convinced, and am still certain, that dogmatists feel no shame, and are by no means to be driven out of life; besides, I have lately come to the conclusion that the dogmatists are perfectly justified in their stubbornness. Belief, and the need of belief, are strong as love, as death. In the case of every dogmatist I now consider it my sacred duty to concede everything in advance, even to the acknowledgment of the least, and least significant, shades of his convictions and beliefs. There is but one limitation, one only, imperceptible and almost invisible: the dogmatist's convictions must not be absolutely and universally binding, that is, not binding upon the whole of mankind without exception. The majority, the vast majority, millions, even tens of millions of people, I will readily allow him, on the understanding that they themselves desire it, or that he will show himself skilful enough to entice them to his side--violence is surely not to be admitted in matters of belief. In a word, I allow him almost the whole of humankind, in consideration whereof he must agree that his convictions are not intrinsically binding upon the few units or tens that remain. I agree to an outward submission. And the dogmatist, after such a victory--my confession is surely a complete victory for him--must consider himself satisfied in full. Socrates was right, Plato, Tolstoi, the prophets were right: there is only one truth, one God; truth has the right to destroy lie, light to destroy darkness. God, omniscient, most gracious and omnipotent, will like Alexander of Macedon conquer nearly all the known world, and will drive out from his possessions, amid the triumphant and delighted shouts of his millions of loyal subjects, the devil and all those who are disobedient to his divine word. But he will renounce his claim to power over the souls of his few opponents, according to the agreement, and a handful of apostates will gather together on a remote isle, invisible to the millions, and will there continue their free, peculiar life. And here--to return to the beginning--among these few disobedient will be found Ibsen as he was in the last years of his life, as he is seen in his last drama. For in _When We Dead Awake_ Ibsen approves and glorifies that which Gogol actually did fifty years ago. He renounces his art, and with hatred and mockery recalls to mind what was once the business of his life. On April 15, 1866, Ibsen wrote to King Karl: 'I am not fighting for a careless existence; I am fighting for the work of my life, in which I unflinchingly believe, and which I know God has given me to do.' By the way, you will hardly find one of the great workers who has not repeated this assertion of Ibsen's, whether in the same or in another form. Evidently, without such an illusion, temporary or permanent, one cannot compass the intense struggle and the sacrifices which are the price of great work. Evidently, illusions of