The National Being: Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity Part 3

Though the heart in us cries out continually, "Oh, hurry, hurry to the Golden Age," though we think of revolutions, we know that the patient marshalling of human forces is wisdom. We have to devise ways and means and light every step clearly before the nation will leave its footing in some safe if unattractive locality to plant itself elsewhere. The individual may be reckless. The race never can be so, for it carries too great a burden and too high destinies, and it is only when the G.o.ds wish to destroy or chastise a race that they first make it mad. Not by revolutions can humanity be perfected. I might quote from an old oracle, "The G.o.ds are never so turned away from man as when he ascends to them by disorderly methods." Our spirits may live in the Golden Age, but our bodily life moves on slow feet, and needs the lantern on the path and the staff struck carefully into the darkness before us to see that the path beyond is not a mora.s.s, and the light not a will o' the wisp.

Other critics may say I would destroy the variety of civilization by the inflexible application of a single idea. Well, I realize that the net which is spread for Leviathan will not capture all the creatures of the deep; and the complexity of human nature is such that it is impossible to imagine a policy, however fitting in certain spheres of human activity, which could be applied to the whole of life. What I think we should aim at is making the co-operative idea fundamental in Irish life.

But to say fundamental is not to say absolute. Always there will be enter rising persons--men of creative minds--who will break away from the ma.s.s and who will insist, perhaps rightly, on an autocratic control of the enterprises they found, which were made possible alone by their genius, and which would not succeed unless every worker in the enterprise was malleable by their will. It is unlikely that State action will cease, or that any Government we may have will not respond to the appeal of the people to do this, that, or the other for them which they are too indolent to do for themselves, or which by the nature of things only governments can undertake. For a principle to be fundamental in a country does not mean that it must be absolute. I hope society in Ireland will be organized that the idea of democratic control of its economic life will so pervade Irish thought that it will be in the body politic what the spinal column is to the body--the pillar on which it rests, the strongest single factor in the body. Another ill.u.s.tration may make still clearer my meaning. In a red sunsetting the glow is so powerful that green hills, white houses, and blue waters, touched by its light, a.s.sume a ruddy color, partly a local color, and partly a reflected light from the sun. Now in the same way, what is most powerful in society multiplies images and shadows of itself, and produces harmonies with itself which are yet not ident.i.ties. It is by a predominating idea that nations achieve the practical unity of their citizens, and national progress becomes possible. In the future structure of society I have no doubt there will be elements to which the socialist, the syndicalist, the capitalist, and the individualist will have contributed. By degrees it will be discovered what enterprises are best directed by the State, by munic.i.p.alities, by groups, or by individuals. But if the idea of democratic control is predominant, those enterprises which are otherwise directed will yet meet the prevalent mood by adopting the ideas of the treatment of the workers enforced in democratically controlled enterprises, and will in every respect, except control, make their standards equal. All the needles of being point to the centres where power is most manifested. The effects of the French revolution--a democratic upheaval--invaded men's minds everywhere. Even the autocratically ruled States, hitherto careless about the people in their underworlds, had to make advances to democracy, and give it some measure of the justice democracy threatened to deal to itself. Without demanding absolutism I do desire a predominant democratic character in our national enterprises, rather than a confused muddle or struggle of interests where nothing really emerges except the egoism of those who struggle.

It will be noticed that in all that has preceded I have referred little to action by government, though it is on governments that democracies over the world are now fixing all their hopes. They believe the State is the right agency to bring about reforms and changes in society. And I must here explain why I do not share their hopes. My distrust of the State in economic reform is based on the belief that governments in great nation-states, even representative governments, are not malleable by the general will. They are too easily dominated by the holders of economic power, are, in fact, always dominated by aristocracies with land or by the aristocracies of wealth. It is the hand at the helm guides the ship. The larger the State is the more easily do the holders of economic power gain political power. The theory of representative government held good in practice, I think, so long as parliaments were engaged in formulating general rights, the right, for example, of the individual to think or profess any religion he pleased; his right not to be deprived of liberty or life without open trial by his fellow-citizens. So long as legislatures were affirming or maintaining these rights, which rich and poor equally desired, they were justified.

But when legislatures began to intervene in economic matters, in the struggles between rich and poor, between capital and labor, it became at once apparent the holders of economic power had also political power; and that the inst.i.tution which operated fairly where universal rights were considered did not operate fairly when there was a conflict between particular interests.

