 CHAPTER XV of Lymanora, THE ISLAND OF PROGRESS by Godfrey Sweven. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. THE DUOMOVAMALAN OR COSMAPHONE Though the Lymanorans calmly pursued their regular employments during these attempts at invasion, I had myself felt the uneasy spiritual atmosphere that proceeds and presages turmoil. None but the Lylamo were engaged in preparation for defense, yet during all the years every spirit was tense and giving out its energy and sympathy to this section of the people. There was a palpable loss of nervous power in the community, for they knew that by accident some joint in the arrangements might fail to work and all the defense miscarry. Not till the bold disturber of their progress was finally disposed of did the tension or the leakage of nerve energy cease. To be absorbed in mere war was to them the Hades of Human Society, and to have again sealed up their island from the intrusion of degenerate souls was a happy epic in their history. While the whole community quivered with inward jubilance, two momentary dangers threatened it. It might take some time to recover its equilibrium, and its thoughts and interests, narrowed by the necessity of defense against this threat from below, might be long in rising to the true cosmic level. Some exceptional stimulus was needed to raise their lives and aims, some appeal to the spirit, which would set them free from the tramples of earth and all deteriorative excitement. Such liberation had been by no means uncommon in their past, but no occasion for it had occurred since I had entered on my noviet, except in the case of individuals and families, then I had been too busy with my training or too distant from the household concerned to notice it. Now it was to be a national purification of the nature, and I was to share in it. Would this be a religious ceremony, a day of humiliation and prayer, such as I had often witnessed in my old home after great national disasters or during plague or famine? I had seen no churches or temples, no signs of religious service, no acts of private worship. I had never heard anyone speak of gods or priests or expiations. Was this at last to be the revelation of the inner shrine, into which I had never been able to penetrate? I had not long to wait for the solution of my problems. Purposes here moved to conclusions with lightning swiftness, and when one impulse stirred the people there was needed no heralding to mass them in the desired place. I found myself drawn with my pro-parents in Thiriel and her household towards a massive building that stood on a peak far up the slopes of Lilaroma. There was no need of road or steps to it. Wings made the white air the highway. Yet were there great terraces ramparting the sides of the peak, and from the highest sea-words there was a marvelous flight of steps which, when the clouds hid Lilaroma, seemed to lead up into heaven. I had often seen the edifice gleam high in the setting sun, yet there were so many temple-like structures on the shoulders and peaks of the giant mountain that it had ceased to excite inquiry. Now as we flew towards it, its titanic proportions and jewel-beauty seemed to dominate all the lower world. The building, the most striking that I had ever seen, raised an enormous circular dome of crystal to the sky, and around this were innumerable smaller structures, which elsewhere would have bulk huge to the eye. As we drew nearer, I saw that each crystal cupola, instead of crouching low upon the terrace as I had thought at first, rose upon a lofty and massive tower of great strength. What I had taken for smaller and higher terraces and bastions were the walls of towers and square citadels that seemed built to outlast the wars of titans. Solid lava they were of extraordinary thickness. There was nothing here of that slenderness and delicacy which had made me compare their other buildings to lacework. The terraces and flights of steps I had seen from below were but the outer flanks of the layer on layer of foundations, laid upon the plateau to save the structure from all but the deepest source tremors. As we entered the mighty portal, I felt that no storm or earthquake could move it. It seemed a city sculptured out of the solid rock, but as soon as we were in, the sense of this massiveness vanished, and the whole appeared as we looked up fairy-like and gossamer. In any one of the vast temples nothing but a film seemed to separate us from the azure sky. In the smaller towers we gazed up a dark shaft, roofed by a circle of sky, and the very stars shone out upon our vision by day, so palpable was the column of darkness above us. We soon settled in our hanging rests under the great central dome. Around us were thousands hung in mid-air in different attitudes of rest. Yet the building sounded empty, so vast was it, and so silent were all. The slightest whisper rang across its great untrammeled spaces with the sharpness of a world beside us. Not a column or beam or ornament broke in the harmonious simplicity of the spacious circle from vault to floor, from side to side. Everyone by instinct kept still, for the mere rustle of a wing appalled by its far reaching effect. We even held our breath lest the sound should break the colossal stillness. To me it seemed for a time frozen silence. I soon perceived