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DR. STOCKMANN, Medical Officer of the Baths; MRS. STOCKMANN, his Wife; BURGOMASTER STOCKMANN, his Brother; HOVSTAD, Editor of the Peoples Messenger; BILLING, HOVSTADS Assistant; ASLAKSEN, Owner of a Printing-House; Assembly of Townsfolk. Aslak. Burgomaster Stockmann will address the meeting. | 1 |
Burg. On account of my close relationshipof which you are probably awareto the present medical officer of the baths, I should have preferred not to speak here this evening; but my position with regard to the baths, and my care for the most important interests of this town, force me to move a resolution. I may doubtless assume that not a single citizen here present thinks it desirable that untrustworthy and exaggerated statements should get abroad as to the sanitary condition of the baths, and of our town. I therefore beg to move, That this meeting declines to hear the proposed lecture or speech on the subject by the medical officer of the baths. But I must preface that in my statement in the Peoples Messenger I have made the public acquainted with the essential facts, so that all well-disposed citizens can easily draw their own conclusions. From that statement you will see that the medical officers proposal, besides amounting to a vote of censure against the leading men of the town, at bottom only means saddling the ratepayers with an unnecessary expense of at least a hundred thousand crowns. * * * * * | 2 |
Aslak. I will now put the burgomasters resolution to the vote. | 3 |
Dr. Stock. Its not necessary. I shant say anything this evening of all the filth at the baths. No; you shall hear something quite different! I am about to make great revelations, fellow citizens! I am going to announce to you a far more important discovery than the trifling fact that our water-works are poisoned, and that our health-resort is built on pestilential ground. | 4 |
Many Voices (shouting). Dont speak about the baths! We wont listen to that! No more of that! | 5 |
Dr. Stock. I have said I would speak of the great discovery I have made within the last few daysthe discovery that all our sources of spiritual life are poisoned, and that our whole society rests upon a pestilential basis of falsehood. | 6 |
Several Voices (in astonishment, and half aloud). Whats he saying? | 7 |
Burg. Such an insinuation | 8 |
Aslak. (with his hand on the bell). I must call upon the speaker to moderate his expressions. | 9 |
Dr. Stock. I have loved my native town as dearly as man could love the home of his childhood. I was young when I left our town, and distance, homesickness, and memory threw, as it were, a glamor over the place and its people. (Some clapping and shouts of approval.) Then for years I was imprisoned in a horrible hole, far away in the north. As I went about among the people scattered here and there over the stony wilderness, it seemed to me, many a time, that these poor degraded creatures ought to have had a cattle-doctor to attend them, rather than a man like me. (Murmurs in the room.) | 10 |
Bill. (laying down his pen). Strike me dead if Ive ever heard | 11 |
Hov. What an insult to a worthy peasantry! | 12 |
Dr. Stock. Wait a moment! I dont think any one can reproach me with forgetting my native town up there. I sat brooding like an eider-duck, and what I hatched wasthe plan of the baths. (Applause and interruptions.) And when, at last, fate ordered things so happily that I could come home again, then, fellow citizens, it seemed to me that I hadnt another desire in the world. Yes, one desire I had: an eager, constant, burning desire to be of service to my birthplace, and to its people. | 13 |
Burg. A strange method to selecthm! | 14 |
Dr. Stock. So I went about reveling in my happy illusions. But yesterday morningno, it was really two nights agomy minds eyes were opened wide, and the first thing I saw was the extraordinary stupidity of the authorities (Noise, cries, and laughter. MRS. STOCKMANN coughs emphatically.) | 15 |
Burg. Mr. Chairman! | 16 |
Aslak. (ringing his bell). In virtue of my position | 17 |
Dr. Stock. Its petty to catch me up on a word, Mr. Aslaksen. I only meant that I became alive to the extraordinary muddle the leading men had been guilty of down at the baths. I detest leading men; Ive seen enough of them in my time. Theyre like goats in a young plantation: they do harm everywhere; they block the path of a free man wherever he turns, and I should be glad if we could exterminate them like other noxious animals (Uproar in the room.) | 18 |
Burg. Mr. Chairman, are such expressions permissible? | 19 |
Aslak. (with his hand on the bell). Dr. Stockmann | 20 |
