Writers on psychology have made many studies of what they
call the collective illusion. This strange malady, which consists in all
the world seeing something which in fact does not exist, wrought more
potently on the mind of England than did reason and justice in the Home
Rule controversies of 1886 and 1893. What has occurred may recur. And
since we are to speak here with all the candour of private conversation
I confess that I cannot devise or imagine any specific against such a
recurrence except an exercise in humility of the kind suggested by Mr
Chesterton. My own argument in that direction is perhaps compromised by
the fact that I am an Irishman. Let us therefore fall back on other
testimony. Out of the cloud of witnesses let us choose two or three, and
in the first place M. Alfred Fouillee. M. Fouillee is a Platonist--the
last Platonist in Europe--and consequently an amiable man. He is
universally regarded as the leader of philosophy in France, a position
not in the least shaken by Bergson's brief authority. In a charming and
lucid study of the "Psychology of the Peoples of Europe" Fouillee has
many pages that might serve for an introduction to the Irish Question.
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