that there was no effort in the self-repression of my neighbor's movements. They were entranced, their heads erect as if catching the echo of some far-off music. To me there was as deep a stillness as before. I listened intently, but felt no change except a slight exhilaration. An electric influence was pulsing around. To the electric sense in them some great harmony was appealing. Yet there was more than this, for their eyes were fixed intently on the dome. I looked up and felt awestruck. There on a scale that seemed to match the sky of night, I saw enacting the evolution of a universe. In the blue vault a great sphere of glowing vapor was whirling round, from its spring off huge concentric rings, that one after the other, themselves became whirling spheres ablaze with the intensity of white heat. Step by step a system of earths revolving around a central sun was developed. On one as it cooled we could see the life appear and grow varied, then fade away and finally vanish. Before the last tragedy had closed another had taken up the strain of existence, had run its course upon the globe, and a third had stepped into the ranks of life-bearers. The torch of generation was passed on from orbit to orbit, the central luminary ever dimming as fires, till at last the system wheeled on through darkness, seeming to have no purpose in the universe. But just as the last light flickered and began to vanish from the surface of the sun, out of the darkness seemed to rush another dead universe. Through the eternities the two had been approaching nearer and nearer, drawn by their common doom. In a moment they had crashed together and out of the collision came a mist of fire, that soon by whirling in space became again another and larger sphere of glowing vapor. How impressive was this reincarnation of worlds! Deeper and deeper the scene sank into the spirit as the electric thrill which accompanied the earlier steps of the process passed into dim echoing music, translating all we saw into sounds. A singular feature of their music was that it was never produced in the same room in which it was to be listened to. The machinery and the orchestra drown out by their clack and clamor the soft-foot falls of harmony that are the only true spirit of music. This was their reason. They had a contrivance in every large room, a huge mouth too by which inflowing music was softened or strengthened and which could, if needed, be raised a whisper into a thunder-peel. In this was a series of keys or stops, by which any sound coming through it could be modulated. One key could make the apparatus soundproof by filling its throat with a pledge of peculiar fibrous metal they had. One series could ring out the harshness of any sound till it became soft as a much reverberated echo. A second magnified any sound, however soft, to the required loudness and volume, and the hole was controlled by a minute keyboard which could be held in the hand and moved to any part of the room. In this vast auditorium I could not see where the keyboard was managed, but he must have been a poet musician who manipulated it, so delicately did the volume of sound adapt itself to the mood of those who watched the growth and decay of worlds. Now it swelled with the collision into thunderous harmony. Again as a crisis approached in the tragedy it fell to the low music of far-echoing nature sounds. At times this marvelous opera of the universe has died away to my herring, yet my neighbors lay in trance as if still catching harmonies that mastered the soul. I knew nothing but the vague electric thrill that passes through the nature at some great thought. Harmonies as colossal touched their electric sense as those which before had come through their herring. I longed to follow them into those spheres of melodious being that were still beyond me. I came afterwards to know the astronomical family that had arranged these wonderful effects upon the soul through the various senses, and I saw the mechanism by which they were contrived. Its simplicity was what struck me most when I remembered how complicated were the sensuous modes of appeal to the spirit. Out of innumerable sonoscryps and electrographs impressed by the world of stars upon their records, they had selected those that would fit together and raise the souls of the listeners to the sublimity of seeing the infinite cosmos. This daylight representation of the music of the spheres was but a prelude to a more impressive effect as night fell. By some ingenious mechanism the immense dome was changed. Instead of a semi-opaque crystal on which could be enacted a mimic evolution of systems, there slid into its place an enormous lands, which gathered the sky ten thousand thousand times magnified into the focus of a smaller lands, and upon this was turned another magnifier which threw upon some light-bearing film in front of us a picture of the sky a million, million times the size of what appeared to the unaided eye. Here we saw enacting the infinite tragedy of the cosmos. We could turn aside and view the azure above us strewn with the silver eyes, and the contrast raised the soul to unknown heights of sublimity. In the picture the worlds lived and moved, and the number of those that filled the spaces behind was past all counting. We seemed to have drawn as near to some of