in some\nrelation to the divine order; and while that uncorrupted spiritual atom\nstill remains all things are possible if by some inspiration there could\nbe revealed to us a way back or forward to greatness, an Irish polity in\naccord with national character.\n\n\n\n\n\nIII.\n\n\n\nIn formulating an Irish polity we have to take into account the change\nin world conditions. A theocratic State we shall have no more. Every\nnation, and our own along with them, is now made up of varied sects,\nand the practical dominance of one religious idea would let loose\nillimitable passions, the most intense the human spirit can feel. The\nway out of the theocratic State was by the drawn sword and was lit by\nthe martyr's fires. The way back is unthinkable for all Protestant\nfears or Catholic aspirations. Aristocracies, too, become impossible\nas rulers. The aristocracy of character and intellect we may hope shall\nfinally lead us, but no aristocracy so by birth will renew its authority\nover us. The character of great historic personages is gradually\nreflected in the mass. The divine right of kings is followed by the\nidea of the divine right of the people, and democracies finally become\nungovernable save by themselves. They have seen and heard too much\nof pride and greatness not to have become, in some measure, proud and\ndefiant of all authority except their own. It may be said the history of\ndemocracies is not one to fill us with confidence, but the truth is the\nworld has yet to see the democratic State, and of the yet untried we\nmay think with hope. Beneath the Athenian and other ancient democratic\nStates lay a substratum of humanity in slavery, and the culture, beauty,\nand bravery of these extraordinary peoples were made possible by the\nworkers in an underworld who had no part in the bright civic life.\n\nWe have no more a real democracy in the world today. Democracy in\npolitics has in no country led to democracy in its economic life. We\nstill have autocracy in industry as firmly seated on its throne as\ntheocratic king ruling in the name of a god, or aristocracy ruling by\nmilitary power; and the forces represented by these twain, superseded\nby the autocrats of industry, have become the allies of the power which\ntook their place of pride. Religion and rank, whether content or not\nwith the subsidiary place they now occupy, are most often courtiers of\nMammon and support him on his throne. For all the talk about democracy\nour social order is truly little more democratic than Rome was under the\nCaesars, and our new rulers have not, with all their wealth, created\na beauty which we could imagine after-generations brooding over with\nuplifted heart.\n\nThe people in theocratic States like Egypt or Chaldea, ruled in the\nname of gods, saw rising out of the plains in which they lived an\narchitecture so mysterious and awe-inspiring that they might well\nbelieve the master-minds who designed the temples were inspired from the\nOversoul. The aristocratic States reflected the love of beauty which is\nassociated with aristocracies. The oligarchies of wealth in our time,\nwho have no divine sanction to give dignity to their rule nor traditions\nof lordly life like the aristocracies, have not in our day created\nbeauty in the world. But whatever of worth the ancient systems produced\nwas not good enough to make permanent their social order. Their\ncivilizations, like ours, were built on the unstable basis of a vast\nworking-class with no real share in the wealth and grandeur it helped\nto create. The character of his kingdom was revealed in dream to\nNebuchadnezzar by an image with a golden head and feet of clay, and that\nimage might stand as symbol of the empires the world has known. There is\nin all a vast population living in an underworld of labor whose freedom\nto vote confers on them no real power, and who are most often scorned\nand neglected by those who profit by their labors. Indifference turns\nto fear and hatred if labor organizes and gathers power, or makes one\nmotion of its myriad hands towards the sceptre held by the autocrats of\nindustry. When this class is maddened and revolts, civilization\nshakes and totters like cities when the earthquake stirs beneath their\nfoundations. Can we master these arcane human forces? Can we, by any\ndevice, draw this submerged humanity into the light and make them real\npartners in the social order, not partners merely in the political life\nof the nation, but, what is of more importance, in its economic life?\nIf we build our civilization without integrating labor into its economic\nstructure, it will wreck that civilization, and it will do that more\nswiftly today than two thousand years ago, because there is no longer\nthe disparity of culture between high and low which existed in past\ncenturies. The son of the artisan, if he cares to read, may become\nalmost as fully master of the wisdom of Plato or Aristotle as if he\nhad been at a university. Emerson will speak to him of his divinity;\nWhitman, drunken with the sun, will chant to him of his inheritance of\nthe earth. He is elevated by the poets and instructed by the economists.\nBut there are not thrones enough for all who are made wise in our social\norder, and failing even to serve in the social heaven these men will\nspread revolt and reign in the social hell. They are becoming too many\nfor higher places to be found for them in the national economy. They are\nincreasing to a multitude which must be considered, and the framers of\na national polity must devise a life for them where their new-found\ndignity of spirit will not be abased. Men no more will be content under\nrulers of industry they do not elect themselves than they were under\npolitical rulers claiming their obedience in the name of God. They will\nnot for long labor in industries where they have no power to fix\nthe conditions of their employment, as they were not content with a\npolitical system which allowed them no power to control legislation.\nIreland must begin its imaginative reconstruction of a civilization by\nfirst considering that type which, in the earlier civilizations of the\nworld, has been slave, serf, or servile, working either on land or at\nindustry, and must construct with reference to it. These workers must be\nthe central figures, and how their material, intellectual, and spiritual\nneeds are met must be the test of value of the social order we evolve.\n\n\n\n\n\nIV.\n\n\n\nIn Ireland we begin naturally our consideration of this problem with the\nfolk of the country, pondering all the time upon our ideal--the linking\nup of individuals with each other and with the nation. Since the\ndestruction of the ancient clans in Ireland almost every economic factor\nin rural life has tended to separate the farmers from each other and\nfrom the nation, and to bring about an isolation of action; and that was\nso until the movement for the organization of agriculture was initiated\nby Sir Horace Plunkett and his colleagues in that patriotic association,\nthe Irish Agricultural Organization Society. Though its actual\nachievement is great; though it may be said to be the pivot round which\nIreland has begun to swing back to its traditional and natural communism\nin work, we still have over the larger part of Ireland conditions\nprevailing which tend to isolate the individual from the community.\n\nWhen we examine rural Ireland, outside this new movement, we find\neverywhere isolated and individualistic agricultural production, served\nwith regard to purchase and sale by private traders and dealers, who are\nindependent of economic control from the consumers or producers, or the\nState. The tendency in the modern world to conduct industry in the grand\nmanner is not observable here. The first thing which strikes one who\ntravels through rural Ireland is the immense number of little shops.\nThey are scattered along the highways and at the crossroads; and where\nthere are a few families together in what is called a village,\nthe number of little shops crowded round these consumers is almost\nincredible. What are all these little shops doing? They are supplying\nthe farmers with domestic requirements: with tea, sugar, flour, oil,\nimplements, vessels, clothing, and generally with drink. Every one of\nthem almost is a little universal provider. Every one of them has its\nown business organization, its relations with wholesale houses in the\ngreater towns. All of them procure separately from others their bags\nof flour, their barrels of porter, their stocks of tea, sugar, raisins,\npots, pans, nails, twine, fertilizers, and what not, and all these\nthings come to them paying high rates to the carriers for little loads.\nThe trader's cart meets them at the station, and at great expense the\nnecessaries of life are brought together. In the world-wide amalgamation\nof shoe-makers into boot factories, and smithies into ironworks,\nwhich is going on in Europe and America, these little shops have been\noverlooked. Nobody has tried to amalgamate them, or to economize human\neffort or cheapen the distribution of the necessaries of life. This work\nof distribution is carried on by all kinds of little traders competing\nwith each other, pulling the devil by the tail; doing the work\neconomically, so far as they themselves are concerned, because they\nmust, but doing it expensively for the district because they cannot\nhelp it. They do not serve Ireland well. The genius of amalgamation and\norganization cannot afford to pass by these shops, which spring up\nin haphazard fashion, not because the country needs them, but because\nfarmers or traders have children to be provided for. To the ignorant\nthis is the easiest form of trade, and so many are started in life in\none of these little shops after an apprenticeship in another like it.\nThese numerous competitors of each other do not keep down prices. They\nincrease them rather by the unavoidable multiplication of expenses;\nand many of them, taking advantage of the countryman's irregularity of\nincome and his need for credit, allow credit to a point where the small\nfarmer becomes a tied customer, who cannot pay all he owes, and who\ntherefore dares not deal elsewhere. These agencies for distribution do\nnot by their nature enlarge the farmer's economic knowledge. His vision\nbeyond them to their sources of supply is blocked, and in this respect\nhe is debarred from any unity with national producers other than his own\nclass.\n\nLet us now for a little consider the small farmer around whom have\ngathered these multitudinous little agencies of distribution. What kind\nof a being is he? We must deal with averages, and the small farmer\nis the typical Irish countryman. The average area of an Irish farm is\ntwenty-five acres or thereabouts. There are hundreds of thousands who\nhave more or less. But we can imagine to ourselves an Irish farmer with\ntwenty-five acres to till, lord of a herd of four or five cows, a drift\nof sheep, a litter of pigs, perhaps a mare and foal: call him Patrick\nMaloney and accept him as symbol of his class. We will view him outside\nthe operation of the new co-operative policy, trying to obey the command\nto be fruitful and replenish the earth. He is fruitful enough. There is\nno race suicide in Ireland. His agriculture is largely traditional. It\nvaried little in the nineteenth century from the eighteenth, and the\nbeginnings of the twentieth century show little change in spite of\na huge department of agriculture. His butter, his eggs, his cattle,\nhorses, pigs, and sheep are sold to local dealers. He rarely knows where\nhis produce goes to--whether it is devoured in the next county or is\nsent across the Channel. It might be pitched into the void for all he\nknows about its destiny. He might be described almost as the primitive\neconomic cave-man, the darkness of his cave unillumined by any ray of\ngeneral principles. As he is obstructed by the traders in a general\nvision of production other than his own, so he is obstructed by these\ndealers in a general vision of the final markets for his produce. His\nreading is limited to the local papers, and these, following the example\nof the modern press, carefully eliminate serious thought as likely to\ndeprive them of readers. But Patrick, for all his economic backwardness,\nhas a soul. The culture of the Gaelic poets and story-tellers, while\nnot often actually remembered, still lingers like a fragrance about his\nmind. He lives and moves and has his being in the loveliest nature, the\nskies over him ever cloudy like an opal; and the mountains flow\nacross his horizon in wave on wave of amethyst and pearl. He has the\nunconscious depth of character of all who live and labor much in the\nopen air, in constant fellowship with the great companions--with the\nearth and the sky and the fire in the sky. We ponder over Patrick, his\nrace and his country, brooding whether there is the seed of a Pericles\nin Patrick's loins. Could we carve an Attica out of Ireland?\n\nBefore Patrick can become the father of a Pericles, before Ireland can\nbecome an Attica, Patrick must be led out of his economic cave: his low\ncunning in barter must be expanded into a knowledge of economic law--his\nfanatical concentration on his family--begotten by the isolation and\nindividualism of his life--be sublimed into national affections; his\nunconscious depths be sounded, his feeling for beauty be awakened by\ncontact with some of the great literature of the world. His mind is\nvirgin soil, and we may hope that, like all virgin soil, it will\nbe immensely fruitful when it is cultivated. How does the policy of\nco-working make Patrick pass away from his old self? We can imagine him\nas a member of a committee getting hints of a strange doctrine called\nscience from his creamery manager. He hears about bacteria, and these\ndark invisibles replace, as the cause of bad butter-making, the wicked\nfairies of his childhood. Watching this manager of his society he learns\na new respect for the man of special or expert knowledge. Discussing the\nbusiness of his association with other members he becomes something of a\npractical economist. He knows now where his produce goes. He learns that\nhe has to compete with Americans, Europeans, and Colonials--indeed\nwith the farmers of the world, hitherto concealed from his view by a\nmountainous mass of middle-men. He begins to be interested in these\ncountries and reads about them. He becomes a citizen of the world.\nHis horizon is no longer bounded by the wave of blue hills beyond his\nvillage. The roar of the planet begins to sound in his ears. What\nis more important is that he is becoming a better citizen of his\nown country. He meets on his committee his religious and political\nopponents, not now discussing differences out identities of interest. He\nalso meets the delegates from other societies in district conferences\nor general congresses, and those who meet thus find their interests are\ncommon, and a new friendliness springs up between North and South,\nand local co-operation leads on to national co-operation. The best\nintellects, the best business men in the societies, meet in the big\ncentres as directors of federations and wholesales, and they get an\nall-Ireland view of their industry. They see the parish from the point\nof view of the nation, and this vision does not desert them when they go\nback to the parish. They realize that their interests are bound up with\nnational interests, and they discuss legislation and administration with\npractical knowledge. Eyes getting keener every year, minds getting more\ninstructed, begin to concentrate on Irish public men. Presently Patrick\nwill begin to seek for men of special knowledge and administrative\nability to manage Irish affairs. Ireland has hitherto been to Patrick\na legend, a being mentioned in romantic poetry, a little dark Rose, a\nmystic maiden, a vague but very simple creature of tears and aspirations\nand revolts. He now knows what a multitudinous being a nation is, and in\ncontact with its complexities Patrick's politics take on a new gravity,\nthoughtfulness, and intellectual character.\n\nUnder the influence of these associations and the ideas pervading them\nour typical Irish farmer gets drawn out of his agricultural sleep of\nthe ages, developing rapidly as mummy-wheat brought out of the tomb and\nexposed to the eternal forces which stimulate and bring to life. I have\ntaken an individual as a type, and described the original circumstance\nand illustrated the playing of the new forces on his mind. It is the\nonly way we can create a social order which will fit our character as\nthe glove fits the hand. Reasoning solely from abstract principles about\njustice, democracy, the rights of man and the like, often leads us into\nfutilities, if not into dangerous political experiments. We have to see\nour typical citizen in clear light, realize his deficiencies, ignorance,\nand incapacity, and his possibilities of development, before we can\nwisely enlarge his boundaries. The centre of the citizen is the home.\nHis circumference ought to be the nation. The vast majority of Irish\ncitizens rarely depart from their centre, or establish those vital\nrelations with their circumference which alone entitle them to the\nprivileges of citizenship, and enable them to act with political wisdom.\nAn emotional relationship is not enough. Our poets sang of a united\nIreland, but the unity they sang of was only a metaphor. It mainly meant\nseparation from another country. In that imaginary unity men were really\nseparate from each other. Individualism, fanatically centering itself on\nits family and family interests, interfered on public boards to do jobs\nin the interests of its kith and kin. The co-operative movement connects\nwith living links the home, the centre of Patrick's being, to the\nnation, the circumference of his being. It connects him with the\nnation through membership of a national movement, not for the political\npurposes which call on him for a vote once every few years, but\nfor economic purposes which affect him in the course of his daily\noccupations. This organization of the most numerous section of the Irish\ndemocracy into co-operative associations, as it develops and embraces\nthe majority, will tend to make the nation one and indivisible and\nconscious of its unity. The individual, however meagre his natural\nendowment of altruism, will be led to think of his community as himself;\nbecause his income, his social pleasures even, depend on the success\nof the local and national organizations with which he is connected. The\nsmall farmers of former times pursued a petty business of barter and\nhaggle, fighting for their own hand against half the world about them.\nThe farmers of the new generation will grow up in a social order,\nwhere all the transactions which narrowed their fathers' hearts will be\ncommunal and national enterprises. How much that will mean in a change\nof national character we can hardly realize, we who were born in an\nIreland where petty individualism was rampant, and where every child had\nit borne in upon him that it had to fight its own corner in the world,\nwhere the whole atmosphere about it tended to the hardening of the\npersonality.\n\nWe may hope and believe that this transformation of the social\norder will make men truly citizens thinking in terms of the nation,\nidentifying national with personal interests. For those who believe\nthere is a divine seed in humanity, this atmosphere, if any, they may\nhope will promote the swift blossoming of the divine seed which in the\npast, in favorable airs, has made beauty or grandeur or spirituality\nthe characteristics of ancient civilizations in Greece, in Egypt, and in\nIndia. No one can work for his race without the hope that the highest,\nor more than the highest, humanity has reached will be within reach of\nhis race also. We are all laying foundations in dark places, putting the\nrough-hewn stones together in our civilizations, hoping for the lofty\nedifice which will arise later and make all the work glorious. And in\nIreland, for all its melancholy history, we may, knowing that we are\nhuman, dream that there is the seed of a Pericles in Patrick's loins,\nand that we might carve an Attica out of Ireland.\n\n\n\n\n\nV.\n\n\n\nIn Ireland we must of necessity give special thought to the needs of the\ncountryman, because our main industry is agriculture. We have few big\ncities. Our great cities are almost all outside our own borders. They\nare across the Atlantic. The surplus population of the countryside\ndo not go to our own towns but emigrate. The exodus does not enrich\nLimerick or Galway, but New York. The absorption of life in great\ncities is really the danger which most threatens the modern State with a\ndecadence of its humanity. In the United States, even in Canada, hardly\nhas the pioneer made a home in the wilderness when his sons and his\ndaughters are allured by the distant gleam of cities beyond the plains.\nIn England the countryside has almost ceased to be the mother of men--at\nleast a fruitful mother. We are face to face in Ireland with this\nproblem, with no crowded and towering cities to disguise the emptiness\nof the fields. It is not a problem which lends itself to legislative\nsolution. Whether there be fair rents or no rents at all, the child\nof the peasant, yearning for a fuller life, goes where life is at\nits fullest. We all desire life, and that we might have it more\nabundantly,--the peasant as much as the mystic thirsting for infinite\nbeing,--and in rural Ireland the needs of life have been neglected.\n\nThe chief problem of Ireland--the problem which every nation in greater\nor lesser measure will have to solve--is how to enable the country-man,\nwithout journeying, to satisfy to the full his economic, social,\nintellectual, and spiritual needs. We have made some tentative efforts.\nThe long war over the land, which resulted in the transference of the\nland from landlord to cultivator, has advanced us part of the way,\nbut the Land Acts offered no complete solution. We were assured by hot\nenthusiasts of the magic of proprietorship, but Ireland has not tilled\na single acre more since the Land Acts were passed. Our rural exodus\ncontinued without any Moses to lead us to Jerusalems of our own. At\nevery station boys and girls bade farewell to their friends; and hardly\nhad the train steamed out when the natural exultation of adventure made\nthe faces of the emigrants glow because the world lay before them, and\nhuman appetites the country could not satisfy were to be appeased at the\nend of the journey.\n\nHow can we make the countryside in Ireland a place which nobody would\nwillingly emigrate from? When we begin to discuss this problem we soon\nmake the discovery that neither in the new world nor the old has there\nbeen much first-class thinking on the life of the countryman. This will\nbe apparent if we compare the quality of thought which has been devoted\nto the problems of the city State, or the constitution of widespread\ndominions, from the days of Solon and Aristotle down to the time of\nAlexander Hamilton, and compare it with the quality of thought which has\nbeen brought to bear on the problems of the rural community.\n\nOn the labors of the countryman depend the whole strength and health,\nnay, the very existence of society, yet, in almost every country,\npolitics, economics, and social reform are urban products, and the\ncountryman gets only the crumbs which fall from the political table.\nIt seems to be so in Canada and the States even, countries which we in\nEurope for long regarded as mainly agricultural. It seems only yesterday\nto the imagination that they were colonized, and yet we find the\nMinister of Agriculture in Canada announcing a decline in the rural\npopulation in Eastern Canada. As children sprung from the loins of\ndiseased parents manifest at an early age the same defects in their\nconstitution, so Canada and the States, though in their national\nchildhood, seem already threatened by the same disease from which\nclassic Italy perished, and whose ravages today make Great Britain seem\nto the acute diagnoser of political health to be like a fruit--ruddy\nwithout, but eaten away within and rotten at the core. One expects\ndisease in old age, but not in youth. We expect young countries to sow\ntheir wild oats, to have a few revolutions before they settle down\nto national housekeeping; but we are not moved by these troubles--the\nresult of excessive energy--as we are by symptoms of premature decay. No\nnation can be regarded as unhealthy when a virile peasantry, contented\nwith rural employments, however discontented with other things, exists\non its soil. The disease which has attacked our great populations here\nand in America is a discontent with rural life. Nothing which has been\ndone hitherto seems able to promote content. It is true, indeed, that\nscience has gone out into the fields, but the labors of the chemist,\nthe bacteriologist, and the mechanical engineer are not enough to\nensure health. What is required is the art of the political thinker, the\nimagination which creates a social order and adjusts it to human needs.\nThe physician who understands the general laws of human health is of\nmore importance to us here than the specialist. The genius of rural life\nhas not yet appeared. We have no fundamental philosophy concerning it,\nbut we have treasures of political wisdom dealing with humanity as a\nsocial organism in the city States or as great nationalities. It might\nbe worth while inquiring to what extent the wisdom of a Solon, an\nAristotle, a Rousseau, or an Alexander Hamilton might be applied to the\nproblem of the rural community. After all, men are not so completely\nchanged in character by their rural environment that their social needs\ndo not, to a large extent, coincide with the needs of the townsman. They\ncannot be considered as creatures of a different species. Yet statesmen\nwho have devoted so much thought to the constitution of empires and the\norganization of great cities, who have studied their psychology, have\nalmost always treated the rural problem purely as an economic problem,\nas if agriculture was a business only and not a life.\n\nOur great nations and widespread empires arose in a haphazard fashion\nout of city States and scattered tribal communities. The fusion of these\ninto larger entities, which could act jointly for offence or defense,\nso much occupied the thoughts of their rulers that everything else was\nsubordinated to it. As a result, the details of our modern civilizations\nare all wrong. There is an intensive life at a few great political or\nindustrial centres, and wide areas where there is stagnation and decay.\nStagnation is most obvious in rural districts. It is so general that it\nhas been often assumed that there was something inherent in rural life\nwhich made the countryman slow in mind as his own cattle. But this is\nnot so, as I think can be shown. There is no reason why as intense,\nintellectual, and progressive a life should not be possible in the\ncountry as in the towns. The real reason for the stagnation is that the\ncountry population is not organized. We often hear the expression, \"the\nrural community,\" but where do we find rural communities? There are\nrural populations, but that is altogether a different thing. The word\n\"community\" implies an association of people having common interests and\ncommon possessions, bound together by laws and regulations which express\nthese common interests and ideals, and define the relation of the\nindividual to the community. Our rural populations are no more closely\nconnected, for the most part, than the shifting sands on the seashore.\nTheir life is almost entirely individualistic. There are personal\nfriendships, of course, but few economic or social partnerships.