“Of course not,” said he.
“But then,” she asked, “how can you write it?”
“I shall write it,” he said, “if I have to die when I get through”. So he shut himself up in his room once more.
Section 7. A famous scientist began the story—reasoning along the lines of Dr. Holland’s argument. The grass took the inorganic matter, and made it into food; the steer ate the grass, and carried it to the next stage; and beyond that was one stage more. So the scientist began making experiments—in a quiet way, of course. He reported the results before a learned scientific body, but his colleagues were so scandalized that the matter was hushed up.
The seed had been sown, however. A younger man took up the idea, and made researches in the South Seas—substantiating the claim that those races which took to anthropophagy had invariably supplanted the others. The new investigator printed his findings in a book which was circulated privately; and pretty soon he was called into consultation by the master-mind of the country’s finance—the richest man in the world. This man was old and bald and feeble; and now suddenly there came to him a new lease of life—new health and new enthusiasm. It was given out that he had got it by wandering about bare-footed in the grass, and playing golf all day—an explanation which the public accepted without question. No one remarked the fact that the old man began devoting his wealth to the establishing of foundling asylums; nor did any one think it suspicious that the younger generation of this multi-millionaire should rise so suddenly to power and fame.
But there began to be strange rumors and suspicions. There were young writers, who had developed a new technique, and had carried poetic utterance to undreamed of heights; and in this poetry were cryptic allusions, hints of diabolic things. A Socialist paper printed the ménu of a banquet given by these “Neo-Nietzscheans”, and demanded to know what one was to understand by filet de mouton blanc, and wherein lay the subtle humor of paté de petit bête. And at last the storm broke—a youth scarcely in his teens published a book of poems in which the dread secret was blazoned forth to the world with mocking defiance. There were frantic attempts to suppress this book, but they failed; and then a prosecuting officer, eager for notoriety, placed the youth upon trial for his life. And so the issue was drawn.
The public at large awakened to a dazed realization of the head-way which the new idea had made. It had become a cult of the ruling-class, the esoteric religion of the state; everywhere its defenders sprang up—it seemed as if all the intellectual as well as the material power of the community was under its spell. To oppose it was not merely bad form—it was to incur a stigma of moral inferiority, to be the victim of a “slave-ethic”.
With the scientific world, of course, its victory was speedy; the new doctrine was in line with recognized evolutionary teaching. The great names of Darwin and Spencer were invoked in its support; and, of course, when it came to economic science, there could be no two opinions. Had laissez-faire ever meant anything, if laissez-faire did not mean this?
At the very outset, the country was startled by the publication of a book by a college professor, famed as a leading sociologist, in which the case was presented without any attempt at sophistication. It was a fact, needing no attestation, that the mass of mankind had always lived in a state of slavery. At the present hour, under the forms of democracy, there were a quarter of a million men killed every year in industry, and half a million women living by prostitution, and two million children earning wages, and ten million people in want; and in comparison with these things, how humane was the new cult, how honest and above-board, how clean and economical! For the first time there could be offered to the submerged tenth a real social function to be performed. Once let the new teaching be applied upon a world-wide scale, and the proletariat might follow its natural impulse to multiply without limit; there would be no more “race-suicide” to trouble the souls of eminent statesmen.
And this at the time when the attention of the community was focussed upon the new cause célèbre! When the public prints were filled with an acrimonious discussion as to the meaning of the instructions given to the jury. If anyone chose to will his body to a purchaser, said the judge, and then go and commit suicide, there was no law to prevent him; and, of course, the subsequent purposes of the purchaser had nothing to do with the point at issue. This was a matter of taste—here the learned justice rapped for order—a matter of prejudice, largely, and the question at issue was one of law. There was no law controlling a man’s dietetic idiosyncrasies, and it was to be doubted if constitutionally any such law would stand—certainly not in a federal court, unless it chanced to be a matter of interstate commerce.