Four Years

Chapter 23

I used to tell the few friends to whom I could speak these secret

thoughts that I would make the attempt in Ireland but fail, for

our civilisation, its elements multiplying by divisions like

certain low forms of life, was all powerful; but in reality I had

the wildest hopes. To-day I add to that first conviction, to that

first desire for unity, this other conviction, long a mere opinion

vaguely or intermittently apprehended: Nations, races and

individual men are unified by an image, or bundle of related

images, symbolical or evocative of the state of mind, which is of

all states of mind not impossible, the most difficult to that man,

race or nation; because only the greatest obstacle that can be

contemplated without despair rouses the will to full intensity. A

powerful class by