An Enemy of the People
far as possible, to arrest him on the perilous course he has adopted;
that is, consideration for his family—
Dr. Stockmann. Please stick to the water-supply and drainage!
Hovstad. —consideration, I repeat, for his wife and his children for
whom he has made no provision.
Morten. Is that us, mother?
Mrs. Stockmann. Hush!
Aslaksen. I will now put the Mayor's proposition to the vote.
Dr. Stockmann. There is no necessity! Tonight I have no intention of
dealing with all that filth down at the Baths. No; I have something
quite different to say to you.
Peter Stockmann (aside). What is coming now?
A Drunken Man (by the entrance door). I am a ratepayer! And therefore,
I have a right to speak too! And my entire—firm—inconceivable opinion
is—
A number of voices. Be quiet, at the back there!
Others. He is drunk! Turn him out! (They turn him out.)
Dr. Stockmann. Am I allowed to speak?
Aslaksen (ringing his bell). Dr. Stockmann will address the meeting.
Dr. Stockmann. I should like to have seen anyone, a few days ago, dare
to attempt to silence me as has been done tonight! I would have
defended my sacred rights as a man, like a lion! But now it is all one
to me; I have something of even weightier importance to say to you.
(The crowd presses nearer to him, MORTEN Kiil conspicuous among them.)
Dr. Stockmann (continuing). I have thought and pondered a great deal,
these last few days—pondered over such a variety of things that in the
end my head seemed too full to hold them—
Peter Stockmann (with a cough). Ahem!
Dr. Stockmann. —but I got them clear in my mind at last, and then I
saw the whole situation lucidly. And that is why I am standing here
to-night. I have a great revelation to make to you, my fellow-citizens!
I will impart to you a discovery of a far wider scope than the trifling
matter that our water supply is poisoned and our medicinal Baths are
standing on pestiferous soil.
A number of voices (shouting). Don't talk about the Baths! We won't
hear you! None of that!
Dr. Stockmann. I have already told you that what I want to speak about
is the great discovery I have made lately—the discovery that all the
sources of our moral life are poisoned and that the whole fabric of our
civic community is founded on the pestiferous soil of falsehood.
Voices of disconcerted Citizens. What is that he says?
Peter Stockmann. Such an insinuation—!
Aslaksen (with his hand on his bell). I call upon the speaker to
moderate his language.
Dr. Stockmann. I have always loved my native town as a man only can
love the home of his youthful days. I was not old when I went away from
here; and exile, longing and memories cast as it were an additional
halo over both the town and its inhabitants. (Some clapping and
applause.) And there I stayed, for many years, in a horrible hole far
away up north. When I came into contact with some of the people that
lived scattered about among the rocks, I often thought it would of been
more service to the poor half-starved creatures if a veterinary doctor
had been sent up there, instead of a man like me. (Murmurs among the
crowd.)
Billing (laying down his pen). I'm damned if I have ever heard—!
Hovstad. It is an insult to a respectable population!
Dr. Stockmann. Wait a bit! I do not think anyone will charge me with
having forgotten my native town up there. I was like one of the
eider-ducks brooding on its nest, and what I hatched was the plans for
these Baths. (Applause and protests.) And then when fate at last
decreed for me the great happiness of coming home again—I assure you,
gentlemen, I thought I had nothing more in the world to wish for. Or
rather, there was one thing I wished for—eagerly, untiringly,
ardently—and that was to be able to be of service to my native town
and the good of the community.
Peter Stockmann (looking at the ceiling). You chose a strange way of
doing it—ahem!
Dr. Stockmann. And so, with my eyes blinded to the real facts, I
revelled in happiness. But yesterday morning—no, to be precise, it was
yesterday afternoon—the eyes of my mind were opened wide, and the
first thing I realised was the colossal stupidity of the authorities—.
(Uproar, shouts and laughter, MRS. STOCKMANN coughs persistently.)
Peter Stockmann. Mr. Chairman!
Aslaksen (ringing his bell). By virtue of my authority—!
Dr. Stockmann. It is a petty thing to catch me up on a word, Mr.
Aslaksen. What I mean is only that I got scent of the unbelievable
piggishness our leading men had been responsible for down at the Baths.
I can't stand leading men at any price!—I have had enough of such
people in my time. They are like billy-goats on a young plantation;
they do mischief everywhere. They stand in a free man's way, whichever
way he turns, and what I should like best would be to see them
exterminated like any other vermin—. (Uproar.)
Peter Stockmann. Mr. Chairman, can we allow such expressions to pass?
Aslaksen (with his hand on his bell). Doctor—!
Dr. Stockmann. I cannot understand how it is that I have only now
acquired a clear conception of what these gentry are, when I had almost
daily before my eyes in this town such an excellent specimen of
them—my brother Peter—slow-witted and hide-bound in prejudice—.
(Laughter, uproar and hisses. MRS. STOCKMANN Sits coughing assiduously.
ASLAKSEN rings his bell violently.)
The Drunken Man (who has got in again). Is it me he is talking about?
My name's Petersen, all right—but devil take me if I—
Angry Voices. Turn out that drunken man! Turn him out. (He is turned
out again.)
Peter Stockmann. Who was that person?
1st Citizen. I don't know who he is, Mr. Mayor.
2nd Citizen. He doesn't belong here.
