The Heather Plot 47 



and the more he knows how to use it, the moie 

 of it awaits him. The whole civilised world is at 

 this moment searching for men to take its ample 

 capital and make use of it on the land, and the 

 search grows keener as the cost of food goes higher. 

 The tendency in this direction is no more than 

 well begun, and Ireland's opportunity is very 

 great had it not been that the agrarian energy is 

 held in foreign fetters. You cannot enslave mind 

 and have muscle free. 



The peasant is afraid to think ; therefore, unfit 

 to work, and unfit to be capitalised. He has not 

 the use of his wits. He has muscle, but not mind, 

 and capital insists on both co-operating. The 

 peasant is bred and trained to regard the free use 

 of mind as a vice and a vital danger ; therefore, 

 fear of thought is among the first of his virtues, 

 and the man afraid to think is no fit man to be 

 entrusted with other men's capital. This is how 

 the Irish peasant is now missing, and bound to 

 miss, the increasing reward for the food producer, 

 already greater than it has been for sixty years, and 

 bound to become much greater still, while agrarian 

 Ireland looks on, industrially disabled, because 

 morally demented. It is not possible to deny 

 mental freedom in the most important interests 

 of life without disabling industrial capacity. 

 You may as well deprive a man of his legs and 

 expect him to run. I owe all that is w r orth having 

 in my own life to my freedom in the use of my 

 mind ; and I ow r e this to my escape from Irish 

 " education," Can any man suppose that if I had 