the golden centers of systems as lightning flight from the beginning of our earth would have brought us. And what gave translucent sublimity to the scene was the strange music that accompanied it. By means of the duo Mova-Milan, a marvelous instrument which reversed the process of Ulurifa, we heard the harmony that the worlds made in their motions. As they moved across our lands and round and across each other, their movements enormously magnified, awakened such harmony of sounds as never embodied soul and heard. Their flight and their magnetism affected an irrelium film in such a way that the complicated lines and curves and figures produced upon it translated themselves into the music, which would have produced these figures in the Uluran. This people had long practiced architecture by music in Ulurifa, before they thought of attempting the reverse process and converting form and color into melody. But once thought of, it was soon accomplished, and the Uluran was the result. The shadowy figures which any melody produced could be made themselves to reproduce it. From the use of this little instrument it came to be seen that their telescopes could by little modification and addition be made to tell out in music the scenes they witnessed and recorded. Step by step the astronomical families advanced till at last they reached the wonderful Duomova Milan, or Cosmophone, which, facing the heavens unbroken for generations, stored up the music of the spheres in their various changes. It was this instrument we heard as we gazed into the hitherto unfathomed depths of night. The worlds themselves in their motion played upon it, and threw it upon our souls. No human thought could have conceived the marvels of harmony that rang through the great auditorium. We felt as if we had been present at the creation of the universe, and our thoughts ranged through infinite space. A dream of the most tremendous kind was being enacted before our waking senses. How poor seemed the whole long history of life upon our earth! Thought was the only element in us akin with infinity or like to last through eternity. The thought that could thus span the abysses between the systems of worlds and comprehend these cosmic melodies still ringing in our ears. When the treasured up music of the spheric movements of the past ceased, the night itself, the very sky we were contemplating, began to stir fresh harmonies through the senses of the subsidiary towers. We gazed and the stars in their silver motions, motions unnoticed by the naked eye, told their tale in sweet harmony. These new symphonies were simpler than the operas of creation and the decadence that we had been listening to and, after those titanic effects, seemed almost monotonous, so few complications had they. They soothed the souls lost in the sublimities of infinite space and time, and we came gentler down to the earth on which our life was cast. We still trod on air, our heads still amongst the stars, but the earth was near us and counted as one of the myriad worlds. As night swung towards the mid-vault, the music faded and seemed to sound from far valleys. At last it sank into a lullaby, the lullaby of slow-moving constellations. Sleep came on me by unconscious, scarce-herd footfalls, and through its magic portal the universe of dreams appeared. Amongst the stars I flew, never resting, eager to visit and know all. Here I communed with beings so like me and yet so far above me that I yearned to remain with them, but on I had to speed. Then I rested on a world still dominated by the rudimentary stages of life-energy, and so repulsive were the sights and sounds there that I fled shrieking from it. Next came a sphere so filmy and translucent I scarcely knew how it persisted in tidying the storms of space. Yet here, too, was life, life so noble, so immaterial, that I felt ashamed of my body and its sensuous methods of knowledge. So ethereal were the beings there that the common forces of gravitation and attraction seemed to have no power over them. So far below them did I feel myself to be in the process of evolution that I had not the heart to remain. Away into space I winged, till a dark orb drew me towards it, shone on by sons of the most fantastic and ill-olmen colors. Here, too, was a manhood not unlike that of earth, yet so sinister that it seemed an orb of devils. The forms were graceful, the faces had a beauty of their own, but shone with such evil meaning that they fascinated like snakes. Amongst them I could recognize the great conquerors and monarchs and warriors and colossal criminals whose faces are the representations of whose faces I had seen upon earth. War and pillage were their occupations. Cunning and force, hypocrisy and arrogance were their weapons. In horror I fled from the sight of their internessing passions and into the depths of the night I spent on. So varied was the constitution of the orbs that I approached, so marvelous the range of the kinds of beings inhabiting them, that my mind seemed to sink under the task of imagining them. Everything was in transition. There was no rest for any form of energy in the cosmos. On it must sweep towards a higher transformation or a lower. I saw beings that seemed to be the very acme of creation, so beautiful and noble were they, so purged of all grossness and