came nearer to the truth with his famous paradox that the only golden rule
in Ibsen's dramas is that there is no golden rule.

It must, however, be admitted that the dramatists themselves are not
entirely guiltless of this current critical misconception. Most of them
happen to be realists, and in devising their situations they aim to be
narrowly natural as well as broadly true. The result is that the
circumstances of their plays have an _ordinary_ look which makes them seem
simple transcripts of everyday life instead of special studies of life
under peculiar conditions. Consequently the audience, and even the critic,
is tempted to judge life in terms of the play instead of judging the play
in terms of life. Thus falsely judged, _The Wild Duck_ (to take an emphatic
instance) is outrageously immoral, although it must be judged moral by the
philosophic critic who questions only whether or not Ibsen told the truth
about the particular people involved in its depressing story. The deeper
question remains: Was Ibsen justified in writing a play which was true and
therefore moral, but which necessarily would have an immoral effect on nine
spectators out of every ten, because they would instinctively make a hasty
and false generalisation from the exceptional and very particular ethics
implicit in the story?

For it must be bravely recognised that any statement of truth which is so
framed as to be falsely understood conveys a lie. If the dramatist says
quite truly, "This particular leaf is sere and yellow," and if the audience
quite falsely understands him to say, "All leaves are sere and yellow," the
gigantic lie has illogically been conveyed that the world is ever windy
with autumn, that spring is but a lyric dream, and summer an illusion. The
modern social drama, even when it is most truthful within its own limits,
is by its very nature liable to just this sort of illogical conveyance of a
lie. It sets forth a struggle between a radical exception and a
conservative rule; and the audience is likely to forget that the exception
is merely an exception, and to infer that it is greater than the rule. Such
an inference, being untrue, is immoral; and in so far as a dramatist aids
and abets it, he must be judged dangerous to the theatre-going public.

Whenever, then, it becomes important to determine whether a new play of
the modern social type is moral or immoral, the critic should decide first
whether the author tells lies specific