\nEverybody pursues his own occupation without regard to the occupation of\nhis neighbors. If a man emigrates it does not affect the occupation of\nthose who farm the land all about him. They go on ploughing and digging,\nbuying and selling, just as before. They suffer no perceptible economic\nloss by the departure of half-a-dozen men from the district. A true\ncommunity would, of course, be affected by the loss of its members. A\nco-operative society, if it loses a dozen members, the milk of their\ncows, their orders for fertilizers, seeds, and feeding-stuffs, receives\nserious injury to its prosperity. There is a minimum of trade below\nwhich its business cannot fall without bringing about a complete\nstoppage of its work and an inability to pay its employees. That is the\ndifference between a community and an unorganized population. In the\nfirst the interests of the community make a conscious and direct appeal\nto the individual, and the community, in its turn, rapidly develops an\ninterest in the welfare of the member. In the second, the interest of\nthe individual in the community is only sentimental, and as there is no\norganization the community lets its units slip away or disappear without\ncomment or action. We had true rural communities in ancient Ireland,\nthough the organization was rather military than economic. But the\nmembers of a clan had common interests. They owned the land in common.\nIt was a common interest to preserve it intact. It was to their interest\nto have a numerous membership of the clan, because it made it less\nliable to attack. Men were drawn by the social order out of merely\npersonal interests into a larger life. In their organizations they were\nunconsciously groping, as all human organizations are, towards the final\nsolidarity of humanity--the federation of the world.\n\nWell, these old rural communities disappeared. The greater organizations\nof nation or empire regarded the smaller communities jealously in the\npast, and broke them up and gathered all the strings of power into\ncapital cities. The result was a growth of the State, with a local decay\nof civic, patriotic, or public feeling, ending in bureaucracies and\nState departments, where paid officials, devoid of intimacy with local\nneeds, replaced the services naturally and voluntarily rendered in an\nearlier period. The rural population, no longer existing as a rural\ncommunity, sank into stagnation. There was no longer a common interest,\na social order turning their minds to larger than individual ends. Where\nfeudalism was preserved, the feudal chief, if the feeling of noblesse\noblige was strong, might act as a centre of progress, but where this was\nlacking social decay set in. The difficulty of moving the countryman,\nwhich has become traditional, is not due to the fact that he lives in\nthe country, but to the fact that he lives in an unorganized society.\nIf in a city people want an art gallery or public baths or recreation\ngrounds, there is a machinery which can be set in motion; there are\ncorporations and urban councils which can be approached. If public\nopinion is evident--and it is easy to organize public opinion in a\ntown--the city representatives will consider the scheme, and if they\napprove and it is within their power as a council, they are able to levy\nrates to finance the art gallery, recreation grounds, public gardens,\nor whatever else. Now let us go to a country district where there is no\norganization. It may be obvious to one or two people that the place is\nperishing and the intelligence of its humanity is decaying, lacking some\ncentre of life. They want a village hall, but how is it to be obtained?\nThey begin talking about it to this person or that. They ask these\npeople to talk to their friends, and the ripples go out weakening and\nwidening for months, perhaps for years. I know of districts where this\nhas happened. There are hundreds of parishes in Ireland where one or\ntwo men want co-operative societies or village halls or rural libraries.\nThey discuss the matter with their neighbors, but find a complete\nignorance on the subject, and consequent lethargy. There is no social\norganism with a central life to stir. Before enthusiasm can be kindled\nthere must be some knowledge. The countryman reads little, and it is a\nlong and tedious business before enough people are excited to bring them\nto the point of appealing to some expert to come in and advise.\n\nMore changes often take place within a dozen years after a co-operative\nsociety is first started than have taken place for a century previous. I\nam familiar with a district--in the northwest of Ireland. It was a most\nwretchedly poor district. The farmers were at the mercy of the gombeen\ntraders and the agricultural middlemen. Then a dozen years ago a\nco-operative society was formed. I am sure that the oldest inhabitant\nwould agree with me that more changes for the better for farmers have\ntaken place since the co-operative society was started than he could\nremember in all his previous life. The reign of the gombeen man is over.\nThe farmers control their own buying and selling. Their organization\nmarkets for them the eggs and poultry. It procures seeds, fertilizers,\nand domestic requirements. It turns the members' pigs into bacon. They\nhave a village hall and a woman's organization. They sell the products\nof the women's industry. They have a co-operative band, social\ngatherings, and concerts. They have spread out into half-a-dozen\nparishes, going southward and westward with their propaganda, and\nin half-a-dozen years, in all that district, previously without\norganization, there will be well-organized farmers' guilds,\nconcentrating in themselves the trade of their district, having\nmeeting-places where the opinion of the members can be taken, having a\nmachinery, committees, and executive officers to carry out whatever may\nbe decided on: and having funds, or profits, the joint property of the\ncommunity, which can be drawn upon to finance their undertakings. It\nought to be evident what a tremendous advantage it is to farmers in\na district to have such organizations, what a lever they can pull\nand control. I have tried to indicate the difference between a rural\npopulation and a rural community, between a people loosely knit together\nby the vague ties of a common latitude and longitude, and people who\nare closely knit together in an association and who form a true social\norganism, a true rural community, where the general will can find\nexpression and society is malleable to the general will. I assert\nthat there never can be any progress in rural districts or any real\nprosperity without such farmers' organizations or guilds. Wherever rural\nprosperity is reported of any country inquire into it, and it will be\nfound that it depends on rural organization. Wherever there is rural\ndecay, if it is inquired into, it will be found that there was a rural\npopulation but no rural community, no organization, no guild to promote\ncommon interests and unite the countrymen in defense of them.\n\n\n\n\n\nVI.\n\n\n\nIt is the business of the rural reformer to create the rural community.\nIt is the antecedent to the creation of a rural civilization. We have to\norganize the community so that it can act as one body. It is not enough\nto organize farmers in a district for one purpose only--in a credit\nsociety, a dairy society, a fruit society, a bacon factory, or in a\nco-operative store. All these may be and must be beginnings; but if they\ndo not develop and absorb all rural business into their organization\nthey will have little effect on character. No true social organism will\nhave been created. If people unite as consumers to buy together they\nonly come into contact on this one point; there is no general identity\nof interest. If co-operative societies are specialized for this purpose\nor that--as in Great Britain or on the Continent--to a large extent the\nlimitation of objects prevents a true social organism from being formed.\nThe latter has a tremendous effect on human character. The specialized\nsociety only develops economic efficiency. The evolution of humanity\nbeyond its present level depends absolutely on its power to unite and\ncreate true social organisms. Life in its higher forms is only possible\nbecause of the union of myriads of tiny lives to form a larger being,\nwhich manifests will, intelligence, affection, and the spiritual powers.\nThe life of the amoeba or any other unicellular organism is low compared\nwith the life in more complex organisms, like the ant or bee. Man is\nthe most highly developed living organism on the globe; yet his body\nis built up of innumerable cells, each of which might be described as\na tiny life in itself. But they are built up in man into such a close\nassociation that what affects one part of the body affects all. The pain\nwhich the whole being feels if a part is wounded, if one cell in the\nhuman body is hurt, should prove that to the least intelligent. The\nnervous system binds all the tiny cells together, and they form in this\ntotality a being infinitely higher, more powerful, than the cells which\ncompose it. They are able to act together and achieve things impossible\nto the separated cells. Now humanity today is, to some extent, like\nthe individual cells. It is trying to unite together to form a real\norganism, which will manifest higher qualities of life than the\nindividual can manifest. But very few of the organisms created by\nsociety enable the individual to do this. The joint-stock companies or\ncapitalist concerns which bring men together at this work or that do\nnot yet make them feel their unity. Existence under a common government\neffects this still less. Our modern states have not yet succeeded in\nbuilding up that true national life where all feel the identity of\ninterest; where the true civic or social feeling is engendered and the\nindividual bends all his efforts to the success of the community on\nwhich his own depends; where, in fact, the ancient Greek conception\nof citizenship is realized, and individuals are created who are ever\nconscious of the identity of interest between themselves and their race.\nIn the old Greek civilizations this was possible because their States\nwere small, indeed their ideal State contained no more citizens than\ncould be affected by the voice of a single orator. Such small States,\nthough they produced the highest quality of life within themselves,\nare no longer possible as political entities. We have to see whether we\ncould not, within our widespread nationalities, create communities\nby economic means, where something of the same sense of solidarity of\ninterest might be engendered and the same quality of life maintained.\nI am greatly ambitious for the rural community. But it is no use having\nmean ambitions. Unless people believe the result of their labors will\nresult in their equaling or surpassing the best that has been done\nelsewhere, they will never get very far. We in Ireland are in quest of\na civilization. It is a great adventure, the building up of a\ncivilization--the noblest which could be undertaken by any persons. It\nis at once the noblest and the most practical of all enterprises, and\nI can conceive of no greater exaltation for the spirit of man than\nthe feeling that his race is acting nobly; and that all together are\nperforming a service, not only to each other, but to humanity and those\nwho come after them, and that their deeds will be remembered. It may\nseem a grotesque juxtaposition of things essentially different in\ncharacter, to talk of national idealism and then of farming, but it is\nnot so. They are inseparable. The national idealism which will not go\nout into the fields and deal with the fortunes of the working farmers is\nfalse dealism. Our conception of a civilization must include, nay, must\nbegin with the life of the humblest, the life of the average man\nor manual worker, for if we neglect them we will build in sand. The\nneglected classes will wreck our civilization. The pioneers of a new\nsocial order must think first of the average man in field or factory,\nand so unite these and so inspire them that the noblest life will be\npossible through their companionship. If you will not offer people the\nnoblest and best they will go in search of it. Unless the countryside\ncan offer to young men and women some satisfactory food for soul as well\nas body, it will fail to attract or hold its population, and they\nwill go to the already overcrowded towns; and the lessening of rural\nproduction will affect production in the cities and factories, and the\nproblem of the unemployed will get still keener. The problem is not only\nan economic problem. It is a human one. Man does not live by cash alone,\nbut by every gift of fellowship and brotherly feeling society offers\nhim. The final urgings of men and women are towards humanity. Their\ndesires are for the perfecting of their own life, and as Whitman says,\nwhere the best men and women are there the great city stands, though it\nis only a village. It is one of the illusions of modern materialistic\nthought to suppose that as high a quality of life is not possible in a\nvillage as in a great city, and it ought to be one of the aims of\nrural reformers to dissipate this fallacy, and to show that it is\npossible--not indeed to concentrate wealth in country communities as in\nthe cities--but that it is possible to bring comfort enough to satisfy\nany reasonable person, and to create a society where there will be\nintellectual life and human interests. We will hear little then of the\nrural exodus. The country will retain and increase its population and\nproductiveness. Like attracts like. Life draws life to itself. Intellect\nawakens intellect, and the country will hold its own tug for tug with\nthe towns.\n\nNow it may be said I have talked a long while round and round the rural\ncommunity, but I have not suggested how it is to be created. I am coming\nto that. It really cannot be created. It is a natural growth when\nthe right seed is planted. Co-operation is the seed. Let us consider\nIreland. Twenty-five years ago there was not a single co-operative\nsociety in the country. Individualism was the mode of life. Every farmer\nmanufactured and sold as seemed best in his eyes. It was generally the\nworst possible way he could have chosen. Then came Sir Horace Plunkett\nand his colleagues, preaching co-operation. A creamery was established\nhere, an agricultural society there, and having planted the ideas it\nwas some time before the economic expert could decide whether they were\nplanted in fertile soil. But that question was decided many years ago.\nThe co-operative society, started for whatever purpose originally, is\nan omnivorous feeder, and it exercises a magnetic influence on all\nagricultural activities; so that we now have societies which buy milk,\nmanufacture and sell butter, deal in poultry and eggs, cure bacon,\nprovide fertilizers, feeding-stuffs, seeds, and machinery for their\nmembers, and even cater for every requirement of the farmer's household.\nThis magnetic power of attracting and absorbing to themselves the\nvarious rural activities which the properly constituted co-operative\nsocieties have, makes them develop rapidly, until in the course of a\ndecade or a generation there is created a real social organism, where\nthe members buy together, manufacture together, market together, where\nfinally their entire interests are bound up with the interests of the\ncommunity. I believe in half a century the whole business of rural\nIreland will be done co-operatively. This is not a wild surmise, for we\nsee exactly the same process going on in Denmark, Germany, Italy, and\nevery country where the co-operative seed was planted. Let us suppose\nthat in a generation all the rural industries are organized on\nco-operative lines, what kind of a community should we expect to find as\nthe result? How would its members live? What would be their relations\nto one another and their community? The agricultural scientist is making\ngreat discoveries. The mechanical engineer goes from one triumph to\nanother. The chemist already could work wonders in our fields if\nthere was a machinery for him to work through. We cannot foretell the\ndevelopments in each branch, but we can see clearly that the organized\ncommunity can lay hold of discoveries and inventions which the\nindividual farmer cannot. It is little for the co-operative society to\nbuy expensive threshing sets and let its members have the use of them,\nbut the individual farmer would have to save a long time before he could\nraise several hundred pounds. The society is a better buyer than the\nindividual. It can buy things the individual cannot buy. It is a better\nproducer also. The plant for a creamery is beyond the individual farmer;\nbut our organized farmers in Ireland, small though they are, find it no\ntrouble to erect and equip a creamery with plant costing two thousand\npounds. The organized rural community of the future will generate its\nown electricity at its central buildings, and run not only its factories\nand other enterprises by this power, but will supply light to the houses\nof its members and also mechanical power to run machinery on the farm.\nOne of our Irish societies already supplies electric light for the town\nit works in. In the organized rural community the eggs, milk, poultry,\npigs, cattle, grain, and wheat produced on the farm and not consumed,\nor required for further agricultural production, will automatically be\ndelivered to the co-operative business centre of the district, where the\nmanager of the dairy will turn the milk into butter or cheese, and the\nskim milk will be returned to feed the community's pigs. The poultry and\negg department will pack and dispatch the fowl and eggs to market. The\nmill will grind the corn and return it ground to the member, or there\nmay be a co-operative bakery to which some of it may go. The pigs will\nbe dealt with in the abattoir, sent as fresh pork to the market or\nbe turned into bacon to feed the members. We may be certain that any\nintelligent rural community will try to feed itself first, and will only\nsell the surplus. It will realize that it will be unable to buy any food\nhalf as good as the food it produces. The community will hold in\ncommon all the best machinery too expensive for the members to buy\nindividually. The agricultural laborers will gradually become skilled\nmechanics, able to direct threshers, binders, diggers, cultivators, and\nnew implements we have no conception of now. They will be members of the\nsociety, sharing in its profits in proportion to their wages, even as\nthe farmer will in proportion to his trade. The co-operative community\nwill have its own carpenters, smiths, mechanics, employed in its\nworkshop at repairs or in making those things which can profitably be\nmade locally. There may be a laundry where the washing--a heavy burden\nfor the women--will be done: for we may be sure that every scrap of\npower generated will be utilized. One happy invention after another will\ncome to lighten the labor of life. There will be, of course, a village\nhall with a library and gymnasium, where the boys and girls will be made\nstraight, athletic, and graceful. In the evenings, when the work of\nthe day is done, if we went into the village hall we would find a dance\ngoing on or perhaps a concert. There might be a village choir or band.\nThere would be a committee-room where the council of the community\nwould meet once a week; for their enterprises would have grown, and the\nbusiness of such a parish community might easily be over one hundred\nthousand pounds, and would require constant thought. There would be\nno slackness on the part of the council in attending, because their\nfortunes would depend on their communal enterprises, and they would\nhave to consider reports from the managers and officials of the various\ndepartments. The co-operative community would be a busy place. In years\nwhen the society was exceptionally prosperous, and earned larger profits\nthan usual on its trade, we should expect to find discussions in which\nall the members would join as to the use to be made of these profits:\nwhether they should be altogether divided or what portion of them should\nbe devoted to some public purpose. We may be certain that there would\nbe animated discussions, because a real solidarity of feeling would have\narisen and a pride in the work of the community engendered, and they\nwould like to be able to outdo the good work done by the neighboring\ncommunities.\n\nOne might like to endow the village school with a chemical laboratory,\nanother might want to decorate the village hall with reproductions\nof famous pictures, another might suggest removing all the hedges and\nplanting the roadsides and lanes with gooseberry bushes, currant bushes,\nand fruit trees, as they do in some German communes today. There would\nbe eloquent pleadings for this or that, for an intellectual heat would\nbe engendered in this human hive, and there would be no more illiterates\nor ignoramuses. The teaching in the village school would be altered to\nsuit the new social order, and the children of the community would,\nwe may be certain, be instructed in everything necessary for the\nintelligent conduct of the communal business. The spirit of rivalry\nbetween one community and another, which exists today between\nneighboring creameries, would excite the imagination of the members,\nand the organized community would be as swift to act as the unorganized\ncommunity is slow to act. Intelligence would be organized as well\nas business. The women would have their own associations, to promote\ndomestic economy, care of the sick and the children. The girls would\nhave their own industries of embroidery, crochet, lace, dress-making,\nweaving, spinning, or whatever new industries the awakened intelligence\nof women may devise and lay hold of as the peculiar labor of their\nsex. The business of distribution of the produce and industries of the\ncommunity would be carried on by great federations, which would attend\nto export and sale of the products of thousands of societies. Such\ncommunities would be real social organisms. The individual would be free\nto do as he willed, but he would find that communal activity would be\ninfinitely more profitable than individual activity. We would then\nhave a real democracy carrying on its own business, and bringing about\nreforms without pleading to, or begging of, the State, or intriguing\nwith or imploring the aid of political middlemen to get this, that, or\nthe other done for them. They would be self-respecting, because they\nwould be self-helping above all things. The national councils and\nmeetings of national federations would finally become the real\nParliament of the nation; for wherever all the economic power is\ncentered, there also is centered all the political power. And no\npolitician would dare to interfere with the organized industry of a\nnation.\n\nThere is nothing to prevent such communities being formed. They would\nbe a natural growth once the seed was planted. We see such communities\nnaturally growing up in Ireland, with perhaps a little stimulus from\noutside from rural reformers and social enthusiasts. If this ideal of\nthe organized rural community is accepted there will be difficulties, of\ncourse, and enemies to be encountered. The agricultural middleman is a\npowerful person. He will rage furiously. He will organize all his forces\nto keep the farmers in subjection, and to retain his peculiar functions\nof fleecing the farmer as producer and the general public as consumer.\nBut unless we are determined to eliminate the middleman in agriculture\nwe will fall to effect anything worth while attempting. I would lay\ndown certain fundamental propositions which, I think, should be accepted\nwithout reserve as a basis of reform. First, that the farmers must be\norganized to have complete control over all the business connected with\ntheir industry. Dual control is intolerable. Agriculture will never be\nin a satisfactory condition if the farmer is relegated to the position\nof a manual worker on his land; if he is denied the right of a\nmanufacturer to buy the raw materials of his industry on trade terms; if\nother people are to deal with his raw materials, his milk, cream,\nfruit, vegetables, live stock, grain, and other produce; and if these\ncapitalist middle agencies are to manufacture the farmers' raw material\ninto butter, bacon, or whatever else are to do all the marketing and\nexport, paying farmers what they please on the one hand, and charging\nthe public as much as they can on the other hand. The existence of these\nmiddle agencies is responsible for a large proportion of the increased\ncost of living, which is the most acute domestic problem of modern\nindustrial communities. They have too much power over the farmer,\nand are too expensive a luxury for the consumer. It would be very\nunbusinesslike for any country to contemplate the permanence in national\nlife of a class whose personal interests are always leading them to\nfleece both producer and consumer alike. So the first fundamental idea\nfor reformers to get into their minds is that farmers, through their own\nco-operative organizations, must control the entire business connected\nwith agriculture. There will not be so much objection to co-operative\nsale as to co-operative purchase by the farmers. But one is as necessary\nas the other. We must bear in mind, what is too often forgotten, that\nfarmers are manufacturers, and as such are entitled to buy the raw\nmaterials for their industry at wholesale prices. Every other kind\nof manufacturer in the world gets trade terms when he buys. Those\nwho buy--not to consume, but to manufacture and sell again--get their\nrequirements at wholesale terms in every country in the world. If\na publisher of books is approached by a bookseller he gives that\nbookseller trade terms, because he buys to sell again. If I, as a\nprivate individual, want one of those books I must pay the full retail\nprice. Even the cobbler, the carpenter, the solitary artist, get trade\nterms. The farmer, who is as much a manufacturer as the shipbuilder, or\nthe factory proprietor, is as much entitled to trade terms when he buys\nthe raw materials for his industry. His seeds, fertilizers, ploughs,\nimplements, cake, feeding-stuffs are the raw materials of his industry,\nwhich he uses to produce wheat, beef, mutton, pork, or whatever else;\nand, in my opinion, there should be no differentiation between the\nfarmer when he buys and any other kind of manufacturer. Is it any wonder\nthat agriculture decays in countries where the farmers are expected to\nbuy at retail prices and sell at wholesale prices? We must not, to save\nany friction, sell the rights of farmers. The second proposition I lay\ndown is that this necessary organization work among the farmers must be\ncarried on by an organizing body which is entirely controlled by those\ninterested in agriculture--farmers and their friends. To ask the State\nor a State Department to undertake this work is to ask a body influenced\nand often controlled by powerful capitalists, and middle agencies which\nit should be the aim of the organization to eliminate. The State can,\nwithout obstruction from any quarter, give farmers a technical education\nin the science of farming; but let it once interfere with business,\nand a horde of angry interests set to work to hamper and limit by\nevery possible means and compromises on matters of principle, where no\ncompromise ought to be permitted, are almost inevitable.\n\nA voluntary organizing body like the Irish Agricultural Organization\nSociety, which was the first to attempt the co-operative organization of\nfarmers in these islands, is the only kind of body which can pursue its\nwork fearlessly, unhampered by alien interests. The moment such a body\ndeclares its aims, its declaration automatically separates the sheep\nfrom the goats, and its enemies are outside and not inside. The\norganizing body should be the heart and centre of the farmers' movement,\nand if the heart has its allegiance divided, its work will be poor and\nineffectual, and very soon the farmers will fall away from it to follow\nmore single-hearted leaders. No trades union would admit representatives\nof capitalist employers on its committee, and no organization of farmers\nshould allow alien or opposing interest on their councils to clog\nthe machine or betray the cause. This is the best advice I can give\nreformers. It is the result of many years' experience in this work.