The jury of the nation was found to be packed. At least nine-tenths of the population in Great Britain, for example, belong to the wage-earning cla.s.s. At least nine-tenths of the members of legislatures belong to the cla.s.ses possessing land or capital. Now, why any member of the wage-earning cla.s.s should look with hope to such a.s.semblies I cannot understand. Their ideal is, or should be, economic freedom, together with democratic control of industries, an ideal in every way opposed to the ideal of the majority of the members of the legislatures. The fiction that representative a.s.semblies will work for the general good is proclaimed with enthusiasm; but the moment we examine their actions we see it is not so, and we discover the cause. Where the nation is capitalist and capitalism is the dominant economic factor, legislatures invariably act to uphold it, and legislation tends to fix the system more securely. We see in Great Britain that wage-earners are now openly regarded by the legislatures as a cla.s.s who must not be allowed the same freedom in life as the wealthy. They must be registered, inspected, and controlled in a way which the wealthy would bitterly resent if the legislation referred to themselves. After economic inferiority has been enforced on them by capital, the stigma of human inferiority is attached to the wage-earners by the legislature. But I must not be led away from my theme by the bitter reflections which arise in one who lives in the Iron Age and knows it is Iron, who feels at times like the lost wanderer on trackless fields of ice, which never melt and will not until earth turns from its axis.

I wish to see society organized so that it shall be malleable to the general will. But political and economic progress are obstructed because existing political and economic organizations are almost entirely unmalleable by the general will. Public opinion does not control the press. The press, capitalistically controlled, creates public opinion.

Our legislators have grown so secure that they confess openly they have pa.s.sed measures which they knew would be hateful to the majority of citizens, and which, if they had been voted on, would never have been pa.s.sed. The theory of representative government has broken down. To tell the truth, the life of the nation is so complicated that it is difficult for the private citizen to have any intelligent opinion about national policies, and we can hardly blame the politician for despising the judgment of the private citizen. Government departments are still less malleable by public opinion than the legislature. For an individual to attack the policy of a Government department is almost as hopeless a proceeding as if a laborer were to take pickaxe and shovel and determine to level a mountain which obstructed his view. Yet Government departments are supposed to be under popular control. The Castle in Ireland, theoretically, was under popular control, but it was adamantine in policy. If the cant about popular control of legislation and Government departments is obviously untrue, how much more is it in regard to public services like railways, gas works, mines, the distribution of goods, manufacture, purchase and sale, which are almost entirely under private control and where public interference is bitterly resented and effectively opposed. What chance has the individual who is aggrieved against the great carrying companies? To come lower down, let us take the farmer in the fairs. What way has he of influencing the jobbers and dealers to act honestly by him--they who have formed rings to keep down the prices of cattle? Are they malleable to public opinion?

The farmers who have waited all day through a fair know they are not.

When we consider the agencies through which people buy we find the same thing. The increase of multiple shops, combines, and rings makes the use of the limited power a man had to affect a dealer by transferring his custom to another merchant to dwindle yearly. Everywhere we turn we find this adamantine front presented by the legislature, the State departments, by the agencies of production, distribution, or credit, and it is the undemocratic organization of society which is responsible for nine-tenths of our social troubles. All the vested interests backed up by economic and political power conflict with the public welfare, and the general will, which intends the good of all, can act no more than a paralyzed cripple can walk. We would all choose the physique of the athlete, with his swift, unfettered, easy movements, rather than the body of the cripple if we could, and we have this choice before us in Ireland.

If we concentrate our efforts mainly on voluntary action, striving to make the co-operative spirit predominant, the general will would manifest itself through organizations malleable to that will, flexible and readily adjusting themselves to the desires of the community.

To effect reforms we have not first to labor at the gigantic task of affecting national opinion and securing the majorities necessary for national action. In any district a hundred or two hundred men can at any time form co-operative societies for production, purchase, sale, or credit, and can link themselves by federation with other organizations like their own to secure greater strength and economic efficiency. By following this policy steadily we simplify our economic system, and reduce to fewer factors the forces in conflict in society. We beget the predominance of one principle, and enable that general will for good, which Rousseau theorized about, to find agencies through which it can manifest freely, so changing society from the static condition begot by conflict and obstruction to a dynamic condition where energies and desires manifest freely.

The general will, as Rousseau demonstrated, always intends the good, and if permitted to act would act in a large and n.o.ble way. The change from static to dynamic, from fixed forms to fluid forms, has been coming swiftly over the world owing to the liberation of thought, and this in spite of the obstruction of a society organized, I might almost say, with egomania as the predominant psychological factor. The ancient conception of Nature as a manifestation of spirit is incarnating anew in the minds of modern thinkers, and Nature is not conceived of as material, but as force and continual motion; and they are trying to identify human will with this arcane energy, and let the forces of Nature have freer play in humanity. We begin to catch glimpses of civilizations as far exceeding ours as ours surpa.s.ses society in the Stone Age. In all our democratic movements, in these efforts towards the harmonious fusion of human forces, humanity is obscurely intent on mightier collective exploits than anything conceived of before. The nature of these energies manifesting in humanity I shall try to indicate later on. But to let the general will have free play ought to be the aim of those who wish to build up national organizations for whatever purpose; and to let the general will have free play we require something better than the English invention of representative government, which, as it exists at present, is simply a device to enable all kinds of compromises to be made on matters where there should be no compromise, as if right and wrong could come to an agreement honestly to let things be partly right and partly wrong. We are importing into Ireland some political machinery of this antiquated pattern. I have written the foregoing because I dread Irish people becoming slaves of this machine.

