gnorant experiments
which belong to the infancy of political science. It was the age of envy
and hate, of fierce passions, of constant social changes more or less
violent, of strife between classes, of war between state and state. This
phase of society lasted, however, for some ages, and was finally brought
to a close, at least among the nobler and more intellectual
populations, by the gradual discovery of the latent powers stored in the
all-permeating fluid which they denominate Vril.

According to the account I received from Zee, who, as an erudite
professor of the College of Sages, had studied such matters more
diligently than any other member of my host's family, this fluid is
capable of being raised and disciplined into the mightiest agency over
all forms of matter, animate or inanimate. It can destroy like the flash
of lightning; yet, differently applied, it can replenish or invigorate
life, heal, and preserve, and on it they chiefly rely for the cure
of disease, or rather for enabling the physical organisation to
re-establish the due equilibrium of its natural powers, and thereby
to cure itself. By this agency they rend way through the most solid
substances, and open valleys for culture through the rocks of their
subterranean wilderness. From it they extract the light which supplies
their lamps, finding it steadier, softer, and healthier than the other
inflammable materials they had formerly used.

But the effects of the alleged discovery of the means to direct the more
terrible force of vril were chiefly remarkable in their influence upon
social polity. As these effects became familiarly known and skillfully
administered, war between the vril-discoverers ceased, for they brought
the art of destruction to such perfection as to annul all superiority in
numbers, discipline, or military skill. The fire lodged in the hollow
of a rod directed by the hand of a child could shatter the strongest
fortress, or cleave its burning way from the van to the rear of an
embattled host. If army met army, and both had command of this agency,
it could be but to the annihilation of each. The age of war was
therefore gone, but with the cessation of war other effects bearing
upon the social state soon became apparent. Man was so completely at
the mercy of man, each whom he encountered being able, if so willing,
to slay him on the instant, that all notions of government by force
gradually vanished from political systems and forms of la