Yes, it is not a
sheer advantage to have several strings to one's bow! if we had been
all German, we might have had the science of Germany; if we had been
all Celtic, we might have been popular and agreeable; if we had been
all Latinised, we might have governed Ireland as the French govern
Alsace, without getting ourselves detested. But now we have
Germanism enough to make us Philistines, and Normanism enough to make
us imperious, and Celtism enough to make us self-conscious and
awkward; but German fidelity to Nature, and Latin precision and clear
reason, and Celtic quick-wittedness and spirituality, we fall short
of. Nay, perhaps, if we are doomed to perish (Heaven avert the
omen!), we shall perish by our Celtism, by our self-will and want of
patience with ideas, our inability to see the way the world is going;
and yet those very Celts, by our affinity with whom we are perishing,
will be hating and upbraiding us all the time.
This is a somewhat unpleasant view to take of the matter; but if it
is true, its being unpleasant does not make it any less true, and we
are always the better for seeing the truth. What we here see is not
the whole truth, however. So long as this mixed constitution of our
nature possesses us, we pay it tribute and serve it; so soon as we
possess it, it pays us tribute and serves us.
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