I fear the importers of this machinery will desire to make it do things it can only do badly, and will set it to work with the ferocity of the new broom and will make it an obstruction, so that the real genius of the Irish people will be unable freely to manifest itself. The less we rely on this machinery at present, and the more we desire a machinery of progress, at once flexible and efficient, the better will it be for us later on. What must be embodied in State action is the national will and the national soul, and until that giant being is manifested it is dangerous to let the pygmies set powers in motion which may enchain us for centuries to come.

XIV.

It may seem I have spoken lightly of that infant whose birth I referred to with more solemnity in the opening pages of this book, and indeed I am a little dubious about that infant. The signature of the Irish mind is nowhere present in it, and I look upon it with something of the hesitating loyalty the inhabitant of a new Balkan State night feel for his imported prince, doubtful whether that sovereign will reflect the will of his new subjects or whether his policy will not constrain national character into an alien mould. The signature of the Irish mind is not apparent anywhere in this new machinery for self-government. Our politicians seem to have been unaware that they had any wisdom to learn from the more obvious failures of representative government as they knew it. So far, as I have knowledge, no Irishman during the past century of effort for political freedom took the trouble to think out a form of government befitting Irish circ.u.mstance and character. We left it absolutely to those whom we declared incapable of understanding us or governing us to devise for us a system by which we might govern ourselves. I do not criticize those who devised the new machinery of self-government, but those who did not devise it, and who discouraged the exercise of political imagination in Ireland. It is said of an artist that it was his fantasy first to paint his ideal of womanly beauty, and, when this was done, to approximate it touch by touch to the sitter, and when the sitter cried, "Ah, now it is growing like!" the artist ceased, combining the maximum of ideal beauty possible with the minimum of likeness. Now if we had thought out the ideal structure of Irish government we might have offered it for criticism by those in whose power it was to accept or reject, and have gradually approximated it until a point was reached where the compromise left at least something of our making and imagination in it. There is nothing of us in the Act which is in abeyance as I write. I am less concerned with it than with the creation of a social order, for the social order in a country is the strong and fast fortress where national character is created and preserved. A legislature may theoretically allow self-government, but by its const.i.tution may operate against national character and its expression in a civilization. We have accepted the principle of representative government, and that, I readily concede, is the ideal principle, but the method by which a representative character is to be given to State inst.i.tutions we have not thought out at all. We have committed the error our neighbors have committed of a.s.suming that the representative a.s.sembly which can legislate for general interests can deal equally with particular interests; that the body of men who will act unitedly so as to secure the liberty of person or liberty of thought, which all desire for themselves, will also act wisely where cla.s.s problems and the development of particular industries are concerned. The whole history of representative a.s.semblies shows that the machinery adequate for the furtherance and protection of general interests operates unjustly or stupidly in practice against particular interests. The long neglect of agriculture and the actual condition of the sweated are instances. I agree that representative government is the ideal, but how is it to operate in the legislature and still more in administration? Are government departments to be controlled by Parliament or by the representatives of the particular cla.s.s to promote whose interests special departments were created. I hold that the continuous efficiency of State departments can only be maintained when they are controlled in respect of policy, not by the casual politician whom the fluctuations of popular emotion places at their head, but by the cla.s.s or industry the State inst.i.tution was created to serve. A department of State can conceivably be preserved from stagnation by a minister of strong will, who has a more profound knowledge of the problems connected with his department than even his permanent officials. He might vitalize them from above. But does the party system yield us such Ministers? In practice is not high position the reward of service to party? Is special knowledge demanded of the controller of a Board of Trade or a Board of Agriculture? Do we not all know that the vast majority of Ministers are controlled by the permanent officials of their department. Failing great Ministers, the operations of a department may be vitalized by control over its policy exercised, not by a general a.s.sembly like Parliament, but by a board elected from the cla.s.s or industry the department ostensibly was created to serve. An agricultural department controlled by a council or board composed solely of those making their livelihood out of agriculture and elected solely by their own cla.s.s, would, we may be certain, be practical in its methods. It would receive perpetual stimulus from those engaged in making their living by the industry. Parliaments or senates should confine themselves to matters of general interest, leaving particular or special interests to those who understand them, to the specialists, and only intervene when national interests are involved by a clashing of particular interests. Our State inst.i.tutions will never fulfill their functions efficiently until they are subject in respect of policy not to general control, but the control of the cla.s.s they were created to serve.

That ideal can only be realized fully when all industries are organized.

