So too Ireland: she was half-conquered by the
Normans, broken, racked, ruined and crucified, a century before
the idea of Nationhood had come into existence, and while
centrifugalism was still the one force in Europe. It is thus
quite beside the point to say that she was never a nation, even
in the days of her native rule. Of course she was not. Nor was
England, in those times; nor any other. In every part of the
continent the centrifugal forces were running riot; though in
some there were strong fighting kings to hold things together.
This by way of hurling one more spear at the old cruel doctrine
of race inferiorities and superiorities: at Unbrotherliness and
all its wicked works and ways. I was the European pralaya; when
your duty to your neighbor was everywhere and always to fight
him, to get in the first blow; to kill him before he killed you,
and thank God for his mericies. So Ireland was not exceptional
in that way. Where she was exceptional, bless her sweet heart,
lay, as we shall see, in the fact that while all the rest were
sunk in ignorance and foulest barbarism, and mentall utterly
barren,--she alone had the grace to combine her Kilkenny Cattery
with an exquisite and wonderful illumination of culture. While
she tore herself to pieces with one hand, with the other she was
holding up the torch of learning,--and a very real learning too,
--to benighted Europe; and _then_ (bedad!) she found another hand
again, to be holding the pen with it, and to produce a literature
to make the white angels of God as green as her own holy hills
with envy! _That_ was Ireland!

The Crest-Wave rolled in to her; the spiritual forces descended
far enough to create a cultural illumination, but not far enough
to create political stability. We have seen before that they
touch the artistic creative planes, in their descent, before
they reach the more material planes. So her position is
perfectly comprehensible. The old European manvantara was dying;
elsewhere it was dead. Its forces, when they passed away through
Ireland, were nearly exhausted; in no condition whatever to
penetrate to the material plane and make political greatnesses
and strengths. But they found in her very soil and atmosphere a
spiritual something which enabled them to produce a splendor of
literary creation that perhaps had had no parallel in Europe
since Periclean days: Yes, surely Ireland was much more creative
than Augustan Rome.

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