IBSEN'S PLAYS 731 



plays which we can read without being forced to admit that we had 

 somewhere stopped short of the full meaning of our own questions, 

 and accepted an answer that concealed from us the duty, and robbed 

 us of the strength, of deeper questioning. 



The poet of doubt has, indeed, fulfilled his mission ! But people 

 say he is " immoral." What do they mean ? 



Do they mean that the moral nature is braced by the habitual con- 

 templation of noble and beautiful things ; that it is dwarfed and poi- 

 soned by habitual contemplation of horrible, foul, or ignoble things; 

 that there are some who delight in unwholesome familiarity with what 

 is hateful, and some who are banefully fascinated by it, even while 

 they loathe it; and that Ibsen is therefore a depressing moral influ- 



ence 



P 



If this is what is meant I believe there is truth in it. I doubt not 

 that Ibsen has done, is doing, and will do, moral harm to some of his 

 readers. The same may be said of Thackeray. And for very dif- 

 ferent reasons the same may be said of Goethe, of Carlyle, and of 

 many more. There are minds capable of deriving harm, and perhaps 

 incapable of deriving good, from Ibsen as from these others. 



But do people mean more than this when they say that Ibsen is 

 immoral ? Do they mean that he makes vice seem attractive, or that 

 he stimulates the imagination to vicious activity ? I cannot conceive 

 of such a charge being intended by any man who has read Ibsen; 

 but, unhappily, many use language calculated to convey to those who 

 have not read him, the impression that this is the charge they bring. 



Or do they mean that Ibsen's writings tend to confuse moral issues, 

 and therefore to weaken moral restraints ? Inasmuch as his works 

 have a terrible solvent power, they may indeed tend to reduce a man 

 to a condition of ethical agnosticism, with all its attendant dangers; 

 but this may be said of all who challenge accepted ideas ; and Ibsen is 

 singularly free from the sin of representing a tinsel nobility as genu- 

 ine, or failing to appreciate the true ore of humanity wherever it is 

 found. In Ibsen, as in Thackeray, the moral stress is always true. 



But what really lies at the basis of all morality ? Is it not the 

 sense of the magnitude of the issues of our thoughts, words, and 

 deeds ? He who saps, deadens, or overbears the sense of responsibility, 

 is the really immoral writer. Will any one bring this charge against 

 Ibsen ? Who, in our day, has brought home with greater force the 

 significance to others of what we do, what we think, and what we 

 are, than Ibsen ? Or who has made us feel the responsibility sitting 

 closer to us for frivolity in rejecting, or hypocrisy in accepting, the 

 current code and creeds of society ? 



But enough cf this cheap reproach of immorality. Let us turn 

 again to the central problem of Ibsen's social plays. That problem 



