Page:Flying Death.pdf/121

 Street. The thought of the catastrophe used to hold me, for seconds, fascinated by the cataclysm I could cause. It is a satisfaction of the sense of power—isn't it?—which impels every child to destruction. The same sense of power, from my potential destructiveness, pleased me at those moments, with nothing at all abnormal in my brain.

Bane, looking down, made himself in his mind the demi-god which I had imagined myself momentarily at thought of my titanic power of destructiveness. In his mind, this did not end with the moment; it met nothing to forbid it, no restraint. In his mind, the barrier between the inborn impulse to prove superiority by smashing, the barrier built by example, by precept and training, was swept away. I saw him smile, as he looked down; and I knew he lived in the pomp and glory of his contemplation of a civilization utterly at his mercy.

How dangerous a habit today for civilization to drive men mad! It was safe enough for society when all that the man, made mad, could do was to seize a stone and hurl it; still