Based on the novel of the same name by Harold Bell Wright, The Eyes of the World was told almost exclusively via flashbacks. The basic plotline concerns a pretty violinist, the handsome artist who falls in love with her, and the double-dyed villain who hopes to seduce the girl.

Wally and the girl are in love. The rich broker covets the girl, but is rejected. The broker bids the father good-bye just as the latter receives a telegram, telling him that he is a large sum short on margins. The broker reads and tells the father he will help him if he is allowed to marry the daughter. The father agrees against his will. The girl agrees to the self-sacrifice to save her father's honor. Money triumphs, and the broker and the girl marry, but as time goes on, he ill-treats her shamefully.

Silent version of the 1884 Helen Hunt Jackson novel originally ran 3 hours but all but 50 minutes of that are now lost.

In Oklahoma, kindhearted outlaw Brick Willock rescues little Lahoma Gledware and her father Henry from certain death at the hands of his outlaw band. In the course of the rescue, he kills Kansas Kimball, the brother of the outlaws' leader Red Kimball, who vows vengeance against Brick. Brick renounces his life of crime, and after Gledware relinquishes custody of his daughter to marry an Indian princess, the old cowboy gives refuge to the little girl, raising her with the help of neighbor Bill Atkins.

The unscrupulous attempts by speculators Dr. West and Jim Prince to have a railroad pass through lower California are met with opposition by Spanish landowners led by Dona Maria Saltonstall, who tries flirting with West to restore their property. Pereo, a religious fanatic who works for Dona Maria, believes in the curse of the Gray Wolf's Ghost: if a member of Dona Maria's family mates with an alien, fortune and life will be lost. Meanwhile, West's son Harry, whom he deserted years before, comes to avenge the wrong done to his mother.