materiality, yet ever beyond them I found some form they looked up to and yearned to reach. Below me I could see on endless orbs lower and lower kinds of energy receding into darker night, yet ever pressing upwards, step by step. What an eternity of ascent was before them. Looking up my soul was drawn to some great center my eyes could not discern. The exilerant force seemed to give me wings finer and nobler than those of my body. With infinite longing I left my material part behind, floating slowly in space. A trance came upon me as I flew upwards with lightning speed, and I swooned with the ecstasy of final achievement. When I awoke, still lying in my pendulous rest, morning had broken and the cosmic strains had died away. This dream flight had been but the climax of the purification. Such music, such electric impulse had been poured about us as we slept, that our spirits could not but accomplish these imaginary voyages through space and time. Without this sublime uplifting into the Diviner realms of ether our souls might have fallen back to the mean purposes and ambitions of the earth induced by the fears of the invasion and necessities of its repulse. Now we walked like angels amongst men, a wall of eternity separating us from the girl's needs of war and defense. We were again on the upward path that leads towards the highest and purified and ennobled, we're eager again for the immediate duties of life. Such purifications of the soul occurred amongst the community as a whole, whenever any influence tended to drag it down to a lower plane. Their eyes were drawn downwards, they had again to be turned to the goal of all energy. Victory over such a conqueror as Chok-Tru had to be given its due in significant proportion in the results and aims of life, else it might attifize some of their spirits and bring to life ambitions buried for long ages. One night's voyage amongst the infinities was enough to throw human conquests, however great they might seem, into pettiness and oblivion. Thus the evil spirit such events might raise was exercised, and yet the sensuous power of the music by which the exorcism was achieved was evaded. Mere music, such as I had been accustomed to hear with luxurious passion in my old home, would have led our spirits, after raising them to the heights of ecstasy, fall crashing into the world of common place as soon as it ceased. But this cosmophonic harmony permanently soothed and elevated the embruted soul. It implanted thoughts so high that it seemed sacrilege to return to any lower plane. End of Chapter 15 Chapter 16 of Lymenora, the Island of Progress by Godfrey Swevin. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Their Heaven and their Hell. The race returned to its daily life, purified and elevated. The danger of intrusion upon their upward struggle had called out unwanted vigor, and the expulsion of the grosser elements and ambitions which threatened to accompany this had resulted in clear gain for their progress. The pace at which they developed greatly quickened, and we felt the pulses of the race beat with the eagerness of provision. Every new age had accelerated its advance till it seemed to have breasted all possibility. Yet as the new step grew swifter and swifter, the lightning swiftness of a far past seemed to them but a snail's pace. Back in the darkness of the future was pushed and new vistas opened where the black wall of fate had seemed to face them. One of the most striking proofs of their advancement was to them the rapidly developing love and power of foreseen. They seemed to live in the future, and that future was an ever receding circle like the horizon ahead of them, widening and widening as they rose above mere earth necessities. A considerable section of their community was devoted to pioneering for the race, exploring the possibilities of the future, and whenever there was a danger that the energy of development would slacken, the imaginations of the youth were fired by a side of all that they might be. One of the chief duties of the imaginative pioneers of the race was to prepare a vision of the time to come that would at once appeal to the youthful fancy and fire it to renewed effort. For often in a generation of family or an individual would become so absorbed in a special pursuit that the idea of the whole was obscured, and to prevent or obviate this false perspective, imaginative perversion was ever and again needed. An easy bird's eye view of all that the race might become was the best means of attaining this. Another magnificent edifice was set apart for this purpose, again on the slopes of Lilaroma. Not to give outlook, but merely to draw all eyes. It was perhaps the most impressive of the great buildings of Limonora. So vast were its proportions that it seemed almost a city in itself, for in huge subsidiary halls every phase of the possibilities of their civilization was represented. These were dwarfed by the central hall, which seemed large enough to contain the whole of them. In it all the phases of the future were focused in what they called the Mornalan, or Time Telescope. This made the pictures of what they might become live and move before the eyes of the gazers, who, as they gazed through one of the many thousand eyepieces, seemed to look upon life itself in its noblest ideals. My first