When, therefore, the ‘I’ is spoken of, which is to have the right to dispose of itself, only the conscious ‘Ego’ can be meant, the pondering, remembering, observing, comparing intellect, not, however, the sub-’Egos’—unconnected, and for the most part at strife with each other—which are included in subconsciousness.[364] The individual is the judging, not the instinctive, human being. Liberty is the capacity of consciousness to derive excitations, not only from the stimuli of the organs, but from those of the senses, and from original memory-images. Ibsen’s liberty is the most abject, and always suicidal,[365] slavery. It is the subjugation of judgment to instinct, and the revolt of some single organ against the domination of that power, which has to watch over the well-being of the whole organism. Even so individualistic a philosopher as Herbert Spencer[366] says: ‘To become fitted for the social state, it is necessary that the man ... should possess the energy capable of renouncing a small enjoyment of the moment, in order to obtain a greater one in the future.’ A healthy man in the full vigour of intellect cannot sacrifice his judgment. The sacrifizio dell’ intelletto is the only one he cannot afford. If law and custom impose upon him acts which he recognises as absurd because they defeat their end, not only will he have the right, but it will be his duty, to defend reason against nonsense, and knowledge against error. But his revolt will always be in the name of judgment, not in the name of instinct.
All this philosophy of self-restraint can, it is true, be preached to healthy human beings only. It has no application to degenerates. Their defective brain and nervous system are not in a state to respond to its demands. The processes within their organs are morbidly intensified. Hence the latter send particularly powerful stimuli to consciousness. The sensory nerves conduct badly. The memory-images in the brain are faint. Perceptions of the external world, representations of anterior experiences, are, therefore, non-existent or too feeble to subdue the stimulus originating in the organs. Such persons can do nought else but follow their desires and impulsions. They are the ‘instinctivists’ and ‘impulsivists’ of mental therapeutics. To this species belong the Noras, Ellidas, Rebeccas, Stockmanns, Brands, etc. This company, being dangerous to themselves and to others, require to be put under the guardianship of rational men, or, better still, in lunatic asylums. Such must be the answer to those fools or charlatans who vaunt Ibsen’s figures as ‘free men’ and ‘strong personalities,’ and with the sweet-sounding tones of a Pied Piper’s air on ‘self-disposal,’ ‘moral independence,’ and ‘living life out,’ attract children devoid of judgment heaven knows whither, but in any case to their ruin.
The third feature of Ibsen’s drama accounting for his success is the light in which he shows woman. ‘Women are the pillars of society,’ he makes Bernick say (in The Pillars of Society, p. 114). With Ibsen woman has no duties and all rights. The tie of marriage does not bind her. She runs away when she longs for liberty, or when she believes she has cause of complaint against her husband, or when he pleases her a little less than another man. The man who plays the Joseph, and does not comply with the will of Madame Potiphar, does not draw on himself the customary ridicule; he is roundly pronounced a criminal (Ghosts, p. 158):
Pastor Manders. It was my greatest victory, Helen—the victory over myself.
Mrs. Alving. It was a crime against us both.
Woman is always the clever, strong, courageous being; man always the simpleton and coward. In every encounter the wife is victorious, and the man flattened out like a pancake. Woman need live for herself alone. With Ibsen she has even overcome her most primitive instinct—that of motherhood—and abandons her brood without twitching an eyelid when the caprice seizes her to seek satisfactions elsewhere. Such abject adoration of woman—a pendant to Wagner’s woman-idolatry—such unqualified approval of all feminine depravities, was bound to secure the applause of those women who in the viragoes of Ibsen’s drama—hysterical, nymphomaniacal, perverted in maternal instinct[367]—recognise either their own portrait or the ideal of development of their degenerate imagination. Women of this species find, as a matter of fact, all discipline intolerable. They are by birth les femmes de ruisseau of Dumas fils. They are not fit for marriage—for European marriage with one man only. Promiscuous sexual intercourse and prostitution are their most deeply-seated instincts, according to Ferrero[368] the atavistic form of degeneration in women, and they are grateful to Ibsen for having catalogued, under the fine designations of ‘The struggle of woman for moral independence’ and ‘The right of woman to assert her own personality,’ those propensities to which opprobrious names are usually given.
