With this enunciation of the main proposition of my book, I may now indicate the order in which I shall endeavour to establish its truth.  I have said enough to show that I do not ignore the historical causes of our present state; but with so many facts with which we can deal confronting us, I propose to review the chief living influences to which the Irish mind and character are still subjected.  These influences fall naturally into three distinct categories and will be treated in the three succeeding chapters.  The first will show the effect upon the Irish mind of its obsession by politics.  The next will deal with the influence of religious systems upon the secular life of the people.  I shall then show how education, which should not only have been the most potent of all the three influences in bringing our national life into line with the progress of the age, but should also have modified the operation of the other two causes, has aggravated rather than cured the malady.

Whatever impression I may succeed in making upon others, I may here state that, as the result of observation and reflection, the conclusion has been forced upon me that the Irish mind is suffering from considerable functional derangement, but not, so far as I can discern, from any organic disease.  This is the basis of my optimism.  I shall submit in another chapter, which will conclude the first, the critical part of my book, certain new principles of treatment which are indicated by the diagnosis; and I would ask the reader, before he rejects the opinions which are there expressed, to persevere through the narrative contained in the second part of the book.  There he will find in process of solution some of the problems which I have indicated, and the principles for which a theoretical approval has been asked, in practical operation, and already passing out of the experimental stage.  The story of the Self-help Movement will strike the note of Ireland’s economic hopes.  The action of the Recess Committee will be explained, and the concession of their demand by the establishment of a ’Department of Agriculture and other rural industries and for Technical Instruction for Ireland,’ will be described.  This will complete the story of a quiet, unostentatious movement which will some day be seen to have made the last decade of the nineteenth century a fit prelude to a future commensurate with the potentialities of the Irish people.

FOOTNOTES: 

[4] I speak from personal knowledge when I say that the leaders of Irish industry and commerce are fully alive to the practical consideration which they have now to devote to the new conditions by which they are surrounded.  They recognise that the intensified foreign competition which harasses them is due chiefly to German education and American enterprise.  They are deep in the consideration of the form which technical education should take to meet their peculiar needs; and I am confident that Ulster will make a sound and useful contribution to the solution of the commercial and industrial problems which confront the manufacturers of the United Kingdom.