Dr. Stock. I cant conceive how it is that Ive only now seen through these gentry; for havent I had a magnificent example before my eyes here every daymy brother Peterslow of understanding, tenacious in prejudice (Laughter, noise, and whistling. MRS. STOCKMANN coughs. ASLAKSEN rings violently.) Well, fellow citizens, Ill say no more about our leading men. If any one imagines, from what Ive just said, that I want to make short work of these gentlemen to-night, hes mistakenaltogether mistaken; for I cherish the comforting belief 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 these are not the people that constitute the most serious danger to society; it is not they who are most active in poisoning 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. | 21 |
Cries from all sides. Who, then? Who is it? Name! Name! | 22 |
Dr. Stock. Yes, you may be sure Ill name them; for this is the great discovery I made yesterday! (In a louder tone.) The most dangerous foe to truth and freedom in our midst is the compact majority. Yes, its the confounded, compact, liberal majority! There, Ive told you! (Immense disturbance in the room. Most of the audience are shouting, stamping, and whistling. MRS. STOCKMANN rises nervously. ASLAKSEN rings the bell and calls for order. HOVSTAD and BILLING both speak, but neither can be heard. At last quiet is restored.) | 23 |
Aslak. I request the speaker to withdraw his ill-considered expressions. | 24 |
Dr. Stock. Never, Mr. Aslaksen! For its this very majority that robs me of my freedom, and wants to forbid me to speak the truth. | 25 |
Hov. Right is always on the side of the majority. | 26 |
Bill. Yes, and truth, too, strike me dead! | 27 |
Dr. Stock. The majority is never right! Never, I say! Thats one of the social lies a free, thinking man is bound to rebel against. Who make up the majority in any given country? Is it the wise men, or the fools? I think we must agree that the fools are in a terrible, overwhelming majority, all the wide world over. But how the deuce can it ever be right for the fools to rule over the wise men? (Noise and shouts.) Yes, yes, you can shout me down, but you cannot gainsay me. The majority has might, unhappily, but right it has not. I and the few, the individuals, are right. The minority is always right! (Renewed disturbance.) | 28 |
Hov. Ha-ha! So Dr. Stockmann has turned aristocrat since the day before yesterday. | 29 |
Dr. Stock. Im going to revolt against the lie that truth resides in the majority! What sort of truths do the majority rally round? Truths that are decrepit with age. When a truth is so old as that its in a fair way to become a lie, gentlemen. (Laughter and jeers.) Yes, yes, you may believe me or not, as you please; but truths are by no means the wiry Methuselahs some people think them. A normally constituted truth lives, let me say, as a rule, seventeen or eighteen years; at the outside twentyseldom longer. And truths so stricken in years are always shockingly thin; yet its not till then that the majority takes them up, and recommends them to society as wholesome food. I can assure you theres not much nutriment in that sort of fare; you may take my word as a doctor for that. All these majority truths are like last years salt pork; theyre like rancid, moldy ham, producing all the moral scurvy that devastates society. | 30 |
Aslak. It seems to me that the honorable speaker is wandering rather far from the subject. | 31 |
Burg. I beg to indorse the chairmans remark. | 32 |
Dr. Stock. Why, youre surely mad, Peter! Im keeping as closely to my text as I possibly can, for my text is just this: that the masses, the majority, that confounded compact majorityits that, I say, thats poisoning our spiritual life at its source, and making a plague-spot of the ground beneath our feet! | 33 |
Hov. And you make this charge against the great, independent majority, just because theyre sensible enough to accept only certain and acknowledged truths? | 34 |
Dr. Stock. Ah, my dear Mr. Hovstad, dont talk about certain truths! The truths acknowledged by the masses, the multitude, were certain truths to the vanguard in our grandfathers days. We, the vanguard of to-day, dont acknowledge them any longer; and I dont believe theres any other certain truth but this: that no society can live a healthy life upon such old, marrowless truths as these! | 35 |
Hov. But instead of all this vague talk, suppose you were to give us some specimens of these old marrowless truths that were living upon. (Approval from several quarters.) | 36 |
Dr. Stock. Oh, I cant go over the whole rubbish-heap; so, for the present, Ill keep to one acknowledged truth, which is a hideous lie at bottom, but which Mr. Hovstad, and the Messenger, and all adherents of the Messenger, live on nevertheless. | 37 |
Hov. And that is | 38 |
Dr. Stock. That is the doctrine youve inherited from our forefathers, and go on heedlessly proclaiming far and wide: the doctrine that the multitude, the vulgar herd, the masses, are the pith of the people; that they are the people; that the common man, the ignorant, undeveloped member of society, has the same right to condemn and to sanction, to counsel and to govern, as the intellectually distinguished few. | 39 |
