“Certainly I will.  Let me, in the first instance, recall to you a few words of your own.  They ran somewhat in this fashion:  Is not the man of practical genius the man who is most apt at solving the little problems of resourcefulness in life?  Do you remember them?”

“Perhaps I do, in a cruder form.”

“They attracted me at once.  It is upon such a postulate I base my practice.  Their moral is this:  To know the antidote the moment the snake bites.  That is to have the intuition of divinity.  We shall rise to it some day, no doubt, and climb the hither side of the new Olympus.  Who knows?  Over the crest the spirit of creation may be ours.”

Polyhistor nodded, still at sea, and the other went on with a smile:—­

“I once knew a world-famous engineer with whom I used to breakfast occasionally.  He had a patent egg-boiler on the table, with a little double-sided ladle underneath to hold the spirit.  He complained that his egg was always undercooked.  I said, ’Why not reverse the ladle so as to bring the deeper cup uppermost?’ He was charmed with my perspicacity.  The solution had never occurred to him.  You remember, too, no doubt, the story of Coleridge and the horse collar.  We aim too much at great developments.  If we cultivate resourcefulness, the rest will follow.  Shall I state my system in nuce?  It is to encourage this spirit of resourcefulness.”

“Surely the habitual criminal has it in a marked degree?”

“Yes; but abnormally developed in a single direction.  His one object is to out-manoeuvre in a game of desperate and immoral chances.  The tactical spirit in him has none of the higher ambition.  It has felt itself in the degree only that stops at defiance.”

“That is perfectly true.”

“It is half self-conscious of an individuality that instinctively assumes the hopelessness of a recognition by duller intellects.  Leaning to resentment through misguided vanity, it falls ‘all oblique.’  What is the cure for this?  I answer, the teaching of a divine egotism.  The subject must be led to a pure devotion to self.  What he wishes to respect he must be taught to make beautiful and interesting.  The policy of sacrifice to others has so long stunted his moral nature because it is an hypocritical policy.  We are responsible to ourselves in the first instance; and to argue an eternal system of blind self-sacrifice is to undervalue the fine gift of individuality.  In such he sees but an indefensible policy of force applied to the advantage of the community.  He is told to be good—­not that he may morally profit, but that others may not suffer inconvenience.”

Polyhistor was beginning to grasp, through his confusion, a certain clue of meaning in his visitor’s rapid utterance.  The stranger spoke fluently, but in the dry, positive voice that characterizes men of will.

“Pray go on,” Polyhistor said; “I am digesting in silence.”