This
tendency is now quite visible even among ourselves, and even, as I
have said, within the great sphere of the Semitic genius, the sphere
of religion; and for its justification this tendency appeals to
science, the science of origins; it appeals to this science as
teaching us which way our natural affinities and repulsions lie. It
appeals to this science, and in part it comes from it; it is, in
considerable part, an indirect practical result from it.
In the sphere of politics, too, there has, in the same way, appeared
an indirect practical result from this science; the sense of
antipathy to the Irish people, of radical estrangement from them, has
visibly abated amongst all the better part of us; the remorse for
past ill-treatment of them, the wish to make amends, to do them
justice, to fairly unite, if possible, in one people with them, has
visibly increased; hardly a book on Ireland is now published, hardly
a debate on Ireland now passes in Parliament, without this appearing.
Fanciful as the notion may at first seem, I am inclined to think that
the march of science,--science insisting that there is no such
original chasm between the Celt and the Saxon as we once popularly
imagined, that they are not truly, what Lord Lyndhurst called them,
ALIENS IN BLOOD from us, that they are our brothers in the great
Indo-European family,--has had a share, an appreciable share, in
producing this changed state of feeling.
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