blind with doubt. If we compare, let us say, the morality
of the DIVINE COMEDY with the morality of Ibsen's GHOSTS, we shall see
all that modern ethics have really done. No one, I imagine, will accuse
the author of the INFERNO of an Early Victorian prudishness or a
Podsnapian optimism. But Dante describes three moral
instruments--Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell, the vision of perfection, the
vision of improvement, and the vision of failure. Ibsen has only
one--Hell. It is often said, and with perfect truth, that no one could
read a play like GHOSTS and remain indifferent to the necessity of an
ethical self-command. That is quite true, and the same is to be said of
the most monstrous and material descriptions of the eternal fire. It is
quite certain the realists like Zola do in one sense promote
morality--they promote it in the sense in which the hangman promotes
it, in the sense in which the devil promotes it. But they only affect
that small minority which will accept any virtue of courage. Most
healthy people dismiss these moral dangers as they dismiss the
possibility of bombs or microbes. Modern realists are indeed
Terrorists, like the dynamiters; and they fail just as much in their
effort to create a thrill. Both realists and dynamiters are
well-meaning people engaged in the task, so obviously ultimately
hopeless, of using science to promote morality.

I do not wish the reader to confuse me for a moment with those vague
persons who imagine that Ibsen is what they call a pessimist. There are
plenty of wholesome people in Ibsen, plenty of good people, plenty of
happy people, plenty of examples of men acting wisely and things ending
well. That is not my meaning. My meaning is that Ibsen has throughout,
and does not disguise, a certain vagueness and a changing attitude as
well as a doubting attitude towards what is really wisdom and virtue in
this life--a vagueness which contrasts very remarkably with the
decisiveness with which he pounces on something which he perceives to
be a root of evil, some convention, some deception, some ignorance. We
know that the hero of GHOSTS is mad, and we know why he is mad. We do
also know that Dr. Stockman is sane; but we do not know why he is sane.
Ibsen does not profess to know how virtue and happiness are brought
about, in the sense that he professes to know how our modern sexual
tragedies are brought about. Falsehood works ruin in THE PILLARS OF
SOCIETY, but truth works equal ruin in