enemies, did not arrive at that pitch of power which made it dominant in
Europe simply by militarism. That military power depended on and was
fed by a vigorous intellectual life, and the most generally diffused
education and science existing perhaps in the world. The national being
had been enriched by a long succession of mighty thinkers. A great
subjective life and centuries of dream preceded a great objective
manifestation of power and wealth. The stir in the German Empire which
has agitated Europe was, at its root, the necessity laid on a powerful
soul to surround itself with equal external circumstance. That
necessity is laid on all nations, on all individuals, to make their
external life correspond in some measure to their internal dream. A
lover of beauty will never contentedly live in a house where all things
are devoid of taste. An intellectual man will loathe a disordered
society.

We may say with certainty that the external circumstances of people are
a measure of their inner life. Our mean and disordered little country
towns in Ireland, with their drink-shops, their disregard of cleanliness
or beauty, accord with the character of the civilians who inhabit them.
Whenever we develop an intellectual life these things will be altered,
but not in priority to the spiritual mood. House by house, village by
village, the character of a civilization changes as the character of the
individuals change. When we begin to build up a lofty world within the
national soul, soon the country becomes beautiful and worthy of respect
in its externals. That building up of the inner world we have
neglected. Our excited political controversies, our playing at
militarism, have tended to bring men's thoughts from central depths to
surfaces. Life is drawn to its frontiers away from its spiritual base,
and behind the surfaces we have little to fall back on. Few of our
notorieties could be trusted to think out any economic or social problem