Act IV

Dr. Stockmann (reflecting). No, confound it, you are right!—you

have never had the courage to. Well, I won't put you in a hole,

Mr. Hovstad. Let us say it is I that am the freethinker, then. I

am going to prove to you, scientifically, that the "People's

Messenger" leads you by the nose in a shameful manner when it

tells you that you—that the common people, the crowd, the

masses, are the real essence of the People. That is only a

newspaper lie, I tell you! The common people are nothing more

than the raw material of which a People is made. (Groans,

laughter and uproar.) Well, isn't that the case? Isn't there an

enormous difference between a well-bred and an ill-bred strain of

animals? Take, for instance, a common barn-door hen. What sort of

eating do you get from a shrivelled up old scrag of a fowl like

that? Not much, do you! And what sort of eggs does it lay? A

fairly good crow or a raven can lay pretty nearly as good an egg.

But take a well-bred Spanish or Japanese hen, or a good pheasant

or a turkey—then you will see the difference. Or take the case

of dogs, with whom we humans are on such intimate terms. Think

first of an ordinary common cur—I mean one of the horrible,

coarse-haired, low-bred curs that do nothing but run about the

streets and befoul the walls of the houses. Compare one of these

curs with a poodle whose sires for many generations have been

bred in a gentleman's house, where they have had the best of food

and had the opportunity of hearing soft voices and music. Do you

not think that the poodle's brain is developed to quite a

different degree from that of the cur? Of course it is. It is

puppies of well-bred poodles like that, that showmen train to do

incredibly clever tricks—things that a common cur could never

learn to do even if it stood on its head. (Uproar and mocking