In the evening the three of us went ashore and wandered along the sands until we came to the rocks at the north point of the island, where we watched two thousand miles of sea throw its fountains in the air. As we faced westward, there was no land between us and Canada, the home of the evicted.

Iona was full of visitors. We now encountered many of them. A man in his kilt, his wife with a Celtic brooch, and their two or three children following dutifully behind; a young man quietly dressed in his clan tartan, his face spiritual and aloof a little; several young men, more or less spiritual, athletic and clean; some young Glasgow women, just refraining from having a good laugh; boys bare-legged, with bathing suits; a group wandering aimlessly seeing what they had seen before; and suddenly, as we came down over a grassy knoll, an encampment on the western side, consisting of two splendid marquees and over a dozen bell-tents in army formation, to explain the martial music. The young men of the tents were playing football, deck tennis, and other games. Yet through it all the peace of Iona persisted. It is as if everyone were conscious of it. It is in the air. So that one wonders how they are affected privately by it now and then.

I remembered the lot of talk there had been in recent years over building a Celtic college in Iona. The United States had got involved, and there had been the usual—apparently inevitable—wordy battles in the Highlands. I confess I had scoffed at the idea of a college in Iona. We had had enough of that western, blue-rolling, rhetorical, impractical, sentimental, Celtic-twilight nonsense to last us for a century or two, and certainly until we had rigged up some half-decent way of getting bread and butter. If there must be such a college, let it be in Inverness; and, failing Inverness, well, all right, let it be in Oban (which was pretty handsome of one living in Inverness).

I saw now that I was quite wrong. Iona is the place. Here the things of the spirit would have to be uppermost—or a man might go mad. You could see it in the lack of noise, of shouting. It is a dedicated land. Which sounds perhaps a trifle solemn and oppressive, but which might sound: ‘I perceive some fragrance of wondrous odour, as of all flowers collected into one; also some burning as of fire, not penal but somehow very sweet; moreover, also a certain unaccustomed and incomparable gladness diffused in my heart, which suddenly consoles me in a wonderful manner, and gladdens me to such a degree that I can remember no more the sadness, nor any labour.’

I do not know. All we can be sure of is that these words were written in the seventh century of men who lived in the sixth, and that if there is anything at all in the conception of evolution we should be able to add something to the ‘incomparable gladness’ in this twentieth century of the same era. Whatever the nature of that something, it should at least be as remarkable as the recorded experience of the monks. Out of a Celtic college in Iona, it might be as remarkable. Even the Marxian dialectic might look for it there as an expression of background. But I doubt if it could come out of any Highland town on the mainland.