Page:The collected works of Henrik Ibsen (Volume 5).djvu/404

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Whither, my brother?

.

Where it is loneliest.

But here—in this desolation? Among these rubbish-heaps?

Is not the whole earth a rubbish-heap?

Yet you have shown that what has fallen can be restored.

Mocker! In Athens I saw how a cobbler had made himself a little workshop in the temple of Theseus. In Rome, I hear, a corner of the Basilica Julia is used for a bullock-stable. Call you that restoration?

Why not? Does not everything happen little by little? What is a whole but the sum of all the parts?

Foolish wisdom!

[He points to the overturned statue of Apollo.

See this noseless face. See this splintered elbow,—these shattered loins. Does the sum of all these deformities restore to us the divine perfection of bygone beauty?