Mrs. Alving. I will tell you what I mean by that. I am frightened
and timid, because I am obsessed by the presence of ghosts that I
never can get rid of,

Manders. The presence of what?

Mrs. Alving. Ghosts. When I heard Regina and Oswald in there, it
was just like seeing ghosts before my eyes. I am half inclined to
think we are all ghosts, Mr. Manders. It is not only what we have
inherited from our fathers and mothers that exists again in us,
but all sorts of old dead ideas and all kinds of old dead beliefs
and things of that kind. They are not actually alive in us; but
there they are dormant, all the same, and we can never be rid of
them. Whenever I take up a newspaper and read it, I fancy I see
ghosts creeping between the lines. There must be ghosts all over
the world. They must be as countless as the grains of the sands,
it seems to me. And we are so miserably afraid of the light, all
of us.

Manders. Ah!--there we have the outcome of your reading. Fine
fruit it has borne--this abominable, subversive, free-thinking
literature!

Mrs. Alving. You are wrong there, my friend. You are the one who
made me begin to think; and I owe you my best thanks for it.

Menders. I!

Mrs. Alving. Yes, by forcing me to submit to what you called my
duty and my obligations; by praising as right and lust what my