It would seem as though the endeavour were being made. Some time ago, when dealing with ‘The Master Builder,’ which is the one of Ibsen’s dramas wherein this dialogue of the ‘second degree’ attains the deepest tragedy, I endeavoured, unskilfully enough, to fix its secrets. For indeed they are kindred handmarks traced on the same wall by the same sightless being, groping for the same light. ‘What is it,’ I asked, ‘what is it that, in the “Master Builder,” the poet has added to life, thereby making it appear so strange, so profound and so disquieting beneath its trivial surface?’ The discovery is not easy, and the old master hides from us more than one secret. It would even seem as though what he has wished to say were but little by the side of what he has been compelled to say. He has freed certain powers of the soul that have never yet been free, and it may well be that these have held him in thrall. ‘Look you, Hilda,’ exclaims Solness, ‘look you! There is sorcery in you, too, as there is in me. It is this sorcery that imposes action on the powers of the beyond. And we _have_ to yield to it. Whether we want to or not, we _must_.’
There is sorcery in them, as in us all. Hilda and Solness are, I believe, the first characters in drama who feel, for an instant, that they are living in the atmosphere of the soul; and the discovery of this essential life that exists in them, beyond the life of every day, comes fraught with terror. Hilda and Solness are two souls to whom a flash has revealed their situation in the true life. Diverse ways there are by which knowledge of our fellows may come to us. Two or three men, perhaps, are seen by me almost daily. For a long time it is merely by their gestures that I distinguish them, by their habits, be these of mind or body, by the manner in which they feel, act or think. But, in the course of every friendship of some duration, there comes to us a mysterious moment when we seem to perceive the exact relationship of our friend to the unknown that surrounds him, when we discover the attitude destiny has assumed towards him. And it is from this moment that he truly belongs to us. We have seen, once and for all, the treatment held in store for him by events. We know that however such a one may seclude himself in the recesses of his dwelling, in dread lest his slightest movement stir up that which lies in the great reservoirs of the future, his forethought will avail him nothing, and the innumerable events that destiny holds in reserve will discover him wherever he hide, and will knock one after another at his door. And even so do we know that this other will sally forth in vain in pursuit of adventure. He will ever return empty-handed. No sooner are our eyes thus opened than unerring knowledge would seem to spring to life, self-created, within our soul; and we know with absolute conviction that the event that seems to be impending over the head of a certain man will nevertheless most assuredly not reach him.