That once upon a time, this earth was No-man's Land, that other worlds
explored and colonized here, and fought among themselves for possession,
but that now it's owned by something:
That something owns this earth--all others warned off.
Nothing in our own times--perhaps--because I am thinking of certain
notes I have--has ever appeared upon this earth, from somewhere else, so
openly as Columbus landed upon San Salvador, or as Hudson sailed up his
river. But as to surreptitious visits to this earth, in recent times, or
as to emissaries, perhaps, from other worlds, or voyagers who have shown
every indication of intent to evade and avoid, we shall have data as
convincing as our data of oil or coal-burning aerial super-constructions.
But, in this vast subject, I shall have to do considerable neglecting or
disregarding, myself. I don't see how I can, in this book, take up at
all the subject of possible use of humanity to some other mode of
existence, or the flattering notion that we can possibly be worth
something.
Pigs, geese, and cattle.
First find out that they are owned.
Then find out the whyness of it.
I suspect that, after all, we're useful--that among contesting
claimants, adjustment has occurred, or that something now has a legal
right to us, by force, or by having paid out analogues of beads for us
to former, more primitive, owners of us--all others warned off--that all
this has been known, perhaps for ages, to certain ones upon this earth,
a cult or order, members of which function like bellwethers to the rest
of us, or as superior slaves or overseers, directing us in accordance
with instructions received--from Somewhere else--in our mysterious
usefulness.
But I accept that, in the past, before proprietorship was established,
inhabitants of a host of other worlds have--dropped here, hopped here,
wafted, sailed, flown, motored--walked here, for all I know--been pulled
here, been pushed; have come singly, have come in enormous numbers; have
visited occasionally, have visited periodically for hunting, trading,
replenishing harems, mining: have been unable to stay here, have
established colonies here, have been lost here; far-advanced peoples, or
things, and primitive peoples or whatever they were: white ones, black
ones, yellow ones--