parate riches.
The tragedies of Deirdre and Grania would never have been remembered,
had not the freedom and high regard of women been universal. Such
decorative skill as is shown in the metal-work and pottery that have
come down to us must have borne fruit in every realm of social life, in
embroideries, tapestries, well-designed and beautifully adorned homes.
Music is everywhere spoken of in the old traditions, and the skill of
the poets we can judge for ourselves.

In all that concerns the natural man, therefore, a very high perfection
had been reached. A frame of life had grown habitual, which brought out
the finest vigor and strength and beauty. Romantic love added its riches
to valor, and dignity was given by the ever-present memory of the heroic
past, merging on the horizon with the divine dawn of the world. Manhood
and womanhood had come to perfect flower. The crown rested on the brow
of the nation's life.

When the life of the natural man is perfected, the time comes to strike
the note of the immortal, to open the door of our real and enduring
destiny. Sensual success, the ideal of unregenerate man, was perfectly
realized in Concobar and ten thousand like him. The destiny of
triumphant individual life, the strong man victorious over nature and
other men, was fulfilled. Individual prowess, individual accomplishment,
could go no further.

Nor should we overlook the dark shadows of the picture. Glory is to the
victor, but woe to the vanquished. The continual warfare between tribe
and tribe, between chief and chief, which made every valley a home of
warriors dominated by a rath-fortress, bore abundant fruits of evil.
Death in battle need not be reckoned, or may be counted as pure gain;
but the fate of the wounded, maimed and miserable, the destitution of
women and children left behind, the worse fate of the captives, sold as
they were into exile and slavery,--all these must be included in
the total.

Nor are these material losses the worst. The great evil of the epoch of
tribal war is its reaction on the human spirit. The continual struggle
of ambition draws forth egotism, the desire to dominate for mere
domination, the sense of separation and antagonism between man and man,
tribe and tribe, province and province.

But our real human life begins only when these evil tendencies are
abated; when we learn to watch the life of others as if it were our
own,--as being indeed a part of our own life,--and in every act