he vitality, all the
lucidity belong to Rebecca, but the decrepit formulas are stoutly
intrenched. In the end it is not the new idea who conquers; it is the
antique house, with its traditions, its avenging vision of white horses,
which breaks the too-clairvoyant Rebecca.

This doubt of the final success of intelligence, this obstinate question
whether, after all, as we so glibly intimate, the old order changeth at
all, whether, on the contrary, it has not become a Juggernaut car that
crushes all originality and independence out of action, this breathes
more and more plainly out of the progressing work of Ibsen. Hedda Gabler
condemns the old order, in its dulness, its stifling mediocrity, but she
is unable to adapt her energy to any wholesome system of new ideas, and
she sinks into deeper moral dissolution. She hates all that has been
done, yet can herself do nothing, and she represents, in symbol, that
detestable condition of spirit which cannot create, though it sees
the need of creation, and can only show the irritation which its own
sterility awakens within it by destruction. All Hedda can actually do,
to assert her energy, is to burn the MS. of Loevborg, and to kill herself
with General Gabler's pistol. The race must be reformed or die; the
Hedda Gablers which adorn its latest phase do best to die.

We have seen that Ibsen's theory was that love of self is the
fundamental principle of all activity. It is the instinct of
self-preservation and self-amelioration which leads to every
manifestation of revolt against stereotyped formulas of conduct. Between
the excessive ideality of Rebecca and the decadent sterility of Hedda
Gabler comes another type, perhaps more sympathetic than either, the
master-builder Solness. He, too, is led to condemn the old order, but in
the act of improving it he is overwhelmed upon his pinnacle, and swoons
to death, "dizzy, lost, yet unupbraiding." Ibsen's exact meaning in the
detail of these symbolic plays will long be discussed, but they repay
the closest and most reiterated study. Perhaps the most curious of all
is _The Lady from the Sea_, which has been examined from the technically
psychological view by a learned French philosopher, M. Jules de
Gaultier. For M. de Gaultier the interest which attaches to Ibsen's
conception of human life, with its conflicting instincts and
responsibilities, is more fully centred in _The Lady from the Sea_ than
in any other of his productions.

The theor