visit to the great building, which they called Terelona, or Millerinium, was not long after the final repulse of Chaktru. Into the younger and less purified hearts of the community, the idea of warlike glory had returned with some force, even though we realized intellectually how shallow and false and retrograde it was. The introduction to what I might call the Heaven of the Race ought to have come naturally later in life, when we had passed completely out of pupillage and assumed the full duties and privileges of maturity. But it seemed necessary to erase from our emotions this atavistic taint that the appearance of Chaktru and his expeditions had begotten in us. The national purification had succeeded in making earthly ambitions seem insignificant, but as we settled down again to our pursuits, the awe that the Cosmophone had bred in us grew fainter. The world was narrowed into a prison house, and our daily duties forced a recoil to a wider sphere of ambitions, such as we had seen out in the Archipelago in the masterful war so lately witnessed. It was time, indeed, that some of us were brought into the presence of the immediate ideals of the Race towards which they were as a whole struggling. We were now to enter upon a new epic of our existence and to know the wider Heaven in which our own special pursuits took their orbit. We were thereafter to drink at the pure fountains of inspiration, to know the rewards of all our struggles, the possibilities that lay within the reach of a measurable number of years. Up through the morning air we flew, exilerate with the wine of healthy life, joyous in anticipation. My pro-parents were with us, and explained in answer to our inquiries the character of the building we were to visit. It absorbed the best energies of some of the most imaginative and artistic families of the island. They were ever forging ahead of their own work. Like life there are never rested. What they imagined today grew familiar or even tamed tomorrow. The consequence was that the inside of the edifice was never two days alike, and the most frequent visitor never found it monotonous. There was no such thing as a fixed paradise for any race. It varied, it must vary, with every development or retrogression of its members. Heaven was merely the brightest ideal that a people could imagine for itself, and the Heaven of a highly progressive race was rapidly antiquated, and in the long flight of ages came to neighbor their hell. It is like climbing a mountain, the shining peak we long to attain as we start from the plains at dawn, is found to be but a lower ridge of plateau which conceals the gleam of higher snows. These again, when we reached, are found to be overtop by still higher peaks. The difference is that in truly advancing human life the process seems unending. There is no spiritual ambition, no ideal, no creed, no ethical code, but one realized in practice is found to reveal something higher, still too long for and realize. A stationary Heaven means a stagnant civilization. Onwards we sped as we discussed or listened, ever near to the vast pile of buildings that was our goal. We who had never been inside or known its purpose tingled with expectation. Even our elders, we could see, were eager and alert with anticipated pleasure. They were sure to see some new and striking features in the four-picture. It was with great awe that we found ourselves within Terralona, for we had entered the great central hall at once, without any attempt to study the separate sections of the experiments in progress depicted in the subsidiary halls. It was more impressive in its proportions and size than any I had yet seen, and was dimly lit with that strange, diffusive, centerless light of which they had command. In no one part was the light brightest, so that it was impossible to say whence it came or how it was produced. The roof rose so high and the walls were so far apart that we found flight easy inside, and there were platforms all round for leaping into the air and taking flight. Along the farther wall we could see many Lymanurans hovering, like butterflies that alight for a moment and then flit to another flower. There were also rising to the roof hundreds of tiers of different kinds of rests. What these were for I could not conjecture, unless they were placed for easy flight. At length we reached that end of the building and saw that every rest was placed so as to bring the eye's level with a large lens set in the wall. We each mounted into one of them, and I set my face against the smooth transparency. The sight that met me I cannot even at this distance describe. There seemed to be miles and miles of space beyond filled with the representation of an island, which I soon recognized as Lymanura, but it seemed to be a float in the azure of the sky, and from it a pathway of silken threads of light led upwards to the stars, which floated within neighborly distance of it. Busy travellers sped up and down the climbing flightway with the swiftness that almost obscured their form and size. It was only when they rested at either goal that I could see their features or study their nature. They were Lymanurans, yet completely transformed. The tissue of their body seemed like light as self, so transparent and filmy was it. Their wings seemed a part of themselves, and