expressed opinion carried much weight with them.

Yet, did not even brilliant scientists frequently exhibit the same lack
of logic back in the Twentieth Century? Did not the historians, the
philosophers of ancient Greece and Rome show themselves to be the same
shrewd observers as those of succeeding centuries, the same masters of
the logical and slaves of the illogical?

After all, I reflected, man makes little progress within himself.
Through succeeding generations he piles up those resources which he
possesses outside of himself, the tools of his hands, and the
warehouses of knowledge for his brain, whether they be parchment
manuscripts, printed book, or electronorecordographs. For the rest he is
born today, as in ancient Greece, with a blank brain, and struggles
through to his grave, with a more or less beclouded understanding, and
with distinct limitations to what we used to call his "think tank."

* * * * *

This particular reflection of mine proved unpopular with them, for it
stabbed their vanity, and neither my prestige nor the novelty of the
idea was sufficient salve. These Hans for centuries had believed and
taught their children that they were a super-race, a race of destiny.
Destined to Whom, for What, was not so clear to them; but nevertheless
destined to "elevate" humanity to some sort of super-plane. Yet through
these same centuries they had been busily engaged in the extermination
of "weaklings," whom, by their very persecutions, they had turned into
"super men," now rising in mighty wrath to destroy them; and in reducing
themselves to the depths of softening vice and flabby moral fiber. Is it
strange that they looked at me in amazed wonder when I laughed outright
in the midst of some of their most serious speculations?

CHAPTER IX

The Fall of Nu-Yok

My position among the Hans, in this period, was a peculiar one. I was at
once a closely guarded prisoner and an honored guest. San-Lan told me
frankly that I would remain the latter only so long as I remained an
object of serious study or mental diversion to himself or his court. I
made bold to ask him what would be done with me when I ceased to be
such.

"Naturally," he said, "you will be eliminated. What else? It takes the
services of fifteen men altogether, to guard you; and men, you
understand, cannot be produced and developed in less than eighteen
years." He meditated frowningly for a moment. "That, by