Bill. Well, now, strike me dead | 40 |
Hov. (shouting at the same time). Citizens, please note that! | 41 |
Angry Voices. Ho-ho! Arent we the people? Is it only the grand folks that are to govern? | 42 |
A Working Man. Turn out the fellow that talks like that! | 43 |
Others. Turn him out! | 44 |
A Citizen (shouting). Now for your horn, Evensen. (The deep notes of a horn are heard; whistling, and terrific noise in the room.) | 45 |
Dr. Stock. (when the noise has somewhat subsided). Now do be reasonable! Cant you bear to hear the voice of truth for once? I dont ask you all to agree with me straight away. But I certainly should have thought that Mr. Hovstad would have backed me up, when hed collected himself a bit. Mr. Hovstad calls himself a freethinker | 46 |
Several Voices (subdued and wondering). Freethinker, did he say? What, Mr. Hovstad a freethinker? | 47 |
Hov. (shouting). Prove it, Dr. Stockmann! When have I said so in print? | 48 |
Dr. Stock. (reflecting). No, on my soul youre right there; youve never had the frankness to do that. Well, I wont get you into a scrape, Mr. Hovstad. Let me be the freethinker, then. And now Ill make it clear to you all, and on scientific grounds, that the Messenger is leading you shamefully by the nose, when it tells you that you, the masses, the crowd, are the true pith of the people. You see thats only a newspaper lie. The masses are nothing but the raw material that must be fashioned into the people. (Murmurs, laughter, and disturbance in the room.) Is it not so with all other living creatures? What a difference between a cultivated and an uncultivated breed of animals! Only look at a common barn-door hen. What meat do you get from such a skinny carcass? Not much, I can tell you. And what sort of eggs does she lay? A decent crow or raven can lay nearly as good. Then take a cultivated Spanish or Japanese hen, or take a fine pheasant or turkeyah, then youll see the difference! And now look at the dog, our near relation. Think first of an ordinary vulgar curI mean one of those wretched, ragged, low mongrels that haunt the gutters and soil the foot-walks. Then place such a mongrel by the side of a poodle-dog, descended through many generations from an aristocratic strain, who has lived on delicate food, and has heard harmonious voices and music. Do you think the brain of the poodle hasnt developed quite differently from that of the mongrel? Yes, you may be sure it has. Its well-bred poodle-pups like this that jugglers train to perform the most extraordinary tricks. A common peasant cur could never learn anything of the sortnot if he tried till doomsday. (Noise and laughter are heard all round.) | 49 |
A Citizen (shouting). Do you want to make dogs of us now? | 50 |
Another Man. Were not animals, doctor. | 51 |
Dr. Stock. Yes, on my soul, but we are animals, my good sir! Were one and all of us animals, whether we like it or not. But truly there arent many aristocratic animals among us. Ah, theres a terrible difference between men-poodles and men-mongrels! And the ridiculous part of it is, that Mr. Hovstad quite agrees with me so long as its four-legged animals were talking of | 52 |
Hov. Oh, let them alone! | 53 |
Dr. Stock. All right; but so soon as I apply the law to two-legged animals, Mr. Hovstad stops short; then he darent hold his own opinions or think out his own thoughts; then he turns all his knowledge topsy-turvy, and proclaims in the Peoples Messenger that barn-door hens and gutter mongrels are precisely the finest specimens in the menagerie. But thats always the way, so long as you havent worked the commonness out of your system, and fought your way up to spiritual distinction. | 54 |
Hov. I make no pretensions to any sort of distinction. I come of simple peasant stock, and Im proud that my root lies deep down among the common people, who are now being jeered at. | 55 |
Several Workmen. Hurrah for Hovstad! Hurrah! Hurrah! | 56 |
Dr. Stock. The sort of common people Im speaking of are not found among the lower classes alone; they crawl and swarm all around usup to the very summits of society. Just look at your own smug, respectable burgomaster! Why, my brother Peter belongs as clearly to the common people as any man that walks on two legs (Laughter and hisses.) | 57 |
Burg. I protest against such personalities. | 58 |
Dr. Stock. and that not because, like myself, hes descended from a good-for-nothing old pirate from Pomerania, or thereaboutfor thats our ancestry | 59 |
Burg. An absurd tradition! Utterly groundless! | 60 |
Dr. Stock. but he is so because he thinks the thoughts and holds the opinions of his official superiors. Men who do that belong, intellectually speaking, to the mob; and thats why my distinguished brother Peter is at bottom so undistinguishedand consequently so illiberal. | 61 |