But we should work towards it. Parliament may act as a kind of guardian of the unorganized, but, once an industry is organized, once it has come of age, it must resent domination by bodies without the special knowledge of which it has the monopoly within itself. It should not tolerate domination by the unexpert outsider, whatever may be his repute in other spheres. It is only when industries are organized that the democratic system of election can justify itself by results in administration. When a county, let us say, chooses a member of Parliament to represent every interest, only too often it chooses a man who can represent few interests except his own. The greatest common denominator of the const.i.tuents is as a rule some fluent utterer of plat.i.tudes. But if the farmers in a county, or the manufacturers in a county, or the workers in a county, had each to choose a man to represent them, we may be certain the farmers would choose one whom they regarded as competent to interpret their needs, the manufacturers a man of real ability, and labor would select its best intelligence. Persons engaged in special work rarely fall to recognize the best men in their own industry. Then they judge somewhat as experts, whereas they are by no means experts when they are asked to select a representative to represent everybody in every industry. To secure good government I conceive we must have two kinds of representative a.s.semblies running concurrently with their spheres of influence well defined. One, the supreme body, should be elected by counties or cities to deal with general interests, taxation, justice, education, the duties and rights of individual citizens as citizens. The other bodies should be elected by the people engaged in particular occupations to control the policy of the State inst.i.tutions created to foster particular interests. The average man will elect people to his mind whose deliberations will be in a sphere where the ideas of the average man ought to be heard and must be respected. The specialists in their department of industry will elect experts to work in a sphere where their knowledge will be invaluable, and where, if it is not present, there will be muddle.

The machinery of government ought never to be complicated, and ought to be easily understood by the citizens. In Ireland, where we have at present no thought of foreign policy, no question of army or navy, departments of State should fall naturally into a few divisions concerned with agriculture, education, local government, justice, police, and taxation. The administration of some of these are matters of national concern, and they should and must be under parliamentary control, and that control should be jealously protected. Others are sectional, and these should be controlled in respect of policy by persons representative of these sections, and elected solely by them. I think there should also be a department of Labor. I am not sure that the main work of the Minister in charge ought not to be the organization of labor in its proper unions or guilds. It is a work as important to the State as the organization of agriculture, and indeed from a humanitarian point of view more urgent. Nothing is more lamentable, nothing fills the heart more with despair, than the mult.i.tude of isolated workers, sweated, unable to fix a price for their work, ignorant of its true economic value; connected with no union, unable to find any body to fall back on for help or advice in trouble, neglected altogether by society, which yet has to pay a heavy price in disease, charity, poor rates, and in social disorder for its neglect. Was not the last Irish rising largely composed of those who were economically neglected and oppressed?

Society bears a heavier burden for its indifference than it would bear if it accepted responsibility for the organization of labor in its own defense. The State in these islands recommends farmers to organize for the protection of their interests and a.s.sists in the organization, and leaves the organized farmers free to use their organizations as they will. As good a case could be made for the State aiding in the organization of labor for the protection of its own interests. A ministry of labor should seek out all wage-earners; where there is no trade union one should be organized, and, where one exists, all workers should be pressed to join it. Such a ministry ought to be the city of refuge for the proletarian, and the Minister be the Father of Labor, fighting its battles for an entry into humanity and its rightful place in civilization.

If we consider the problem of representation, it should not be impossible to devise a system of which the foundation might be the County Councils, where there would be as sub-divisions, committees for local government, agriculture, and technical instruction or trade to deal with local administration in these matters. These committees should send representatives to general councils of local government, agriculture, and trade. The election should not be by the County Council as a body, but by the committees, so that traders would have no voice in choosing a representative for farmers, nor farmers interfere in the choice of manufacturers or traders selecting a representative on a general Council of Trade, and it should be regarded as ridiculous any such intervention as for a War Office to claim it should have a voice along with the Admiralty in the selection of captains and commanders of vessels of war. At these general councils, which might meet twice a year for whatever number of days may be expedient, general policies would be decided and boards elected to ensure the carrying out by the officials of the policies decided upon. By this process of selection men who had to control Boards of Agriculture, Trade, or Local Government would be three times elected, each time by a gradually decreasing electorate, with a gradually increasing special knowledge of the matters to be dealt with. A really useless person may contrive to be chosen as representative by a thousand electors. It requires an able man to convince a committee of ten persons, themselves more or less specialists, that his is the best brain among them. Where national education, a th.o.r.n.y subject in Ireland, is concerned, I think the educationalists in provinces might be asked to elect representatives from their own profession on a Council of Education to act as an advisory body to the Minister of Education. County Council elections are not exactly means by which miracles of culture are discovered. A man who came to be member of a board of control would at least have proved his ability to others engaged on work like his own who have special knowledge of it and of his capacity to deal with it. If this system was accepted, we would not have traders on our Council of Agriculture protesting against the farmers organizing their industry, because none but persons concerned with agriculture would be a owed to be members of agricultural committees, and this would, of course, involve the concentration of merchants and manufacturers upon the work of a Board of Trade and the control of a policy of technical instruction suitable for industrial workers, where agricultural advisers in their turn would be out of place. Control so exercised over the policy of State inst.i.tutions would vitalize them, and tend to make them enter more intimately into the department of national effort they were created to foster. The stagnation which falls on most Government departments is due to this, that the responsible heads rarely have a knowledge great enough to enable them to inaugurate new methods, that parliamentary control is never adequate, is rarely exercised with knowledge, and there is always a party in power to defend the policy of their Minister, for if one Minister is successfully attacked a whole party goes out of power. We, in Ireland, should desire above all things efficiency in our public servants. They will stagnate in their offices unless they are continually stimulated by intimate connection with the cla.s.s they work for and who have a power of control. This system would also, I believe, lead to less jobbery. Men in an a.s.sembly, where theoretically every cla.s.s and interest are represented, often conspire to make bad appointments, because only a minority have knowledge of what qualifications the official ought to have, and they are outvoted by representatives who do their friends such good turns often in sheer ignorance that they are betraying their const.i.tuents. Where specialists have power, and where the well-being of their own industry is concerned, they never willingly appoint the inefficient. Such an organization of our County Council system would operate also to break up sectarian cliques. The feeling of organized cla.s.ses, farmers, or industrialists, concerned about their own well-being, would oppose itself to sectarian sentiment where its application was unfitting.

