Explore "The National Being" by George William Russell on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
We have descended from the national soul to the material plane, and we must still continue here for a time, because the doctrine that a sane mind can only manifest through a sane body is as true in reference to the State as to the individual, and necessitates a study of social fabrics. The soul creates tendencies and habits in the body, and the body repeats these vibrations automatically and infects the soul again with its old desires. Our religious hatreds created sectarian organizations, and these react again in the national soul, which would, I believe, willingly pass away from that mood, but finds itself incarnated in organizations habituated to sectarian action, and its energies are turned into these hateful channels unwillingly. So a drunkard who now realizes that intemperance is rotting his nature is conquered by the appetites he set up in the past, and with his soul in rebellion he yet satisfies the craving in the body.
The individualism in our economic life reacts on the national being, and prevents concerted action for the general good. We have yet to create harmony of purpose in our economic life, and to bring together interests long separated and unmindful of each other, and make them realize that their interests are identical.