In his fiercely travestied exaggerations of Ibsen’s doctrines, entitled Der Vater, Gräfin Julie, Gläubiger, etc., poor Grindberg, whose brain is equally deranged, but who possesses great creative power, goes to the greatest pains to show the absurdity of Ibsen’s notions on the nature of woman, her rights, her relations to man. His method, however, is a false one. He will never convince Ibsen by rational arguments that his doctrines are foolish, for they do not spring from his reason, but from his unconscious instincts. His figures of women and their destinies are the poetical expression of that sexual perversion of degenerates called by Krafft-Ebing ‘masochism.’[369] Masochism is a sub-species of ‘contrary sexual sensation.’ The man affected by this perversion feels himself, as regards woman, to be the weaker party; as the one standing in need of protection; as the slave who rolls on the ground, compelled to obey the behests of his mistress, and finding his happiness in obedience. It is the inversion of the healthy and natural relation between the sexes. In Sacher-Masoch imperious and triumphant woman wields the knout; in Ibsen she exacts confessions, inflicts inflammatory reprimands, and leaves in a flare of Bengal lights. In essence, Ibsen’s heroines are the same as Sacher-Masoch’s, though the expression of feminine superiority is a little less brutal. It is remarkable that the women who exult over Ibsen’s Nora-types are not shocked by the Hedwigs, Miss Tesmans, and other womanly embodiments of sacrifice, in whom the highly contradictory thoughts and feelings of the confused mystic come to light. But it has been psychologically established that human beings overlook what is in dissonance with their own propinquities, and dwell on that only which is in harmony with them.
Ibsen’s feminine clientèle is, moreover, not composed merely of hysterical and degenerate characters, but includes also those women who are leading an unhappy married life, or believe themselves misunderstood, or suffer from the discontent and inner void resulting from insufficient occupation. Clear thinking is not the most prominent quality of this species of woman. Otherwise they would not have found their advocate in Ibsen. Ibsen is not their friend. No one is who, as long as the present order of society exists, attacks the institution of marriage.
A serious and healthy reformer will contend for the principle that marriage should acquire a moral and emotional import, and not remain a lying form. He will condemn the marriage for interest, a dowry or business marriage; he will brand as a crime the action of married couples who feel for some other human being a strong, true love, tested by time and struggle, and yet remain together in a cowardly pseudo-union, deceiving and contaminating each other, instead of honourably separating and contracting genuine connections elsewhere; he will demand that marriage be based on reciprocal inclination, maintained by confidence, respect, and gratitude, consolidated by consideration for the offspring; but he will guard himself from saying anything against marriage itself, this bulwark of the relations between the sexes afforded by definite, permanent duty. Marriage is a high advance from the free copulation of savages. To abandon it and return to primitive promiscuity would be the most profound atavism of degeneracy. Marriage, moreover, was not instituted for the man, but for the woman and the child. It is a protective social institution for the benefit of the weaker part. Man has not yet conquered and humanized his polygamous animal instincts to the same extent as woman. It would for the most part be quite agreeable to him to exchange the woman he possesses for a new one. Departures à la Nora are as a rule not of a nature to frighten him. He could open the door very wide for Nora, and bestow on her his parting benediction with much pleasure. Were it once the law and custom in a society where each was forced to care for himself alone (and needed only to trouble himself about the offspring of others, when it was a question of orphan, abandoned, or begging children) that man and wife should separate as soon as they ceased to be agreeable to each other, it would be the men and not the women who would first make use of the new liberty. Departures à la Nora are perhaps without danger for rich wives, or those eminently capable of acquiring means of support, and hence pecuniarily independent. Such, however, in present society constitute a minute minority. Under Ibsen’s code of morals the vast majority of wives would have everything to lose. The severe discipline of matrimony is their bulwark. It obliges the man to take care of the children and of the wife as she declines in years. Hence it should be the true duty of rational wives to declare Ibsen infamous, and to revolt against Ibsenism, which criminally threatens them and their rights. Only through error can women of spirit and indisputable morality join the ranks of Ibsen’s followers. It is necessary to enlighten them concerning the range of his doctrines, and in particular concerning their effect on the position of woman, so that they may abandon a company which can never be their own. May he remain surrounded by those only who are spirit of his spirit, that is to say, by hysterical women and masculine masochists, who, with Ehrhard,[370] believe that ‘sound common-sense and optimism are the two destructive principles of all poetry’!