In the system of representative government I have outlined, we would have one supreme or national a.s.sembly concerned with general interests, justice, taxation, education, the apportioning of revenue to its various uses, reserving to itself direct control over the policy of the departments of treasury, police, judiciary, all that affects the citizens equally; and, beneath it, other councils, representative of cla.s.ses and special interests, controlling the policy and administration of the State departments concerned with their work. Where everybody was concerned everybody would have that measure of control which a vote confers; where particular interests were concerned these interests would not be hampered in their development by the intervention of busybodies from outside. Of course on matters where particular interests clashed with general interests, or were unable to adjust themselves to other interests, the supreme a.s.sembly would have to decide. The more sectional interests are removed from discussion in the National a.s.sembly, and the more it confines itself to general interests the more will it approximate to the ideal sense, be less the haunt of greed, and more the vehicle of the national will and the national being.

By the application of the principle of representative government now in force, one is reminded of nothing so much as the palette of an artist who had squeezed out the primary colors and mixed them into a greasy drab tint, where the purity of every color was lost, or the most powerful pigment was in dull domination. If the modification of the representative principle I have outlined was in operation, with each interest or industry organized, and freed from alien interference, the effect might be likened to a disc with the seven primary colors raying from a centre, and made to whirl where the motion produced rather the effect of pure light. We must not mix the colors of national life until conflicting interests muddle themselves into a gray drab of human futility, but strive, so far as possible, to keep them pure and unmixed, each retaining its own peculiar l.u.s.tre, so that in their conjunction with others they will harmonize, as do the pure primary colors, and in their motion make a light of true intelligence to prevail in the national being.

XV.

No policy can succeed if it be not in accord with national character.

If I have misjudged that, what is written here is vain. It may be asked, can any one abstract from the chaos which is Irish history a prevailing mood or tendency recurring again and again, and a.s.sert these are fundamental? It is difficult to define national character, even in long-established States whose history lies open to the world; but it is most difficult in Ireland, which for centuries has not acted by its own will from its own centre, where national activity was mainly by way of protest against external domination, or a readjustment of itself to external power. We can no more deduce the political character of the Irish from the history of the past seven hundred years than we can estimate the quality of genius in an artist whom we have only seen when grappling with a burglar. The political character of a people emerges only when they are shaping in freedom their own civilization. To get a clue in Ireland we must slip by those seven centuries of struggle and study national origins, as the lexicographer, to get the exact meaning of a word, traces it to its derivation. The greatest value our early history and literature has for us is the value of a clue to character, to be returned to again and again in the maze of our infinitely more complicated life and era.

In every nation which has been allowed free development, while it has the qualities common to all humanity, it will be found that some one idea was predominant, and in its predominance regrouped about itself other ideas. With our neighbors I believe the idea of personal liberty has been the inspiring motive of all that is best in its political development, whatever the reactions and oppressions may have been. In ancient Attica the idea of beauty, proportion, or harmony in life so pervaded the minds of the citizens that the surplus revenues of the State were devoted to the beautifying of the city. We find that love for beauty in its art, its literature, its architecture; and to Plato, the highest mind in the Athenian State, Deity itself appeared as Beauty in its very essence. That mighty mid-European State, whose ambitions have upset the world, seems to conceive of the State as power. Other races have had a pa.s.sion for justice, and have left codes of law which have profoundly affected the life of nations which grew up long after they were dead. The cry of ancient Israel for righteousness rings out above all other pa.s.sions, and its laws are essentially the laws of a people who desired that morality should prevail. We have to discover for ourselves the ideas which lie at the root of national character, and so inculcate these principles that they will pervade the nation and make it a spiritual solidarity, and unite the best minds in their service, and so control those pa.s.sionate and turbulent elements which are the cause of the downfall and wreckage of nations by internal dissensions. I desire as much as any one to preserve our national ident.i.ty, and to make it worthy of preservation, and this can only be done by the domination of some inspiring ideal which will draw all hearts to it; which may at first have that element of strangeness in it which Ben Jonson said was in all excellent beauty, and which will later become--as all high things we love do finally become--familiar to us, and nearer and closer to us than the beatings of our own hearts.

When ideals which really lie at the root of our being are first proclaimed, all that is external in life protests. So were many great reformers martyred, but they left their ideals behind them in the air, and men breathed them and they became part of their very being.