\nAn industry must have the same freedom of movement as an individual in\npossession of all his powers. An industry divided against itself can\nno more prosper than a household divided against itself. By the means\nI have indicated the farmers can become the masters of their own\ndestinies, just as the urban workers can, I think, by steadfastly\napplying the same principles, emancipate themselves. It is a battle in\nwhich, as in all other battles, numbers and moral superiority united\nare irresistible; and in the Irish struggle to create a true democracy\nnumbers and the power of moral ideas are with the insurgents.\n\n\n\n\n\nVII.\n\n\n\nIt would be a bitter reproach on the household of our nation if there\nwere any unconsidered, who were left in poverty and without hope and\noutside our brotherhood. We have not yet considered the agricultural\nlaborer--the proletarian of the countryside. His is, in a sense, the\nmost difficult problem of any. The basis of economic independence in\nhis industry is the possession of land, and that is not readily to be\nobtained in Ireland. The earth does not upheave itself from beneath the\nsea and add new land to that already above water in response to our\nneed for it. Yet I would not pass away from the rural laborer without,\nhowever inadequately, indicating some curves in his future evolution.\nThese laborers are not in Ireland half so numerous as farmers, for it\nis a country of small holdings, where the farmer and his family are\nthemselves laborers. Labor is badly paid, and, owing to the lack of\ncontinuous cropping of the land, it is often left without employment at\nseasons when employment is most needed. No class which is taken up today\nand dropped tomorrow will in modern times remain long in a country.\nEmployers often act as if they thought labor could be taken up and laid\ndown again like a pipe and tobacco. None have contributed so to thicken\nthe horde of Irish exiles as the rural laborers. Three hundred thousand\nof them in less than my lifetime have left the fields of Ireland for the\nfactories of the new world. Yet I can only rejoice if Irishmen, who are\nbadly dealt with in their motherland, find an ampler life and a more\nprosperous career in another land. A wage of ten or eleven shillings a\nweek will bind none but the unaspiring lout to his country. But I would\nlike to make Ireland a land which, because of the human kindness in it,\nfew would willingly leave. The agricultural proletarian, like all other\nlabor, should be organized in a national union. That is bound to come.\nBut the agricultural laborer should, I think, no more than labor in the\ncities, make the raising of wages his main or only object. He should\nrather strive to make himself economically independent; or, in the\nalternative, seek for status by integration into the co-operative\ncommunities of farmers by becoming a member, and by pressing for\npermanent employment by the community rather than casual employment by\nthe individual. Agricultural labor undoubtedly will have to struggle for\nbetter remuneration. Yet it has to be remembered that agriculture is\na protean industry. It is not like mining, where the colliery produces\ncoal and nothing but coal, and where the miners have a practical\nmonopoly of supply. If miners are dissatisfied with wages and are well\norganized they can enforce their terms, and the colliery owners may\nalmost be indifferent, because they can charge the increased cost\nof working to the public. But agriculture, as I said, is protean and\nchanges its forms perpetually. If tillage does not pay this year, next\nyear the farmer may have his land in grass. He reverts to the cheapest\nmethods of farming when prices are low, or labor asks a wage which the\nfarmer believes it would be unprofitable to pay. In this way pressure\non the farmer for extra wages might result in two men being employed\nto herd cows where a dozen men were previously employed at tillage.\nThe farmer cannot easily--as the mine-owner--unload his burden on the\ngeneral public by the increase of prices. There are many difficulties,\nwhich seem almost insoluble, if we propose to ourselves to integrate the\nrural laborer into the general economic life of the country by making\nhim a partner in the industry he works on. But what I hope for most\nis first that the natural evolution of the rural community, and the\nconcentration of individual manufacture, purchase and sale, into\ncommunal enterprises, will lead to a very large co-operative ownership\nof expensive machinery, which will necessitate the communal employment\nof labor. If this takes place, as I hope it will, the rural laborer,\ninstead of being a manual worker using primitive implements, will have\nthe status of a skilled mechanic employed permanently by a cooperative\ncommunity. He should be a member of the society which employs him, and\nin the division of profits receive in proportion to his wage, as the\nfarmers in proportion to their trade.\n\nA second policy open to agricultural labor when it becomes organized\nis the policy of collective farming. This I believe will and ought to\nreceive attention in the future. Co-operative societies of agricultural\nlaborers in Italy, Roumania, and elsewhere have rented land from\nlandowners. They then reallotted the land among themselves for\nindividual cultivation, or else worked it as a true co-operative\nenterprise with labor, purchase and sale all communal enterprises, with\nconsiderable benefit to the members. We can well understand a landowner\nnot liking to divide his land into small holdings, with all the\nattendant troubles which in Ireland beset a landlord with small farmers\non his estate. But I think landowners in Ireland could be found who\nwould rent land to a co-operative society of skilled laborers who\napproached the owner with a well-thought-out scheme. The success of one\ncolony would lead to others being started, as happened in Italy.\n\nThis solution of the problem of agricultural labor will be forced on us\nfor many reasons. The economic effects of the great European War, the\nburden of debt piled on the participating nations, will make Ministers\nshun schemes of reform involving a large use of national credit, or\nwhich would increase the sum of national obligations. Land purchase\non the old term I believe cannot be continued. Yet we will demand the\nintensive cultivation of the national estate, and increased production\nof wealth, especially of food-stuffs. The large area of agricultural\nland laid down for pasture is not so productive as tilled land, does\nnot sustain so large a population, and there will be more reasons in the\nfuture than in the past for changing the character of farming in these\nareas. The policy of collective farming offers a solution, and whatever\nGovernment is in power should facilitate the settlement of men in\ncooperative colonies and provide expert instructors as managers for the\nfirst year or two if necessary. Such a policy would not be so expensive\nas land purchase, and with fair rent fixed, hundreds of thousands of\npeople could be planted comfortably on the land in Ireland and produce\nmore wealth from it than could ever be produced from grazing lands,\nand agricultural workers and the sons of farmers who now emigrate could\nbecome economically independent.\n\nI hope, also, that farmers, becoming more brotherly as their own\nenterprises flourish, will welcome laborers into their co-operative\nstores, credit banks, poultry and bee-keeping societies, and allow them\nthe benefits of cheap purchase, cheap credit, and of efficient marketing\nof whatever the laborer may produce on his allotment. The growth of\nnational conscience and the spirit of human brotherhood, and a\nfeeling of shame that any should be poor and neglected in the national\nhousehold, will be needed to bring the rural laborer into the circle of\nnational life, and make him a willing worker in the general scheme.\nIf farmers will not, on their part, advance towards their laborers and\nbring them into the co-operative community, then labor will be organized\noutside their community and will be hostile, and will be always brooding\nand scheming to strike a blow when the farmer can least bear it,--when\nthe ground must be tilled or the harvest gathered. And this, if peace\ncannot be made, will result in a still greater decline of tillage and\nthe continued flight of the rural laborers, and the increase of the area\nin grass, and the impoverishing of human life and national well-being.\n\nSome policy to bring contentment to small holders and rural workers must\nbe formulated and acted upon. Agriculture is of more importance to the\nnation than industry. Our task is to truly democratize civilization\nand its agencies; to spread in widest commonalty culture, comfort,\nintelligence, and happiness, and to give to the average man those things\nwhich in an earlier age were the privileges of a few. The country is the\nfountain of the life and health of a race. And this organization of the\ncountry people into co-operative communities will educate them and make\nthem citizens in the true sense of the word, that is, people continually\nconscious of their identity of interest with those about them.\n\nIt is by this conscious sense of solidarity of interest, which only the\norganized co-operative community can engender in modern times, that the\nhigher achievements of humanity become possible. Religion has created\nthis spirit at times--witness the majestic cathedrals the Middle Ages\nraised to manifest their faith. Political organization engendered the\npassion of citizenship in the Greek States, and the Parthenon and a host\nof lordly buildings crowned the hills and uplifted and filled with\npride the heart of the citizen. Our big countries, our big empires, and\nrepublics, for all their military strength and science, and the wealth\nwhich science has made it possible for man to win, do not create\ncitizenship because of the loose organization of society; because\nindividualism is rampant, and men, failing to understand the intricacies\nof the vast and complex life of their country, fall back on private\nlife and private ambitions, and leave the honor of their country and the\nmaking of laws and the application of the national revenues to a class\nof professional politicians, in their turn in servitude to the interests\nwhich supply party funds, and so we find corruption in high places and\ncynicism in the people. It is necessary for the creation of citizens,\nfor the building up of a noble national life, that the social order\nshould be so organized that this sense of interdependence will be\nconstantly felt. It is also necessary for the preservation of the\nphysical health and beauty of our race that our people should live\nmore in the country and less in the cities. I believe it would be an\nexcellent thing for humanity if its civilization could be based on rural\nindustry mainly and not on urban industry. More and more men and women\nin our modern civilization drift out of Nature, out of sweet air,\nhealth, strength, beauty, into the cities, where in the third generation\nthere is a rickety population, mean in stature, vulgar or depraved in\ncharacter, with the image of the devil in mind and matter more than the\nimage of Deity. Those who go like it at first; but city life is like the\nroll spoken of by the prophet, which was sweet in the mouth but bitter\nin the belly. The first generation are intoxicated by the new life,\nbut in the third generation the cord is cut which connected them with\nNature, the Great Mother, and life shrivels up, sundered from the source\nof life. Is there any prophet, any statesman, any leader, who will--as\nMoses once led the Israelites out of the Egyptian bondage--excite\nthe human imagination and lead humanity back to Nature, to sunlight,\nstarlight, earth-breath, sweet air, beauty, gaiety, and health? Is it\nimpossible now to move humanity by great ideas, as Mahomet fired his\ndark hosts to forgetfulness of life; or as Peter the Hermit awakened\nEurope to a frenzy, so that it hurried its hot chivalry across a\ncontinent to the Holy Land? Is not the earth mother of us all? Are not\nour spirits clothed round with the substance of earth? Is it not from\nNature we draw life? Do we not perish without sunlight and fresh air?\nLet us have no breath of air and in five minutes life is extinct. Yet\nin the cities there is a slow poisoning of life going on day by day. The\nlover of beauty may walk the streets of London or any big city and may\nlook into ten thousand faces and see none that is lovely. Is not the\nreturn of man to a natural life on the earth a great enough idea to\ninspire humanity? Is not the idea of a civilization amid the green trees\nand fields under the smokeless sky alluring? Yes, but men say there is\nno intellectual life working on the land. No intellectual life when man\nis surrounded by mystery and miracle! When the mysterious forces which\nbring to birth and life are yet undiscovered; when the earth is teeming\nwith life, and the dumb brown lips of the ridges are breathing mystery!\nIs not the growth of a tree from a tiny cell hidden in the earth as\nprovocative of thought as the things men learn at the schools? Is not\nthought on these things more interesting than the sophistries of the\nnewspapers? It is only in Nature, and by thought on the problems of\nNature, that our intellect grows to any real truth and draws near to the\nMighty Mind which laid the foundations of the world.\n\nOur civilizations are a nightmare, a bad dream. They have no longer the\ngrandeur of Babylon or Nineveh. They grow meaner and meaner as they\ngrow more urbanized. What could be more depressing than the miles of\npoverty-stricken streets around the heart of our modern cities? The\nmemory lies on one \"heavy as frost and deep almost as life.\" It\nis terrible to think of the children playing on the pavements; the\ndepletion of vitality, with artificial stimulus supplied from the\nflaring drink-shops. The spirit grows heavy as if death lay on it while\nit moves amid such things. And outside these places the clouds are\nflying overhead snowy and spiritual as of old, the sun is shining, the\nwinds are blowing, the fields are green, the forests are murmuring leaf\nto leaf, but the magic that God made is unknown to these poor folk. The\ncreation of a rural civilization is the greatest need of our time.\nIt may not come in our days, but we can lay the foundations of it,\npreparing the way for the true prophet when he will come. The fight now\nis not to bring people back to the land, but to keep those who are\non the land contented, happy, and prosperous. And we must begin by\norganizing them to defend what is left to them; to take back, industry\nby industry, what was stolen from them. We must organize the country\npeople into communities, for without some kind of communal life men hold\nno more together than the drifting sands by the seashore. There is a\nnatural order in which men have instinctively grouped themselves from\nthe dawn of time. It is as natural to them to do so as it is for bees to\nbuild their hexagonal cells. If we read the history of civilization\nwe will find people in every land forming little clans co-operating\ntogether. Then the ambition of rulers or warriors breaks them up; the\ngreed of powerful men puts an end to them. But, whether broken or not,\nthe moment the rural dweller is left to himself he begins again, with\nnature prompting him, to form little clans--or nations rather--with his\nfellows, and it is there life has been happiest. We did this in ancient\nIreland. The baronies whose names are on Irish land today and the\ncounties are survivals of these old co-operative colonies, where the men\nowned the land together and elected their own leaders, and formed their\nown social order and engendered passionate loyalties and affections. It\nwas so in every land under the sun. It was so in ancient India and in\nancient Peru. The European farmers, and we in Ireland along with them,\nare beginning again the eternal task of building up a civilization in\nnature--the task so often disturbed, the labor so often destroyed. And\nit is with the hope that we in Ireland will build truly and nobly that I\nhave put together these thoughts on the rural community.\n\n\n\n\n\nVIII.\n\n\n\nWe may now consider the proletarian in our cities. The worker in our\nmodern world is the subject of innumerable unapplied doctrines. The\nlordliest things are predicated of him, which do not affect in the least\nthe relationship with him of those who employ his labor. The ancient\nwisdom, as it is recounted to him on God's day, assures him of his\nimmortality: that the divine signature is over all his being, that in\nsome way he is co-related with the Eternal, that he is fashioned in a\nlikeness to It. He is a symbol of God Himself. He is the child of Deity.\nHis life is Its very breath. The Habitations of Eternity await his\ncoming, and the divine event to which he moves is the dwelling within\nhim of the Divine Mind, so that Deity may become his very self. So proud\na tale is told of him, and when he wakens on the morrow after the day of\nGod he finds that none will pay him reverence. He, the destined comrade\nof Seraphim and Cherubim, is herded with other Children of the King in\nfetid slum and murky alleys, where the devil hath his many mansions,\nwhere light and air, the great purifiers, are already dimmed and\ncorrupted before they do him service. He is insecure in the labor by\nwhich he lives. He works today, and tomorrow he may be told there is no\nfurther need for him, and his fate and the fate of those dependent on\nhim are not remembered by those who dismissed him. If he dies, leaving\nwife or children, the social order makes but the most inhuman provision\nfor them. How ghastly is the brotherhood of the State for its poor the\nworkhouses declare, and our social decrees which turn loving-kindness\ninto official acts and make legal and formal what should be natural\nimpulse and the overflow of the heart. So great a disparity exists\nbetween spiritual theory and the realities of the social order that it\nmight almost be said that spiritual theory has no effect at all on our\ncivilization, and its inhuman contours seem softened at no point where\nwe could say, \"Here the Spirit has mastery. Here God possesses the\nworld.\"\n\nThe imagination, following the worker in our industrial system, sees\nhim laboring without security in his work, in despair, locked out, on\nstrike, living in slums, rarely with enough food for health, bringing\nchildren into the world who suffer from malnutrition from their earliest\nyears, a pauper when his days of strength are passed. He dies in\ncharitable institutions. Though his labors are necessary he is yet not\nintegrated into the national economy. He has no share of his own in the\nwealth of the nation. He cannot claim work as a right from the holders\nof economic power, and this absolute dependence upon the autocrats of\nindustry for a livelihood is the greatest evil of any, for it puts a\nspiritual curse on him and makes him in effect a slave. Instinctively he\nadopts a servile attitude to those who can sentence him and his children\nto poverty and hunger without trial or judgment by his peers. A hasty\nword, and he may be told to draw his pay and begone. The spiritual wrong\ndone him by the social order is greater than the material ill, and that\nspiritual wrong is no less a wrong because generation after generation\nof workers have grown up and are habituated to it, and do not realize\nthe oppression; because in childhood circumstance and the black art of\neducation alike conspire to make the worker humble in heart and to take\nthe crown and sceptre from his spirit, and his elders are already tamed\nand obsequious.\n\nYet the workers in the modern world have great qualities. This class\nin great masses will continually make sacrifices for the sake of a\nprinciple. They have lived so long in the depths: many of them have\nreached the very end of all the pain which is the utmost life can bear\nand have in their character that fearlessness which comes from long\nendurance and familiarity with the worst hardships. I am a literary\nman, a lover of ideas, and I have found few people in my life who would\nsacrifice anything for a social principle; but I will never forget the\nexultation with which I realized in a great labor trouble, when the\nmasters of industry issued a document asking men on peril of dismissal\nto swear never to join a trades union, that there were thousands of men\nin my own city who refused to obey, though they had no membership or\nconnection with the objectionable association. Nearly all the real\nmanhood of Dublin I found was among the obscure myriads who are paid\nfrom twenty to thirty shillings a week. The men who will sacrifice\nanything for brotherhood get rarer and rarer above that limit of wealth.\nThese men would not sign away their freedom, their right to choose their\nown heroes and their own ideals. Most of them had no strike funds to\nfall back on. They had wives and children depending on them. Quietly\nand grimly they took through hunger the path to the Heavenly City, yet\nnobody praised them, no one put a crown upon their brows. Beneath their\nrags and poverty there was in these obscure men a nobility of spirit. It\nis in these men and the men in the cabins in the country that the hope\nof Ireland lies. The poor have always helped each other, and it is\nthey who listen eagerly to the preachers of a social order based on\nbrotherhood in industry. It is these workers, always necessary but never\nyet integrated into the social order, who must be educated, who must\nbe provided for, who must be accepted fully as comrade in any scheme\nof life to be devised and which would call itself Christian. That word,\nexpressing the noblest and most spiritual conception of humanity, has\nbeen so degraded by misuse in the world that we could almost hate it\nwith the loathing we have for evil, if we did not know that Hell can as\ndisguise put on the outward garments of Heaven. Yet what is eternally\ntrue remains pure and uncorrupted, and those who turn to it find it\nthere--as all finally must turn to it to fulfill their destiny of\ninevitable beauty.\n\n\n\n\n\nIX.\n\n\n\nOften with sadness I hear people speak of industrial development in\nIreland, for I feel they contemplate no different system than that which\nfills workers with despair in countries where it is more successfully\napplied. All these energetic people are conspiring to build factories\nand mills and to fill them with human labor, and they believe the more\nthey do this the better it will be for Ireland. They talk of Ireland\nas if it was only admirable as a quantity rather than a quality. They\nexpress delight at swelling statistics and increased trade, but where\ndo we hear any reflection on the quality of life engendered by this\nindustrial development? Our civilization is to differ in no way from any\nother. No new ideal of life is suggested to differentiate us. We are to\ngo on exploiting human labor. Our working classes are to increase and\nmultiply and earn profits for an employing class, as labor has one from\ntime immemorial in Babylon, in Nineveh, in Rome, and in London\ntoday. But a choice yet remains to us, because the character of our\ncivilization is not yet fixed. It is mainly germinal. It fills the\nspirit with weariness to think of another nation following the old path,\nwithout thought or imagination of other roads leading to new and more\nbeautiful life. Every now and then, when the world was still vast and\nfull of undiscovered wonders, some adventurers would leave the harbor,\nand steer their galleys past the known coast and the familiar cities and\nover unraveled seas, seeking some new land where life might be freer and\nampler than that they had known. Is the old daring gone? Are there\nnot such spirits among us ready to join in the noblest of all\nadventures--the building up of a civilization--so that the human might\nreflect the divine order? In the divine order there is both freedom and\nsolidarity. It is the virtue of the soul to be free and its nature to\nlove; and when it is free and acts by its own will it is most united\nwith all other life. Those planetary spirits who move in solemn motion\nabout the heavens I do not conceive as the slaves of Deity but as its\nadorers. But that material nature in which the soul is embodied has the\ndividing quality of the prism, which resolves pure light into distinct\nrays; and so on earth we get the principle of freedom and the virtue of\nsolidarity as separated ideals continually at warfare with each other,\nand the reconcilement on earth of these principles in man is the\nconquest of matter by the spirit. This dramatic sundering on earth\nof virtues in unison in the heavens explains the struggle between\nProtestantism and Catholicism, between nationality and imperialism,\nbetween individualist and socialist, between dynamic and static in\nphilosophy. Indeed in the last analysis all human conflicts are the\nbalancing on earth of the manifestation of divine principles which are\none in the unmanifest spirit.\n\nThe civilization we create, the social order we build up, must provide\nfor essential freedom for the individual and for solidarity of the\nnation. Now essential freedom is denied to men if they are in their\ncondition servile. Can we contemplate the permanent existence of a\nservile class in Ireland? For, disguise it how we will, our present\nindustrial system is practically a form of slavery for the workers,\ndiffering in externals only from the ages when the serf had a collar\nround his neck. He has now freedom to change from master to master, and\ncan even seek for a master in other countries; but he must, in any\ncase, accept the relation of servant to master. The old slave could be\nwhipped. In the new order the wage slave can be starved, and the fact\nthat many of the rulers of industry use their power benevolently does\nnot make the existing relation between employer and employed right, or\nthe social order one whose permanence can be justified. Men will gladly\nlabor if they feel that their labor conspires with that of all other\nworkers for the general good; but there is something loathsome to the\nspirit in the condition of the labor market, where labor is regarded as\na commodity to be bought and sold like soap or candles. For that truly\ndescribes how it is with labor in our industrial system: we can buy\nlabor, which means we can buy human life and thought, a portion of God's\nbeing, and make a profit out of it. By so selling himself the worker is\nenslaved and limited in a thousand ways. The power of dismissal of one\nperson by another at whim acts against independence of character, or the\nfree expression or opinion in thought, in politics, and in religion. The\nsoul is stunted in its growth, and spiritual life made subordinate\nto material interests. To deny essential freedom to the soul is the\ngreatest of all crimes, and such denial has in all ages evoked the\ndeepest anger among men. When freedom has been threatened nations have\nrisen up maddened and exultant, and the clang of martial arms has been\nheard and the stony kings of the past have been encountered in battle.\nIn Ireland we shall have our greatest fight of all to gain this freedom:\nnot alone material independence for man, but the freedom of the soul,\nits right to choose its own heroes and its own ideals without let or\nhindrance by other men.\n\nWe have many of the vices of a slave race, and we treat others as we\nhave been treated. Our national aspirations were overborne by material\npower, and we in turn use cudgel and curse on our countrymen when they\ndiffer from us in opinion and policy. Men, when they cannot match their\nintellect against another's, suppress him and howl him down, putting\nfaith in their own brainlessness. I would make the most passionate plea\nfor freedom in Ireland: freedom for all to say the truth they feel or\nknow. What right have we to ask for ourselves what we deny to another?