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IBSEN 37
Ibsen's social and political ideas follow
necessarily from the nature of his art. He
knew too much about the depths of character
to suppose that people could be improved
from without. He agreed with our grandmothers
that what men need are new hearts.
It is good feeling that makes good men, and
the sole check on bad feeling is conscience.
Laws, customs, and social conventions he
regarded as ineffectual means to good. There
is no virtue in one who is restrained from evil
by fear. He went further : he regarded
external restraints as means to bad, since they
come between a man and his conscience and
"
blunt the moral sense. So long as I keep
to the rules," says the smug citizen, " I am
of the righteous." Ibsen loathed the State,
with its negative virtues, its mean standards,
its mediocrity, and its spiritual squalor. He
was a passionate individualist.
Perhaps no one has seen more clearly that
the State, at its best, stands for nothing better
than the lowest common factor of the human
mind. What else can it stand for ? State
ideals must be ideals that are not beyond the
intellect and imagination of " the average
citizen " ; also, since average minds are not
pervious to reason, the reasoning of statesmen
must be rhetoric. State morals law and
custom that is to say are nothing more than