Well and good—but no sooner do I apply the law to two-legged animals, than Mr. Hovstad stops short; then he daren’t hold his own opinions, or think out his own thoughts; then he turns the whole principle upside down, and proclaims in the _People’s Messenger_ that the barn-door hen and the gutter-mongrel are precisely the finest specimens in the menagerie. But that’s always the way, so long as the commonness still lingers in your system, and you haven’t worked your way up to spiritual distinction. HOVSTAD. I make no pretence to any sort of distinction. I come of simple peasant folk, and I am proud that my root should lie deep down among the common people, who are here being insulted. WORKMEN. Hurrah for Hovstad. Hurrah! hurrah! DR. STOCKMANN. The sort of common people I am speaking of are not found among the lower classes alone; they crawl and swarm all around us—up 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._ BURGOMASTER. I protest against such personalities. DR. STOCKMANN. [_Imperturbably._]——and that not because, like myself, he’s descended from a good-for-nothing old pirate from Pomerania, or thereabouts—for that’s our ancestry—— BURGOMASTER. An absurd tradition! Utterly groundless. DR. STOCKMANN. ——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 common people; and that is why my distinguished brother Peter is at bottom so undistinguished,—and consequently so illiberal. BURGOMASTER. Mr. Chairman——! HOVSTAD. So that the distinguished people in this country are the Liberals? That’s quite a new light on the subject. _Laughter._ DR. STOCKMANN. Yes, that is part of my new discovery. And _this_, too, follows: that liberality of thought is almost precisely the same thing as morality. Therefore I say it’s absolutely unpardonable of the _Messenger_ to proclaim, day out, day in, the false doctrine that it’s the masses, the multitude, the compact majority, that monopolise 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.