\nThe bludgeon at meetings is a blow struck against heaven. Those who will\nnot argue or reason are recreants against humanity, and are prowling\nback again on all fours in their minds to the brute. It matters not in\nwhat holy name men war with violence on freedom of thought, whether in\nthe name of God or nation they are enemies of both. We are only right\nin controversy when we overcome by a superior beauty or truth. The\nfirst fundamental idea inspiring an Irish polity should be this idea of\nfreedom in all spheres of thought, and it is most necessary to fight\nfor this because the devil and hell have organized their forces in this\nunfortunate land in sectarian and secret societies, of which it might\nbe written they love darkness rather than light for the old God-given\nreasons.\n\n\n\n\n\nX.\n\n\n\nWhenever in Ireland there has been a revolt of labor it too often finds\narrayed against it the press, the law, and the police. All the great\npowers are in entente. The press, without inquiry, begins a detestable\ncant about labor agitators misleading ignorant men. Every wild phrase\nuttered by an exasperated worker is quoted against the cause of labor,\nand its grievances are suppressed. We are told nothing about how\nthe worker lives: what homes, what food, his wage will provide. The\njournalist holds up a moral umbrella, protecting society from the fiery\nhail of conscience. The baser sort of clergyman will take up the parable\nand begin advocating a servile peace, glibly misinterpreting the divine\nteaching of love to prove that the lamb should lie down inside the lion,\nand only so can it be saved soul and body, forgetful that the peace\nwhich was Christ's gift to humanity was the peace of God which passes\nall understanding, and that it was a spiritual quietude, and that on\nearth--the underworld--the gospel in realization was to bring not peace\nbut a sword.\n\nThe law, assured of public opinion, then deals sternly with whatever\nunfortunate life is driven into its pens. I am putting very mildly the\ndevilish reality, for society is so constituted that the public, kept in\nignorance of the real facts, believes that it is acting rightly, and so\nthe devil has conscience on his side and that divine power is turned\nto infernal uses. What can labor oppose to this federation of State and\nChurch, of press and law, of capital and physical force to back capital,\nwhen it sets about its own liberation and to institute a new social\norder to replace autocracy in industry? Its allies are few. A rare\nthinker, scientist, literary man, artist or clergyman, impelled by\nhatred of what is ugly in life, will speak on its behalf, and may render\nsome aid and help to tear holes in that moral shield held up by the\npress, and may here and there give to that blinded public a vision of\nthe Hosts of the Lord arrayed against it. But the only real power\nthe workers can truly rely on is their own. Nothing but a spiritual\nrevolution or an economic revolution will bring other classes into\ncomradeship with them. The ideal labor should set before itself is not\na transitory improvement in its wage, because a wage war never truly or\npermanently improves the position of labor. This section or that may,\nrelatively to its own past or the position of other workers, improve\nitself; but capital is like a ship which, however the tide rises or\nfalls, floats upon it, and is not sunken more deeply in the water at\nhigh tide than at low tide. Whenever any burden is placed upon capital\nit immediately sets about unloading that burden on the public. Wages\nmight be doubled by Act of Parliament, and the net result would be\nto double prices, if not to increase them still more. The more the\nautocrats of industry are federated the more easily can they unload on\nothers any burden placed on them.\n\nThe value of money is simply what it will purchase at any time. If\nthe rulers of industry can halve the purchasing power of money while\ndoubling wages at the command of the State, logic leads us to assume\nthat wages boards, arbitration boards and the like can only be\ntransitory in their meliorating effect; and to pursue the attack on the\nautocrats of industry by the road of wages alone is to attack them where\nthey are impregnable, and where, seeming to give way, they are all the\nwhile really losing nothing, and are only fixing the wage system more\npermanently on those who attack them. There are fiery spirits among the\nproletarians who hope that militant labor will at last bring about the\nsocial revolution, taking the earthly paradise by violence. They believe\nthat if every worker dropped his tools and absolutely refused to work\nunder the old system, it would be impossible to continue it. That is\ntrue, but those who advocate this policy slur over many difficulties,\nand the relative power of endurance of both parties. They do not, I\nthink, take into account the immense power in the hands of those who\nuphold the present system. Those who might be expected to strike are\nnot--at least in Ireland--a majority of the population. They would have\nfar fewer material resources to fall back on than those others whose\ninterests would lead them to preserve the present social order. It\nis clear, too, when we analyze the forces at the command of labor\nand capital, that the latter has attached to itself by the bonds of\nself-interest the scientific men--engineers, inventors, chemists,\nbacteriologists, designers, organizers, all the intellect of\nindustry--without which, in alliance with itself, revolting labor would\nbe unable to continue production as before. Labor so revolting might\nindeed for a time bring the work of the nation to a standstill; but\nunless it could by some means attract to itself men of the class\ndescribed, it would not be able to take the helm of the ship of industry\nand guide it with knowledge as the holders of economic power have done\nin the past. A policy of emancipation should provide labor with a\nmeans of attracting to itself that kind of knowledge which is gained in\nuniversities, laboratories, colleges of science, and, above all, in\nthe actual guidance of great industrial enterprises. In any trial of\nendurance those who start with the greatest intellectual, moral, and\nmaterial resources will win.\n\nI do not deny that the strike is a powerful weapon in the hand of labor,\nbut it is one with which it is difficult to imagine labor dealing a\nknock-out blow to the present social order. I believe in an orderly\nevolution of society, at least in Ireland, and doubt whether by\nrevolution people can be raised to an intelligence, a humanity, or a\nnobility of nature greater than they formerly possessed. Nobody can\nremain standing on tiptoe. After a little time disorder subsides and\nsome strong man leads the inevitable reaction. In France people revolted\nagainst a decadent monarchy, and in a dozen years they had a new\nemperor. In England they beheaded a king as a protest against tyranny,\nand they got a dictator in his place who took little or no account of\nparliaments; and finally a second Charles, rather worse than the first,\ncame to the throne. The everlasting battle between light and darkness\ngoes on stubbornly all the time, and the gain of the Hosts of Light is\ninch by inch. Extraordinary efforts, impetuous charges, which seem\nto win for a moment, too often leave the attacking force tired and\nexhausted, and the forces of reaction set in and overwhelm them. I am\nthe friend of revolt if people cannot stand the conditions they live\nunder, and if they can see no other way. It is better to be men than\nslaves. The French Revolution was a tragic episode in history, but\nwhen people suffer intolerably and are insulted in their despair it is\ninevitable blood will be shed. One can only say with Whitman:\n\nPale, silent, stern, what could I say to that long-accrued retribution?\nCould I wish humanity different Could I wish the people made of wood and\nstone, or that there be no justice in destiny or time?\n\nThere is danger in revolution if the revolutionary spirit is much more\nadvanced than the intellectual, and moral qualities which alone\ncan secure the success of a revolt. These intellectual and moral\nqualities--the skill to organize, the wisdom to control large\nundertakings, are not natural gifts but the results of experience. They\nare evolutionary products. The emancipation of labor, I believe, will\nnot be gained by revolution but by prolonged effort, continued month by\nmonth and year by year, in which first this thing is adventured, then\nthat: each enterprise brings its own gifts of wisdom and experience,\nand there is no reaction, because, instead of the violent use of certain\npowers, the whole being is braced: experience, intellect, desire, all\nstrong and working harmoniously, press forward and support each other,\nand no enterprise is undertaken where the intellect to carry it out is\nnot present together with the desire. It requires great intellectual\nand moral qualities to bring about a revolution. A rage at present\nconditions is not enough.\n\n\n\n\n\nXI.\n\n\n\nOur farmers are already free. The problem with them is not now concerned\nwith freedom, but how they may be brought into a solidarity with each\nother and the nation. To make our proletarians free and masters of their\nown energies, in unison with each other and the national being, is the\nmost pressing labor of the many before us. Unless there be economic\nfreedom there can be no other freedom. The right of no individual to\nsubsistence should be at the good will of any other individual. More\nthan mere comfort depends on it. There are eternal and august rights of\nthe soul to be safeguarded, and the economic position of men should be\nprotected by organization and democratic law. I have already discussed\nsome of the avenues through which workers in our time have looked with\nhope. I have little belief that these roads lead anywhere but back to\nthe old City of Slavery, however they may seem to curve away at the\noutset. The strike, on whatever scale, is no way to freedom, though\nthe strike--or the threat of it--may bring wages nearer to subsistence\nlevel. The art of warfare is too much in the hands of specialists for\ntrust to be placed in revolution. A machine-gun with a few experts\nbehind it is worth a thousand revolutionary workers, however maddened\nthey may be. Does political action, on which so many rely, promise more?\nI do not believe it does. I believe that to appeal to legislatures is\nto appeal to bodies dominated by those interested in maintaining the\npresent social order, although they may act so as to redress the worst\nevils created by it. In Ireland, for this generation at least, it\nwould be impossible to secure in a legislative assembly majorities\nrepresentative of the class we wish to see emancipated. It may seem as\nif I had closed all the paths out of the social labyrinth; but the\nway to emancipation has, I think, already been surveyed by pioneers.\nA policy of social reconstruction is practical, and needs but steady\npersistence for its realization. That policy--I refer to co-operative\naction--has been adopted in various forms by workers in many countries;\nand what is needed here is to study and coordinate these applications of\nco-working, and to form a general staff of labor who will, on behalf of\nthe workers, examine the weapons fashioned by their class elsewhere, and\nwho will draw up a plan of campaign as the staff of an army do previous\nto military operations. It will be found that economic action along\nco-operative lines has, in one country, barriers placed before its\nexpansion which could be set aside by supplementing this action by\nmethods elaborated by the genius of workers elsewhere.\n\nIt is not my purpose here to repeat in detail methods of organization,\npartly technical, which can be found fully described in many admirable\nbooks, but rather to indicate the order of advance, the methods of\ncoordination of these, and their final absorption and transformation\nin the national being. There is a great deal of ignorance about things\nessential to safe action. When men are filled with enthusiasm they are\napt to apply their new principles rashly in schemes which are bound to\nfall, just as over-confident soldiers will in battle sometimes rush a\nposition prematurely which they cannot hold, because the general line of\ntheir army has not advanced sufficiently to support them. Sacrifices are\nmade with no permanent result, and the morale of the army is injured.\n\nIn the rural districts the advance must, in the nature of things, be\nfrom production to consumption, and with urban workers inversely from\na control over distribution to a mastery over production. I have often\nwondered over the blindness of workers in towns in Ireland, who have\nmade so little use in the economic struggle of the freedom they have to\nspend their wage where they choose. They speak of this struggle as the\nclass war; but they carry on the conflict most energetically where it is\nmost difficult for them to succeed, and hardly at all where it would\nbe comparatively easy for them to weaken the resources of their\nantagonists. In warfare much use is made of flanking movements, which\naim at cutting the enemy's communication with his base of supply.\nFrontal attacks are dangerous. It is equally true in economic warfare.\nThe strike is a frontal attack, and those they fight are entrenched\ndeeply with all the artillery of the State, the press, science, and\nwealth on their side. What would we think of an army which, at the\nclose of each week's fighting, voluntarily surrendered to the enemy the\nground, guns, ammunition, and prisoners captured through the previous\nsix days? Yet this is what our workers do. The power opposed to them is\nmainly economic, though there is an intellectual basis for it also. But\nthe wages of the workers, little for the individual, yet a large part of\nthe national income if taken for the mass, goes back to strengthen the\nsystem they protest against through purchases of domestic requirements.\nThe creation of co-operative stores ought to be the first constructive\npolicy adopted by Irish labor. It ought to be as much a matter of class\nhonor with them to be members of stores as to be in the trade union of\ntheir craft. The store may be regarded as the commissariat department\nof the army of labor. Many a strike has failed of its object, and\nthe workers have gone back defeated, because their neglect of the\ncommissariat made them unable to hold out for that last week when both\nsides are desperate and at the end of their resources. But it is\nnot mainly as an aid to the strike that I advocate democratizing the\ndistributive trade, but because control over distribution gives a\nlarge measure of control over production. The history of co-operative\nworkshops indicates that these have rarely been successful unless\nworked in conjunction with distributive stores. The retail trader is\nnot sympathetic with co-operative production. As the cat is akin to the\ntiger, so is the individual trader--no matter on how small a scale he\noperates--a kinsman of the great autocrats of industry, and he will\nsympathize with his economic kinsmen and will retail their goods in\npreference to those produced in co-operative workshops.\n\nThe control of agencies of distribution by the workers at a certain\nstage in their development enables them to start productive enterprises\nwith more safety and less expense in regard to advertisement than the\ncapitalist can. In fact the co-operative store, properly organized,\ncreates a tied trade for the output of co-operative workshops. It is\na source of financial aid to these, and will invest funds in them and\nassist trades unions gradually to transform themselves into co-operative\nguilds of producers which should be their ultimate ideal. As I shall\nshow later on, the store will enable the urban worker to enter into\nintimate alliance with the rural producer. Their interests are\nreally identical. In every town in Ireland efforts should be made to\ndemocratize the distributive agencies, and the workers will have many\nallies in this, driven by the increased cost of living to search out the\nmost economical agencies of purchase. If the proletarians are not in a\nmajority in Ireland--a nation where the farmers are the most numerous\nsingle class--they certainly form the majority in the cities; and the\nco-operative store, while admitting to membership all who will apply,\nought to be and would be sympathetic with the efforts of labor to\nemancipate itself, and would be a powerful lever in its hands. As the\nstores increase in number, an analysis of their trade will reveal\nyear by year in what directions co-operative production of particular\narticles may safely be attempted. More and more by this means the\nproducing power and the capital at the disposal of the worker will\nbe placed at the service of democracy. The first steps are the most\ndifficult. In due time the workers will have educated a number of their\nmembers, and will have attached to themselves men of proved capacity\nto be the leaders in fresh enterprises, manufactures of one kind or\nanother, democratic banking institutions, all supporting each other and\nleaning on each other and playing into each other's hands.\n\nThe extent to which this may be carried, and the opportunities for\nmaking Ireland a co-operative democracy, I shall presently explain. I do\nnot regard any of these forms of co-operative organization as ideal or\npermanent. The co-operative movement must be regarded rather as a\ngreat turning movement on the part of humanity towards the ideal. The\nco-operative organizations now being formed in Ireland and over the\nworld will, I am certain, persist and outlast this generation and the\nnext, and will grow into vaster things than we dream of; but the really\nimportant change they will bring about in the minds of men will be\npsychological. Men will become habituated to the thought of common\naction for the common good. To get so far in civil life is a great\nstep. Today our civil life is a tangle of petty personal interests\nand competitions. The co-operative movement is, as I have said, a vast\nturning movement of humanity heavenwards, or, at least, to bring them\nface round to the Delectable City. When this psychological change takes\nplace the democratic associations--which have grown up haphazard as the\nworkers found it easiest to create them--will be changed and remodeled\nby men who will have the mass of people behind them in their efforts\nto make a more majestic structure of society for the enlargement of the\nlives and spirits of men.\n\n\n\n\n\nXII.\n\n\n\nWe have descended from the national soul to the material plane, and we\nmust still continue here for a time, because the doctrine that a sane\nmind can only manifest through a sane body is as true in reference\nto the State as to the individual, and necessitates a study of social\nfabrics. The soul creates tendencies and habits in the body, and the\nbody repeats these vibrations automatically and infects the soul\nagain with its old desires. Our religious hatreds created sectarian\norganizations, and these react again in the national soul, which\nwould, I believe, willingly pass away from that mood, but finds itself\nincarnated in organizations habituated to sectarian action, and its\nenergies are turned into these hateful channels unwillingly. So a\ndrunkard who now realizes that intemperance is rotting his nature is\nconquered by the appetites he set up in the past, and with his soul in\nrebellion he yet satisfies the craving in the body. The individualism in\nour economic life reacts on the national being, and prevents concerted\naction for the general good. We have yet to create harmony of purpose\nin our economic life, and to bring together interests long separated and\nunmindful of each other, and make them realize that their interests are\nidentical. It is one of the commonplaces of economics that urban\nand rural interests are identical: but in truth the townsman and the\ncountryman have always acted as if their interests were opposed,\nand they know very little of each other. I never like to let these\ncommonplaces of economics pass my frontiers unless they give the\ncountersign to the challenge for truth. People declare in the same way\nthat the interests of labor and capital are identical, and implore them\nnot to fight with one another. But the truth of that statement seems\nto me to depend largely on whether capital owns labor or labor owns\ncapital. As an abstract proposition it is one of the economic formulae I\nwould leave instructions at my frontiers to have detained until further\ninquiry as to its antecedents. All these statements may be true, but\nto make them operative, to give them a dynamic rather than a static\ncharacter, we must convince people they are true by close argument and\nstill more so by realistic illustration.\n\nTo bring about a high nobility in the national soul we must make harmony\nin its economic life, and the two main currents of economic energy--the\nagricultural and urban--must be made to flow so that their action will\nnot defeat each other. Let us take the farmer first. How ought he to\nwish to see life in the towns develop? Should he wish for the triumph of\nlabor or capital: the success of the co-operative movement, the triumph\nof the multiple shop or the private trader, of guilds of workers or\nautocrats of industry? Economic desires generally depend on the nature\nof the industry men are engaged in. The jeweler would probably desire\nthe permanence of the social order which created most wealthy people who\ncould afford to buy his wares. The farmer's industry, if we consider it\nclosely, is the most democratic of any in its application to society.\nThe produce of the farm, in its final distribution, is divided into\nportions more or less equal and conditioned in quantity by the digestive\npowers of an individual. The wealthiest millionaire cannot eat more\nbread, butter, meat, vegetables, or fruit than the manual laborer would\neat if the latter could afford to get such things. In fact he would\neat rather less, because the manual worker has a much better appetite,\nindeed requires more food. It appears to be the interest of the farmer\nto support any urban movement whose object it is to see that every\nworker in the towns is remunerated so that he, his wife, and his\nchildren can procure as much food as they require. Any underpaid worker\nin the towns is a wrong to the farmer--a willing customer who yet cannot\nbuy. If there is, let us say, a sum of fifteen hundred pounds a week to\nbe paid away in a town, it is to the interest of farmers that that sum\nshould be paid to a thousand men at the rate of thirty shillings a week\nrather than to fifty men at thirty pounds a week. In the case of the\nworkers a greater part of the money will be spent on food. But if fifty\nmen have thirty pounds a week each, it will be spent to satisfy the\nappetites of a much smaller number of people. A larger proportion will\nbe spent on furniture, pictures, motor-cars and what not. It may be\nspent so as to give some kind of employment, but it will not be a\ndivision of the money so much to the interests of the farmer. However\nwe analyze the problem it appears to be to the farmer's interests to\nsupport democratic movements in the cities, certainly up to the point\nwhere every worker in the towns has a wage which enables himself and his\nfamily to eat all they require for health. It is also to the interests\nof farmers to support any system of distribution of goods which\neliminates the element of profit in the sale. After the farmer gets his\nprice it is to his interests that food should be increased in cost as\nlittle as possible when the article is transferred to the consumer,\nbecause if farm produce has to bear too many profits it will be\nexpensive for the consumer, and there will be a lessened demand. So\nassociations like the co-operative stores, which aim at the elimination\nof the element of profit in distribution, should be approved of by the\nfarmers.\n\nNow we come to the townsman again. Is it his interest to support the\nfarmers in his own country or to regard the world as his farm? The\nargument on the economic side is not so clear, but it is, I think,\njust as sound. If agriculture is neglected in any country the rural\npopulation pour into the towns. The country becomes a fountain of\nblackleg labor. Rural labor has no traditions of trade unionism, and\ntakes any work at any price. There are fewer people engaged in producing\nfood, and its cost rises. Food must be imported from abroad; and there\nis national insecurity, as in times of war their is always the danger of\nthe trade routes overseas being blocked by an enemy, and this again has\nto be provided against by heavy expenditure for militarist purposes. The\nfarther away an army is from its base the more insecure is its\nposition, and the same thing is true in the industrial life of nations.\nInternational trade there must always be. It is one of the means by\nwhich the larger solidarity of humanity is to be achieved; but that will\nnever come about until there is a nobler and more human life within the\nstates, and we must begin by perfecting national life before we consider\nempires and world federations. So in this essay only the national being\nis considered.\n\nI desire to unite countryman and townsman in one movement, and to make\nthe co-operative principle the basis of a national civilization. How\nare we to prevent them fighting the old battle between producer and\nconsumer? I think that this can best be brought about by co-operative\nfederations, which will act for both in manufacture, purchase, and sale,\nand with which both rural and urban associations will find it to their\ninterest to be affiliated. Now the townsman cannot to any extent supply\nfood for his stores by buying farms. To control agricultural production\nin that way would necessitate a financial operation which the\nState would shrink from, and which it would be impossible for urban\ncooperators to finance. We had better make up our minds to let farmers\nbe syndicalists, controlling entirely the processes of agricultural\nproduction themselves. They will do it better than the townsman could,\nmore efficiently and more economically. They will never be able, with\nthe world in competition, to put up prices artificially. How can the\ntwo main divisions of national life be brought together in a national\nsolidarity? We can find an answer if we remember that farmers are not\nonly producers but consumers. They do not go about naked in the fields.\nThey require clothes, furniture, tea, coffee, sugar, oil, soap, candles,\npots and pans--in fact the farmer's wife needs nearly all the things the\ntownsman's wife needs, except that she purchases a little less food. But\neven here modern conditions are driving the farmer to buy food in the\nshops rather than to produce it for himself on the farm. Country bread\nis made in the bakery more and more. Butter, cheese, and bacon are made\nin factories, and the farmer's tendency is to buy what bread, bacon,\nand butter he requires, selling the milk to be made into butter to a\ncreamery, the grain to make the bread to a miller, and the pigs to\na factory. Co-operative distribution would be as advantageous to the\ncountry as in the town. Already in Ireland a considerable number of\nfarmers' societies are enlarging their objects, and are turning what\noriginally were purely agricultural associations into general\npurposes societies, where the farmer's wife can purchase her\ndomestic requirements as well as her man his machinery, fertilizers,\nfeeding-stuffs, and seeds. It would be to the interest of rural\nsocieties to deal with co-operative wholesales just as much as it is in\nthe interest of urban stores to do so. It would be to their interest to\ntake shares in these wholesales and productive federations, and see that\nthey cater for the farmer's interests as much as for the townsman's.