ness, a permanent, invisible justice, or a vigilant, eternal
Providence. But does the "interpreter of life," who succeeds in
arousing this fear, bring us nearer to truth; and is it his mission to
convey to us sorrow, and trouble, and painful emotion, or peace,
satisfaction, tranquillity, and light?

28

It is not easy, I know, to free oneself wholly from traditional
interpretation, for it often succeeds in reasserting its sway upon us
at the very moment we strain every nerve to escape from our bondage.
So has it happened with Ibsen, who, in his search for a new and almost
scientific form of fatality, erected the veiled, majestic, tyrannical
figure of heredity in the centre of the very best of his dramas. But
it is not the scientific mystery of heredity which awakens within us
those human fears that lie so much deeper than the mere animal fear;
for heredity alone could no more achieve this result than could the
scientific mystery of a dreaded disease, a stellar or marine
phenomenon. No, the fear that differs so essentially from the one
called forth by an imminent natural danger, is aroused within us by the
obscure idea of justice which heredity assumes in the drama; by the
daring pronouncement that the sins of the fathers are almost invariably
visited on the children; by the suggestion that a sovereign Judge, a
goddess of the species, is for ever watching our actions, inscribing
them on her tablets of bronze, and balancing in her eternal hands
rewards long deferred and never-ending punishment. In a word, even
while we deny it, it is the face of God that reappears; and from
beneath the flagstone one had believed to be sealed for ever comes once
again the murmur of the very ancient flame of Hell.

29

This new form of fatality, or fatal justice, is less defensible, and
less acceptable too, than the ancient and elementary power, which,
being general and undefined, and offering no too strict explanation of
its actions, lent itself to a far greater number of situations. In the
special case selected by Ibsen, it is not impossible that some kind of
accidental justice may be found, as it is not impossible that the arrow
a blind man shoots into a crowd may chance to strike a parricide. But
to found a law upon this accidental justice is a fresh perversion of
mystery, for elements are thereby introduced into human morality which
have no right to be there; elements which we would welcome, which would
be of value, if t