“In fact,” resumed Zee, “if the wisdom of human life be to approximate to the serene equality of immortals, there can be no more direct flying off into the opposite direction than a system which aims at carrying to the utmost the inequalities and turbulences of mortals.  Nor do I see how, by any forms of religious belief, mortals, so acting, could fit themselves even to appreciate the joys of immortals to which they still expect to be transferred by the mere act of dying.  On the contrary, minds accustomed to place happiness in things so much the reverse of godlike, would find the happiness of gods exceedingly dull, and would long to get back to a world in which they could quarrel with each other.”

Chapter XVI.

I have spoken so much of the Vril Staff that my reader may expect me to describe it.  This I cannot do accurately, for I was never allowed to handle it for fear of some terrible accident occasioned by my ignorance of its use; and I have no doubt that it requires much skill and practice in the exercise of its various powers.  It is hollow, and has in the handle several stops, keys, or springs by which its force can be altered, modified, or directed—­so that by one process it destroys, by another it heals—­by one it can rend the rock, by another disperse the vapour—­by one it affects bodies, by another it can exercise a certain influence over minds.  It is usually carried in the convenient size of a walking-staff, but it has slides by which it can be lengthened or shortened at will.  When used for special purposes, the upper part rests in the hollow of the palm with the fore and middle fingers protruded.  I was assured, however, that its power was not equal in all, but proportioned to the amount of certain vril properties in the wearer in affinity, or ‘rapport’ with the purposes to be effected.  Some were more potent to destroy, others to heal, &c.; much also depended on the calm and steadiness of volition in the manipulator.  They assert that the full exercise of vril power can only be acquired by the constitutional temperament—­i.e., by hereditarily transmitted organisation—­and that a female infant of four years old belonging to the Vril-ya races can accomplish feats which a life spent in its practice would not enable the strongest and most skilled mechanician, born out of the pale of the Vril-ya to achieve.  All these wands are not equally complicated; those intrusted to children are much simpler than those borne by sages of either sex, and constructed with a view to the special object on which the children are employed; which as I have before said, is among the youngest children the most destructive.  In the wands of wives and mothers the correlative destroying force is usually abstracted, the healing power fully charged.  I wish I could say more in detail of this singular conductor of the vril fluid, but its machinery is as exquisite as its effects are marvellous.