\n\nThe urban co-operators, on their side, will see the opportunities for\nproductive co-operation the union of rural and urban movements would\ncreate. They naturally will desire to employ as many people as possible\nin co-operative production. Farmers are surrounded by rings of all\nkinds: machinery manufacturers who will not sell to their societies,\nmanure manufacturers' alliances who keep up prices. It is a great\nindustry, this of supplying the farmer with his fertilizers,\nfeeding-stuffs, cake, machinery. These rural co-operative societies\nare increasing in number year by year. Farmers want clothes, hats, and\nboots: and the necessary machinery for their industry is almost entirely\nof urban manufacture--ploughs, binders, separators, harrows, and many\nother implements of tillage. It is an immense industry and yet to be\nco-operatively exploited. In the towns some progress has been made in\ndistribution. But a nation depends upon its wealth producers and not\nupon its consumers. Co-operators might double, treble, or quadruple the\ndistributive trade, and still occupy only a very secondary position in\nnational life unless they enter more largely upon production. We will\nnever make the co-operative idea the fundamental one in the civilization\nof Ireland until we employ a very large part of the population in\nproduction. Now we have at present, thanks to the energy of the pioneers\nof agricultural co-operation, a new market opening in the country\nfor things which the townsman can produce. Does not this suggest\nnew productive urban enterprises? Does it not favor an evolution of\nmanufacturing industry, so that democratic control may finally replace\nthe autocratic control of the capitalist? The trades unions cannot\ndo this alone by following up any of their traditional policies. They\ncannot go into trade on their own account with any guarantee of success\nunless they are associated with agencies of distribution. But if\nco-operators--urban and rural--through their federations invade more and\nmore the field of production they will draw to themselves the hearts and\nhopes of the workers and idealists in the nation. People are really more\nconcerned about the making of an income than about the spending of it.\nIt is a necessity of our policy if it is to bring about the co-operative\ncommonwealth, that co-operators must adventure much more largely into\nproduction than they have hitherto done.\n\nNow let us see what we have come to. There is a country movement which\nis not merely one for agricultural production. It is rapidly taking\nup the distribution of goods. There is an urban movement not merely\nconcerned with distribution but entering upon production. They can be\nbrought into harmony if the same federations act for both branches of\nthe movement. The meeting-place of the two armies should be there.\nIf this policy is adopted there will gradually grow-up that unity of\npurpose between country and urban workers which is the psychological\nbasis and necessary precedent for national action for the common good.\nThe policy of identity of interest must be real, and it can only be\nreal when the identity of interest is obvious, and it can only be made\nobvious when the symbols of that unity and identity are visible day by\nday in buildings and manufactures, things which are handled and seen,\nand in transactions which daily bring that unity to mind. The old\npoetic ideal of a United Ireland was and could only be a geographical\nexpression, and not a human reality, so long as men were individualist\nin economics and were competing and struggling with each other for\nmastery.\n\nBy the co-operative commonwealth more is meant than a series of\norganizations for economic purposes. We hope to create finally, by the\nclose texture of our organizations, that vivid sense of the identity of\ninterest of the people in this island which is the basis of citizenship,\nand without which there can be no noble national life. Our great\nnation-states have grown so large, so myriad are their populations, so\ncomplicated are their interests, that most people in them really feel no\nsense of brotherhood with each other. We have yet to create inside our\ngreat nation-states social and economic organizations, which will\nmake this identity of interest real and evident, and not seem merely\na metaphor, as it does to most people today. The more the co-operative\nmovement does this for its members, the more points of contact they find\nin it, the more will we tend to make out of it and its branches real\nsocial organisms, which will become as closely knit psychically as\nphysically the cells in a human body are knit together. Our Irish\ndiversities of interest have made us world-famous; but such industrial\nand agricultural organizations would swallow up these antagonisms, as\nthe serpents created by the black art of the Egyptian magicians were\nswallowed up by the rod Aaron cast on the floor, and which was made\nanimate by the white magic of the Lord.\n\n\n\n\n\nXIII.\n\n\n\nIt will appear to the idealist who has contemplated the heavens more\nclosely than the earth that the policy I advocate is one which only\ntardily could be put into operation, and would be paltry and inadequate\nas a basis for society. The idealist with the Golden Age already in his\nheart believes he has only to erect the Golden Banner and display it for\nmultitudes to array themselves beneath its folds; therefore he advocates\nnot, as I do, a way to the life, but the life itself. I am sympathetic\nwith idealists in a hurry, but I do not think the world can be changed\nsuddenly by some heavenly alchemy, as St. Paul was smitten by a light\nfrom the overworld. Such light from heaven is vouchsafed to individuals,\nbut never to nations, who progress by an orderly evolution in society.\nThough the heart in us cries out continually, \"Oh, hurry, hurry to the\nGolden Age,\" though we think of revolutions, we know that the patient\nmarshalling of human forces is wisdom. We have to devise ways and means\nand light every step clearly before the nation will leave its footing\nin some safe if unattractive locality to plant itself elsewhere. The\nindividual may be reckless. The race never can be so, for it carries too\ngreat a burden and too high destinies, and it is only when the gods\nwish to destroy or chastise a race that they first make it mad. Not by\nrevolutions can humanity be perfected. I might quote from an old oracle,\n\"The gods are never so turned away from man as when he ascends to them\nby disorderly methods.\" Our spirits may live in the Golden Age, but our\nbodily life moves on slow feet, and needs the lantern on the path and\nthe staff struck carefully into the darkness before us to see that the\npath beyond is not a morass, and the light not a will o' the wisp.\n\nOther critics may say I would destroy the variety of civilization by the\ninflexible application of a single idea. Well, I realize that the net\nwhich is spread for Leviathan will not capture all the creatures of the\ndeep; and the complexity of human nature is such that it is impossible\nto imagine a policy, however fitting in certain spheres of human\nactivity, which could be applied to the whole of life. What I think we\nshould aim at is making the co-operative idea fundamental in Irish life.\nBut to say fundamental is not to say absolute. Always there will be\nenter rising persons--men of creative minds--who will break away from\nthe mass and who will insist, perhaps rightly, on an autocratic control\nof the enterprises they found, which were made possible alone by\ntheir genius, and which would not succeed unless every worker in the\nenterprise was malleable by their will. It is unlikely that State action\nwill cease, or that any Government we may have will not respond to the\nappeal of the people to do this, that, or the other for them which they\nare too indolent to do for themselves, or which by the nature of things\nonly governments can undertake. For a principle to be fundamental in\na country does not mean that it must be absolute. I hope society in\nIreland will be organized that the idea of democratic control of its\neconomic life will so pervade Irish thought that it will be in the body\npolitic what the spinal column is to the body--the pillar on which it\nrests, the strongest single factor in the body. Another illustration\nmay make still clearer my meaning. In a red sunsetting the glow is so\npowerful that green hills, white houses, and blue waters, touched by\nits light, assume a ruddy color, partly a local color, and partly a\nreflected light from the sun. Now in the same way, what is most powerful\nin society multiplies images and shadows of itself, and produces\nharmonies with itself which are yet not identities. It is by a\npredominating idea that nations achieve the practical unity of their\ncitizens, and national progress becomes possible. In the future\nstructure of society I have no doubt there will be elements to which the\nsocialist, the syndicalist, the capitalist, and the individualist will\nhave contributed. By degrees it will be discovered what enterprises\nare best directed by the State, by municipalities, by groups, or by\nindividuals. But if the idea of democratic control is predominant, those\nenterprises which are otherwise directed will yet meet the prevalent\nmood by adopting the ideas of the treatment of the workers enforced in\ndemocratically controlled enterprises, and will in every respect, except\ncontrol, make their standards equal. All the needles of being point to\nthe centres where power is most manifested. The effects of the French\nrevolution--a democratic upheaval--invaded men's minds everywhere. Even\nthe autocratically ruled States, hitherto careless about the people in\ntheir underworlds, had to make advances to democracy, and give it some\nmeasure of the justice democracy threatened to deal to itself. Without\ndemanding absolutism I do desire a predominant democratic character in\nour national enterprises, rather than a confused muddle or struggle of\ninterests where nothing really emerges except the egoism of those who\nstruggle.\n\nIt will be noticed that in all that has preceded I have referred little\nto action by government, though it is on governments that democracies\nover the world are now fixing all their hopes. They believe the State\nis the right agency to bring about reforms and changes in society. And\nI must here explain why I do not share their hopes. My distrust of the\nState in economic reform is based on the belief that governments in\ngreat nation-states, even representative governments, are not malleable\nby the general will. They are too easily dominated by the holders of\neconomic power, are, in fact, always dominated by aristocracies with\nland or by the aristocracies of wealth. It is the hand at the helm\nguides the ship. The larger the State is the more easily do the holders\nof economic power gain political power. The theory of representative\ngovernment held good in practice, I think, so long as parliaments were\nengaged in formulating general rights, the right, for example, of the\nindividual to think or profess any religion he pleased; his right not\nto be deprived of liberty or life without open trial by his\nfellow-citizens. So long as legislatures were affirming or maintaining\nthese rights, which rich and poor equally desired, they were justified.\nBut when legislatures began to intervene in economic matters, in the\nstruggles between rich and poor, between capital and labor, it became\nat once apparent the holders of economic power had also political power;\nand that the institution which operated fairly where universal rights\nwere considered did not operate fairly when there was a conflict between\nparticular interests.\n\nThe jury of the nation was found to be packed. At least nine-tenths of\nthe population in Great Britain, for example, belong to the wage-earning\nclass. At least nine-tenths of the members of legislatures belong to\nthe classes possessing land or capital. Now, why any member of the\nwage-earning class should look with hope to such assemblies I cannot\nunderstand. Their ideal is, or should be, economic freedom, together\nwith democratic control of industries, an ideal in every way opposed\nto the ideal of the majority of the members of the legislatures. The\nfiction that representative assemblies will work for the general good is\nproclaimed with enthusiasm; but the moment we examine their actions\nwe see it is not so, and we discover the cause. Where the nation is\ncapitalist and capitalism is the dominant economic factor, legislatures\ninvariably act to uphold it, and legislation tends to fix the system\nmore securely. We see in Great Britain that wage-earners are now openly\nregarded by the legislatures as a class who must not be allowed the same\nfreedom in life as the wealthy. They must be registered, inspected,\nand controlled in a way which the wealthy would bitterly resent if the\nlegislation referred to themselves. After economic inferiority has been\nenforced on them by capital, the stigma of human inferiority is attached\nto the wage-earners by the legislature. But I must not be led away from\nmy theme by the bitter reflections which arise in one who lives in the\nIron Age and knows it is Iron, who feels at times like the lost wanderer\non trackless fields of ice, which never melt and will not until earth\nturns from its axis.\n\nI wish to see society organized so that it shall be malleable to the\ngeneral will. But political and economic progress are obstructed because\nexisting political and economic organizations are almost entirely\nunmalleable by the general will. Public opinion does not control the\npress. The press, capitalistically controlled, creates public opinion.\nOur legislators have grown so secure that they confess openly they have\npassed measures which they knew would be hateful to the majority of\ncitizens, and which, if they had been voted on, would never have been\npassed. The theory of representative government has broken down. To tell\nthe truth, the life of the nation is so complicated that it is difficult\nfor the private citizen to have any intelligent opinion about national\npolicies, and we can hardly blame the politician for despising the\njudgment of the private citizen. Government departments are still less\nmalleable by public opinion than the legislature. For an individual to\nattack the policy of a Government department is almost as hopeless a\nproceeding as if a laborer were to take pickaxe and shovel and\ndetermine to level a mountain which obstructed his view. Yet Government\ndepartments are supposed to be under popular control. The Castle in\nIreland, theoretically, was under popular control, but it was adamantine\nin policy. If the cant about popular control of legislation and\nGovernment departments is obviously untrue, how much more is it\nin regard to public services like railways, gas works, mines, the\ndistribution of goods, manufacture, purchase and sale, which are almost\nentirely under private control and where public interference is bitterly\nresented and effectively opposed. What chance has the individual who is\naggrieved against the great carrying companies? To come lower down,\nlet us take the farmer in the fairs. What way has he of influencing the\njobbers and dealers to act honestly by him--they who have formed rings\nto keep down the prices of cattle? Are they malleable to public opinion?\nThe farmers who have waited all day through a fair know they are not.\n\nWhen we consider the agencies through which people buy we find the same\nthing. The increase of multiple shops, combines, and rings makes the use\nof the limited power a man had to affect a dealer by transferring his\ncustom to another merchant to dwindle yearly. Everywhere we turn we\nfind this adamantine front presented by the legislature, the State\ndepartments, by the agencies of production, distribution, or credit, and\nit is the undemocratic organization of society which is responsible for\nnine-tenths of our social troubles. All the vested interests backed up\nby economic and political power conflict with the public welfare, and\nthe general will, which intends the good of all, can act no more than\na paralyzed cripple can walk. We would all choose the physique of the\nathlete, with his swift, unfettered, easy movements, rather than the\nbody of the cripple if we could, and we have this choice before us in\nIreland.\n\nIf we concentrate our efforts mainly on voluntary action, striving\nto make the co-operative spirit predominant, the general will would\nmanifest itself through organizations malleable to that will, flexible\nand readily adjusting themselves to the desires of the community.\nTo effect reforms we have not first to labor at the gigantic task of\naffecting national opinion and securing the majorities necessary for\nnational action. In any district a hundred or two hundred men can at\nany time form co-operative societies for production, purchase, sale, or\ncredit, and can link themselves by federation with other organizations\nlike their own to secure greater strength and economic efficiency. By\nfollowing this policy steadily we simplify our economic system, and\nreduce to fewer factors the forces in conflict in society. We beget the\npredominance of one principle, and enable that general will for good,\nwhich Rousseau theorized about, to find agencies through which it can\nmanifest freely, so changing society from the static condition begot\nby conflict and obstruction to a dynamic condition where energies and\ndesires manifest freely.\n\nThe general will, as Rousseau demonstrated, always intends the good, and\nif permitted to act would act in a large and noble way. The change from\nstatic to dynamic, from fixed forms to fluid forms, has been coming\nswiftly over the world owing to the liberation of thought, and this in\nspite of the obstruction of a society organized, I might almost say,\nwith egomania as the predominant psychological factor. The ancient\nconception of Nature as a manifestation of spirit is incarnating anew\nin the minds of modern thinkers, and Nature is not conceived of as\nmaterial, but as force and continual motion; and they are trying to\nidentify human will with this arcane energy, and let the forces of\nNature have freer play in humanity. We begin to catch glimpses of\ncivilizations as far exceeding ours as ours surpasses society in the\nStone Age. In all our democratic movements, in these efforts towards\nthe harmonious fusion of human forces, humanity is obscurely intent\non mightier collective exploits than anything conceived of before. The\nnature of these energies manifesting in humanity I shall try to indicate\nlater on. But to let the general will have free play ought to be the\naim of those who wish to build up national organizations for whatever\npurpose; and to let the general will have free play we require something\nbetter than the English invention of representative government, which,\nas it exists at present, is simply a device to enable all kinds of\ncompromises to be made on matters where there should be no compromise,\nas if right and wrong could come to an agreement honestly to let things\nbe partly right and partly wrong. We are importing into Ireland some\npolitical machinery of this antiquated pattern. I have written the\nforegoing because I dread Irish people becoming slaves of this machine.\nI fear the importers of this machinery will desire to make it do things\nit can only do badly, and will set it to work with the ferocity of the\nnew broom and will make it an obstruction, so that the real genius of\nthe Irish people will be unable freely to manifest itself. The less we\nrely on this machinery at present, and the more we desire a machinery of\nprogress, at once flexible and efficient, the better will it be for us\nlater on. What must be embodied in State action is the national will\nand the national soul, and until that giant being is manifested it is\ndangerous to let the pygmies set powers in motion which may enchain us\nfor centuries to come.\n\n\n\n\n\nXIV.\n\n\n\nIt may seem I have spoken lightly of that infant whose birth I referred\nto with more solemnity in the opening pages of this book, and indeed I\nam a little dubious about that infant. The signature of the Irish mind\nis nowhere present in it, and I look upon it with something of the\nhesitating loyalty the inhabitant of a new Balkan State night feel for\nhis imported prince, doubtful whether that sovereign will reflect\nthe will of his new subjects or whether his policy will not constrain\nnational character into an alien mould. The signature of the Irish mind\nis not apparent anywhere in this new machinery for self-government. Our\npoliticians seem to have been unaware that they had any wisdom to learn\nfrom the more obvious failures of representative government as they knew\nit. So far, as I have knowledge, no Irishman during the past century\nof effort for political freedom took the trouble to think out a form\nof government befitting Irish circumstance and character. We left it\nabsolutely to those whom we declared incapable of understanding us\nor governing us to devise for us a system by which we might govern\nourselves. I do not criticize those who devised the new machinery of\nself-government, but those who did not devise it, and who discouraged\nthe exercise of political imagination in Ireland. It is said of an\nartist that it was his fantasy first to paint his ideal of womanly\nbeauty, and, when this was done, to approximate it touch by touch to\nthe sitter, and when the sitter cried, \"Ah, now it is growing like!\" the\nartist ceased, combining the maximum of ideal beauty possible with the\nminimum of likeness. Now if we had thought out the ideal structure of\nIrish government we might have offered it for criticism by those in\nwhose power it was to accept or reject, and have gradually approximated\nit until a point was reached where the compromise left at least\nsomething of our making and imagination in it. There is nothing of us\nin the Act which is in abeyance as I write. I am less concerned with\nit than with the creation of a social order, for the social order in\na country is the strong and fast fortress where national character\nis created and preserved. A legislature may theoretically allow\nself-government, but by its constitution may operate against national\ncharacter and its expression in a civilization. We have accepted the\nprinciple of representative government, and that, I readily concede, is\nthe ideal principle, but the method by which a representative character\nis to be given to State institutions we have not thought out at all. We\nhave committed the error our neighbors have committed of assuming that\nthe representative assembly which can legislate for general interests\ncan deal equally with particular interests; that the body of men who\nwill act unitedly so as to secure the liberty of person or liberty of\nthought, which all desire for themselves, will also act wisely where\nclass problems and the development of particular industries are\nconcerned. The whole history of representative assemblies shows that\nthe machinery adequate for the furtherance and protection of general\ninterests operates unjustly or stupidly in practice against particular\ninterests. The long neglect of agriculture and the actual condition of\nthe sweated are instances. I agree that representative government is\nthe ideal, but how is it to operate in the legislature and still more\nin administration? Are government departments to be controlled by\nParliament or by the representatives of the particular class to promote\nwhose interests special departments were created. I hold that the\ncontinuous efficiency of State departments can only be maintained when\nthey are controlled in respect of policy, not by the casual politician\nwhom the fluctuations of popular emotion places at their head, but by\nthe class or industry the State institution was created to serve. A\ndepartment of State can conceivably be preserved from stagnation by\na minister of strong will, who has a more profound knowledge of\nthe problems connected with his department than even his permanent\nofficials. He might vitalize them from above. But does the party system\nyield us such Ministers? In practice is not high position the reward of\nservice to party? Is special knowledge demanded of the controller of a\nBoard of Trade or a Board of Agriculture? Do we not all know that the\nvast majority of Ministers are controlled by the permanent officials\nof their department. Failing great Ministers, the operations of a\ndepartment may be vitalized by control over its policy exercised, not\nby a general assembly like Parliament, but by a board elected from the\nclass or industry the department ostensibly was created to serve. An\nagricultural department controlled by a council or board composed solely\nof those making their livelihood out of agriculture and elected solely\nby their own class, would, we may be certain, be practical in its\nmethods. It would receive perpetual stimulus from those engaged in\nmaking their living by the industry. Parliaments or senates should\nconfine themselves to matters of general interest, leaving particular or\nspecial interests to those who understand them, to the specialists, and\nonly intervene when national interests are involved by a clashing of\nparticular interests. Our State institutions will never fulfill their\nfunctions efficiently until they are subject in respect of policy not\nto general control, but the control of the class they were created to\nserve.\n\nThat ideal can only be realized fully when all industries are organized.\nBut we should work towards it. Parliament may act as a kind of guardian\nof the unorganized, but, once an industry is organized, once it has\ncome of age, it must resent domination by bodies without the special\nknowledge of which it has the monopoly within itself. It should not\ntolerate domination by the unexpert outsider, whatever may be his repute\nin other spheres. It is only when industries are organized that\nthe democratic system of election can justify itself by results\nin administration. When a county, let us say, chooses a member of\nParliament to represent every interest, only too often it chooses a\nman who can represent few interests except his own. The greatest common\ndenominator of the constituents is as a rule some fluent utterer of\nplatitudes. But if the farmers in a county, or the manufacturers in\na county, or the workers in a county, had each to choose a man to\nrepresent them, we may be certain the farmers would choose one whom they\nregarded as competent to interpret their needs, the manufacturers a man\nof real ability, and labor would select its best intelligence. Persons\nengaged in special work rarely fall to recognize the best men in their\nown industry. Then they judge somewhat as experts, whereas they are\nby no means experts when they are asked to select a representative\nto represent everybody in every industry. To secure good government I\nconceive we must have two kinds of representative assemblies running\nconcurrently with their spheres of influence well defined. One, the\nsupreme body, should be elected by counties or cities to deal with\ngeneral interests, taxation, justice, education, the duties and rights\nof individual citizens as citizens. The other bodies should be elected\nby the people engaged in particular occupations to control the policy\nof the State institutions created to foster particular interests. The\naverage man will elect people to his mind whose deliberations will be in\na sphere where the ideas of the average man ought to be heard and must\nbe respected. The specialists in their department of industry will elect\nexperts to work in a sphere where their knowledge will be invaluable,\nand where, if it is not present, there will be muddle.