standpoint. Thus the position of women question,
the marriage question, the education question, social questions of all kinds, are in Ibsen's social dramas restated from the point of view of the dramatist. They are not answered. They are merely put. One
sees in action how individual tendency and social
convention work themselves out; how the bourgeois
ideal of morals would be expressed if those who held
it knew how to express it; liow wretchedly ignoble
a creature Mrs. Grundy is when she speaks her mind,
and how mean are the actions she habitually
approves; how disastrous to the whole moral and
intellectual nature are the mechanical system of
education and the petty ideals which characterise
modern commercial communities. Ibsen applies the
microscope with merciless intelligence and skill. If
there be such a science as social pathology, he is its
first professor. He does not in the least care for
parties. His sympathy for humanity is greater tlian
for that which is misnamed the people. He is one
of the few earnest men who look both before and
after, who want to know whither we are pushing our
descendants. For not only are our present actions
determined by the past passions of other people —
our progenitors, — but our own hap-liazard life from
bed to board, and from board to bed, is determining
the happiness, misery, life, and death of countless
generations in the future. This is the almost para-
lysing conclusion of the acceptance of the principle
of heredity.
Ibsen might be set down as a moralist, though
like all great ethical teachers lie is never directly
didactic. He leaves his men and women to tell
— sometimes even in their casual utterances, in little
unregarded traits — the bitter story of their own
weaknesses; but there the most self-satisfied reader
will find enough to disturb the even current of his
soul. Ibsen is saved from the common fault of forcing
a moral by his dominant artistic motive, and his
immense humour. There is an instance of the play
of these in the scene at the close of A71 Enemy of
Society, where Dr. Stockman makes his speecli upon
the duty of rebellion against the majority, which,
he says, must always be in the wrong. Even there,
where perhaps Ibsen more than elsewhere speaks his
own mind, the artist does not forget himself. The
little weaknesses Stockmann discloses freely in his
excited oration have been indicated beforehand, so
that the presentation of the enthusiastic sanitary
and social reformer is consistent tliroughout. This
speech of Dr. Stockmann's might usefully be com-
pared with the speech in the House of Lords of
l’Homme qui rit. Both orators wasted their breath
upon hopelessly unsympathetic hearers, and both
knew it. They lioth railed as if the government of
the world were in the hands of their audience; and they both made themselves rather ridiculous. But the crassest Philistine who reads either the one or the other knows in his inmost soul that the orator was right and that the audience was wrong, and sympathises accordingly. Of course he straightway goes to hiss or imprison the first reformer that comes his way; but some little wedge has made an opening into his mind which may one day be large enough to make him uneasy.
The four dramas which have recently been made available for English readers may be briefly sketched, although the peculiar method of Ibsen's writings renders them difficult to summarise,and nearly impossible to quote. Nora, though partly an example of heredity, is in the main a drama of marriage. Nora and Helmer are the couple. Helmer has been over-worked, and though he himself does not realise it, seems to the doctors to stand in absolute need of a winter in Italy. His wife determines that he shall have it. There are no resources; but she resolves to find the money. No other means offering themselves, she forges her father's name to a bill, and secures the re-establishment of her husband's health. Her father dies before she is able to inform him, as she had intended, that she had signed his name. She tells her husband that she had received the money from her father. Only the person from whom she had obtained the advance knows the truth. On the return from Italy, Nora sets secretly to work to discharge her heavy and dangerous obligation. She stints herself, takes in needlework, and wants so much money from her husband that he reproaches her with extravagance. All the while she leads a double life, gay and cheerful to her husband, bent down with care when she is by herself. Yet she works hopefully, largely unconscious of what she has done, and of the danger involved. Events transpire which must biing to the knowledge of the husband what has occurred. Nora, in the depth of her misery, attempts unsuccessfully the weakly feminine artifice of withdrawing, before he has seen it, the incriminating letter from lier husband's letter-box, and then looks her fate full in the face. Helmer of course will take the guilt upon himself. He will come forward and say, ' I alone did it.' Nora will deny this, and will claim the punishment, whatever it may be, for herself. The world will not believe her word against his, and he will suffer. She must therefore give impressive proof of her own guilt. She will commit suicide. She is about to leave the house with this purpose when Helmer appears. His earliest words are a disillusion. She understands him as she never did before. Her idealised Helmer fades away. The
