fascinating, and the whole story is only too horribly true, a narrative of one of the frightful incidents of human life. Ghosts is an extremely delicate picture of an extremely gruesome subject.
The characters of Mrs. Alving, Parson Manders, Oswald, and Regina are, as are all Ibsen's persons, drawn in rough outline, but every essential feature is there, and one can readily think out the details.
The idea which prompted the title of the play really underlies the whole of Ibsen's writings. We are all ghosts. We consist of old beliefs, old super- stitions, old habits of thinking, all dead, some of them before we were alive. And we walk the earth thus compounded, without living ideas, without the intellectual and moral movement which is the evi- dence of life, and flatter ourselves that we live — whereas we are only ghosts of our own dead selves and of the dead selves of our ancestors. Tiiis fertile idea, clothed in artistic expression, is really the central point in the whole of Ibsen's teaching.
It has been said that Ghosts is the working out in a domestic drama of the principle of heredity ; but there are really two separate ideas associated with this principle. There is, first, the transmis- sion from parent to offspring of the inborn character of the parent, exemplified in Oswald's self-indulgence and his amorous habit, both of which were charac- teristics of his father. There is, second, the transmission of an acquired characteristic, viz. the disease of his father. The possibility of the transmission of disease from parent to offspring is seriously disputed by many biologists ; so that although the popular belief is on the side of Ibsen on this point, he is really on safer and much more interesting ground when he speculates upon the hypothetical characteristics of a son wliose father has been supposed to possess certain definite inborn characteristics. Though the subject is really en- tirely in the region of speculation, it is immensely useful to possess the results of the observations of an acute observer of the human species such as Ibsen, in order to compare his conclusions with those of observers of lower types of animal life. The Pillars of Society and An Enemy of Society are both social dramas. Ibsen is understood not to have avowed liimself a Socialist, yet his criticism of society as revealed in these plays owes much to the Socialistic criticism, although perliaps it would be more accurate to say that it owed more to the anarchistic. That is to say, that Ibsen, finding in the representative governments of mimicipalities and states a low level of intellectual and moral life, would wish to exercise a destructive criticism upon these as at present constituted. The positive counterpart to this negative view as disclosed in Ibsen's writings might perliaps be expressed in tlie formula ' Each for all, all for each,' or, as Ibsen miglit read it, Wliat is to be desired is environment such as to yield possibilities of full development for the individual, male or female, and an individual in this environment who should, as an integral part of his or her life, devote himself to the good of all. No one would in Ibsen's view be justified like Nora in sacrificing the possibility of developing her own character to the actuality of looking pretty to please her husband, or like Mrs. Alving in sacrificing the development of her character to the assumed duty of keeping her husband from vicious indulgence, any more than Dr. Stockmann would have been justified in allowing his own individual pecuniary interests to stand in the way while society had to be saved by an act of sacrifice. Ibsen's social philosopliy might fairly be set down as consisting in a nice balance of individualism, or regard for individual evolution, and socialism, or regard for social evolution. Ibsen does not really attack these problems on their economic side, his attack is almost entirely on the ethical side. The Pillars of Society is a play in four acts, in which the habits of thouglit of a commercial com- munity are first demonstrated by a series of con- versations. The inconsistencies of conventional thinking are amusing enough when they are painted in sharp contrasts, and Ibsen is specially skilful in these. Indeed he recalls Fielding, who also was an adept in this minor art. The merchants' wives, the parson, and the merchants disclose themselves fully enough in these conversations to enable us to see into them much better than we are likely to do into the originals of the portraits in actual life. It is found that the pillars of society, the merchants, and important persons in the community, had been by something very like chicanery, but something which would have passed for ordinarily sharp business management, intending to reap large benefits to themselves, while they pretended to benefit the community. The sudden conversion of the chief mover in the affair led to his divesting himself of his prospective gains in favour of the community. This conduct, which of course every one in the play called Quixotic, and which perhaps every one who reads of it will call Quixotic also, is the result of the opening of Consul Bernick's eyes to see things as they are, just as Nora's eyes and Mrs. Alving's eyes were opened. Everywhere one finds in Ibsen the same mental progression. His characters act out their parts in the conventional track, and then one day they find out that this is a fools' paradise after all, that they have been struggling for happiness and peace of mind when they had it within them if they
