effort to think out the revolt of his feeling against readymade
morality. Ibsen's morality is original all through: he knows well that
the men in the street have no use for principles, because they can
neither understand nor apply them; and that what they can understand and
apply are arbitrary rules of conduct, often frightfully destructive and
inhuman, but at least definite rules enabling the common stupid man to
know where he stands and what he may do and not do without getting into
trouble. Now to all writers of the first order, these rules, and the
need for them produced by the moral and intellectual incompetence of the
ordinary human animal, are no more invariably beneficial and respectable
than the sunlight which ripens the wheat in Sussex and leaves the desert
deadly in Sahara, making the cheeks of the ploughman's child rosy in the
morning and striking the ploughman brainsick or dead in the afternoon;
no more inspired (and no less) than the religion of the Andaman
islanders; as much in need of frequent throwing away and replacement as
the community's boots. By writers of the second order the readymade
morality is accepted as the basis of all moral judgment and criticism of
the characters they portray, even when their genius forces them to
represent their most attractive heroes and heroines as violating the
readymade code in all directions. Far be it from me to pretend that the
first order is more readable than the second! Shakespear, Scott,
Dickens, Dumas _père_ are not, to say the least, less readable than
Euripides and Ibsen. Nor is the first order always more constructive;
for Byron, Oscar Wilde, and Larochefoucauld did not get further in
positive philosophy than Ruskin and Carlyle, though they could snuff
Ruskin's Seven Lamps with their fingers without flinching. Still, the
first order remains the first order and the second the second for all
that: no man who shuts his eyes and opens his mouth when religion and
morality are offered to him on a long spoon can share the same
Parnassian bench with those who make an original contribution to