People tell me that the countryside must always be
stupid and backward, and I get angry, as if it were said that only
townspeople had immortal souls, and it was only in the city that
the flame of divinity breathed into the first men had any unobscured
glow. The countryside in Ireland could blossom into as much beauty
as the hillsides in mediaeval Italy if we could but get rid of our
self-mistrust. We have all that any race ever had to inspire them,
the heavens overhead, the earth underneath, and the breath of life
in our nostrils. I would like to exile the man who would set limits
to what we can do, who would take the crown and sceptre from the
human will and say, marking out some petty enterprise as the limit--
"Thus far can we go and no farther, and here shall our life be stayed."
Therefore I hate to hear of stagnant societies who think because they
have made butter well that they have crowned their parochial
generation with a halo of glory, and can rest content with the
fame of it all, listening to the whirr of the steam separators and
pouching in peace of mind the extra penny a gallon for their milk.
Pages:
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133