So, when he set out from the hotel, he did not go home, but walked instead for uncounted hours in the park. And in those hours he lived through the whole of his new book, the unspeakable book--“The Higher Cannibalism”!
In the morning he told Corydon about it. She cried in terror, “But, Thyrsis, nobody would publish it!”
“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.