ÆäÀÌÁö À̹ÌÁö
PDF
ePub

MR. MANDERS. And it is over that man you raise a monument? MRS. ALVING. There! you see what power a bad conscience has. MR. MANDERS. A bad ? What do you mean?

MRS ALVING. It was always before my eyes that it was impossible but that the truth must come out and be believed. So the Asylum was to destroy all evil rumours and banish all doubts for ever.

MR. MANDERS. In that you have certainly not missed your mark, Mrs. Alving.

MRS. ALVING. And besides, I had one more reason. I did not wish that Oswald, my own boy, should inherit anything whatever from his father.

[merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small]

MRS. ALVING. Yes. The sums which I have laid by for the Orphanage, year by year, make up the sum-I have reckoned it up precisely the sum which made Lieutenant Alving a good match in his day.

MR. MANDErs. I don't quite understand

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

MRS. ALVING. It was the purchase-money. I do not chocse that money to pass into Oswald's hands. My son shall have everything from me ;-everything. (Oswald Alving comes through the second door to the right; he has taken off his hat and overcoat in the hall. Mrs. Alving goes towards him). Is it you come back again? my dear, dear boy!

OSWALD. Yes. What can a fellow do out of doors in this eternal rain? But I hear we are to have dinner. That's capital! REGINA (with a parcel from the dining room). A parcel has come for you, Mrs. Alving (hands it to her).

MRS. ALVING (with a glance at Mr. Manders.) Probably from the printer's; the poem that has been written for to-morrow's festivity. MR. MANDERS. Hm.

REGINA. And now dinner is ready.

MRS. ALVING. Very well. We will come presently. I will just (begins to open the parcel).

REGINA (to Oswald). Would Mr. Alving like red or white wine? OSWALD. Both, if you please.

REGINA. Bien. Very well, Sir. (She goes into the dining room). OSWALD. I may as well help uncork it. (He goes into the dining room whose door swings half to behind him).

MRS. ALVING (who has opened the parcel).

Yes. I am quite right.

Here are the songs for to morrow's festivity, Mr. Manders.

MR. MANDERS (with folded hands). How can I possibly deliver my discourse to-morrow with a free mind, that

MRS. ALVING. Oh! you will find plenty to say.

MR. MANDERS (softly, so as not to be heard in the dining room). Yes;

it would not do to provoke scandal.

MRS. ALVING (under her breath but firmly). No. But then this long, hateful comedy will be at an end for ever. From the day after to-morrow it shall be for me as though the dead man had never lived in this house. No one else shall be here but my boy and his mother. (From within the dining room comes the noise of a chair overturned, and at the same moment is heard)

REGINA (choked but whispering). Oswald! I say! are you mad? Let me go!

MRS. ALVING (starts in terror). АH! (She stares wildly towards the half opened door. Oswald is heard coughing and humming inside. A bottle is uncorked).

MR. MANDERS (excited). But what in the world is happening? What is it, Mrs. Alving?

MRS. ALVING (hoarsely). GHOSTS! The couple from the conservatory is walking about again.

MR. MANDERS. What! Is it possible? Regina? Is she? MRS. ALVING. Yes. Come. Not another word! (She seizes Mr. Manders by the arm and walks unsteadily towards the dining room.)

END OF ACT I.

TO-DAY.

No. 14.-FEBRUARY, 1885.

Social Progress and Individual Effort.

THE

HE Progress of Society is a subject which occupies much attention now-a-days. We hear the shouts and cries of reformers, and are inclined sometimes to be vexed at their noisy insistance and brandishing of panaceas; but when we come to look into the evils to which they draw our attention-under our very noses as it were-and see how serious they are; when we see the misery, the suffering all around us, and see too how directly in some cases this appears to be traceable to certain institutions, we can hardly be human if we do not make some effort to alter these institutions, and the state of society which goes with them; indeed at times we feel that it is our highest duty to agitate with the noisiest, and insist at all costs that justice should be done, the iniquity swept away.

And yet, on the other hand, when retiring from the heat and noise of conflict, we mount a little in thought and look out over the world, when we realise what indeed every day is becoming more abundantly clear-that Society is the gigantic growth of centuries, moving on in an irresistible and ordered march of its own, with the precision and fatality of an astronomic orb-how absurd seem all our demonstrations! what an idle beating of the air! The huge beast comes on with elephantine tread. The Liberal sits on his head, and the Conservative sits on his tail; but both are borne along whether they will or no, and both are shaken off before long, inevitably, into the dust. One reformer shouts, "This way," and another shouts " That," but the great foot comes down and crushes them both, indifferent, crushes the one who thought he was right and the one who found he was wrong, crushes him who would facilitate its progress and him who would stop it, alike. I confess that I am continually borne about between these two Vol. III. No. 2. New Series.

D

[ocr errors]

opposing views. On the one hand is Justice, here and now, which must and shall be done. On the other hand is Destiny, indifferent, coming down from eternity, which cannot be altered.

