to the mist-shrouded regions_.

Solveig (smiling).--_Oh, that riddle is easy_.

Peer.-- _Then tell what thou knowest!
Where was I, as myself, as the whole man, the true man?
Where was I, with God's sigil upon my brow_?

Solveig.--_In my faith, in my hope, in my love_.

A Shirking of the Ethical Problem?

"This," says the Messrs. Archer, in effect, "may be--indeed
is--magnificent: but it is not Ibsen." To quote their very words--

"The redemption of the hero through a woman's love ... we take to
be a mere commonplace of romanticism, which Ibsen, though he
satirised it, had by no means fully outgrown when he wrote _Peer
Gynt_. Peer's return to Solveig is (in the original) a passage of
the most poignant lyric beauty, but it is surely a shirking, not
a solution, of the ethical problem. It would be impossible to the
Ibsen of to-day, who knows (none better) that _No man can save
his brother's soul, or pay his brother's debt_."

In a footnote to the italicized words Messrs. Archer add the
quotation--

"No, nor woman, neither."

* * * * *

Oct. 22, 1892. The main Problem.

"Peer's return to Solveig is surely a shirking, not a solution of the
ethical problem." Of what ethical problem? The main ethical problem of
the poem is, What is self? And how shall a man be himself? As Mr.
Wicksteed puts it in his "Four Lectures on Henrik Ibsen," "What is it
to be one's self? God _meant something_ when He made each one of us.
For a man to embody that meaning of God in his words and deeds, and so
become, in a degree, 'a word of God made flesh' is to be himself. But
thus to be himself he must slay himself. That is to say, he must slay
the craving to make himself the centre round which others revolve, and
must strive to find his true orbit, and swing, self poised, round the
great central light. But what if a poor devil can never puzzle out
what God _did_ mean when He made him? Why, then he must _feel_ it. But
how often your 'feeling' misses fire! Ay, there you have it. The devil
has no stancher ally than _want of perception_."

And its Solution.

This is a fair statement of Ibsen's problem and his solution of it. In
the poem he solves it by the aid of two characters, two diagrams we
may say. Diagram I. is Peer Gynt, a man who is always striving to make
himself the centre round which others revolve, w