her in their charge, and what will oppose
them? Men at conflict in their own hearts, opposing each other in the
world, reduce themselves and each other to wretchedness. The race which
could eliminate the factors which promote internal conflict in society
and could organize human energies in harmony, would be powerful beyond
our wildest dreams. Every now and then in world-history we come across
instances of what organized humanity could accomplish. There are
fragments of an architecture so majestic that they awe us as the high
rocks of nature do, and they seem almost like portions of nature itself,
and truly they are so, being portions of nature remade by man, who is
also a nature energy of divine origin. Europe by its conflicts today
is reducing itself to barbarism and powerlessness, and these conflicts
arose out of the internal conflicts in society, for individuals and
nations act outside themselves as they act inside themselves. The
problem for Europe is to create a harmonious life, and it is the problem
for us in Ireland, and we will have to work this out for ourselves. The
creation of a harmonious life among a people must come from within. It
can never come by the imposition of an external law imposed by another
people: Never did master and slave work in true unison, no matter how
benevolent the master or how yielding the slave, for there is in every
man, no matter what his condition, a spark of divine life, and it
will always be ready to stir him out of subjection, as the fires of
earthquake lie below the cultivated plain. Man is a creature who has
free will, and it is by self-devised and self-checked efforts he will
attain his full human stature. So the problem of creating an organic
life in Ireland, a harmony of our people, a union of their efforts for
the common good and for the manifestation of whatever beauty, majesty,
and spirituality is in us, must be one we ourselves must solve for
ourselves.

To be indifferent to the possibilities of human life, to ignore the
problem, is to turn our back on heaven, which fashioned the spirit of
man in its image. If the spirit of man has likeness to Deity, it means
that if it manifests itself fully in the world, the world too becomes
a shadowy likeness of the heavens, and our civilizations will make a
harmony with the diviner spheres. We give still a service of lip belief
to the Scriptures, yet active faith we have not. But they are true,
yesterday, today, and for ever; and