Abstract
In a recent article dealing with the development of Irish intellectual attitudes, Sean O'Faolain endorsed "that great scholar Rudolf Thurneysen's observation when examining some early law tracts that they revealed the total inability of the Irish mind to form a concept". O'Faolain deems this intellectual incapacity basic to native thought and pervasive in native society. It is a view which has also received the imprimatur of Professor Binchy, who has heartily adopted Thurneysen's comments and held "the general incapacity for abstract thought" responsible for what he considers to be the impoverished state of native jurisprudence and theology.