Burg. Mr. Chairman | 62 |
Hov. So the distinguished people in this country are the liberals? Thats quite a new light on the subject. (Laughter.) | 63 |
Dr. Stock. Yes, thats part of my new discovery. And this, too, follows, that liberality of thought is almost precisely the same thing as morality. Therefore I say its altogether unpardonable of the Messenger to proclaim day after day the false doctrine that its the masses, the multitude, the compact majority, that monopolize liberality and morality; and that vice and corruption and all sorts of spiritual uncleanness ooze out of culture, as all that filth oozes down to the baths from the Mill Dale tan-works! (Noise and interruptions. DR. STOCKMANN goes on imperturbably, smiling in his eagerness.) And yet this same Messenger can preach about raising the masses and the multitude to a higher level of life! Why, deuce take it, if the Messengers own doctrine holds good, the elevation of the masses would simply mean hurling them into destruction. But, happily, its only an old traditional lie that culture demoralizes. No, its stupidity, poverty, the ugliness of life, that do the devils work! In a house that isnt aired and swept every daymy wife Katrine maintains that the floors ought to be scrubbed too, but we cant discuss that nowwell, in such a house, I say, within two or three years people lose the power of thinking or acting morally. Lack of oxygen enervates the conscience. And there seems to be precious little oxygen in many and many a house in this town, since the whole compact majority is unscrupulous enough to want to found its future upon a quagmire of lies and fraud. | 64 |
Aslak. I cannot allow so gross an insult to be leveled against the whole body of citizens. | 65 |
A Gentleman. I move that the chairman order the speaker to sit down. | 66 |
Eager Voices. Yes, yes, thats right! Sit down! Sit down! | 67 |
Dr. Stock. Then Ill proclaim the truth at every street corner! Ill write to newspapers in other towns! The whole land shall know how things go on here! | 68 |
Hov. It would almost seem as if the doctor wanted to ruin the town. | 69 |
Dr. Stock. Yes, I love my native town so well, I would rather ruin it than see it flourishing upon a lie. | 70 |
Aslak. Thats putting it strongly. (Noise and whistling. MRS. STOCKMANN coughs in vain; the DOCTOR does not heed her.) | 71 |
Hov. (shouting amid the tumult). The man who would ruin a whole community must be an enemy to his fellow citizens! | 72 |
Dr. Stock. (with growing excitement). What does it matter if a lying community is ruined? It should be leveled to the ground, I say! All men who live upon lies should be exterminated like vermin! Youll poison the whole country in time; youll bring it to such a pass that the whole country will deserve to perish. And if it ever comes to that, I shall say, from the bottom of my heart: Perish the country! Perish all its people! | 73 |
A Man (in the crowd). Why, he talks like a regular enemy of the people! | 74 |
Bill. Strike me dead, but there spoke the peoples voice! | 75 |
The Whole Assembly (shouting). Yes! Yes! Yes! Hes an enemy of the people! He hates his country! He hates the people! | 76 |
Aslak. Both as a citizen of this town and as a man, I am deeply shocked at what I have here had to listen to. Dr. Stockmann has unmasked himself in a manner I should never have dreamed of. I am reluctantly forced to subscribe to the opinion just expressed by some worthy citizens, and I think we ought to formulate this opinion in a resolution. I therefore beg to move, That this meeting declares the medical officer of the baths, Dr. Thomas Stockmann, to be an enemy of the people. (Thunders of applause and cheers. Many form a circle round the DOCTOR and hoot at him.) | 77 |
Dr. Stock. (to the people hooting). Ah, fools that you are! I tell you that | 78 |
Aslak. (ringing). The doctor is out of order in speaking. A formal vote must be taken; but out of consideration for personal feelings, it will be taken in writing and without names. Have you any blank paper, Mr. Billing? | 79 |
Bill. Heres both blue and white paper | 80 |
Aslak. Thatll do; we can manage more quickly this way. Tear it up. Thats it. (To the meeting.) Blue means no, white means yes. I myself will go round and collect the votes. (The BURGOMASTER leaves the room. ASLAKSEN and a few others go round with pieces of paper in hats.) * * * * * | 81 |
Aslak. With the exception of one intoxicated person, this meeting of citizens declares the medical officer of the baths, Dr. Thomas Stockmann, to be an enemy of the people. (Cheers and applause.) Three cheers for our fine old municipality! (Cheers.) Three cheers for our able and energetic burgomaster, who has so loyally put aside the claims of kindred! (Cheers.) The meeting is dissolved. | 82 |
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