He has evidently persuaded himself that this method of which he is so proud will enable him to go "roundabout" the throne of Judgment.

After losing his fortune and wandering in Morocco and Egypt, Peer Gynt returns to Norway. From that point of return we have the record of his disillusionment. The ship is wrecked and he finds himself clinging to an upturned boat on the angry waters. He is joined there by "a strange passenger " who is really Peer's better self, the self God intended when He gave him being, and there, with only a few spars separating him from a grave in the deep, he has a glimpse of the kind of man he had become. Drowning men, when rescued, have sometimes told of the vivid recollections of their past life which came to them crowded into the compass of a few seconds, as they hovered between life and death. Peer Gynt saw not merely what he had been, but what he might have been had he to himself been faithful. Mr. William Archer declares that he was "convicted of sin convicted of sin" on that frail raft. That is, perhaps, true. He certainly heard the deeper voices of his own neglected spirit. And yet the old habit returns. He defers de

cision. He is more anxious for bodily safety than for the recovery of his best self.

Saved from the seas Peer can find no deliverance from questions which go down to the bases of his soul. What has he done with his life? Has he done anything at all? He can point to nothing.

Figments, dreams, and still-born knowledge
Lay the pyramid's foundation;

O'er them shall the work mount upwards,
Earnest shunned, repentance dreaded."

That is how it all seems as he strives to look deeply into his own life, and somehow in spite of himself and his theories, he cannot help looking. His world is full of complaints and reproaches, and he hears sounds like those of children weeping. The thread-balls on the ground of the blasted heath on which he wanders, in the lone dark night, cry:

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We are thoughts;

Thou shouldst have thought us."

The withered leaves flying before the wind accuse him:

"We are a watchword;

Thou shouldst have proclaimed us."

The sighing of the wind takes up the reproach:

"We are songs;

Thou shouldst have proclaimed us."

The Dewdrops dripping from the branches of the charred tree trunks say:

"We are tears

Unshed for ever."

The broken straws at his feet complain:

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We are deeds;

Thou shouldst have achieved us."

And even Ase's sad voice is heard far away:

"You've driven me the wrong way."

As he flees from these accusing voices Peer Gynt is met, at the cross-roads, by a symbolical messenger of Divine judgment called the "Button Moulder." In childhood Peer used to mould buttons in a ladle, and when a button was poorly cast he would fling it into the melting pot to be cast afresh. The Button Moulder carries with

him a huge ladle into which he has been charged by his Divine Master to cast the souls which have never realised their Maker's design, have made no use of the powers entrusted to their

care.

Now you were designed for a shining button, On the vest of the world; but your loop gave way; So into the paste box you needs must go,

And then, as they phrase it, be merged in the mass."

It is a fantastic statement of the ultimate significance of our life, that it really is an investment of the Maker. The human spirit is not a finished creation: it is something to be made by effort and sacrifice. Character is a spiritual production moulded out of the thoughts, passions, and aptitudes of life.

And here we find one of the most daring conceptions of the drama. An evil character, declares the Button Moulder, which has sinned boldly and resolutely is like the negative of a photograph in which lines are reversed and bright is turned to dark. But yet, by the use of stringent acids and scalding solutions we may, from the negative

likeness, obtain a positive. So the fiery judgments of God may, hereafter, effect transformation in a sinful character. But what can be made of the plate which bears no image at all? Peer's theory has ended in neutrality: search his life through and through and there is found nothing at all: the plate bears no image upon which acids can take effect. He has played off one impulse against another and has neutralised everything. He protests with all his soul against annihilation, this "Gynt cessation" as he terms it. To which the Button Moulder replies:

"Bless me, my dear Peer, there is surely no need To get so wrought up about trifles like this, Yourself you have never been at all;

Then what does it matter, your dying right out."

Concerning which thought about the future Ibsen might have quoted against his critics the words, "Because thou art lukewarm I will spew thee out of my mouth."

Peer Gynt does not seek further to plead innocence. His sins, he openly confesses, are many and black. But he does strive to prove that he has made something of himself. He fails, how