lives, let us say, as a rule seventeen or eighteen, or at most
twenty years--seldom longer. But truths as aged as that are always worn
frightfully thin, and nevertheless it is only then that the majority
recognises them and recommends them to the community as wholesome moral
nourishment. There is no great nutritive value in that sort of fare, I
can assure you; and, as a doctor, I ought to know. These "majority
truths" are like last year's cured meat--like rancid, tainted ham; and
they are the origin of the moral scurvy that is rampant in our
communities.

Aslaksen. It appears to me that the speaker is wandering a long way
from his subject.

Peter Stockmann. I quite agree with the Chairman.

Dr. Stockmann. Have you gone clean out of your senses, Peter? I am
sticking as closely to my subject as I can; for my subject is precisely
this, that it is the masses, the majority--this infernal compact
majority--that poisons the sources of our moral life and infects the
ground we stand on.

Hovstad. And all this because the great, broadminded majority of the
people is prudent enough to show deference only to well-ascertained and
well-approved truths?

Dr. Stockmann. Ah, my good Mr. Hovstad, don't talk nonsense about
well-ascertained truths! The truths of which the masses now approve are
the very truths that the fighters at the outposts held to in the days
of our grandfathers. We fighters at the outposts nowadays no longer
approve of them; and I do not believe there is any other
well-ascertained truth except this, that no community can live a
healthy life if it is nourished only on such old marrowless truths.

Hovstad. But, instead of standing there using vague generalities, it
would be interesting if you would tell us what these old marrowless
truths are, that we are nourished on.

(Applause from many quarters.)

Dr. Stockmann. Oh, I could give you a whole string of such
abominations; but to begin with I will confine myself to one
well-approved truth, which at bottom is a foul lie, but upon which
nevertheless Mr. Hovstad and the "People's Messenger" and all the
"Messenger's" supporters are nourished.

Hovstad. And that is--?

Dr. Stockmann. That is, the doctrine you have inherited from your
forefathers and proclaim thoughtlessly far and wide--the doctrine that
the public, the crowd, the masses, are the essential part of the
population--that they constitute the People--that the common folk, the
ignorant and incomplete