\n\nThe machinery of government ought never to be complicated, and ought\nto be easily understood by the citizens. In Ireland, where we have\nat present no thought of foreign policy, no question of army or\nnavy, departments of State should fall naturally into a few divisions\nconcerned with agriculture, education, local government, justice,\npolice, and taxation. The administration of some of these are matters\nof national concern, and they should and must be under parliamentary\ncontrol, and that control should be jealously protected. Others are\nsectional, and these should be controlled in respect of policy by\npersons representative of these sections, and elected solely by them. I\nthink there should also be a department of Labor. I am not sure that the\nmain work of the Minister in charge ought not to be the organization of\nlabor in its proper unions or guilds. It is a work as important to the\nState as the organization of agriculture, and indeed from a humanitarian\npoint of view more urgent. Nothing is more lamentable, nothing fills\nthe heart more with despair, than the multitude of isolated workers,\nsweated, unable to fix a price for their work, ignorant of its true\neconomic value; connected with no union, unable to find any body to fall\nback on for help or advice in trouble, neglected altogether by society,\nwhich yet has to pay a heavy price in disease, charity, poor rates,\nand in social disorder for its neglect. Was not the last Irish rising\nlargely composed of those who were economically neglected and oppressed?\nSociety bears a heavier burden for its indifference than it would bear\nif it accepted responsibility for the organization of labor in its own\ndefense. The State in these islands recommends farmers to organize for\nthe protection of their interests and assists in the organization, and\nleaves the organized farmers free to use their organizations as\nthey will. As good a case could be made for the State aiding in the\norganization of labor for the protection of its own interests. A\nministry of labor should seek out all wage-earners; where there is no\ntrade union one should be organized, and, where one exists, all workers\nshould be pressed to join it. Such a ministry ought to be the city of\nrefuge for the proletarian, and the Minister be the Father of Labor,\nfighting its battles for an entry into humanity and its rightful place\nin civilization.\n\nIf we consider the problem of representation, it should not be\nimpossible to devise a system of which the foundation might be the\nCounty Councils, where there would be as sub-divisions, committees for\nlocal government, agriculture, and technical instruction or trade to\ndeal with local administration in these matters. These committees\nshould send representatives to general councils of local government,\nagriculture, and trade. The election should not be by the County Council\nas a body, but by the committees, so that traders would have no voice\nin choosing a representative for farmers, nor farmers interfere in\nthe choice of manufacturers or traders selecting a representative on a\ngeneral Council of Trade, and it should be regarded as ridiculous any\nsuch intervention as for a War Office to claim it should have a voice\nalong with the Admiralty in the selection of captains and commanders of\nvessels of war. At these general councils, which might meet twice a year\nfor whatever number of days may be expedient, general policies would be\ndecided and boards elected to ensure the carrying out by the officials\nof the policies decided upon. By this process of selection men who had\nto control Boards of Agriculture, Trade, or Local Government would be\nthree times elected, each time by a gradually decreasing electorate,\nwith a gradually increasing special knowledge of the matters to be\ndealt with. A really useless person may contrive to be chosen as\nrepresentative by a thousand electors. It requires an able man\nto convince a committee of ten persons, themselves more or less\nspecialists, that his is the best brain among them. Where national\neducation, a thorny subject in Ireland, is concerned, I think the\neducationalists in provinces might be asked to elect representatives\nfrom their own profession on a Council of Education to act as an\nadvisory body to the Minister of Education. County Council elections are\nnot exactly means by which miracles of culture are discovered. A man who\ncame to be member of a board of control would at least have proved\nhis ability to others engaged on work like his own who have special\nknowledge of it and of his capacity to deal with it. If this system\nwas accepted, we would not have traders on our Council of Agriculture\nprotesting against the farmers organizing their industry, because none\nbut persons concerned with agriculture would be a owed to be members\nof agricultural committees, and this would, of course, involve the\nconcentration of merchants and manufacturers upon the work of a Board of\nTrade and the control of a policy of technical instruction suitable for\nindustrial workers, where agricultural advisers in their turn would be\nout of place. Control so exercised over the policy of State institutions\nwould vitalize them, and tend to make them enter more intimately into\nthe department of national effort they were created to foster. The\nstagnation which falls on most Government departments is due to this,\nthat the responsible heads rarely have a knowledge great enough to\nenable them to inaugurate new methods, that parliamentary control is\nnever adequate, is rarely exercised with knowledge, and there is always\na party in power to defend the policy of their Minister, for if one\nMinister is successfully attacked a whole party goes out of power. We,\nin Ireland, should desire above all things efficiency in our public\nservants. They will stagnate in their offices unless they are\ncontinually stimulated by intimate connection with the class they work\nfor and who have a power of control. This system would also, I believe,\nlead to less jobbery. Men in an assembly, where theoretically every\nclass and interest are represented, often conspire to make bad\nappointments, because only a minority have knowledge of what\nqualifications the official ought to have, and they are outvoted by\nrepresentatives who do their friends such good turns often in sheer\nignorance that they are betraying their constituents. Where specialists\nhave power, and where the well-being of their own industry is concerned,\nthey never willingly appoint the inefficient. Such an organization\nof our County Council system would operate also to break up sectarian\ncliques. The feeling of organized classes, farmers, or industrialists,\nconcerned about their own well-being, would oppose itself to sectarian\nsentiment where its application was unfitting.\n\nIn the system of representative government I have outlined, we would\nhave one supreme or national assembly concerned with general interests,\njustice, taxation, education, the apportioning of revenue to its\nvarious uses, reserving to itself direct control over the policy of\nthe departments of treasury, police, judiciary, all that affects the\ncitizens equally; and, beneath it, other councils, representative of\nclasses and special interests, controlling the policy and administration\nof the State departments concerned with their work. Where everybody\nwas concerned everybody would have that measure of control which a vote\nconfers; where particular interests were concerned these interests would\nnot be hampered in their development by the intervention of busybodies\nfrom outside. Of course on matters where particular interests clashed\nwith general interests, or were unable to adjust themselves to other\ninterests, the supreme Assembly would have to decide. The more sectional\ninterests are removed from discussion in the National Assembly, and\nthe more it confines itself to general interests the more will it\napproximate to the ideal sense, be less the haunt of greed, and more the\nvehicle of the national will and the national being.\n\nBy the application of the principle of representative government now in\nforce, one is reminded of nothing so much as the palette of an artist\nwho had squeezed out the primary colors and mixed them into a greasy\ndrab tint, where the purity of every color was lost, or the most\npowerful pigment was in dull domination. If the modification of the\nrepresentative principle I have outlined was in operation, with each\ninterest or industry organized, and freed from alien interference, the\neffect might be likened to a disc with the seven primary colors raying\nfrom a centre, and made to whirl where the motion produced rather the\neffect of pure light. We must not mix the colors of national life\nuntil conflicting interests muddle themselves into a gray drab of human\nfutility, but strive, so far as possible, to keep them pure and unmixed,\neach retaining its own peculiar lustre, so that in their conjunction\nwith others they will harmonize, as do the pure primary colors, and\nin their motion make a light of true intelligence to prevail in the\nnational being.\n\n\n\n\n\nXV.\n\n\n\nNo policy can succeed if it be not in accord with national character.\nIf I have misjudged that, what is written here is vain. It may be asked,\ncan any one abstract from the chaos which is Irish history a prevailing\nmood or tendency recurring again and again, and assert these are\nfundamental? It is difficult to define national character, even in\nlong-established States whose history lies open to the world; but it is\nmost difficult in Ireland, which for centuries has not acted by its own\nwill from its own centre, where national activity was mainly by way\nof protest against external domination, or a readjustment of itself to\nexternal power. We can no more deduce the political character of the\nIrish from the history of the past seven hundred years than we can\nestimate the quality of genius in an artist whom we have only seen when\ngrappling with a burglar. The political character of a people emerges\nonly when they are shaping in freedom their own civilization. To get a\nclue in Ireland we must slip by those seven centuries of struggle and\nstudy national origins, as the lexicographer, to get the exact meaning\nof a word, traces it to its derivation. The greatest value our early\nhistory and literature has for us is the value of a clue to character,\nto be returned to again and again in the maze of our infinitely more\ncomplicated life and era.\n\nIn every nation which has been allowed free development, while it has\nthe qualities common to all humanity, it will be found that some one\nidea was predominant, and in its predominance regrouped about itself\nother ideas. With our neighbors I believe the idea of personal liberty\nhas been the inspiring motive of all that is best in its political\ndevelopment, whatever the reactions and oppressions may have been. In\nancient Attica the idea of beauty, proportion, or harmony in life so\npervaded the minds of the citizens that the surplus revenues of the\nState were devoted to the beautifying of the city. We find that love for\nbeauty in its art, its literature, its architecture; and to Plato, the\nhighest mind in the Athenian State, Deity itself appeared as Beauty in\nits very essence. That mighty mid-European State, whose ambitions have\nupset the world, seems to conceive of the State as power. Other races\nhave had a passion for justice, and have left codes of law which have\nprofoundly affected the life of nations which grew up long after they\nwere dead. The cry of ancient Israel for righteousness rings out above\nall other passions, and its laws are essentially the laws of a people\nwho desired that morality should prevail. We have to discover for\nourselves the ideas which lie at the root of national character, and so\ninculcate these principles that they will pervade the nation and make it\na spiritual solidarity, and unite the best minds in their service, and\nso control those passionate and turbulent elements which are the cause\nof the downfall and wreckage of nations by internal dissensions. I\ndesire as much as any one to preserve our national identity, and to make\nit worthy of preservation, and this can only be done by the domination\nof some inspiring ideal which will draw all hearts to it; which may at\nfirst have that element of strangeness in it which Ben Jonson said was\nin all excellent beauty, and which will later become--as all high things\nwe love do finally become--familiar to us, and nearer and closer to us\nthan the beatings of our own hearts.\n\nWhen ideals which really lie at the root of our being are first\nproclaimed, all that is external in life protests. So were many great\nreformers martyred, but they left their ideals behind them in the\nair, and men breathed them and they became part of their very being.\nNationality is a state of consciousness, a mood of definite character in\nour intellectual being, and it is not perceived first except in profound\nmeditation; it does not become apparent from superficial activities any\nmore than we could, by looking at the world and the tragic history\nof mankind, discover that the Kingdom of Heaven is within us. That\nknowledge comes to those who go within themselves, and not to those who\nseek without for the way, the truth, and the life. But, once proclaimed,\nthe incorruptible spiritual element in man intuitively recognizes it\nas truth, and it has a profound effect on human action. There is, I\nbelieve, a powerful Irish character which has begun to reassert itself\nin modern times, and this character is in essentials what it was two\nthousand years ago. We discover its first manifestation in the ancient\nclans. The clan was at once aristocratic and democratic. It was\naristocratic in leadership and democratic in its economic basis. The\nmost powerful character was elected as chief, while the land was the\nproperty of the clan. That social order indicates the true political\ncharacter of the Irish. Races which last for thousands of years do not\nchange in essentials. They change in circumstance. They may grow better\nor worse, but throughout their history the same fundamentals appear and\nreassert themselves. We can see later in Irish literature or politics,\nas powerful personalities emerged and expressed themselves, how the\nancient character persisted. Swift, Goldsmith, Berkeley, O'Grady, Shaw,\nWilde, Parnell, Davitt, Plunkett, and many others, however they differed\nfrom each other, in so far as they betrayed a political character, were\nintensely democratic in economic theory, adding that to an aristocratic\nfreedom of thought. That peculiar character, I believe, still persists\namong our people in the mass, and it is by adopting a policy which\nwill enable it to manifest once more that we will create an Irish\ncivilization, which will fit our character as the glove fits the hand.\nDuring the last quarter of a century of comparatively peaceful life the\nco-operative principle has once more laid hold on the imagination of the\nIrish townsman and the Irish countryman. The communal character is still\npreserved. It still wills to express itself in its external aspects in\na communal civilization, in an economic brotherhood. That movement alone\nprovides in Ireland for the aristocratic and democratic elements in\nIrish character. It brings into prominence the aristocracy of character\nand intelligence which it is really the Irish nature to love, and its\neconomic basis is democratic. A large part of our failure to achieve\nanything memorable in Ireland is due to the fact that, influenced by the\nexample of our great neighbors, we reversed the natural position of the\naristocratic and democratic elements in the national being. Instead of\nbeing democratic in our economic life, with the aristocracy of character\nand intelligence to lead us, we became meanly individualistic in our\neconomics and meanly democratic in leadership. That is, we allowed\nindividualism--the devilish doctrine of every man for himself--to be the\nkeynote of our economic life; where, above all things, the general good\nand not the enrichment of the individual should be considered. For our\nleaders we chose energetic, common-place types, and made them represent\nus in the legislature; though it is in leadership above all that we\nneed, not the aristocracy of birth, but the aristocracy of character,\nintellect, and will. We had not that aristocracy to lead us. We chose\ninstead persons whose ideas were in no respect nobler than the\naverage to be our guides, or rather to be guided by us. Yet when the\naristocratic character appeared, however imperfect, how it was adored!\nIreland gave to Parnell--an aristocratic character--the love which\nsprings from the deeps of its being, a love which it gave to none other\nin our time.\n\nWith our great neighbors what are our national characteristics were\nreversed. They are an individualistic race. This individualism has\nexpressed itself in history and society in a thousand ways. Being\nindividualistic in economics, they were naturally democratic in\npolitics. They have a genius for choosing forcible average men as\nleaders. They mistrust genius in high places, Intensely individualistic\nthemselves, they feared the aristocratic character in politics. They\ndesired rather that general principles should be asserted to encircle\nand keep safe their own national eccentricity. They have gradually\ninfected us with something of their ways, and as they were not truly our\nways we never made a success of them. It is best for us to fall back on\nwhat is natural with us, what is innate in character, what was visible\namong us in the earliest times, and what, I still believe, persists\namong us--a respect for the aristocratic intellect, for freedom of\nthought, ideals, poetry, and imagination, as the qualities to be looked\nfor in leaders, and a bias for democracy in our economic life. We were\nmore Irish truly in the heroic ages. We would not then have taken, as we\ndo today, the huckster or the publican and make them our representative\nmen, and allow them to corrupt the national soul. Did not the whole\nvulgar mob of our politicians lately unite to declare to the world\nthat Irish nationality was impossible except it was floated on a sea of\nliquor? The image of Kathleen ni Houlihan anciently was beauty in the\nhearts of poets and dreamers. We often thought her unwise, but never did\nwe find her ignoble; never was she without a flame of idealism in her\neyes, until this ignoble crew declared alcohol to be the only possible\nbasis of Irish nationality.\n\nIn the remote past we find the national instincts of our people fully\nmanifested. We find in this early literature a love for the truth-teller\nand for the hero. Indeed they did not choose as chieftains of their\nclans men whom the bards could not sing. They reverenced wisdom, whether\nin king, bard, or ollav, and at the same time there was a communal basis\nfor economic life. This heroic literature is, as our Standish O'Grady\ndeclared, rather prophecy than history. It reveals what the highest\nspirits deemed the highest, and what was said lay so close to the\nheart of the race that it is still remembered and read. That literature\ndiscloses the character of the national being, still to be manifested in\na civilization, and it must flame out before the tale which began among\nthe gods is closed. Whatever brings this communal character into our\nsocial order, and at the same time desires the independent aristocratic\nintellect, is in accord with the national tradition. The co-operative\nmovement is the modern expression of that mood. It is already making a\nconquest of the Irish mind, and in its application to life predisposing\nour people to respect for the man of special attainments, independent\ncharacter, and intellect. A social order which has made its economics\ndemocratic in character needs such men above all things. It needs\naristocratic thinkers to save the social order from stagnation, the\ndisease which eats into all harmonious life. We shall succeed or fail in\nIreland as we succeed or fail to make democracy prevail in our\neconomic life, and aristocratic ideals to prevail in our political and\nintellectual life.\n\nIn all things it is best for a people to obey the law of their own\nbeing. The lion can never become the ox, and \"one law for the lion and\nthe ox is oppression.\"\n\nNow that the hammer of Thor is wrecking our civilizations, is destroying\nthe body of European nationalities, the spirit is freer to reshape the\nworld nearer to the heart's desire. Necessity will drive us along with\nthe rest to recast our social order and to fix our ideals. Necessity and\nour own hearts should lead us to a brotherhood in industry. It should\nbe horrible to us the thought of the greedy profiteer, the pursuit of\nwealth for oneself rather than the union of forces for the good of all\nand the creation of a brotherly society. The efforts of individuals to\namass for themselves great personal wealth should be regarded as ignoble\nby society, and as contrary to the national spirit, as it is indeed\ncontrary to all divine teaching. Our ideal should be economic harmony\nand intellectual diversity. We should regard as alien to the national\nspirit all who would make us think in flocks, and discipline us to an\nunintellectual commonalty of belief. The life of the soul is a personal\nadventure, a quest for the way and the truth and the life. It may be we\nshall find the ancient ways to be the true ways, but if we are led to\nthe truth blindfolded and without personal effort, we are like those\nwhom the Scripture condemns for entering into Paradise, not by the\nstraight gate, but over the wall, like thieves and robbers. If we seek\nit for ourselves and come to it, we shall be true initiates and masters\nin the guild.\n\nNo people seem to have greater natural intelligence than the Irish. No\npeople have been so unfortunately cursed with organizations which led\nthem to abnegate personal thought, and Ireland is an intellectual\ndesert where people read nothing and think nothing; where not fifty in a\nhundred thousand could discern the quality of thought in the Politics\nof Aristotle or the Republic of Plato as being in any way deeper than\na leading article in one of their daily papers. And we, whose external\nlife is so mean, whose ignorance of literature is so great, are yet\nflattered by the suggestion that we have treasures of spiritual and\nintellectual life which should not be debased by external influences,\nand so it comes about that good literature is a thing unpurchasable\nexcept in some half-dozen of the larger towns. Any system which would\nsuppress the aristocratic, fearless, independent intellect should be\nregarded as contrary to the Irish genius and inimical to the national\nbeing.\n\n\n\n\n\nXVI.\n\n\n\nAmong the many ways men have sought to create a national consciousness,\na fountain of pride to the individual citizen, is to build a strong body\nfor the great soul, and it would be an error to overlook--among other\nmodern uprisings of ancient Irish character--the revival of the military\nspirit and its possible development in relation to the national being.\nNational solidarity may be brought about by pressure from without, or by\nthe fusion of the diverse elements in a nation by a heat engendered\nfrom within. But to Create national solidarity by war is to attain but\na temporary and unreal unity, a gain like theirs who climb into the\nKingdom not by the straight gate, but over the wall like a robber. When\none nation is threatened by another, great national sacrifices will be\nmade, and the latent solidarity of its humanity be kindled. But when the\nwar is over, when the circumstances uniting the people for a time are\npast, that spirit rapidly dies, and people begin their old antagonisms\nbecause the social order, in its normal working, does not constantly\npromote a consciousness of identity of interest.\n\nAlmost all the great European states have fortified their national\nbeing by militarism. Everything almost in their development has been\nsubordinated to the necessities of national defense, and hence it is\nonly in times of war there is any real manifestation of national spirit.\nIt is only then that the citizens of the Iron Age feel a transitory\nbrotherhood. It is a paradoxical phenomenon, possible only in the Iron\nAge, that the highest instances of national sacrifice are evoked by\nwarfare--the most barbarous of human enterprises. To make normal that\nspirit of unity which is now only manifested in abnormal moments in\nhistory should be our aim; and as it is the Iron Age, and material\nforces are more powerful than spiritual, we must consider how these\nfierce energies can be put in relation with the national being with\nleast debasement of that being. If the body of the national soul is too\nmartial in character, it will by reflex action communicate its character\nto the spirit, and make it harsh and domineering, and unite against it\nin hatred all other nations. We have seen that in Europe but yesterday.\nThe predominance in the body of militarist practice will finally drive\nout from the soul those unfathomable spiritual elements which are the\nbody's last source power in conflict, and it will in the end defeat its\nown object, which is power. When nations at war call up their reserves\nof humanity to the last man capable of bearing arms, their leaders begin\nalso to summon up those bodiless moods and national sentiments which\nare the souls of races, and their last and most profound sources of\ninspiration and deathless courage. The war then becomes a conflict of\ncivilizations and of spiritual ideals, the aspirations and memories\nwhich constitute the fundamental basis of those civilizations. Without\nthe inspiration of great memories or of great hopes, men are incapable\nof great sacrifices. They are rationalists, and the preservation of the\nlife they know grows to be a desire greater than the immortality of the\nspiritual life of their race. A famous Japanese general once said it was\nthe power to hold out for the last desperate quarter of an hour which\nwon victories, and it is there spiritual stamina reinforces physical\npower. It is a mood akin to the ecstasy of the martyr through his\nburning. Though in these mad moments neither spiritual nor material is\nconsciously differentiated, the spiritual is there in a fiery fusion\nwith all other forces. If it is absent, the body unsupported may take\nto its heels or will yield. It has played its only card, and has not\neternity to fling upon the table in a last gamble for victory.\n\nA military organization may strengthen the national being, but if it\ndominates it, it will impoverish its life. How little Sparta has given\nto the world compared with Attica. Yet when national ideals have been\ncreated they assume an immeasurably greater dignity when the citizens\norganize themselves for the defense of their ideals, and are prepared to\nyield up life itself as a sacrifice if by this the national being may\nbe preserved. A creed always gains respect through its martyrs. We may\ngrant all this, yet be doubtful whether a militarist organization should\nbe the main support of the national being in Ireland. The character of\nthe ideal should, I believe, be otherwise created, and I am not\ncertain that it could not be as well preserved and defended by a\ncivil organization, such as I have indicated, as by armed power. Our\ngeographical position and the slender population of our country also\nmake it evident that the utmost force Ireland could organize would make\nbut a feeble barrier against assault by any of the greater States. We\nhave seen how Belgium, a country with a population larger than that of\nIreland, was thrust aside, crushed and bleeding, by one stroke from the\npaw of its mighty neighbor.