me in
the service of that grand ideal, the wonderful power of which has
sustained me through those years of torture; and I will devote all my
energies and whatever ability I may have to that noblest of all causes
of a new, regenerated and free humanity; and it shall be more than my
sufficient reward to know that I have added, if ever so little, in
breaking the shackles of superstition, ignorance and tradition, and
helped to turn the tide of society from the narrow lane of its blind
selfishness and self-sufficient arrogance into the broad, open road
leading toward a true civilization, to the new and brighter day of
Freedom in Brotherhood.

[Illustration]

HENRIK IBSEN.

M. B.

I SHALL not attempt to confine him within the rigid lines of any
literary circle; nor shall I press him into the narrow frame of school
or party; nor stamp upon him the distinctive label of any particular
ism. He would break such fetters; his free spirit, his great
individuality would overflow the arbitrary confines of "the _sole_
Truth," "the _only_ true principle." The waves of his soul would break
down all artificial barriers and rush out to join the ever-moving
currents of life.

A seer has died.

He carried the flaming torch of his art behind the scenes of society--he
found there nothing but corruption. He tested the strength of our social
foundations--its pillars shook: they were rotten.

The rays of his genius penetrated the darkness of popular ideals; the
hollow pretences of Philistinism filled his ardent soul with disgust,
and pain. In this mood he wrote "The League of Youth," in which he
exposed the pettiness of bourgeois aspirations and the poverty of their
ideals.

In "The Enemy of the People" Ibsen thunders his powerful protest against
the democracy of stupidity, the tyrannous vulgarity of majority rule.
Doctor Stockmann--that is Ibsen himself. How willing and eager the
pigmies and yahoos would have been to stone him.

"What shameless unconventionality, what shocking daring!" cried the
Philistines when they beheld the characters portrayed in "Nora" (The
Doll's House), "Wild Duck," and in "The Ghosts"--living pictures
revealing all the evil hidden by the mask of "our sacred institutions,"
"our holy hearthstone." In "Rosmersholm" Ibsen ignored even the
inviolability of conscience; for there Ibsen showed how the sick
conscience of Rosmer worked the ruin of Rebecca and himself, by robbing
them of the joy of life.