Another.
He doesn’t belong to the town.
A Third.
I believe he’s a timber-dealer from——
[The rest is inaudible.
Aslaksen.
The man was evidently intoxicated.—Continue, Dr. Stockmann; but pray endeavour to be moderate.
Dr. Stockmann.
Well, fellow citizens, I shall say no more about our leading men. If any one imagines, from what I have just said, that it’s these gentlemen I want to make short work of to-night, he is mistaken—altogether mistaken. For I cherish the comfortable conviction that these laggards, these relics of a decaying order of thought, are diligently cutting their own throats. They need no doctor to hasten their end. And it is not people of that sort that constitute the real danger to society; it is not they who are most active in poisoning the sources of our spiritual life and making a plague-spot of the ground beneath our feet; it is not they who are the most dangerous enemies of truth and freedom in our society.
Cries from All Sides.