Sciences.
Of their sciences we know nothing till they were so steeped in the civilisation of older races that originality was hopeless. Still, in the stages through which the intellect of Europe has yet passed, they have played their part with brilliancy. But now that knowledge is assuming a higher and more prosaic phase, it is doubtful whether the deductive brilliancy of the Celtic mind can avail anything against the inductive sobriety of the Aryan. So long as metaphysics were science, and science was theory, the peculiar form of the Celtic mind was singularly well adapted to see through sophistry and to guess the direction in which truth might lie. But now that we have only to question Nature, to classify her answers, and patiently to record results, its mission seems to have passed away. Truth in all its majesty, and Nature in all her greatness, must now take the place of speculation, with its cleverness, and man’s ideas of what might or should be, must be supplanted by the knowledge of God’s works as they exist and the contemplation of the eternal grandeur of the universe which we see around us.
Though these are the highest, they are at the same time the most sober functions of the human mind; and while conferring the greatest and most lasting benefit, not only on the individual who practises them, but also on the human race, they are neither calculated to gratify personal vanity, nor to reward individual ambition.
Such pursuits are not, therefore, of a nature to attract or interest the Celtic races, but must be left to those who are content to sink their personality in seeking the advantage of the common weal.