Any serious and liberal habit of mind is worth acquiring, not least ...

Any serious and liberal habit of mind is worth acquiring, not least in an age which the increase of routine and specialism on one side, the extension of leisure and amusement on the other, is likely to make less liberal and less serious. But if I needed another arguement, I should say: Look at Ireland.

There we have the great failure of our history. When I think of the deflexion and absorption of English intelligence and purpose by Ireland, I am inclined to regard it as the one irreparable disaster of our history; and the ground and cause of it was a failure of historical perception: the refusal to see that time and circumstance had created an Irish mind; to learn the idiom in which that mind of necessity -expressed itself; to understand that what we could never remember, Ireland could never forget.

And we live in an age which can afford to forgo no study by which disaster can be averted or eluded. This may seem an unduly grave conclusion to a slight work.

But one must be in earnest sometimes, especially when one's theme is the waning of a great civilization.