humanity that is in you? If you can make yourself as insensate a thing
as this stone, I daresay you will be able to stand the life. But are you
willing to venture upon political life at such a price? If you are--so
be it; but remember that in that case you must also kill all humanity
in Gertrud--in these two--in every one that is dear to you. Otherwise no
one will understand you or follow you. If you cannot do that, you will
never be more than a dabbler in politics--a quarter, an eighth part, of
a politician--and all your efforts, in what you consider your vocation,
will be pitiable!

Mrs. Evje (who has been occupied at the back of the room, but now sits
down by the fare). That is quite true! I know cases of petrifaction like
that--and God preserve anyone that I love from it!

Evje (coming forward towards HARALD). I don't want to say anything to
hurt your feelings--least of all just now. But I just want to add my
warning, because I believe I have discovered that there is a danger that
persecution may make you hard.

Harald. Yes!--but do you suppose it is only politics that offer that
dangerous prospect?

The Doctor. You are quite right! It is all the cry nowadays, "Harden
yourself!" It isn't only military men and doctors that have to be
hardened; commercial men have to be hardened, civil servants have to be
hardened, or dried up; and everybody else has to be hardened for life,
apparently. But what does it all mean? It means that we are to drive out
all warmth from our hearts, all desire from our imaginations. There is a
child's heart at the bottom of every one of our hearts-ever young, full
of laughter and tears; and that is what we shall have killed before we
are "fitted for the battle of life," as they put it. No, no--that is
what we ought to preserve; we were given it for that! (HARALD hides his
face in his hands, and sits so for some time.)

Mrs. Evje. Any mother or any wife knows that.

Evje (standing with his back to the fire). You want to bring back the
age of romance, doctor!

The Doctor (with a laugh). Not its errors--because in those days unclean
minds brought to birth a great deal that was unclean. (Seriously.) But
what is it, when all is said and done, but a violent protest on the
part of the Teutonic people against the Romanesque spirit and school--a
remarkable school, but not _ours_. To us it seems a barren, merely
intellectual school--a mere mass of formulas which led to a precocious
development