Page:The Gaelic State in the Past & Future.djvu/68

 any other the end is in the beginning and the beginning in the end. That we have already seen. We have seen, first, the National State as it existed, and we saw that it was indeed a National State although it was not finally centralised before it was assaulted. We have seen the assault that suspended its completion, and we saw that that assault meant for some centuries the war of a State against a State, a Polity against a Polity, a foreign and alien polity seeking to break and displace the polity of the Nation. We have seen that polity broken arid displaced, and we saw the ideas that went to the building of that polity lying resident in the people and creating a continual warfare with the alien polity that had been imposed upon the country from without. We have seen that those ideas maintained the warfare unceasingly, it being the first principle of life to find an outlet for the ideas of the mind and the impulses of the blood, and to war for them when they are thwarted; and we saw that warfare successful in winning back much of what had been lost, and especially winning back the land on which the old polity had been based. We have seen those ideas breaking out in some remarkable acts reminiscent of the old process of law; and we saw that when some scheme was advocated to the people that could be worked independently of the alien polity it was taken and bent into the form of the stateships in which the old polity had been expressed. In a word, we have seen the end in the beginning, and the beginning in the end, with a persistent continuity throughout. The question is, how may