Where does the truth lie? Is there any attainable truth in the matter? Perhaps not. The more I think of it, the more am I persuaded that the true explanations, theories, of the social changes which we see around us, that the forces which produce them, that the purposes which they fulfil, lie deep deep down, unsuspected; that the profoundest hitherto Science (Buckle, Comte, Marx, Spencer, Morgan, and the rest) has hardly done more than touch the skirt of this great subject. The surface indications, currents, are elusive; the apparent purposes very different from the real ones; individuals, institutions, nations, more or less like puppets or pieces in a game;—the hand that moves them altogether unseen, screening itself effectually from observation.

Let me take an illustration. You see a young plant springing out of the ground. You are struck by the eager vital growth of it. What elasticity, energy! how it snatches contributions from the winds and sunlight, and the earth beneath, and rays itself out with hourly fresh adornment! You become interested to know what is the meaning of all this activity. You watch the plant. It unfolds. The leaf-bud breaks and discloses leaves. These, then, are what it has been aiming at.

But in the axils of the leaves are other leaf-buds, and from these more leaves! The young shoot branches and becomes a little tree or bush. The branching and budding go on, a repetition apparently of one formula. Presently, however, a flower-bud appears. Now we see the real object!

Take a

Have you then ever carefully examined a flower-bud? rosebud for instance, or better still perhaps, a dahlia. When quite young the buds of these latter are mere green knobs. Cut one across with your pen-knife: you will see a green or whitish mass, apparently without organisation. Cut another open which is more advanced, and you will see traces of structural arrangement, even markings and lines faintly pencilled on its surface, like the markings that shoot thro' freezing water-sketches and outlines of what is to follow. Later, and your bud will disclose a distinct formation; beneath an outer husk or film-transparent in the case of the dahlia— the petals can already be distinguished, marked, though not actually separated from each other. Here they lie in block as it were, conceived yet not shapen, like the statue in the stone, or the thought in the brain of the sculptor. But they are growing momently and expanding. The outermost, or sepals, cohering form a husk, which for a time protects the young bud. But it also confines it. A struggle ensues, a strangulation, and then the husk gives way, falls off or passes into a secondary place, and the bud opens.

And now the petals uncurl and free themselves like living things to the light. But the process is not finished. Each petal expanding shows another beneath, and these younger ones as they open push the older ones outwards, and while these latter are fading there are still new ones appearing in the centre. Envelope after envelope exfoliated--such is the law of life.

At last however within the most intimate petals appears the central galaxy-the group of the sexual organs! And now the flower (the petal-flower) which just before in all its glory of form colour and fragrance seemed to be the culminating expression and purpose of the plant's life, appears as only a means, an introduction, a secondary thing-a mere advertisement and lure to wandering insects. Within it lies the golden circle of the stamens, the magic staff of the pistil, and the precious ark or seed-vessel.

Now then we know what it has all been for! But the appearance of the seed-vessel is not the end, it is only a beginning. The flower, the petals, now drop off withered and useless; their work is done. But the seed-vessel begins to swell, to take on structure and form-just as the formless bud did before-there is something at work within. And now it bursts, opens, and falls away. It too is a husk, and no longer of any importance-for within it appear the seeds, the objects of all this long toil!

Is the investigation finished? is the process at an end?-No. Here within this tiny seed lies the promise, the purpose, the vital principle, the law, the inspiration-whatever you like to call it-of this plant's life. Can we find it?

The seed falls to the ground. It swells and takes on form and structure just as the seed-vessel which enclosed it took on form and structure before-and as the flower-bud (which enclosed the seed-vessel) did before that—and as the leaf-bud (which enclosed the flower-bud) did before that. The seed falls to the ground; it throws off a husk (always husks thrown off!)—and discloses an embryo plant-radicle, plumule and cotyledons-root-shoot, stemshoot and seed leaves-complete. And the circle begins again.*

We are baffled after all! We have followed this extraordinary process, we have seen each stage of the plant-growth appearing first as final, and then only as the envelope of a later stage. We have stripped off, so to speak, husk after husk, in our search for the inner secret of the plant-life-we have got down to the tiny seed. But the seed we have found turns out (like every other stage) to be itself only an envelope-to be thrown away in its turn-what we want lies still deeper down. The plant-life begins again or rather it never ends but it does not repeat itself. The young plant is not the same as the parent, and the next generation varies again from this. When the envelopes have been thrown off a thousand and a hundred thousand times more, a new form will appear; will this be a nearer and more perfect expression than before of that within-lying secret-or otherwise?

To return to Society: I began by noting the contrast, often drawn, between the stern inexorable march of this as a whole, and the equally imperious determination of the individual to interfere with its march-a determination excited by the contemplation of what is called evil, and shapen by an ideal of something better arising within him. Think what a commotion there must be within the bud when the petals of a rose are forming! Think what arguments, what divisions, what recriminations, even among the atoms. An organization has to be constructed and completed. Though not really a circle-any more than ¡the paths of the planets are really ellipses

*

« ÀÌÀü°è¼Ó »