"Listen without interrupting, or I shall lose the thread of my argument. I suppose that you'll admit that the optimists outnumber the pessimists? Obviously they must, or the world would come to an end. Very well, then, we'll say that the pessimists are the people with no digestions at all: on top of them will be the people with slow digestions, the great unthinking herd that is optimistic because the optimists shout most loudly. The people with good normal digestions are of course the shouting optimists. Finally come the people whose digestions are too rapid. I belong to that class."
"Are they optimists?"
"They're optimists until they've finished digesting, but between meals they're outrageously pessimistic. The only way to illustrate my theory is to talk about myself. Imagine you're a lady palmist and prepare for a debauch of egotism from one of your clients. All through my life, Michael, I've been a martyr to quick digestion. Your friend Guy Hazlewood suffered from that complaint, judging by the way he talked about the war. I can imagine that his life has been made of brief, exquisite illusions followed by long vacuums. Am I right?"
Michael nodded.
"Cassandra, to take a more remote instance, suffered from rapid digestion—in fact, all prophets have the malady. Isn't it physiologically true to say that the unborn child performs in its mother's womb the drama of man's evolution? I'm sure it's equally true that the life of the individual after birth and until death is a microcosm of man's later history, or rather I ought to say that it might be, for only exceptional individuals reproduce the history of humanity up to contemporary development. A genius—a great creative genius—seems to me a man whose active absorption can keep pace with the rapidity of his digestion. How often do we hear of people who were in advance of their time! This figure of speech is literally true, but only great creative geniuses have the consolation of projecting themselves beyond their ambient in time. There remain a number of sterile geniuses, whom Nature, with her usual prodigality, has put on the market in reserve, but for whom later on she finds she has no use on account of the economy that always succeeds extravagance. These sterile geniuses are left to fend for themselves and somehow to extract from a hostile and suspicious environment food to maintain them during the long, dreary emptiness that succeeds their too optimistic absorption. Do you agree with me?"
"At one end of the pole you would put Shakespeare, at the other the Jubilee Juggins?" Michael suggested.
"That's it," she agreed. "Although a less conspicuous wastrel would serve for the other end."
"And I suppose if you're searching for the eternal rhythm of the universe, you'd have to apply to nations the same classification as to individuals?" he went on.
"Of course."
"So that England would have a good normal digestion and Ireland a too rapid digestion? Or better, let us say that all Teutons eat heartily and digest slowly, and that all Kelts are too rapid. But come back to yourself."