A
nation is dead where men acknowledge only conventions. We must find out
truth for ourselves, becoming first initiates and finally masters in the
guild of life. The intellect of Ireland is in chains where it ought to
be free, and we have individualism in our economics which ought to be
co-ordinated and sternly disciplined out of the iniquity of free
profiteering. To quicken the intellect and imagination of Ireland, to
co-ordinate our economic life for the general good, should be the
objects of national policy, and will subserve the evolutionary purpose.
The free imagination and the aspiring mind alone climb into the higher
spheres and deflect for us the ethereal currents. It is the multitude
of aristocratic thinkers who give glory to a people and make them of
service to other nations, and it is by the character of the social order
and the quality of brotherhood in it our civilization will endure.
Without love we are nothing.
XX.
I beseech audience from the churches for these thoughts on our Irish
polity, and would recall to them their early history, how when the fiery
spirit of their Lord first manifested on earth, life, near to It,
reflected It as in a glowing glass, and impulses of true living arose.
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