Symbols

Excerpt From
From A Hermitage

by

Pádraig Pearse

Symbols are very important. The symbol of a true thing is a beneficent thing, is worthy of all homage; the symbol of a false thing, a crude thing, is worthy of all reprobation. A gibbet has come to be the noblest symbol in the world, because it symbolises the noblest thing that has ever been done among men. The red coat of a soldier, a gallant thing in itself, has come to be a symbol of unspeakable evil import because such unspeakable things have been done by the empire for which the red-coated soldier fight, such murders perpetrated, such tyrannies upheld for centuries. Thus, a shameful thing may come to have a glorious significance, a ridiculous thing may achieve venerability, while a goodly thing may become so degraded that the stomach of a strong man heaves when he looks upon it. Consider this: if a man were to walk down O’Connell Street wearing a double-pointed conical hat a full foot high and of a glaring yellow colour, we should laugh, yet when a man mounts the steps of an altar with a hat of that precise pattern on his head we are dumb and reverent, for we see in the preposterous headgear the awful symbol of apostolic succession. This matter of symbols came into my mind today as I watched a bishop administer confirmation. The Church to which I belong, the wise church that had called into her service all the arts, knows better than any other institution, human or divine, the immense potency of symbols: with symbols she exorcises evil spirits, with symbols she calls into play for beneficent purposes the infinite power of omnipotence. And those of her children who honour not her symbols she pronounces anathema.

A nation should exact similar respect for its symbols. Free nations do. They salute their flags with bared heads; they hail with thundering cannon the nincompoops that happen to be their kings. A man with whom you would not sit at meat if he were a private individual, whom you would cut every time you saw him approaching you in the street, receives your homage, and justly receives your homage, when he symbolises the majesty of your Nation. A man whom, as an individual you would consider too insignificant to be an object of your dislike, becomes an object of holy hatred when he symbolises some holy thing that oppresses you or yours.