their flight was as easy as a swallow's. They moved through the air like shreds of sunlight or animated snowflakes, with power to fly up or down, often at lightning speed. Their faces were none of the deep shadows of baffle thought or blind emotion, but they seemed supremely happy in their enfranchisement from earth. Yet they were but human, only a few steps removed from the humanity I saw around me. They had still upon their faces the look of pity so frequent amongst the Lymanurans when they gazed out on the men and life of other lands. But it was only when they gazed or travelled downwards that this took the place of the serene calm, which marked them out as sages. At times an agitation marked their gate as they set out on the gauzy pathway of the stars. I could feel that there was still a world beyond that which they had reached, and that towards this they must progress with eager thought and effort. It was the inhabitants of other stars that they were trying to emulate or gain as friends. They could live in the intervening ether and found movement through it rapid as thought. Their highest wishes, the subjects of their imagination, encountered little obstacle or friction in the accomplishment. They were evidently near omnipotence over the forces around them than they had ever been. Their bodies were so much dematerialized that they were not far from the state and texture of their souls. Thought was not clogged with an earthy matter so different from itself as to hold it down till freed by death. Yet I could see that there were limits to their actions. The forces of other worlds and the conditions of interstellar space narrowed and checked their activity. They could not yet create. They could only transform what already existed, for there I saw one pair molding a creature perfect according to their ideals and trying to breathe life into it. And not yet could they know the center of all being. The path was still upwards and onwards. Their activity was no longer restricted through the immediate confines of the earth. Beyond and above it they soared till it became an insignificant speck of light in the azure, busily exploring the universes that strewed infinity and finding out the higher and ever higher life that inhabited them. I could see them marking on their itineraries of the sky the orbs to be avoided for their degenerate or degraded forms of life or energy. Every grade of existence was found and indicated by brighter light or deeper shadow. They loved to linger over those orbs whose dwellers were but a step above them, watching their actions and thoughts and learning their higher ambitions. At a distance they hovered over the worlds of beings many stages beyond them in the evolution of energy. Afraid less they might be repulsed as degenerate. As they watched, their longing study helped them to rise more rapidly in the scale of being, and back they would come to Limonora with new thoughts and methods and set themselves thus equipped to work out with increasing pace their own evolution. This vast widening of their horizon was evidently an era in their history. It added such lightning swiftness to their rise in the scale of existence. It gave them such power of fulfilling whatever they designed or even imagined. Nobler and nobler ideals remained to be discovered in every corner of the cosmos. They had only to sail out and investigate, and then, returning with higher thoughts and ways of life, mold their being to them. And to die, what was it now but to slough off a trampling form? Death was to them an ecstasy. Every moment of advance was to them a death, a death of the old, a realization of the nobler and higher. Such was the representation I watched through my optic glass, for my pro-parents interpreted what I saw, and showed me the spiritual meaning of this cosmarama of the future. The details of the living picture I had not time to mark, nor were my guardians willing that these should distract my attention from the central ideas. They emphasized the guiding principles of the new life we might perhaps soon lead, and the glory of it overcame my earth-born ambitions. What a pitiful figure did Choctru and his armies and fleets seem in comparison with such a life! All the great conquerors and heroes of earth were pygmies seen in a light like this, slaves to brute longings and ambitions. I grew ashamed of ever having harbored anything but contempt for even the greatest career of mortal upon earth. Nor yet were we done with our cure. The imaginative artists had filled another and complimentary edifice with living pictures of all that by means of horror could drive us forward on the path of progress. It was called Cyrilésion, or the Museum of Terror. I had often heard of it and had imagined it as a place of unending torture, a limonorn and rationalized version of the hell of Christendom, and looked forward with much loathing and curiosity to the side of it. We were taught that this was no imaginary place, but the two real result of all retrogression and encouragement of Atavism, and that there was nothing supernatural in it, but that it was the natural outcome of all lapses from the existing ethical path of advance. It was the contrivance of nature herself to prevent degeneration. As I had read Daunte's Inferno, it was easy for me to map out the