# XVI explained — The Coming Race > Chapter companion for The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. ## What happens The narrator describes the Vril Staff in detail, its construction, powers, and the hereditary aptitude required to wield it. He recounts a visit to the College of Sages' museum, where obsolete weapons and steam-powered models are displayed as relics of a savage past. Zee explains the philosophical basis of vril, arguing that matter is animated by the will of an intellectual agent. The narrator also examines ancient portraits, noting a shift from expressive, passionate faces to serene, uniform beauty after the vril revolution, and views three prehistorical portraits of a legendary philosopher with webbed digits and reptilian features. ## Themes in this chapter ### Technology and Power The Vril Staff is depicted as a versatile tool of destruction, healing, and mind control, whose power is proportional to the user's hereditary vril properties, illustrating the theme of technology as an extension of innate power. ### Evolution and Species Superiority Zee's argument that the An began with the capacity for divine ideas, not as a tadpole, and the narrator's observation of the Vril-ya's serene, evolved faces, highlight themes of species superiority and directed evolution. ### Critique of Democracy and American Politics Aph-Lin dismisses the possibility of the Vril-ya relapsing into a 'Koom-Posh' (democratic chaos), reinforcing the critique of democratic systems as unstable and strife-ridden. ## Character check-ins ### The Narrator Describes the Vril Staff and his observations at the College of Sages; refrains from arguing with Zee due to her physical and intellectual superiority. ### Aph-Lin Accompanies the narrator and Zee to the museum; speaks approvingly of Zee's philosophical discourse on the origin of the An. ### Zee A magnificent Gy who explains the properties of vril and matter; argues that the An originated with the capacity to receive the idea of a Divine Being; displays formidable strength and learning. ## Key lines > It is hollow, and has in the handle several stops, keys, or springs by which its force can be altered, modified, or directed⁠—so that by one process it destroys, by another it heals⁠—by one it can rend the rock, by another disperse the vapour⁠—by one it affects bodies, by another it can exercise a certain influence over minds. The Vril Staff is a hollow tube with controls that allow the user to switch between destructive, healing, rock-shattering, vapor-dispersing, physical, and mental-influence functions. _Describes the multifunctional nature of the Vril Staff._ > They assert that the full exercise of vril power can only be acquired by constitutional temperament⁠— i.e. , by hereditarily transmitted organisation⁠—and that a female infant of four years old belonging to the Vril-ya races can accomplish feats with the wand placed for the first time in her hand, which a life spent in its practice would not enable the strongest and most skilled mechanician, born out of the pale of the Vril-ya, to achieve. The Vril-ya believe that mastery of vril power depends on inherited biological traits, so even a four-year-old Vril-ya girl can outperform a lifetime practitioner from outside their race. _Highlights the hereditary and racial basis of vril proficiency._ > I had a secret persuasion that, whatever the real effects of vril upon matter, Mr. Faraday could have proved her a very shallow philosopher as to its extent or its causes, but I had no doubt that Zee could have brained all the Fellows of the Royal Society, one after the other, with a blow of her fist. The narrator privately thinks the scientist Michael Faraday could refute Zee's philosophy, but he dares not argue because Zee could physically overpower the entire Royal Society. _Shows the narrator's ironic deference to Zee's physical might over intellectual debate._ ## Links - HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_coming_race_se/chapters/xvi - Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_coming_race_se - All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/the_coming_race_se/chapters