From the beginning to the end of Ibsen’s work the one thing lacking is synthesis. Synthesis is one with personality, and Ibsen is not a personality; he is all brain. He has not, in any one of his books, the warmth and pulsation that belong to a complete nature; one feels something resembling warmth, yes, something very like fever-heat, in the passages where he describes cruelty; we need only recall the martyrdom of Agnes in _Brand_. He was a man of brains who composed; but the brain cannot compose. The blood composes, the soul composes, the nerves compose, but of all these he had very little--there was indeed a despairing lack of them in the year 1848 and thereabout. What did that period bring with it? A wordy warfare in which the logic of Judaism assumed the highest tone. Wherever this logic found its way, it imported debates upon problems, and Ibsen became the greatest of its pupils. He agitated, he “revolutionised,” he occasioned more than one act of momentary liberation. There was one characteristic which he retained from the days when he had been an apothecary’s apprentice, and that was an affection for acids. His entire authorship comes under the head of acids. He was never a psychologist, only a constructive agent, and since _Rosmersholm_ even his constructive power has forsaken him; his men, Wangel, Tesmann, Solness, Almers are only variations of the same Rosmer. His women, Hedda, Hilda, Rita, are obvious derivations from the woman _à la_ Strindberg. And now that he is nearing his end, he stands where his own Rita stands, whose last hope it is to make little civilised Eyolf-cripples out of the ragged, unmannerly, yet vigorous fisher class. FOOTNOTE: [1] See Ibsen’s Poems. _The High Priest of Purity_ _Björnstjerne Björnson_ I