appling 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 passion 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 passions, 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 passionate 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 identity, 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