speech of which every word has a significance beyond itself, and
Deirdre is, like Helen, a symbol of eternal beauty; and Cuculain
represents as much as Prometheus the heroic spirit, the
redeemer in man.

In so far as these ancient traditions live in the memory of man,
they are contemporary to us as much as electrical science: for the
images which time brings now to our senses, before they can be used
in literature, have to enter into exactly the same world of human
imagination as the Celtic traditions live in. And their fitness
for literary use is not there determined by their freshness but by
their power of suggestion. Modern literature, where it is really
literature and not book-making, grows more subjective year after year,
and the mind has a wider range over time than the physical nature has.
Many things live in it--empires which have never crumbled, beauty
which has never perished, love whose fires have never waned: and,
in this formidable competition for use in the artist's mind, today
stands only its chance with a thousand days. To question the
historical accuracy of the use of such memories is not a matter
which can be rightly raised. The question is--do they express lofty
things to the soul? If they do they have justified themselves.

I have written at some length on the two paths which lie before us,
for we have arrived at a parting of ways. One path leads, and has
already led many Irishmen, to obliterate all nationality from their
work. The other path winds upward to a mountain-top of our own,
which may be in the future the Mecca to which many worshippers will
turn. To remain where we are as a people, indifferent to literature,
to art, to ideas, wasting the precious gift of public spirit we
possess so abundantly in the sordid political rivalries, without