Show ISBEN5 CRlfllNALS Lives of Human Pathology Followed In H Works Enrico Fern in the August Atlantic Of Ibsens works says Enrico Fern in the August Atlantic Ghosts is the drama which above all others most intensely in-tensely follows the lines of human pathology pa-thology as revealed by modern science although the crime it alhough i involves is only faintly indicated and we are left uncertain un-certain at the end whether the mother I gives to her son the liberating poson craved by the victim of paternal vice Another confirmation cif the right to die is found Coppees Bon Crime showing how this view is making headway head-way among higher thinkers Ibsens work is inspired v > y a rare knowledge of scientific facts reproduced with amore a-more or less philosophical precision Thus Hedda Gabler hews out as from a rude block the figure of a neurotic woman hysterical and criminal In The Wild Duck we encounter the triumphant tri-umphant criminal and swindler a contemporary con-temporary figure of haute finance now too often met with In The Pillars of Society Ibsen depicts the socalled great men of politics at once criminals and mmrotc who display in a different dif-ferent environment the environment of parliamentary life the same tendencies tenden-cies that influence the brigands of the roads In Ghosts wherein the author attempts to demonstrate the organic basis of crime or madness the Dicture of Oswald lacks somewhat the precision of a tocspital diagnosis but the making of diagnoses is not the function of art I I suffices that i should ask of science the fundamental facts of life and then be free to change the colors in order the better to impose its real artistic creations on the collective science This effect is attained by Ghosts as i is also attained by Zolas LAssommoir which has fixed the disastrous results of alcohol isn just 3 Ghosts has made us comprehend the hereditary transmission trans-mission of paternal degeneration even though the inexorable uniformity of this law is a little exaggerated |