Nationality is a state of consciousness, a mood of definite character in our intellectual being, and it is not perceived first except in profound meditation; it does not become apparent from superficial activities any more than we could, by looking at the world and the tragic history of mankind, discover that the Kingdom of Heaven is within us. That knowledge comes to those who go within themselves, and not to those who seek without for the way, the truth, and the life. But, once proclaimed, the incorruptible spiritual element in man intuitively recognizes it as truth, and it has a profound effect on human action. There is, I believe, a powerful Irish character which has begun to rea.s.sert itself in modern times, and this character is in essentials what it was two thousand years ago. We discover its first manifestation in the ancient clans. The clan was at once aristocratic and democratic. It was aristocratic in leadership and democratic in its economic basis. The most powerful character was elected as chief, while the land was the property of the clan. That social order indicates the true political character of the Irish. Races which last for thousands of years do not change in essentials. They change in circ.u.mstance. They may grow better or worse, but throughout their history the same fundamentals appear and rea.s.sert themselves. We can see later in Irish literature or politics, as powerful personalities emerged and expressed themselves, how the ancient character persisted. Swift, Goldsmith, Berkeley, O'Grady, Shaw, Wilde, Parnell, Davitt, Plunkett, and many others, however they differed from each other, in so far as they betrayed a political character, were intensely democratic in economic theory, adding that to an aristocratic freedom of thought. That peculiar character, I believe, still persists among our people in the ma.s.s, and it is by adopting a policy which will enable it to manifest once more that we will create an Irish civilization, which will fit our character as the glove fits the hand.

During the last quarter of a century of comparatively peaceful life the co-operative principle has once more laid hold on the imagination of the Irish townsman and the Irish countryman. The communal character is still preserved. It still wills to express itself in its external aspects in a communal civilization, in an economic brotherhood. That movement alone provides in Ireland for the aristocratic and democratic elements in Irish character. It brings into prominence the aristocracy of character and intelligence which it is really the Irish nature to love, and its economic basis is democratic. A large part of our failure to achieve anything memorable in Ireland is due to the fact that, influenced by the example of our great neighbors, we reversed the natural position of the aristocratic and democratic elements in the national being. Instead of being democratic in our economic life, with the aristocracy of character and intelligence to lead us, we became meanly individualistic in our economics and meanly democratic in leadership. That is, we allowed individualism--the devilish doctrine of every man for himself--to be the keynote of our economic life; where, above all things, the general good and not the enrichment of the individual should be considered. For our leaders we chose energetic, common-place types, and made them represent us in the legislature; though it is in leadership above all that we need, not the aristocracy of birth, but the aristocracy of character, intellect, and will. We had not that aristocracy to lead us. We chose instead persons whose ideas were in no respect n.o.bler than the average to be our guides, or rather to be guided by us. Yet when the aristocratic character appeared, however imperfect, how it was adored!

Ireland gave to Parnell--an aristocratic character--the love which springs from the deeps of its being, a love which it gave to none other in our time.

With our great neighbors what are our national characteristics were reversed. They are an individualistic race. This individualism has expressed itself in history and society in a thousand ways. Being individualistic in economics, they were naturally democratic in politics. They have a genius for choosing forcible average men as leaders. They mistrust genius in high places, Intensely individualistic themselves, they feared the aristocratic character in politics. They desired rather that general principles should be a.s.serted to encircle and keep safe their own national eccentricity. They have gradually infected us with something of their ways, and as they were not truly our ways we never made a success of them. It is best for us to fall back on what is natural with us, what is innate in character, what was visible among us in the earliest times, and what, I still believe, persists among us--a respect for the aristocratic intellect, for freedom of thought, ideals, poetry, and imagination, as the qualities to be looked for in leaders, and a bias for democracy in our economic life. We were more Irish truly in the heroic ages. We would not then have taken, as we do today, the huckster or the publican and make them our representative men, and allow them to corrupt the national soul. Did not the whole vulgar mob of our politicians lately unite to declare to the world that Irish nationality was impossible except it was floated on a sea of liquor? The image of Kathleen ni Houlihan anciently was beauty in the hearts of poets and dreamers. We often thought her unwise, but never did we find her ign.o.ble; never was she without a flame of idealism in her eyes, until this ign.o.ble crew declared alcohol to be the only possible basis of Irish nationality.

In the remote past we find the national instincts of our people fully manifested. We find in this early literature a love for the truth-teller and for the hero. Indeed they did not choose as chieftains of their clans men whom the bards could not sing. They reverenced wisdom, whether in king, bard, or ollav, and at the same time there was a communal basis for economic life. This heroic literature is, as our Standish O'Grady declared, rather prophecy than history. It reveals what the highest spirits deemed the highest, and what was said lay so close to the heart of the race that it is still remembered and read. That literature discloses the character of the national being, still to be manifested in a civilization, and it must flame out before the tale which began among the G.o.ds is closed. Whatever brings this communal character into our social order, and at the same time desires the independent aristocratic intellect, is in accord with the national tradition. The co-operative movement is the modern expression of that mood. It is already making a conquest of the Irish mind, and in its application to life predisposing our people to respect for the man of special attainments, independent character, and intellect. A social order which has made its economics democratic in character needs such men above all things. It needs aristocratic thinkers to save the social order from stagnation, the disease which eats into all harmonious life. We shall succeed or fail in Ireland as we succeed or fail to make democracy prevail in our economic life, and aristocratic ideals to prevail in our political and intellectual life.

