The National Being: Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity by George William Russell

Author:George William Russell
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Ireland -- Economic conditions, Ireland -- Politics and government, Cooperation
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2024-12-12T22:03:00+00:00

XIII

It will ap­pear to the ideal­ist who has con­tem­plated the heav­ens more closely than the earth that the policy I ad­voc­ate is one which only tardily could be put in­to op­er­a­tion, and would be paltry and in­ad­equate as a basis for so­ci­ety. The ideal­ist with the Golden Age already in his heart be­lieves he has only to erect the Golden Ban­ner and dis­play it for mul­ti­tudes to ar­ray them­selves be­neath its folds; there­fore he ad­voc­ates not, as I do, a way to the life, but the life it­self. I am sym­path­et­ic with ideal­ists in a hurry, but I do not think the world can be changed sud­denly by some heav­enly al­chemy, as St. Paul was smit­ten by a light from the over­world. Such light from heav­en is vouch­safed to in­di­vidu­als, but nev­er to na­tions, who pro­gress by an or­derly evol­u­tion in so­ci­ety. Though the heart in us cries out con­tinu­ally, “Oh, hurry, hurry to the Golden Age,” though we think of re­volu­tions, we know that the pa­tient mar­shalling of hu­man forces is wis­dom. We have to de­vise ways and means and light every step clearly be­fore the na­tion will leave its foot­ing in some safe if un­at­tract­ive loc­al­ity to plant it­self else­where. The in­di­vidu­al may be reck­less. The race nev­er can be so, for it car­ries too great a bur­den and too high des­tinies, and it is only when the gods wish to des­troy or chas­tise a race that they first make it mad. Not by re­volu­tions can hu­man­ity be per­fec­ted. I might quote from an old or­acle, “The gods are nev­er so turned away from man as when he as­cends to them by dis­orderly meth­ods.” Our spir­its may live in the Golden Age, but our bod­ily life moves on slow feet, and needs the lan­tern on the path and the staff struck care­fully in­to the dark­ness be­fore us to see that the path bey­ond is not a mor­ass, and the light not a will o’ the wisp.

Oth­er crit­ics may say I would des­troy the vari­ety of civil­iz­a­tion by the in­flex­ible ap­plic­a­tion of a single idea. Well, I real­ize that the net which is spread for Le­viath­an will not cap­ture all the creatures of the deep; and the com­plex­ity of hu­man nature is such that it is im­possible to ima­gine a policy, how­ever fit­ting in cer­tain spheres of hu­man activ­ity, which could be ap­plied to the whole of life. What I think we should aim at is mak­ing the co­oper­at­ive idea fun­da­ment­al in Ir­ish life. But to say fun­da­ment­al is not to say ab­so­lute. Al­ways there will be en­ter­pris­ing per­sons—men of cre­at­ive minds—who will break away from the mass and who will in­sist, per­haps rightly, on an auto­crat­ic con­trol of the en­ter­prises they found, which were made pos­sible alone by their geni­us, and which would not suc­ceed un­less every work­er in the en­ter­prise was mal­le­able by their will. It is un­likely that State ac­tion will cease, or that any Gov­ern­ment we may have will not re­spond to the ap­peal of

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