on account of sentiments or emotions which are not
representative of the real character or general attitude. Justice may,
indeed, be said to be a necessary consequence of mind-reading.

As regards the interpreter himself, the instinct of courtesy was not
long needed to check wanton or offensive thoughts. In all my life
before, I had been very slow to form friendships, but before I had been
three days in the company of this stranger of a strange race, I had
become enthusiastically devoted to him. It was impossible not to be.
The peculiar joy of friendship is the sense of being understood by our
friend as we are not by others, and yet of being loved in spite of
the understanding. Now here was one whose every word testified to a
knowledge of my secret thoughts and motives which the oldest and nearest
of my former friends had never, and could never, have approximated.
Had such a knowledge bred in him contempt of me, I should neither have
blamed him nor been at all surprised. Judge, then, whether the cordial
friendliness which he showed was likely to leave me indifferent.

Imagine my incredulity when he informed me that our friendship was not
based upon more than ordinary mutual suitability of temperaments. The
faculty of mind-reading, he explained, brought minds so close together,
and so heightened sympathy, that the lowest order of friendship between
mind-readers implied a mutual delight such as only rare friends enjoyed
among other races. He assured me that later on, when I came to know
others of his race, I should find, by the far greater intensity of
sympathy and affection I should conceive for some of them, how true this
saying was.

It may be inquired how, on beginning to mingle with the mind-readers
in general, I managed to communicate with them, seeing that, while they
could read my thoughts, they could not, like the interpreter, respond to
them by speech. I must here explain that, while these people have no
use for a spoken language, a written language is needful for purposes
of record. They consequently all know how to write. Do they, then, write
Persian? Luckily for me, no. It appears that, for a long period after
mind-reading was fully developed, not only was spoken language disused,
but also written, no records whatever having been kept during this
period. The delight of the people in the newly found power of direct
mind-to-mind vision, whereby pictures of the total mental state were
communicated, instead of