“But Ibsen’s allegories are never stiffly or pedantically worked out. His characters, though typical, are personal. We could read _Brand_, and could feel the tragedy and learn the lessons of the drama without any knowledge whatever of the circumstances or feelings under which it was written, or the references to the Norwegian character and conduct with which it teems. “So, too, with _Peer Gynt_. We may forget the national significance of the sketch, except where special allusions recall it to our minds, and may think only of the universal problems with which the poem deals, and which will retain their awful interest when Ibsen’s polemic against his countrymen has sunk into oblivion. The study of _Peer Gynt_ as an occasional poem should be strictly subsidiary and introductory to its study as the tragedy of a lost soul. “What is it to be one’s self? God _meant something_ when he made each one of us. For a man to embody that meaning of God in his words and deeds, and so become in his degree a ‘word of God made flesh,’ is to be himself. But thus to be himself he must slay himself. That is to say, he must slay the craving to make himself the centre round which others revolve, and must strive to find his true orbit and swing, self-poised, round the great central light. But what if a poor devil can never puzzle out what on earth God _did_ mean when he made him? Why, then, he must _feel_ it. But how often your ‘feeling’ misses fire! Ay! there you have it. The devil has no stauncher ally than _want of perception_! [Act V. Sc. 9.] “But, after all, you may generally find out what God meant you for, if you will face facts. It is easy to find a refuge from facts in lies, in self-deception, and in self-sufficiency. It is easy to take credit to yourself for what circumstances have done for you, and lay upon circumstances what you owe to yourself. It is easy to think you are realising yourself by refusing to become a ‘pack-horse for the weal and woe of others’ [Act IV. Sc. 1], keeping alternatives open and never closing a door behind you or burning your ships, and so always remaining the master of the situation and self-possessed. If you choose to do these easy things you may always ‘get round’ your difficulties [Act II. Sc. 7], but you will never get through them. You will remain master of the situation indeed, but the situation will become poorer and narrower every day. If you never commit yourself, you never express yourself, and yourself becomes less and less significant and decisive. Calculating selfishness is the annihilation of self.” So far Mr. Wicksteed. The general significance of the poem, in the terms of that theism which may or may not have been Ibsen’s personal creed during the years of its incubation, could scarcely be better expounded.