* The military and political institutions of\na small country are comparatively easy to displace, but it would be\na task infinitely more difficult to destroy ideals or to extinguish a\nnational being based on a social order, democratic and co-operative in\ncharacter, the soul of the country being continually fed by institutions\nwhich, by their very nature, would be almost impossible to alter unless\ndestruction of the whole humanity of the country was aimed at. National\nideals, based on a co-operative social order, would have the same\npower of resistance almost as a religion, which is, of all things, most\nunconquerable by physical force, and, when it is itself militant, the\nmost powerful ally of military power. The aim of all nations is to\npreserve their immortality. I do not oppose the creation of a national\narmy for this purpose. There are occasions when the manhood of a nation\nmust be prepared to yield life rather than submit to oppression, when\nit must perish in self-contempt or resist by force what wrong would be\nimposed by force. But I would like to point out that for a country in\nthe position of Ireland the surest means of preserving the national\nbeing by the sacrifice and devotion of the people are economic and\nspiritual.\n\n     * Since this book was written Ireland has had a tragic\n       illustration of the truth of what is urged in these pages.\n\n\nOur political life in the past has been sordid and unstable because we\nwere uncultured as a nation. National ideals have been the possession of\nthe few in Ireland, and have not been diffused. That is the cause of our\ncomparative failure as a nation. If we would create an Irish culture,\nand spread it widely among our people, we would have the same\nunfathomable sources of inspiration and sacrifice to draw upon in our\nacts as a nation as the individual has who believes he is immortal, and\nthat his life here is but a temporary foray into time out of eternity.\n\nYet we have much to learn from the study of military organization. The\ngreat problem of all civilizations is the creation of citizens: that\nis, of people who are dominated by the ideal of the general welfare,\nwho will sink private desire and work harmoniously with their\nfellow-citizens for the highest good of their race. While we may all\nagree that war brings about an eruption of the arcane and elemental\nforces which lie normally in the pit of human life, as the forces which\ncause earthquakes lie normally asleep in the womb of the world, none the\nless we must admit that military genius has discovered and applied\nwith mastery a law of life which is of the highest importance to\ncivilization--far more important to civil even than to military\ndevelopment--and that is the means by which the individual will forget\nhis personal danger and sacrifice life itself for the general welfare.\nIn no other organization will men in great masses so entirely forget\nthemselves as men will in battle under military discipline. What is the\ncause of this? Can we discover how it is done and apply the law to civil\nlife?\n\nThe military discipline works miracles. The problem before the captains\nof armies is to take the body of man, the most naturally egoistic of\nall things, which hates pain and which will normally take to its legs in\ndanger and try to save itself, and to dominate it so that the body and\nthe soul inhabiting it will stand still and face all it loathes. And the\nproblem is solved in the vast majority of cases. After military training\nthe civilians who formerly would fly before a few policemen will\nmanfully and heroically stand, not the blows of a baton, but a whole\nhail of bullets, a cannonade lasting through a day; nay, they will for\nweeks and months, day by day, risk and lose life for a cause, for an\nidea, at a word of command. They may not have half as good a cause to\nlose life for as they had as a mob of angry civilians, but they will\nface death now, and the chances of mutilation and agony worse\nthan death. Can we inspire civilians with the same passionate\nself-forgetfulness in the pursuit of the higher ideals of peace? Men in\na regiment have to a large extent the personal interests abolished. The\norganization they now belong to supports them and becomes their life. By\ntheir union with it a new being is created. Exercise, drill, maneuver,\naccentuate that unity, and esprit de corps arises, so that they feel\ntheir highest life is the corporate one; and that feeling is fostered\ncontinually, until at last all the units, by some law of the soul, are\nas it were in spite of themselves, in spite of the legs which want to\nrun, in spite of the body which trembles with fear, constrained to\nmove in obedience to the purpose of the whole organism expressed by its\ncontrolling will; and so we get these devoted masses of men who advance\nagain and again under a hail more terrible than Dante imagined falling\nin his vision of the fiery world.\n\nThere is nothing like it in civilian life, but yet the aim of the higher\nminds in all civilizations is to create a similar devotion to civic\nideals, so that men will not only, as Pericles said, \"give their bodies\nfor the commonwealth,\" but will devote mind, will, and imagination with\nequal assiduity and self-surrender to the creation of a civilization\nwhich will be the inheritance of all and a cause of pride to every one,\nand which will bring to the individual a greater beauty and richness of\nlife than he could finally reach by the utmost private efforts of which\nhe was capable.\n\nI believe that an organization of society, such as I have indicated,\nwould evolve gradually a similar passion for the general zeal, having,\nwithout the stern restraint militarism imposes on its units, a like\npower of turning the thoughts to the general good.\n\nI may say also that to create a militarist organization, before the\nnatural principles to be safe-guarded are well understood and a common\npossession of all the people in the country, would be a danger akin to\nthe peril of allowing children to play with firearms. We may find it a\nbad business to create natural ideals as they are required, just as it\nis a perilous business to try to create an army when a country is in a\nstate of war. If we do not rapidly create a national culture embodying\nthe fundamental ideas we wish to see prevailing in society our volunteer\narmies will be subject to influences from the baser sort of politicians\nwho would force party aims on the country. We shall have a wretched\nfuture unless the soul of the country can dominate the physical forces\nin it, unless ideals of national conduct, liberty of speech and thought,\nof justice and brotherhood, exist to inspire and guide it, and are\nrecognized by all and appealed to by all parties equally.\n\nWe are standing on the threshold of nationhood, and it is problems like\nthese we should be setting ourselves to solve, unless we are to be an\nunimportant province of the world, a mere administrative area inhabited\nby a quite undistinguished people.\n\n\n\n\n\nXVII.\n\n\n\nBut there are other methods of devotion to the national being possible\nto us through collective action, and I was moved to imagine one, having\nonce received a letter from a bloodthirsty correspondent--one of that\nrather numerous class whose minds are always loaded with ball cartridge,\nwhose fingers are always on the trigger, and who are always calling\non the authorities not to hesitate to shoot. He wrote to me during a\nrailway strike, advocating military conscription in order that\nrailway men who went out on strike could be called up by the military\nauthorities, as the French railway strikers were, and who were subject\nto martial law if they disobeyed. I do not think with those who believe\nthe venerable remedy of blood-letting is the best cure for social\nmaladies; and I would have thought no more about that stern\ndisciplinarian, but my mind went playing about the idea of conscription,\nand there came to me some thoughts which I wish to put on record in the\nhope that our people in some future, when the social order will create\npublic spirit and the passion for the State more plentifully than it\ndoes today, may recur to the idea and apply it. Nearly every State in\nthe world demands from youth a couple of years' service in the army.\nThere they are trained to defend their country--even, if necessary,\nto slay their own countrymen. There is much that is abhorrent to the\nimagination in the idea of war, and I am altogether with that noble\nbody of men who are trying, by means of arbitration treaties, to\nsolve national differences by reason rather than by force. But we\nall recognize something noble in the spirit of the nation where the\ncommunity agrees that every man shall give up some years of his life to\nthe State for the preservation of the State, and may be called upon to\nsurrender life absolutely in that service. While the manhood of a race\ndoes this on the whole with cheerfulness, there must be something of\nhigh character in the manhood of that nation. A certain gravity attaches\nto national decisions which are made, as it were, upon the slopes of\ndeath, because none are exempt from service, and there is no delirious\nmob ready to yell for a war in which it does not run the risk of having\nits own dirty skin perforated by bullets. In Ireland we have never had\nmilitary conscription, for reasons which are well known to all, and\nupon which I need not enter. I am well satisfied it should be so, for\nit leaves open to us the possibility of a much nobler service, one which\nhas never yet been attempted by any modern nation, and that is civil\nconscription.\n\nI throw out this suggestion, which may hold the imagination of those who\nhave noble conceptions of what national life should be and what a nation\nshould work for, in the hope that some time it may fructify. There is a\nprohibition laid on the people in this island against conscription\nfor military purposes. Is there any reason why we should not have\nconscription for civil purposes? Why should not every young man in\nIreland give up two years of his life in a comradeship of labor with\nother young men, and be employed under skilled direction in great works\nof public utility, in the erection of public buildings, the beautifying\nof our cities, reclamation of waste lands, afforestation, and other\ndesirable objects? The principle of service for the State for\nmilitary purposes is admitted in every country, even at last by the\nEnglish-speaking peoples. It is easy to be seen how this principle of\nconscription could be applied to infinitely nobler ends--to the building\nup of a beautiful civilization--and might make the country adopting it\nin less than half a century as beautiful as ancient Attica or majestic\nas ancient Egypt. While other nations take part of the life of young men\nfor instruction in war, why should not the State in Ireland, more nobly\ninspired, ask of its young men that they should give equally of their\nlives to the State, not for the destruction of life, but for the\nconservation of life? This service might be asked from all--high and\nlow, well and humbly born--except from those who can plead the reasons\nwhich exempt people abroad from military service. As things stand today,\nif the State undertakes any public work, it does it more expensively by\nfar than it would be if undertaken by private enterprise. Every person\nputs up prices for the State or for municipalities. Labor, land, and\nmaterials are all charged at the highest possible rates, whereas if\nthere was any really high conception of citizenship and of the functions\nof the State, the citizens would agree so that works of public utility,\nor those which conspired to add to national dignity, should be done at\nleast cost to the community. Where there is no national sacrifice there\nis no national pride. Because there is no national pride our modern\ncivilizations show meanly compared with the titanic architecture of the\ncities and majestic civilizations of the past. We know from the ruins of\nthese proud cities that he who walked into ancient Rome, Athens, Thebes,\nMemphis and Babylon, walked amid grandeurs which must have exalted the\nspirit. To walk into Manchester, Sheffield, or Liverpool is to feel a\nweight upon the soul. There is no national feeling for beauty in our\nindustrial civilizations.\n\nLet us suppose Ireland had through industrial conscription about fifty\nthousand young men every year at its disposal under a national works\ndepartment. What could be done? First of all it would mean that every\nyoung man in the country would have received an industrial training of\nsome kind. The work of technical instruction could be largely carried on\nin connection with this industrial army. People talk of the benefit of\ndiscipline and obedience secured by military service. This and much more\ncould be secured by a labor conscription. Every man in the island would\nhave got into the habit of work at a period of life when it is most\nnecessary, and when too many young men have no serious occupation.\nParents should welcome the training and discipline for their children,\nand certificates of character and intelligence given by the department\nof national works should open up prospects of rapid employment in\nthe ordinary industrial life of the country when the period of public\nservice was closed. For those engaged there would be a true comradeship\nin labor, and the phrase, \"the dignity of labor,\" about which so much\ncant has been written, would have a real significance where young men\nwere working together for the public benefit with the knowledge that any\ncompleted work would add to the health, beauty, dignity, and prosperity\nof the State. In return for this labor the State should feed and clothe\nits industrial army, educate them, and familiarize them with some branch\nof employment, and make them more competent after this period of service\nwas over to engage in private enterprise. Two years of such training\nwould dissipate all the slackness, lack of precision, and laziness\nwhich are so often apparent in young men who have never had any strict\ndiscipline in their homes, and whom parental weakness has rendered unfit\nfor the hard business of life.\n\nThe benefit to those undergoing such a training would of itself justify\ncivil conscription; but when we come to think of the nation--what might\nnot be done by a State with a national labor army under its control?\nPublic works might be undertaken at a cost greatly below that which\nwould otherwise be incurred, and the estimates which now paralyze the\nState, when it considers this really needed service or that, would\nassume a different appearance, as it would be embracing in one\nenterprise technical education and the accomplishment of beneficial\nworks. With such an army under skilled control the big cities could\nhave playgrounds for the children of the cities; public gardens, baths,\ngymnasiums, recreation rooms, hospitals, and sanatoriums might be built;\nwaste land reclaimed and afforested, and the roadsides might be planted\nwith fruit trees. National schools, picture-galleries, public halls,\nlibraries, and a thousand enterprises which now hang fire because at\npresent labor for public service is the most expensive labor, all could\nbe undertaken. If the State becomes very poor, as indeed it is certain\nto be, it may be forced into some such method of fulfilling its\nfunctions. Are we, with enormous burdens of debt, to hang up every\nuseful public work because of the expense, and spend our lives in paying\nState debts while the body for whom we work is unable, on account of the\nexpense, to do anything for us in return? If the State is to continue\nits functions we shall have to commandeer people for its service in\ntimes of peace as is done in times of war. There is hardly an argument\nwhich could be used to defend military conscription which could not be\nequaled with as powerful an argument for civil conscription. I am not\nat all sure that if the State in Ireland decided to utilize two years of\nevery young man's life for State purposes that we could not disband\nmost of our expensive constabulary and make certain squads of our civil\nrecruits responsible for the keeping of public law and order, leaving\nonly the officers as permanent professionals, for of course there must\nbe expert control of the conscripts. The postal service might also be\ncarried on largely by conscripted civilians.\n\nThis may appear a fantastic programme, but I would like to see it\nargued out. It would create a real brotherhood in work, just as the army\ncreates in its own way a brotherhood between men in the same regiments.\nThe nation adopting civil conscription could clean itself up in a\ncouple of generations, so that in respect of public services it would be\nincomparable. The alternative to this is to starve all public services,\nto make the State simply the tax-collector, to pay the interest on a\nhuge debt, and so get it hated because it can do nothing except collect\nmoney to pay the interest on a colossal national debt. Obviously the\nState as an agency to bring about civilization cannot perform both\nservices--pay interest on huge public loans, and continue an expensive\nservice. It must find out some way in which public services can be\ncontinued, and if possible improved, and the open way to that is civil\nconscription and the assertion of a claim to two or three years of the\nwork of every citizen for civil purposes, just as it now asserts a claim\non the services of citizens for the defense of the State. As national\ndebts are more and more piled up, it has seemed to many that here must\nbe an end to what was called social reform, that we were entering on a\nblack era, and no dawn would show over Europe for another century. There\nis always a way out of troubles if people are imaginative enough and\nbrotherly enough to conceive of it and bold enough to take action when\nthey have found the way. The real danger for society is that it may\nbecome spiritless and hidebound and tamed, and have none of those high\nqualities necessary in face of peril, and the more people get accustomed\nto thinking of bold schemes the better. They will get over the first\nshock, and may be ready when the time comes to put them into action.\nWhen a country is poor like Ireland and yet is ambitious of greatness;\nwhen the aspect of its civilization is mean and when it yet aspires to\nbeauty; when its people are living under unsanitary conditions and yet\nthe longing is there to give health to all; when Ireland is like this,\nits public men and its citizens might do much worse than brood over the\npossibilities of industrial conscription, and of revising the character\nof the purposes for which nations have hitherto claimed service from\ntheir young citizens on behalf of the State. Debarred by a fate not\naltogether unkind from training every citizen in the arts of war Ireland\nmight--if the love of country and the desire for service are really so\nstrong as we are told--suddenly become eminent among the nations of the\nworld by adopting a policy which in half a century would make our mean\ncities and our backward countryside the most beautiful in the modern\nworld.\n\n\n\n\n\nXVIII.\n\n\n\nI have not in all this written anything about the relations of Ireland\nwith other countries, or even with our neighbors, in whose political\nhousehold we have lived for so many centuries in intimate hostility.\nI have considered this indeed, but did not wish, nor do I now wish,\nin anything I may write, to say one word which would add to that old\nhostility. Race hatred is the cheapest and basest of all national\npassions, and it is the nature of hatred, as it is the nature of love,\nto change us into the likeness of that which we contemplate. We grow\nnobly like what we adore, and ignobly like what we hate; and no people\nin Ireland became so anglicized in intellect and temperament, and even\nin the manner of expression, as those who hated our neighbors most. All\nhatreds long persisted in bring us to every baseness for which we hated\nothers. The only laws which we cannot break with impunity are divine\nlaws, and no law is more eternally sure in its workings than that which\ncondemns us to be even as that we condemned. Hate is the high commander\nof so many armies that an inquiry into the origin of this passion is\nat least as needful as histories of other contemporary notorieties. Not\nemperors or parliaments alone raise armies, but this passion also. It\nwill sustain nations in defeat. When everything seems lost this wild\ncaptain will appear and the scattered forces are reunited. They will be\nas oblivious of danger as if they were divinely inspired, but if they\nwin their battle it is to become like the conquered foe. All great\nwars in history, all conquests, all national antagonisms, result in an\nexchange of characteristics. It is because I wish Ireland to be itself,\nto act from its own will and its own centre, that I deprecate hatred as\na force in national life. It is always possible to win a cause without\nthe aid of this base helper, who betrays us ever in the hour of victory.\n\nWhen a man finds the feeling of hate for another rising vehemently in\nhimself, he should take it as a warning that conscience is battling\nin his own being with that very thing he loathes. Nations hate other\nnations for the evil which is in themselves; but they are as little\ngiven to self-analysis as individuals, and while they are right to\novercome evil, they should first try to understand the genesis of the\npassion in their own nature. If we understand this, many of the ironies\nof history will be intelligible. We will understand why it was that our\ncountrymen in Ulster and our countrymen in the rest of Ireland, who\nhave denounced each other so vehemently, should at last appear to\nhave exchanged characteristics: why in the North, having passionately\nprotested against physical force movements, no-rent manifestos, and\ncontempt for Imperial Parliament, they should have come themselves at\nlast to organize a physical force movement, should threaten to pay no\ntaxes, and should refuse obedience to an Act of Parliament. We will\nunderstand also why it was their opponents came themselves to address to\nUlster all the arguments and denunciations Ulster had addressed to them.\nI do not point this out with intent to annoy, but to illustrate by late\nhistory a law in national as well as human psychology. If this unpopular\npsychology I have explained was adopted everywhere as true, we would\nnever hear expressions of hate. People would realize they were first\nrevealing and then stabbing their own characters before the world.\n\nNations act towards other nations as their own citizens act towards each\nother. When slavery existed in a State, if that nation attacked\nanother it was with intent to enslave. Where there is a fierce economic\ncompetition between citizen and citizen then in war with another nation,\nthe object of the war is to destroy the trade of the enemy. If the\ncitizens in any country could develop harmonious life among themselves\nthey would manifest the friendliest feelings towards the people of other\ncountries. We find that it is just among groups of people who aim\nat harmonious life, co-operators and socialists, that the strongest\nnational impulses to international brotherhood arise; and wars of\ndomination are brought about by the will of those who within a State are\ndominant over the fortunes of the rest. Ireland, a small country,\ncan only maintain its national identity by moral and economic forces.\nPhysically it must be overmastered by most other European nations. Moral\nforces are really more powerful than physical forces. One Christ changed\nthe spiritual life of Europe; one Buddha affected more myriads in Asia.\n\nThe co-operative ideal of brotherhood in industry has helped to make\nstronger the ideal of the brotherhood of humanity, and no body of men in\nany of the countries in the great War of our time regarded it with more\ngenuine sorrow than those who were already beginning to promote schemes\nfor international co-operation. It must be mainly in movements inspired\nwith the ideal of the brotherhood of man, that the spirit will be\ngenerated which, in the future, shall make the idea of war so detestable\nthat statesmen will find it is impossible to think of that solution\nof their disputes as they would think now of resorting to private\nassassination of political opponents. The great tragedy of Europe was\nbrought about, not by the German Emperor, nor by Sir Edward Grey, nor by\nthe Czar, nor by any of the other chiefs ostensibly controlling foreign\npolicy, but by the nations themselves. These men may have been agents,\nbut their action would have been impossible if they did not realize that\nthere was a vast body of national feeling behind them not opposed to\nwar. Their citizens were in conflict with each other already, generating\nthe moods which lead on to war. Emperors, foreign secretaries,\nambassadors, cabinet ministers are not really powerful to move nations\nagainst their will. On the whole, they act with the will of the nations,\nwhich they understand. Let any one ruler try, for example, to change by\nedict the religion of his subjects, and a week would see him bereft of\nplace and power. They could not do this, because the will of the nation\nwould be against it. They resort to war and prepare for it because the\nwill of the nation is with them, and this throws us back on the private\ncitizens, who finally are individually and collectively responsible for\nthe actions of the State. In the everlasting battle between good and\nevil, private soldiers are called upon to fight as well as the captains,\nand it is only through the intensive cultivation by individuals and\nraces of the higher moral and intellectual qualities, until in intensity\nthey outweigh the mood and passion of the rest, that war will finally\nbecome obsolete as the court of appeal. When there is a panic of fire\nin a crowded building men are suddenly tested as to character. Some will\nbecome frenzied madmen, fighting and trampling their way out. Others\nwill act nobly, forgetting themselves. They have no time to think. What\nthey are in their total make up as human beings, overbalanced either for\ngood or evil, appears in an instant. Even so, some time in the heroic\nfuture, some nation in a crisis will be weighed and will act nobly\nrather than passionately, and will be prepared to risk national\nextinction rather than continue existence at the price of killing\nmyriads of other human beings, and it will oppose moral and spiritual\nforces to material forces, and it will overcome the world by making\ngentleness its might, as all great spiritual teachers have done. It\ncomes to this, we cannot overcome hatred by hatred or war by war, but\nby the opposites of these. Evil is not overcome by evil but by good; and\nany race like the Irish, eager for national life, ought to learn this\ntruth--that humanity will act towards their race as their race acts\ntowards humanity. The noble and the base alike beget their kin.\nEmpires, ere they disappear, see their own mirrored majesty arise in the\nlooking-glass of time. Opposed to the pride and pomp of Egypt were the\npride and pomp of Chaldaea. Echoing the beauty of the Greek city state\nwere many lovely cities made in their image. Carthage evoked Rome. The\nBritish Empire, by the natural balance and opposition of things, called\ninto being another empire with a civilization of coal and steel, and\nwith ambitions for colonies and for naval power, and with that image\nof itself it must wrestle for empire. The great armadas that throng the\nseas, the armed millions upon the earth betray the fear in the minds of\nraces, nay, the inner spiritual certitude the soul has, that pride and\nlust of power must yet be humbled by their kind. They must at last meet\ntheir equals face to face, called to them as steel to magnet by some\ninner affinity. This is a law of life both for individuals and races,\nand, when this is realized, we know nothing will put an end to race\nconflicts except the equally determined and heroic development of the\nspiritual, moral, and intellectual forces which disdain to use the force\nand fury of material powers.\n\nWe may be assured that the divine law is not mocked, and it cannot be\ndeceived. As men sow so do they reap. The anger we create will rend us;\nthe love we give will return to us. Biologically, everything breeds true\nto its type: moods and thoughts just as much as birds and beasts and\nfishes. When I hear people raging against England or Germany or Russia I\nknow that rage will beget rage, and go on begetting it, and so the whole\ndevilish generation of passions will be continued. There are no nations\nto whom the entire and loyal allegiance of man's spirit could be given.