He had fallen desperately in love with a young woman who was

attended by many handsome suitors. My client had more money than any of them,

more brains, more experience, but he lacked the one thing that each of the

others had that always weighs heavily with the undeveloped, unreasoning,

sentiment-ridden minds of young females – good looks.

"Now 378-J-493811-P had what my client lacked and could afford to purchase.

Quickly we reached an agreement as to price and I transferred the brain of my

rich client to the head of 378-J-493811-P and my client went away and for all I

know won the hand of the beautiful moron; and 378-J-493811-P might have rested

on indefinitely upon his ersite slab until I needed him or a part of him in my

work, had I not, merely by chance, selected him for resurgence because of an

existing need for another male slave.

"Mind you now, the man had been murdered. He was dead. I bought and paid for the

corpse and all there was in it. He might have lain dead forever upon one of my

ersite slabs had I not breathed new life into his dead veins. Did he have the

brains to view the transaction in a wise and dispassionate manner? He did not.

His sentimental reactions caused him to reproach me because I had given him

another body, though it seemed to me that, looking at the matter from a

standpoint of sentiment, if one must, he should have considered me as a

benefactor for having given him life again In a perfectly healthy, if somewhat

used, body.

"He had spoken to me upon the subject several times, begging me to restore his

body to him, a thing of which, of course, as I explained to him, was utterly out

of the question unless chance happened to bring to my laboratory the corpse of

the client who had purchased his carcass – a contingency quite beyond the pale

of possibility for one as wealthy as my client. The fellow even suggested that I

permit him to go forth and assassinate my client bringing the body back that I

might reverse the operation and restore his body to his brain. When I refused to

divulge the name of the present possessor of his body he grew sulky, but until

the very hour of your arrival, when he attacked me, I did not suspect the depth

of his hate complex.

"Sentiment is indeed a bar to all progress. We of Toonol are probably less

subject to its vagaries than most other nations upon Barsoom, but yet most of my

fellow countrymen are victims of it in varying degrees. It has its rewards and

compensations, however. Without it we could preserve no stable form of

government and the Phundahlians, or some other people, would overrun and conquer

us; but enough of our lower classes have sentiment to a sufficient degree to

give them loyalty to the Jeddak of Toonol and the upper classes are brainy

enough to know that it is to their own best interests to keep him upon his

throne.

"The Phundahlians, upon the other hand, are egregious sentimentalists, filled

with crass stupidities and superstitions, slaves to every variety of brain

withering conceit. Why the very fact that they keep the old termagant, Xaxa, on

the throne brands them with their stupid idiocy. She is an ignorant, arrogant,

selfish, stupid, cruel virago, yet the Phundahlians would fight and die for her

because her father was Jeddak of Phundahl. She taxes them until they can scarce

stagger beneath their burden, she misrules them, exploits them, betrays them,

and they fall down and worship at her feet. Why? Because her father was Jeddak

of Phundahl and his father before him and so on back into antiquity; because

they are ruled by sentiment rather than reason; because their wicked rulers play

upon this sentiment.

"She had nothing to recommend her to a sane person – not even beauty. You know,

you saw her."

I saw her?" I demanded.

"You assisted me the day that we gave her old brain a new casket – the day you

arrived from what you call your Earth."

"She! That old woman was Jeddara of Phundahl?"

"That was Xaxa," he assured me.

"Why, you did not accord her the treatment that one of the Earth would suppose

would be accorded a ruler, and so I had no idea that she was more than a rich

old woman."

"I am Ras Thavas," said the old man. "Why should I incline the head to any

other? In my world nothing counts but brain and in that respect and without

egotism, I may say that I acknowledge no superior."

"Then you are not without sentiment," I said, smiling. "You acknowledge pride in

your intellect!"

"It is not pride," he said, patiently, for him, "it is merely a fact that I

state. A fact that I should have no difficulty in proving. In all probability I

have the most highly developed and perfectly functioning mind among all the

learned men of my acquaintance, and reason indicates that this fact also

suggests that I possess the most highly developed and perfectly functioning mind

upon Barsoom. From what I know of Earth and from what I have seen of you, I am

convinced that there is no mind upon your planet that may even faintly

approximate in power that which I have developed during a thousand years of

active study and research. Rasoom (Mercury) or Cosoom (Venus) may possibly

support intelligences equal to or even greater than mine. While we have made

some study of their thought waves, our instruments are not yet sufficiently

developed to more than suggest that they are of extreme refinement, power and

flexibility."

"And what of the girl whose body you gave to the Jeddara?" I asked,

irrelevantly, for my mind could not efface the memory of that sweet body that

must, indeed, have possessed an equally sweet and fine brain.

"Merely a subject! Merely a subject!" he replied with a wave of his hand.

"What will become of her?' I insisted.

"What difference does it make?" he demanded. "I bought her with a batch of

prisoners of war. I do not even recall from what country my agent obtained them,

or from whence they originated. Such matters are of no import."

"She was alive when you bought her?" I demanded.

"Yes. Why?"

"You–er–ah–killed her, then?"

"Killed her! No; I preserved her. That was some ten years ago.