This state of things—­a paradox in action—­carries with it certain metaphysical implications.  The philosophers tell us that all morality centres in the maxim that others are to be treated as ends in themselves, and not as instruments to our ends.  If they are right, then we must picture Ireland as the victim of a radical immoralism.  We must think of her as a personality violated in its ideals, and arrested in its development.  And, indeed, that is no bad way of thinking:  it is the one formula which summarises the whole of her experience.  But the phrasing is perhaps too high and absolute; and the decline and fall of Mr Balfour are a terrible example to those of us who, being young, might otherwise take metaphysics too solemnly.  It will, therefore, at this stage be enough to repeat that, in contemplating the discontent and unrest which constitute the Irish difficulty, Great Britain is contemplating the work of her own hands, the creation of her own mind.  For that reason we can make no progress until we ascertain what sort of mind we have to deal with.

I do not disguise from myself the extremely unpleasant nature of this inquiry.  It is as if a counsel were to open his address by saying:  “Gentlemen of the Jury, before discussing the facts of the case I will examine briefly the mental flaws, gaps, kinks, and distortions of you twelve gentlemen.”  There is, however, this difference.  In the analysis upon which we are engaged the mental attitude of the jury is not merely a fact in the case, it is the whole case.  Let me reinforce my weaker appeal by a passage from the wisest pen in contemporary English letters, that of Mr Chesterton.  There is in his mere sanity a touch of magic so potent that, although incapable of dullness, he has achieved authority, and although convinced that faith is more romantic than doubt, or even sin, he has got himself published and read.  Summarising the “drift” of Matthew Arnold, Mr Chesterton observes: 

“The chief of his services may perhaps be stated thus, that he discovered (for the modern English) the purely intellectual importance of humility.  He had none of that hot humility which is the fascination of saints and good men.  But he had a cold humility which he had discovered to be a mere essential of the intelligence.”

Such a humility, purely hygienic in character, is for Englishmen the beginning of wisdom on the Irish Question.  It is the needle’s eye by which alone they can enter a city otherwise forbidden to them.  Let there be no misunderstanding.  The attitude of mind commended to them is not without its agreeable features.  Closely scrutinised, it is seen to be a sort of inverted vanity.  The student begins by studying himself, an exercise in self-appraisal which need not by any means involve self-depreciation.  What sort of a mind, then, is the English mind?