Page:Alerielorvoyaget00lach.djvu/76

54 upon my mind, and asked him if I had been dreaming last night. He answered, without any delay or explanation: 'You saw me as I really am, Aleriel, the wanderer, from another world, the explorer of the realms of space.'

"I was then encouraged (finding I had unawares entertained so unearthly a visitor) to ask him some questions about his world and the universe around us. He said that life was the highest primal force, and existed throughout the universe. As earth was only one of millions and billions of worlds, so man was only one of millions of forms of the higher developments of life. In some worlds they were in a lower condition than mankind, in others there were intelligences superior to man. Mankind might ultimately develope into something superior to what he is now. At first, he repeated, he was inferior to mankind; but in the peace of his beautiful world, in their loving obedience to God's laws, its inhabitants had developed a higher and a better life than man on earth, and thus had become superior to man, as they were better than man. This could account for his power of passing from one world to another, because in his world the intelligences had a far greater control over natural forces than on earth, and so he