3rd Citizen. I expect he is a navvy from over at—(the rest is
inaudible).
Aslaksen. He had obviously had too much beer. Proceed, Doctor; but
please strive to be moderate in your language.
Dr. Stockmann. Very well, gentlemen, I will say no more about our
leading men. And if anyone imagines, from what I have just said, that
my object is to attack these people this evening, he is
wrong—absolutely wide of the mark. For I cherish the comforting
conviction that these parasites—all these venerable relics of a dying
school of thought—are most admirably paving the way for their own
extinction; they need no doctor's help to hasten their end. Nor is it
folk of that kind who constitute the most pressing danger to the
community. It is not they who are most instrumental in poisoning the
sources of our moral life and infecting the ground on which we stand.
It is not they who are the most dangerous enemies of truth and freedom
amongst us.
Shouts from all sides. Who then? Who is it? Name! Name!
Dr. Stockmann. You may depend upon it—I shall name them! That is
precisely the great discovery I made yesterday. (Raises his voice.) The
most dangerous enemy of truth and freedom amongst us is the compact
majority—yes, the damned compact Liberal majority—that is it! Now you
know! (Tremendous uproar. Most of the crowd are shouting, stamping and
hissing. Some of the older men among them exchange stolen glances and
seem to be enjoying themselves. MRS. STOCKMANN gets up, looking
anxious. EJLIF and MORTEN advance threateningly upon some schoolboys
who are playing pranks. ASLAKSEN rings his bell and begs for silence.
HOVSTAD and BILLING both talk at once, but are inaudible. At last quiet
is restored.)
Aslaksen. As Chairman, I call upon the speaker to withdraw the
ill-considered expressions he has just used.
Dr. Stockmann. Never, Mr. Aslaksen! It is the majority in our community
that denies me my freedom and seeks to prevent my speaking the truth.
Hovstad. The majority always has right on its side.
Billing. And truth too, by God!
Dr. Stockmann. The majority never has right on its side. Never, I say!
That is one of these social lies against which an independent,
intelligent man must wage war. Who is it that constitute the majority
of the population in a country? Is it the clever folk, or the stupid? I
don't imagine you will dispute the fact that at present the stupid
people are in an absolutely overwhelming majority all the world over.
But, good Lord!—you can never pretend that it is right that the stupid
folk should govern the clever ones! (Uproar and cries.) Oh, yes—you
can shout me down, I know! But you cannot answer me. The majority has
might on its side—unfortunately; but right it has not. I am in the
right—I and a few other scattered individuals. The minority is always
in the right. (Renewed uproar.)
Hovstad. Aha!—so Dr. Stockmann has become an aristocrat since the day
before yesterday!
Dr. Stockmann. I have already said that I don't intend to waste a word
on the puny, narrow-chested, short-winded crew whom we are leaving
astern. Pulsating life no longer concerns itself with them. I am
thinking of the few, the scattered few amongst us, who have absorbed
new and vigorous truths. Such men stand, as it were, at the outposts,
so far ahead that the compact majority has not yet been able to come up
with them; and there they are fighting for truths that are too
newly-born into the world of consciousness to have any considerable
number of people on their side as yet.
Hovstad. So the Doctor is a revolutionary now!
Dr. Stockmann. Good heavens—of course I am, Mr. Hovstad! I propose to
raise a revolution against the lie that the majority has the monopoly
of the truth. What sort of truths are they that the majority usually
supports? They are truths that are of such advanced age that they are
beginning to break up. And if a truth is as old as that, it is also in
a fair way to become a lie, gentlemen. (Laughter and mocking cries.)
Yes, believe me or not, as you like; but truths are by no means as
long-lived at Methuselah—as some folk imagine. A normally constituted
truth lives, let us say, as a rule seventeen or eighteen, or at most
twenty years—seldom longer. But truths as aged as that are always worn
frightfully thin, and nevertheless it is only then that the majority
recognises them and recommends them to the community as wholesome moral
nourishment. There is no great nutritive value in that sort of fare, I
can assure you; and, as a doctor, I ought to know. These "majority
truths" are like last year's cured meat—like rancid, tainted ham; and
they are the origin of the moral scurvy that is rampant in our
communities.
Aslaksen. It appears to me that the speaker is wandering a long way
from his subject.
Peter Stockmann. I quite agree with the Chairman.
Dr. Stockmann. Have you gone clean out of your senses, Peter? I am
sticking as closely to my subject as I can; for my subject is precisely
this, that it is the masses, the majority—this infernal compact
majority—that poisons the sources of our moral life and infects the
ground we stand on.
Hovstad. And all this because the great, broadminded majority of the
people is prudent enough to show deference only to well-ascertained and
well-approved truths?
Dr. Stockmann. Ah, my good Mr. Hovstad, don't talk nonsense about
well-ascertained truths! The truths of which the masses now approve are
the very truths that the fighters at the outposts held to in the days
of our grandfathers. We fighters at the outposts nowadays no longer
approve of them; and I do not believe there is any other
well-ascertained truth except this, that no community can live a
healthy life if it is nourished only on such old marrowless truths.
Hovstad. But, instead of standing there using vague generalities, it
would be interesting if you would tell us what these old marrowless
truths are, that we are nourished on.
(Applause from many quarters.)
Dr. Stockmann. Oh, I could give you a whole string of such
abominations; but to begin with I will confine myself to one