"And what was our Mind like in those days?" said Sir Richmond. "That, I
suppose, is what interests you. A vivid childish mind, I guess, with not
a suspicion as yet that it was Man ruling his Planet or anything of that
sort."
The doctor pursed his lips. "None," he delivered judicially. "If one
were able to recall one's childhood--at the age of about twelve or
thirteen--when the artistic impulse so often goes into abeyance and one
begins to think in a troubled, monstrous way about God and Hell, one
might get something like the mind of this place."
"Thirteen. You put them at that already?... These people, you think,
were religious?"
"Intensely. In that personal way that gives death a nightmare terror.
And as for the fading of the artistic impulse, they've left not a trace
of the paintings and drawings and scratchings of the Old Stone people
who came before them."
"Adults with the minds of thirteen-year-old children. Thirteen-year-old
children with the strength of adults--and no one to slap them or tell
them not to.... After all, they probably only thought of death now and
then. And they never thought of fuel. They supposed there was no end to
that. So they used up their woods and kept goats to nibble and kill the
new undergrowth.
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