In all things it is best for a people to obey the law of their own being. The lion can never become the ox, and "one law for the lion and the ox is oppression."

Now that the hammer of Thor is wrecking our civilizations, is destroying the body of European nationalities, the spirit is freer to reshape the world nearer to the heart's desire. Necessity will drive us along with the rest to recast our social order and to fix our ideals. Necessity and our own hearts should lead us to a brotherhood in industry. It should be horrible to us the thought of the greedy profiteer, the pursuit of wealth for oneself rather than the union of forces for the good of all and the creation of a brotherly society. The efforts of individuals to ama.s.s for themselves great personal wealth should be regarded as ign.o.ble by society, and as contrary to the national spirit, as it is indeed contrary to all divine teaching. Our ideal should be economic harmony and intellectual diversity. We should regard as alien to the national spirit all who would make us think in flocks, and discipline us to an unintellectual commonalty of belief. The life of the soul is a personal adventure, a quest for the way and the truth and the life. It may be we shall find the ancient ways to be the true ways, but if we are led to the truth blindfolded and without personal effort, we are like those whom the Scripture condemns for entering into Paradise, not by the straight gate, but over the wall, like thieves and robbers. If we seek it for ourselves and come to it, we shall be true initiates and masters in the guild.

No people seem to have greater natural intelligence than the Irish. No people have been so unfortunately cursed with organizations which led them to abnegate personal thought, and Ireland is an intellectual desert where people read nothing and think nothing; where not fifty in a hundred thousand could discern the quality of thought in the Politics of Aristotle or the Republic of Plato as being in any way deeper than a leading article in one of their daily papers. And we, whose external life is so mean, whose ignorance of literature is so great, are yet flattered by the suggestion that we have treasures of spiritual and intellectual life which should not be debased by external influences, and so it comes about that good literature is a thing unpurchasable except in some half-dozen of the larger towns. Any system which would suppress the aristocratic, fearless, independent intellect should be regarded as contrary to the Irish genius and inimical to the national being.

XVI.

Among the many ways men have sought to create a national consciousness, a fountain of pride to the individual citizen, is to build a strong body for the great soul, and it would be an error to overlook--among other modern uprisings of ancient Irish character--the revival of the military spirit and its possible development in relation to the national being.

National solidarity may be brought about by pressure from without, or by the fusion of the diverse elements in a nation by a heat engendered from within. But to Create national solidarity by war is to attain but a temporary and unreal unity, a gain like theirs who climb into the Kingdom not by the straight gate, but over the wall like a robber. When one nation is threatened by another, great national sacrifices will be made, and the latent solidarity of its humanity be kindled. But when the war is over, when the circ.u.mstances uniting the people for a time are past, that spirit rapidly dies, and people begin their old antagonisms because the social order, in its normal working, does not constantly promote a consciousness of ident.i.ty of interest.

Almost all the great European states have fortified their national being by militarism. Everything almost in their development has been subordinated to the necessities of national defense, and hence it is only in times of war there is any real manifestation of national spirit.

It is only then that the citizens of the Iron Age feel a transitory brotherhood. It is a paradoxical phenomenon, possible only in the Iron Age, that the highest instances of national sacrifice are evoked by warfare--the most barbarous of human enterprises. To make normal that spirit of unity which is now only manifested in abnormal moments in history should be our aim; and as it is the Iron Age, and material forces are more powerful than spiritual, we must consider how these fierce energies can be put in relation with the national being with least debas.e.m.e.nt of that being. If the body of the national soul is too martial in character, it will by reflex action communicate its character to the spirit, and make it harsh and domineering, and unite against it in hatred all other nations. We have seen that in Europe but yesterday.

The predominance in the body of militarist practice will finally drive out from the soul those unfathomable spiritual elements which are the body's last source power in conflict, and it will in the end defeat its own object, which is power. When nations at war call up their reserves of humanity to the last man capable of bearing arms, their leaders begin also to summon up those bodiless moods and national sentiments which are the souls of races, and their last and most profound sources of inspiration and deathless courage. The war then becomes a conflict of civilizations and of spiritual ideals, the aspirations and memories which const.i.tute the fundamental basis of those civilizations. Without the inspiration of great memories or of great hopes, men are incapable of great sacrifices. They are rationalists, and the preservation of the life they know grows to be a desire greater than the immortality of the spiritual life of their race. A famous j.a.panese general once said it was the power to hold out for the last desperate quarter of an hour which won victories, and it is there spiritual stamina reinforces physical power. It is a mood akin to the ecstasy of the martyr through his burning. Though in these mad moments neither spiritual nor material is consciously differentiated, the spiritual is there in a fiery fusion with all other forces. If it is absent, the body unsupported may take to its heels or will yield. It has played its only card, and has not eternity to fling upon the table in a last gamble for victory.

