The Man Whom God Wills To Slay

I Believe That Before Anything Else I'm A Human Being -- Just As Much As You Are... Or At Any Rate I Shall Try To Become One. I Know Quite Well That Most People Would Agree With You, Torvald, And That You Have Warrant For It In Books; But I Can't Be Satisfied Any Longer With What Most People Say, And With What's In Books. I Must Think Things Out For Myself And Try To Understand Them.

Oh Yes, Right—right. What Is The Use Of Having Right On Your Side If You Have Not Got Might?

But I Almost Think We Are All Of Us Ghosts. It Is Not Only What We Have Inherited From Our Father And Mother That “walks” In Us. It Is All Sorts Of Dead Ideas, And Lifeless Old Beliefs, And So Forth. They Have No Vitality, But They Cling To Us All The Same, And We Cannot Shake Them Off. Whenever I Take Up A Newspaper, I Seem To See Ghosts Gliding Between The Lines.

The State Is The Curse Of The Individual... The State Must Go! That Will Be A Revolution Which Will Find Me On Its Side. Undermine The Idea Of The State, Set Up In Its Place Spontaneous Action, And The Idea That Spiritual Relationship Is The Only Thing That Makes For Unity, And You Will Start The Elements Of A Liberty Which Will Be Something Worth Possessing.

It Was Then That I Began To Look Into The Seams Of Your Doctrine. I Wanted Only To Pick At A Single Knot; But When I Had Got That Undone, The Whole Thing Raveled Out. And Then I Understood That It Was All Machine-sewn.