ill.

CHAPTER IX

It is not my intention to give a full descriptive account of my peculiar
journey around the world with Arletta, nor to recount the many strange
things witnessed. Suffice it to mention that we visited nearly every
country on the globe through the power of mind sight, and I was enabled
to see any terrestrial occurrence as well as if having been on the spot
in person. In fact, being under the direct influence of Arletta's
perception, conditions appeared much more comprehensive to me than ever
before and I felt like some great judge looking down upon the earth and
its inhabitants with an impartial eye. And somehow these inhabitants did
not seem to impress me as being in such a high state of intelligence as
I had formerly been led to believe they were. Everywhere human beings
were fighting and snarling amongst themselves like ferocious beasts.
Their universal law granted the right of the strong to victimize the
weak either through the power of physical or mental force. In fact it
was considered a divine right for men of superior intellects to receive
more of the fruits of the earth than those of smaller mental capacity.
One-half of the world was over-fed while the other half was under-fed.
Aside from a slight difference in political and religious theories, the
characteristics of all the peoples of the world were the same; the
predominant features being greed, vanity, egotism, intemperance,
gluttony, fraud, theft, bribery, deceit, brutality, murder, superstition
and filth. Even America, the much boasted land of the free, the country
which God in his infinite wisdom had taken from the bad English and
given to the good Americans, contained people with these traits, and the
so-called great men of this country appeared like a lot of silly little
pigmies engaged in an eternal quarrel over a few trinkets. Few of them
could see further than their own noses unless it was to see something
that would increase their own selfish desires. Equality, of which these
people boasted so much, existed merely in their imaginations. The actual
meaning of equality, as the Americans understood it, was that the
physical and mental gladiators and weaklings alike were put into one
great prize ring and given an opportunity to fight for their lives and
nature's gifts. Those who were capable of battering down and trampling
upon their adversaries were legally entitled to all the luxuries the
earth provided and more than they could use, b