We fall into vain lamenting over this red rapine and wrath, until we divine the genius and secret purpose of that wonderful epoch, so wholly different in inspiration from our own.  The life of races, like the life of men, has its ordered stages, and none can ripen out of season.  That was the epoch of dawning individual consciousness, when men were coming to a keen and vivid realization of themselves and their powers.  Keen consciousness and strong personal will could be developed only through struggle—­through long ages of individual and independent fighting, where the best man led, and often fought for his right to lead with the best of his followers.  Innumerable centers of initiative and force were needed, and these the old tribal life abundantly gave.  The territory of a chief hardly stretched farther than he could ride in a day, so that every part of it had a real place in his heart.  Nor was he the owner of that territory.  He was simply the chosen leader of the men who lived there, perhaps the strongest among many brothers who shared it equally between them.  If another thought himself the better man, the matter was forthwith decided by fighting.

The purpose of all this was not the “survival of the fittest” in the material sense, but a harvest purely spiritual:  the ripening of keen personal consciousness and will in all the combatants, to the full measure of their powers.  The chiefs were the strongest men who set the standard and served as models for the rest, but that standard held the minds of all, the model of perfect valor was in the hearts of all.  Thus was personal consciousness gained and perfected.

If we keep this in mind as the keynote of the whole pagan epoch, we shall be better able to comprehend the new forces which were added to that epoch, and which gradually transformed it.  The greatest was the Message of the New Way.  Deeds are stronger than words, and in the deeds of the first Messengers we can see the new spirit bearing fruit.  The slave of Slemish mountain returned breathing not vengeance for his captivity but pity and generous kindness towards his captors.  Colum the exile did not seek to enlist the Picts against his native land, but sought rather to give the message of that land to the wild Pictish warriors, and to spread humane and generous feeling among them.  Thus was laid the foundation of a wide and universal consciousness; a bridge was built between soul and soul.

From the waning of the Norsemen to the first coming of the Normans is a period of about a hundred and fifty years.  We shall best gain an insight into the national and religious life of that time by gleaning from the Annals the vivid and living pictures they never fail to give,—­pictures which are the records of eye-witnesses.  The strictly contemporary character of the records is vouched for by the correct entry of eclipses:  for instance, “on the day before the calends of September, in the year 1030, there was a darkening of the sun.”