\nIt can only go out to the ideal empires and nationalities in the womb\nof time, for whose coming we pray. Those countries of the future we must\ncarve out of the humanity of today, and we can begin building them up\nwithin our present empires and nationalities just as we are building\nup the co-operative movement in a social order antagonistic to it.\nThe people who are trying to create these new ideals in the world are\noutposts, sentinels, and frontiersmen thrown out before the armies of\nthe intellectual and spiritual races yet to come into being. We can all\nenlist in these armies and be comrades to the pioneers. I hope many\nwill enlist in Ireland. I would cry to our idealists to come out of this\npresent-day Irish Babylon, so filled with sectarian, political, and race\nhatreds, and to work for the future. I believe profoundly, with the most\nextreme of Nationalists, in the future of Ireland, and in the vision\nof light seen by Bridget which she saw and confessed between hopes and\ntears to Patrick, and that this is the Isle of Destiny and the destiny\nwill be glorious and not ignoble, and when our hour is come we will have\nsomething to give to the world, and we will be proud to give rather than\nto grasp. Throughout their history Irishmen have always wrought better\nfor others than for themselves, and when they unite in Ireland to\nwork for each other, they will direct into the right channel all that\nnational capacity for devotion to causes for which they are famed. We\nought not only to desire to be at peace with each other, but with\nthe whole world, and this can only be brought about by the individual\ncitizen at all times protesting against sectarian and national passions,\nand taking no part in them, coming out of such angry parties altogether,\nas the people of the Lord were called by the divine voice to come out of\nBabylon. It may seem a long way to set things right, but it is the swift\nway and the royal road, and there is no other; and nobody, no prophet\ncrying before his time, will be listened to until the people are ready\nfor him. The congregation must gather before the preacher can deliver\nwhat is in him to say. The economic brotherhood which I have put forward\nas an Irish ideal would, in its realization, make us at peace with\nourselves, and if we are at peace with ourselves we will be at peace\nwith our neighbors and all other nations, and will wish them the\ngoodwill we have among ourselves, and will receive from them the same\ngoodwill. I do not believe in legal and formal solutions of national\nantagonisms. While we generate animosities among ourselves we will\nalways display them to other nations, and I prefer to search out how it\nis national hatreds are begotten, and to show how that cancer can be cut\nout of the body politic.\n\n\n\n\n\nXIX.\n\n\n\nIt seems inevitable that the domination of the individual by the\nState must become ever greater. It is in the evolutionary process. The\namalgamation of individuals into nationalities and empires is as much\nin the cosmic plan as the development of highly organized beings out\nof unicellular organisms. I believe this process will continue until\nhumanity itself is so psychically knit together that, as a being, it\nwill manifest some form of cosmic consciousness in which the individual\nwill share. Our spiritual intuitions and the great religions of the\nworld alike indicate some such goal as that to which this turbulent\ncavalcade of humanity is wending. A knowledge of this must be in our\nsubconscious being, or we would find the sacrifices men make for the\nState otherwise inexplicable. The State, though now ostensibly secular,\nmakes more imperious claims on man than the ancient gods did. It lays\nhold of life. It asserts its right to take father, brother, and son, and\nto send them to meet death in its own defense. It denies them a choice\nor judgment as to whether its action is right or wrong. Right or wrong,\nthe individual must be prepared to give his body for the commonwealth,\nand when one gives the body unresistingly, one gives the soul also.\nThe marvelous thing about the authority of the State is that it is\nrecognized by the vast majority of citizens. During eras of peace the\ncitizen may be always in conflict with the policy of the State. He may\ncall it a tyranny, but yet when it is in peril he will die to preserve\nfor it an immortal life. The hold the State establishes over the spirit\nof man is the more wonderful when we look rearward on history, and see\nwith what labor and sacrifice the State was established. But we see\nalso how readily, once the union has been brought about, men will die\nto preserve it, even although it is a tyranny, a bad State. For what\ndo they die unless the spirit in man has some inner certitude that the\ndivine event to which humanity tends is a unity of its multitudinous\nlife, and that a State--even a bad State--must be preserved by its\ncitizens, because it is at least an attempt at organic unity? It is a\nsimulacrum of the ideal; it contains the germ or possibility of that to\nwhich the spirit of man is traveling. It disciplines the individual in\nservice to that greater being in which it will find its fulfillment, and\na bad State is better than no State at all. To be without a State is to\nprowl backwards from the divinity before us to the beast behind us.\n\nThe power the State exerts is a spiritual power, acting on or through\nthe will of man. The volunteer armies do not really march to die with\nmore readiness than the conscript armies. The sacrifice is not readily\nexplicable by material causes. There is no material reason why the\nproletarian--who has no property to defend, who is more or less sure\nas a skilled craftsman of employment under any ruler--should concern\nhimself whether his ruler be King, Kaiser, or President. But not one in\na hundred proletarians really thinks like that. It is not the hope\nof personal profit works upon men to risk life. Let some exploiter of\nindustry desire to employ a thousand men at dangerous work, with the\nrisks of death or disablement equal to those of war; let it be known\nthat one in six will be killed and another be disabled, and what sum\nwill purchase the service of workers? They will risk life for the State,\nthough given a bare subsistence or a pay which they would describe as\ninhuman if offered by one of the autocrats of industry. Men working for\nthe State will make the most extraordinary sacrifices; but they stand\nstubbornly and sullenly as disturbers and blockers of all industry which\nis run for private profit. Is it not clear of the two policies for the\nState to adopt, to promote personal interests among its citizens or to\nunite men for the general good, that the first path is full of danger to\nthe State, while through the other men will march cheerfully, though it\nbe to death, in defense of the State. Something, a real life above the\nindividual, acts through the national being, and would almost suggest\nto us that Heaven cannot fully manifest its will to humanity through the\nindividual, but must utter itself through multitudes. There must be an\norchestration of humanity ere it can echo divine melodies. In real truth\nwe are all seeking in the majesties we create for union with a greater\nMajesty.\n\nI wrote in an earlier page that the ancient conception of Nature as\na manifestation of spirit was incarnating anew in the minds of modern\nthinkers; that Nature was no longer conceived of as material or static\nin condition, but as force and continual motion; that they were trying\nto identify human will with this arcane energy, and let the forces of\nNature manifest with more power in society. The real nature of these\nenergies manifesting in humanity I do not know, but they have been\nhinted at in the Scriptures, the oracles of the Oversoul, which speak of\nthe whole creation laboring upwards and the entry of humanity into the\nDivine Mind, and of the re-introcession of That Itself with all Its\nmyriad unity into Deity, so that God might be all in all. I believe\nprofoundly that men do not hold the ideas of liberty or solidarity,\nwhich have moved them so powerfully, merely as phantasies which are\npleasant to the soul or make ease for the body; but because, whether\nthey struggle passionately for liberty or to achieve a solidarity, in\nworking for these two ideals, which seem in conflict, they are divinely\nsupported, in unison with the divine nature, and energies as real as\nthose the scientist studies--as electricity, as magnetism, heat or\nlight--do descend into the soul and reinforce it with elemental energy.\nWe are here for the purposes of soul, and there can be no purpose in\nindividualizing the soul if essential freedom is denied to it and there\nis only a destiny. Wherever essential freedom, the right of the spirit\nto choose its own heroes and its own ideals, is denied, nations rise\nin rebellion. But the spirit in man is wrought in a likeness to Deity,\nwhich is that harmony and unity of Being which upholds the universe;\nand by the very nature of the spirit, while it asserts its freedom,\nits impulses lead it to a harmony with all life, to a solidarity or\nbrotherhood with it.\n\nAll these ideals of freedom, of brotherhood, of power, of justice, of\nbeauty, which have been at one time or another the fundamental idea in\ncivilizations, are heaven-born, and descended from the divine world,\nincarnating first in the highest minds in each race, perceived by them\nand transmitted to their fellow-citizens; and it is the emergence or\nmanifestation of one or other of these ideals in a group which is the\nbeginning of a nation; and the more strongly the ideal is held the more\npowerful becomes the national being, because the synchronous vibration\nof many minds in harmony brings about almost unconsciously a psychic\nunity, a coalescing of the subconscious being of many. It is that inner\nunity which constitutes the national being.\n\nThe idea of the national being emerged at no recognizable point in\nour history in Ireland. It is older than any name we know. It is not\nearth-born, but the synthesis of many heroic and beautiful moments, and\nthese, it must be remembered, are divine in their origin. Every heroic\ndeed is an act of the spirit, and every perception of beauty is vision\nwith the divine eye, and not with the mortal sense. The spirit was\nsubtly intermingled with the shining of old romance, and it is no mere\nphantasy which shows Ireland at its dawn in a misty light thronged with\ndivine figures, and beneath and nearer to us demi-gods and heroes\nfading into recognizable men. The bards took cognizance only of the\nmost notable personalities who preceded them, and of these only the acts\nwhich had a symbolic or spiritual significance; and these grew thrice\nrefined as generations of poets in enraptured musings along by the\nmountains or in the woods brooded upon their heritage of story, until,\nas it passed from age to age, the accumulated beauty grew greater than\nthe beauty of the hour. The dream began to enter into the children of\nour race, and turn their thoughts from earth to that world in which it\nhad its inception.\n\nIt was a common belief among the ancient peoples that each had a\nnational genius or deity who presided over them, in whose all-embracing\nmind they were contained, and who was the shepherd of their destinies.\nWe can conceive of the national spirit in Ireland as first manifesting\nitself through individual heroes or kings, and as the history of famous\nwarriors laid hold of the people, extending its influence until it\ncreated therein the germs of a kindred nature.\n\nAn aristocracy of lordly and chivalrous heroes is bound in time to\ncreate a great democracy by the reflection of their character in the\nmass, and the idea of the divine right of kings is succeeded by the idea\nof the divine right of the people. If this sequence cannot be traced\nin any one respect with historical regularity, it is because of the\ncomplexity of national life, its varied needs, the vicissitudes of\nhistory, and its infinite changes of sentiment. But the threads are all\ntaken up in the end; and ideals which were forgotten and absent from the\nvoices of men will be found, when recurred to, to have grown to a rarer\nand more spiritual beauty in their quiet abode in the heart. The seeds\nwhich were sown at the beginning of a race bear their flowers and fruits\ntowards its close, and already antique names begin to stir us again with\ntheir power, and the antique ideals to reincarnate in us and renew their\ndominion over us.\n\nThey may not be recognized at first as a re-emergence of ancient moods.\nThe democratic economics of the ancient clans have vanished almost out\nof memory, but the mood in which they were established reappears in\nthose who would create a communal or co-operative life in the nation\ninto which those ancient clans long since have melted. The instinct in\nthe clans to waive aside the weak and to seek for an aristocratic and\npowerful character in their leaders reappears in the rising generation,\nwho turn from the utterer of platitudes to men of real intellect and\nstrong will. The object of democratic organization is to bring out the\naristocratic character in leadership, the vivid original personalities\nwho act and think from their own will and their own centres, who bring\ndown fire from the heaven of their spirits and quicken and vivify the\nmass, and make democracies also to be great and fearless and free. A\nnation is dead where men acknowledge only conventions. We must find out\ntruth for ourselves, becoming first initiates and finally masters in the\nguild of life. The intellect of Ireland is in chains where it ought to\nbe free, and we have individualism in our economics which ought to\nbe co-ordinated and sternly disciplined out of the iniquity of free\nprofiteering. To quicken the intellect and imagination of Ireland,\nto co-ordinate our economic life for the general good, should be the\nobjects of national policy, and will subserve the evolutionary purpose.\nThe free imagination and the aspiring mind alone climb into the higher\nspheres and deflect for us the ethereal currents. It is the multitude\nof aristocratic thinkers who give glory to a people and make them of\nservice to other nations, and it is by the character of the social\norder and the quality of brotherhood in it our civilization will endure.\nWithout love we are nothing.\n\n\n\n\n\nXX.\n\n\n\nI beseech audience from the churches for these thoughts on our Irish\npolity, and would recall to them their early history, how when the\nfiery spirit of their Lord first manifested on earth, life, near to It,\nreflected It as in a glowing glass, and impulses of true living arose.\nMaterial possessions were held in common. There was no fierce talk of\nThine and Mine. His ancient law counseled poverty to the spirit, lest\nthe gates of Paradise should grow narrow before it like the eye of a\nneedle. I believe the fading hold the heavens have over the world is due\nto the neglect of the economic basis of spiritual life. What profound\nspiritual life can there be when the social order almost forces men to\nbattle with each other for the means of existence? I know well that no\npolitical mechanics, nothing which is an economic device only, will of\nthemselves be able to affect the transfiguration of society and bring\nit under the dominion of the spirit. For that, a far higher quality of\nthought and action than is here indicated is necessary. The economist\ncan provide the daily bread, but that bread of the coming day which\nChrist wished his followers to aspire to must come otherwise. That\nshould be the labor of the poets, artists, musicians, and of the heroic\nand aristocratic characters who provide by their life an image to\nwhich life can be modeled. Therefore I beseech audience not only of the\nchurches, but of the poets, writers, and thinkers of Ireland for their\naid in this labor. They alone can create in wide commonalty the ideals\nwhich can dominate society. It is the work of the artist to create for\nus images of desirable life, to manifest to us the ideal humanity, and\nto prefigure that vaster entity which I have called the national being.\nI said in an earlier page that part of the failure of Ireland must be\nlaid to the poets who had dropped out of the divine procession and sang\na solitary song; to the writers who had turned from contemplating\nthe great to the portrayal of the little in human nature. I know how\ndifficult it is to constrain the spirit, and how futile it is to ask\nartists or poets to create what they are not inspired to create. But\nwe can ask all men--artists, poets, litterateurs, and scientists--to be\ncitizens, and if they realize imaginatively the spiritual conception of\nthe State, we may assume that this imaginative realization of the\nState will influence the labors of the mind, and what is done will,\nconsciously or unconsciously, have reference to that collective being\nwhich must dominate society more and more, which will dominate it as a\ntyranny if we fail in our labors, or liberate and make more majestical\nthe spirit of man if we imagine rightly. All greatness is brought\nabout by a conspiracy of the imagination and the will. Our literature\ncertainly manifests beauty, but not greatness or majesty, for majesty\nonly arises where there is an orchestration of humanity by some mighty\nconductor; and as a people we shall never manifest the highest qualities\nin literature or life until we are under the dominion of one, at least,\nof the great fundamental ideas which have been the inspiration of races.\nOur feebleness arises from our economic individualism. We continually\nneutralize each other's efforts. Yet there is no less power in humanity\ntoday than there ever was. We see now clearly what untamed elemental\nfires lay underneath the seeming placidity of the world. There was a\nfeeling in society that, just as the earth itself had settled down to\nbe a habitable globe, and was forgetting its ancient ferocities of\nearthquake that opened up gulfs between land and land and rended sea\nfrom sea, so, too, humanity was losing those wilder energies we surmised\nin the cave-dweller or the hunters of mastodon, mammoth, and cave-tiger.\nBut it was all a dream--a dream, we suspect, about the earth as well\nas about humanity. While we indulged in these pleasing speculations on\nsociety, the scientists of our generation were placing beyond question\nor argument the doctrine of the indestructibility of energy and matter\nand we may be sure that while there is immortal life there must be\nimmortal energies as its companions through time, and they will never be\nless powerful than they are today or were in the morning of the world.\nThere will be no weakening of that mighty God-begotten brotherhood of\nelemental powers; and, while we cannot hope that by the wastage of time\nthese powers will be feebler, we may hope that by an understanding of\nthem we may get mastery over them. The wild elephant of the woods, with\na greater strength than man's, has yet been trained to be his servant,\nand that arcane power we call electricity, which, if it shoots out of\nits channel, shrivels up the body of man, is now our servant. So we may\nhope, too, that the elemental energies in humanity itself, which break\nout in wars and Armageddons, will come under control. We should not hope\nthat man will ever be a less powerful being. To hope that would be to\nwish for his degradation. We should wish him to become ever more\nand more powerful by understanding himself, and by the unity of\nthe spiritual faculties and the elemental energies in him into one\nharmonious whole. At present he is feeble because he is, to use the\nscriptural illustration, a house divided against itself.\n\nOur feebleness is due to the conflict of powers in us and our conflict\nwith each other. Get the two mightiest bulls in a herd, put them\nopposing each other in a narrow passage, and they, being of equal\nstrength, will reduce each other to feebleness. Neither will make\nheadway. Let them unite together in their charge, and what will oppose\nthem? Men at conflict in their own hearts, opposing each other in the\nworld, reduce themselves and each other to wretchedness. The race which\ncould eliminate the factors which promote internal conflict in society\nand could organize human energies in harmony, would be powerful beyond\nour wildest dreams. Every now and then in world-history we come across\ninstances of what organized humanity could accomplish. There are\nfragments of an architecture so majestic that they awe us as the high\nrocks of nature do, and they seem almost like portions of nature itself,\nand truly they are so, being portions of nature remade by man, who is\nalso a nature energy of divine origin. Europe by its conflicts today\nis reducing itself to barbarism and powerlessness, and these conflicts\narose out of the internal conflicts in society, for individuals and\nnations act outside themselves as they act inside themselves. The\nproblem for Europe is to create a harmonious life, and it is the problem\nfor us in Ireland, and we will have to work this out for ourselves. The\ncreation of a harmonious life among a people must come from within. It\ncan never come by the imposition of an external law imposed by another\npeople: Never did master and slave work in true unison, no matter how\nbenevolent the master or how yielding the slave, for there is in every\nman, no matter what his condition, a spark of divine life, and it\nwill always be ready to stir him out of subjection, as the fires of\nearthquake lie below the cultivated plain. Man is a creature who has\nfree will, and it is by self-devised and self-checked efforts he will\nattain his full human stature. So the problem of creating an organic\nlife in Ireland, a harmony of our people, a union of their efforts for\nthe common good and for the manifestation of whatever beauty, majesty,\nand spirituality is in us, must be one we ourselves must solve for\nourselves.\n\nTo be indifferent to the possibilities of human life, to ignore the\nproblem, is to turn our back on heaven, which fashioned the spirit of\nman in its image. If the spirit of man has likeness to Deity, it means\nthat if it manifests itself fully in the world, the world too becomes\na shadowy likeness of the heavens, and our civilizations will make a\nharmony with the diviner spheres. We give still a service of lip belief\nto the Scriptures, yet active faith we have not. But they are true,\nyesterday, today, and for ever; and we have still the root of the matter\nin us, for when any one utters out of profound conviction his faith,\nthere are always multitudes ready to respond. What really prevents an\norganic unity in Ireland is the economic individualism of our lives. The\nscience of economics deals with the efforts of men to mine out of nature\nthe food, minerals, and materials necessary to preserve life. There is\nnothing more certain than that where men work alone or only with the\naid of their families they are little higher than the animals. When they\ntend to unite civilization begins. Then arise the towers, the temples,\nthe cities, the achievements of the architect and engineer. The earth is\ntapped of its arcane energies, the very air yields to us its mysterious\npowers. We control the etheric waves and send the message of our deeds\nacross the ocean. Yet in the midst of these vast external manifestations\nof power, multitudes of men and women live in squalor, isolated in their\nlabors, living in the slums of cities; and this, if we examine it, comes\nabout because the organization of human energies into a harmonious unity\nis not complete. There is really no lack of food, clothing, building\nmaterial, land. Nature has provided bountifully for more myriads than we\nare likely to see peopling the earth. But people compete with each other\nand undersell each other, and those who labor are mulcted of their\ndue, and instead of turning to the earth--the inexhaustible mother--and\nworking unitedly for the common weal, they continue that fierce\ncompetition and stultify each other's efforts and reduce each other to\nwretchedness. Humanity is a house divided against itself. Those who feel\nthis to be true must gather round any movement which gives a hope for\nthe future, which indicates a policy by which the organic unity of\nsociety in Ireland might be attained, and our people work harmoniously\nto make beauty and health prevail in our civilization. What each\ngives up to society in the making of a civilization he gets back a\nthousandfold. Now, the co-operative movement alone of all movements in\nIreland has aspired to make an economic solidarity in Ireland. Whatever\nthe aims of other movements may be--and many of them have high ideals\nand are necessary for the spiritual and intellectual development of our\npeople--there is none of them which has for aim the unity of economic\nlife. They all leave untouched this problem--how are we to organize\nsociety so that people will not be in conflict with each other, will not\nnullify each other's efforts, but all will conspire together for\nunity, so that none shall be forgotten or oppressed or left out of our\nbrotherhood? The policy I put forward is incomplete and imperfect, and\nit must necessarily be so, being mainly the work of one mind, and to\ncomplete it and perfect it there must be many minds and many workers\nfired by the ideal. But I have indicated in some completeness how the\nrural population could be co-operatively organized, federated together,\nand how the urban population could be organized and brought into a\nharmony of economic purpose with the folk of the country. Within the\nlimits of object these suggestions amount to a policy for the nation.\n\nIf the tragic condition of the world leaves us unstirred, if we draw\nno lessons from it, if there is no fiery stirring of will in Ireland to\nmake it a better place to live in, then indeed we may lose hope for our\ncountry. Let us remember the most scornful condemnation in Scripture was\nnot given to the evil but to the indifferent: \"Because thou art neither\nhot nor cold I will spew thee out of my mouth.\" Let us not be the\nLaodiceans of Europe, listless and indifferent to human needs,\nswallowing our whisky and our porter, stupefying our souls, while our\npoor are sweated; letting the children of our cities die with more\ncarelessness about life than the people of any other European country,\nwith sectarian organization's crawling in secrecy like poisonous\nserpents through the undergrowth of swamps and forests. The co-operative\nmovement is at least open and ideal in its aims and objects. It is\nnational and not sectional. It seeks the triumph of no section but the\nunity of our people, where unity alone is possible. Our intransigents\nand extremists of all parties are not hurt or wounded by their adhesion\nto the co-operative ideal. We may make up our minds that the stubborn\nIrish temperament will never be overcome, but it may be won, and the\nmovement which invites all parties and creeds into its ranks and gives\nthem the largest opportunities of working together and understanding\neach other, gives also the largest hope of the gradual melting of old\nbitterness into a common tolerance where what is best essentially wins;\nfor all true triumphs are triumphs not of force, but the conquest by a\nsuperior beauty of what is less beautiful. We should aim at a society\nwhere people will be at harmony in their economic life, will readily\nlisten to different opinions from their own, will not turn sour faces\non those who do not think as they do, but will, by reason and sympathy,\ncomprehend each other and come at last, through sympathy and affection,\nto a balancing of their diversities, as in that multitudinous diversity,\nwhich is the universe, powers and dominions and elements are balanced,\nand are guided harmoniously by the Shepherd of the Ages.\n\n\nTHE END","title":"The National Being: Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":41882}