Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930

He laughed softly. "Think, Senores! Compare the estate of men with the estate of apes! Compare the civilization which will arise upon the earth when men's brains are as far above their present level as the present level is above the anthropoid! The upward steps of the human race under my rule will parallel, will surpass the advance from the brutish caveman to intellectual genius. But I have seen, Senores, the one danger in my offering." There was silence. Jamison shook his head despairingly. The Master could not see him. He formed the word with his lips. "Crazy!" But Bell said coldly: "Go on." "I must rule," said The Master soberly. "It is essential. If my little secret were known, intelligences would be magnified, but under many flags and with many aims. Scientists, with genius beside which Newton's pales, would seek out deadly weapons for war. The world would destroy itself of its own genius. But under my rule--" "Men go mad," said Bell coldly. The Master smiled reproachfully. "Ah, you are trying to make me angry, so that I will betray something! You are clever, Senor Bell. With my little medicine, in such quantities as I would administer it to you...." "You describe it," said Bell harshly and dogmatically, "as a brain stimulant. But it drives men mad." "To be sure," said The Master mildly. "It does. It is not excreted from the body save very, very slowly. But it changes in the blood stream. As--let us say--sugar changes into alcohol in digestion. The end-product of my little medicine is a poison which attacks the brain. But the slightest bit of unchanged medicine is an antidote. It is"--he smiled amiably--"it is as if sugar in the body changed to alcohol, and alcohol was a poison, but sugar--unchanged--was an antidote. That is it exactly. You see that I have taken my little medicine for years, and it has not harmed me."