these two early epochs we shall see the perfecting of the natural man;
the moulding of rounded, gracious and harmonious lives, inspired with
valor and the love of beauty and song.

Did our human destiny stop there, with the perfect life of individual
men and women, we might well say that these two epochs of Ireland
contain it all; that our whole race could go no further. For no man
lived more valiant than Cuculain, more generous than Fergus, more full
of the fire of song than Ossin, son of Find. Nor amongst women were any
sadder than Deirdré and Grania; craftier than Meave, more winsome than
Nessa the mother of Concobar. Perfected flowers of human life all of
them,--if that be all of human life. So, were this all, we might well
consent that with the death of Oscar our roll of history might close;
there is nothing to add that the natural man could add.

But where the perfecting of the natural man ends, our truer human life
begins--the life of our ever-living soul. The natural man seeks victory;
he seeks wealth and possessions and happiness; the love of women, and
the loyalty of followers. But the natural man trembles in the face of
defeat, of sorrow, of subjection; the natural man cannot raise the
black veil of death.

Therefore for the whole world and for our land there was needed another
epoch, a far more difficult lesson,--one so remote from what had been of
old, that even now we only begin to understand it. To the Ireland that
had seen the valor of Cuculain, that had watched the wars of Fergus,--to
the Ireland that listened to the deeds of Find and the songs of
Ossin,--came the Evangel of Galilee, the darkest yet brightest message
ever brought to the children of earth. If we rightly read that Evangel,
it brought the doom of the natural man, and his supersession by the man