But there is one disadvantage with which we have to reckon, and which for many other reasons besides the one I am now immediately concerned with, we must seek to remove.

A community does not naturally or easily produce for export that for which it has itself no use, taste, or desire.

Whatever latent capacity for artistic handicrafts the Irish peasant may possess, it is very rarely that one finds any spontaneous attempt to give outward expression to the inward aesthetic sense.

And this brings me to a strange aspect of Irish life to which I have often wished, on the proper occasion, to draw public attention.

The matter arises now in the form of a peculiar difficulty which lies in the path of those who endeavour to solve the problem of rural life in Ireland, and which, in my belief, has profoundly affected the fortunes of the race both at home and abroad.
To a sympathetic insight there is a singular and significant void in the Irish conception of a home--I mean the lack of appreciation for the comforts of a home, which might never have been apparent to me had it not obtruded itself in the form of a hindrance to social and economic progress.[9] In the Irish love of home, as in the larger national aspirations, the ideal has but a meagre material basis, its appeal being essentially to the social and intellectual instincts.