The National Being: Some Thoughts on an Irish PolityRussell, George William
Philosophy
The National Being: Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity
Russell, George William
Cooperation; Ireland -- Economic conditions; Ireland -- Politics and government
is in these men and the men in the cabins in the country that the hope
of Ireland lies. The poor have always helped each other, and it is
they who listen eagerly to the preachers of a social order based on
brotherhood in industry. It is these workers, always necessary but never
yet integrated into the social order, who must be educated, who must
be provided for, who must be accepted fully as comrade in any scheme
of life to be devised and which would call itself Christian. That word,
expressing the noblest and most spiritual conception of humanity, has
been so degraded by misuse in the world that we could almost hate it
with the loathing we have for evil, if we did not know that Hell can as
disguise put on the outward garments of Heaven. Yet what is eternally
true remains pure and uncorrupted, and those who turn to it find it
there--as all finally must turn to it to fulfill their destiny of
inevitable beauty.
IX.
Often with sadness I hear people speak of industrial development in
Ireland, for I feel they contemplate no different system than that which
fills workers with despair in countries where it is more successfully
applied. All these energetic people are conspiring to build factories
and mills and to fill them with human labor, and they believe the more
they do this the better it will be for Ireland. They talk of Ireland
as if it was only admirable as a quantity rather than a quality. They
express delight at swelling statistics and increased trade, but where
do we hear any reflection on the quality of life engendered by this
industrial development? Our civilization is to differ in no way from any
other. No new ideal of life is suggested to differentiate us. We are to
go on exploiting human labor. Our working classes are to increase and
multiply and earn profits for an employing class, as labor has one from
time immemorial in Babylon, in Nineveh, in Rome, and in London
today. But a choice yet remains to us, because the character of our
civilization is not yet fixed. It is mainly germinal. It fills the
spirit with weariness to think of another nation following the old path,
without thought or imagination of other roads leading to new and more
beautiful life. Every now and then, when the world was still vast and
full of undiscovered wonders, some adventurers would leave the harbor,
and steer their galleys past the known coast and the familiar cities and
over unraveled seas, seeking some new land where life might be freer and
ampler than that they had known. Is the old daring gone? Are there
not such spirits among us ready to join in the noblest of all
adventures--the building up of a civilization--so that the human might
reflect the divine order? In the divine order there is both freedom and
solidarity. It is the virtue of the soul to be free and its nature to
love; and when it is free and acts by its own will it is most united
with all other life. Those planetary spirits who move in solemn motion
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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