A military organization may strengthen the national being, but if it dominates it, it will impoverish its life. How little Sparta has given to the world compared with Attica. Yet when national ideals have been created they a.s.sume an immeasurably greater dignity when the citizens organize themselves for the defense of their ideals, and are prepared to yield up life itself as a sacrifice if by this the national being may be preserved. A creed always gains respect through its martyrs. We may grant all this, yet be doubtful whether a militarist organization should be the main support of the national being in Ireland. The character of the ideal should, I believe, be otherwise created, and I am not certain that it could not be as well preserved and defended by a civil organization, such as I have indicated, as by armed power. Our geographical position and the slender population of our country also make it evident that the utmost force Ireland could organize would make but a feeble barrier against a.s.sault by any of the greater States. We have seen how Belgium, a country with a population larger than that of Ireland, was thrust aside, crushed and bleeding, by one stroke from the paw of its mighty neighbor.* The military and political inst.i.tutions of a small country are comparatively easy to displace, but it would be a task infinitely more difficult to destroy ideals or to extinguish a national being based on a social order, democratic and co-operative in character, the soul of the country being continually fed by inst.i.tutions which, by their very nature, would be almost impossible to alter unless destruction of the whole humanity of the country was aimed at. National ideals, based on a co-operative social order, would have the same power of resistance almost as a religion, which is, of all things, most unconquerable by physical force, and, when it is itself militant, the most powerful ally of military power. The aim of all nations is to preserve their immortality. I do not oppose the creation of a national army for this purpose. There are occasions when the manhood of a nation must be prepared to yield life rather than submit to oppression, when it must perish in self-contempt or resist by force what wrong would be imposed by force. But I would like to point out that for a country in the position of Ireland the surest means of preserving the national being by the sacrifice and devotion of the people are economic and spiritual.

* Since this book was written Ireland has had a tragic ill.u.s.tration of the truth of what is urged in these pages.

Our political life in the past has been sordid and unstable because we were uncultured as a nation. National ideals have been the possession of the few in Ireland, and have not been diffused. That is the cause of our comparative failure as a nation. If we would create an Irish culture, and spread it widely among our people, we would have the same unfathomable sources of inspiration and sacrifice to draw upon in our acts as a nation as the individual has who believes he is immortal, and that his life here is but a temporary foray into time out of eternity.

Yet we have much to learn from the study of military organization. The great problem of all civilizations is the creation of citizens: that is, of people who are dominated by the ideal of the general welfare, who will sink private desire and work harmoniously with their fellow-citizens for the highest good of their race. While we may all agree that war brings about an eruption of the arcane and elemental forces which lie normally in the pit of human life, as the forces which cause earthquakes lie normally asleep in the womb of the world, none the less we must admit that military genius has discovered and applied with mastery a law of life which is of the highest importance to civilization--far more important to civil even than to military development--and that is the means by which the individual will forget his personal danger and sacrifice life itself for the general welfare.

In no other organization will men in great ma.s.ses so entirely forget themselves as men will in battle under military discipline. What is the cause of this? Can we discover how it is done and apply the law to civil life?

The military discipline works miracles. The problem before the captains of armies is to take the body of man, the most naturally egoistic of all things, which hates pain and which will normally take to its legs in danger and try to save itself, and to dominate it so that the body and the soul inhabiting it will stand still and face all it loathes. And the problem is solved in the vast majority of cases. After military training the civilians who formerly would fly before a few policemen will manfully and heroically stand, not the blows of a baton, but a whole hail of bullets, a cannonade lasting through a day; nay, they will for weeks and months, day by day, risk and lose life for a cause, for an idea, at a word of command. They may not have half as good a cause to lose life for as they had as a mob of angry civilians, but they will face death now, and the chances of mutilation and agony worse than death. Can we inspire civilians with the same pa.s.sionate self-forgetfulness in the pursuit of the higher ideals of peace? Men in a regiment have to a large extent the personal interests abolished. The organization they now belong to supports them and becomes their life. By their union with it a new being is created. Exercise, drill, maneuver, accentuate that unity, and esprit de corps arises, so that they feel their highest life is the corporate one; and that feeling is fostered continually, until at last all the units, by some law of the soul, are as it were in spite of themselves, in spite of the legs which want to run, in spite of the body which trembles with fear, constrained to move in obedience to the purpose of the whole organism expressed by its controlling will; and so we get these devoted ma.s.ses of men who advance again and again under a hail more terrible than Dante imagined falling in his vision of the fiery world.

There is nothing like it in civilian life, but yet the aim of the higher minds in all civilizations is to create a similar devotion to civic ideals, so that men will not only, as Pericles said, "give their bodies for the commonwealth," but will devote mind, will, and imagination with equal a.s.siduity and self-surrender to the creation of a civilization which will be the inheritance of all and a cause of pride to every one, and which will bring to the individual a greater beauty and richness of life than he could finally reach by the utmost private efforts of which he was capable.