III
But there is an explanation of all this crudity and violence in Ireland. For all sorts of reasons, political, social, historical and religious, the critical faculty has rarely been employed and certainly has not been developed. Either you are for a thing or you are against it. Doubt is treated as if it were antagonism. Reluctance to commit oneself to any scheme however fantastic or ill-considered it may be, is treated as treason to the national spirit. A man who asserts his belief in the establishment of an Irish Republic, by force, if necessary, is an Irishman, even though he be a "dago," and any one who is doubtful of the feasibility of this proposal is denounced as a West Briton, an anglicised Irishman, even, on occasions, as "not Irish at all," although his forbears have lived in Ireland for generations. The state of affairs in Ireland is not unlike the state of affairs in Russia, where literary criticism, as a Russian writer has stated, has always tended to be the handmaid of political faction. "Any writer of sufficient talent" says a reviewer in the Times Literary Supplement, "who adopted a liberal attitude was certain of the appreciation of the intelligentsia's acknowledged critical leaders, and hence of a wide and enthusiastic audience. But writers whose instinct for the truth led them to doubt the sufficiency of doctrinaire discontent with the established order were debarred from the aids to literary advancement, and had to struggle against the grain of popular, and even academic, valuation."
It is even worse than that in Ireland, for there, generally speaking, there is hardly any criticism at all, although there is plenty of abuse. In great measure this lack of criticism is due to the fact that all the mind of Ireland has been obsessed by the demand for, or the opposition to, self-government. There has not been any reality in Irish electoral contests for a great many years. Until the growth of Sinn Fein, there seldom were any contests at all. Candidates for parliament were nearly always returned unopposed. Contests, if there were any, were between one Nationalist and another, concerned with matters of detail and not with matters of principle, or, at the most, between a Nationalist and a Unionist, concerned with the advocacy of, or opposition to, Home Rule. Sinn Fein has, indeed, brought a contest to every constituency, but even here the contest is concerned with the old obsession, self-government in one form or self-government in another: Home Rule within the British Commonwealth or a Republic outside it. If one considers that this obsession was nearly always expressed in bitter language, it is not difficult to understand how deplorable its effects have been on the general life of the Irish people. It has temporarily incapacitated them from judging any proposition in a sane and dispassionate fashion; and so the critical faculty in Ireland has languished until at times one fears that it has decayed.
Mr. Yeats is a great creative artist: he is also a great critic. Had he chosen to do so, he could have had an enormous influence on the minds of his countrymen. His pride in his craft, his desire for perfect work, his contempt for subterfuges and makeshifts and ill-considered schemes, his knowledge and his skill, all these would have affected the faith and achievements of his countrymen, imperceptibly, perhaps, but very surely. It is unfortunate that he was not appointed to the Chair of Literature in Trinity College, Dublin. I know that he wished to receive this appointment and was disappointed that he did not receive it. The mind that might have disciplined and developed the imagination of young Irishmen was rejected by Trinity College, and it has turned to tiresome preoccupation with disembodied beings, to table-turning and ouija-boards and the childish investigation of what is called spiritual phenomena, but is, in fact, mere conjurer's stuff.