features of Cyrilésion. I knew the vices and faults they most shrank from, and these would define their own natural punishments. As we winged our way towards the somber edifice, perched, strangely enough, upon one of the most prominent spurs of Lila Roma that beatled over the sea, I let my mind wander over what was soon to meet my eyes, pictured a place of intense woe, full of the horrors of a medieval place of torture. I could almost imagine I heard the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. We entered the gloomy porch and passed into the central hall. It was almost the exact counterpart of Terellona, except that there was no brilliant suggestion of all that was beautiful and noble. There was the same dim suffusion of light, the same lofty wall of lenses with rests, the same series of flight platforms around the other walls. With some precipitancy I made for one of the optic rounds in the wall, and the first sight I saw struck me as the most common place and familiar. It was a representation of one of the foul lanes of our western cities. There were the gutter children, the reeling drunkards issuing from the gin palaces, the cursing drabs behind them, the tatters, the filth, the dilapidated buildings. It was but an unending series of instantaneous photographs moving with great speed under stereoscopic glasses, wilts the sounds accompanying the scene, having impressed themselves similarly on long strips of a rillium, were in one of their sound machines reproducing themselves. It was indeed the commonest and most repulsive of sights in the east end of any of our large towns. What astonished me was that it should have been taken from European life, and yet, when I gazed more attentively at it and put the sound magnifier to my ears, I knew that it was not European. The words spoken were in a language I did not know, and the rags of the men and women were the rags of a national costume I did not recognize. I shifted my rest and lens, and I saw a rustic village, such as I had known in my boyhood, with the toilers busy at their work. At a distance it was a happy scene, for the men and women were absorbed in occupation and seemed to have forgotten the evils of mankind. They were much in the open air, which was bright with the colors of the sunlight, and the children's voices sounded merry at playing or humming like bees from the window of the schoolhouse. It was a picture such as city poets had often painted as ideal and primitive happiness, yet some contrivance seemed to analyze it all for my mind, and reveal to me that it was even more repulsive than that of the foul city lane. Not to my hearing or my eyes did this come, but to my magnetic sense he'll develop though it was. I felt a deadly stupor over the whole pressing out of the higher life of every rustic. Not the diseases which often overtook them unprovided. Not the poverty leaving no outlook for their old age except reluctant and hated charity. Not the constant slavery of toil. Or the meager assagement of its woes by a weekly booze in the tavern. Wait upon my spirit and made me sad to look at the scene. It was the stagnant spiritual level on which they and their children to the thousandth generation must live, without power of perceiving the nobleness that was above them and around them, without the chance of ever developing the spiritual energy that was in them, without one approach to the line of infinite progress going on throughout the universe. To stand still or recede was the true inferno of the Lymanorans. Again I changed my optic glass and a greater sadness came to me through my magnetic sense. I saw such men and women, such as I used to envy for their respectable life, their serene comfort, and their sure grasp of both worlds trooping into buildings for religious worship. They bowed and sang, they genuflected and prayed. They raised their eyes to the ceiling. They groaned and professed to pity themselves as miserable sinners. Yet I could feel that they had an inner consciousness that these performance were superfluous on their part. So comfortably worldly. So charitably godly were they. As they rose to leave the temple they seemed to purr and pat their sleek stomachs in supreme self-content. Yet through the magnetic magnifier I knew that they were in a lower circle of inferno than the rustic slaves. Their past stood out through many generations of ancestors exactly the same as their present or better. Never a chance had they of progressing. They thought they had reached perfection as far as earthly conditions would allow. They prayed that they might be made better, but that was only as they prayed that their sins might be forgiven when they were certain that they had committed none, or as they prayed for guidance in their daily duties when they knew that no one could manage them better than they. Stagnancy was written on every feature of their faces and of their lives, fatty degeneration of every faculty and organ necessary to development. Their ethics, their religion, their business, their habits of life had all reached a stage that made criticism superfluous and that knew no higher outlook. The next scene that came through the lens was one of the most envied of Christendom. Men and women of the highest birth and best breeding were moving to and fro in brilliantly lit and decorated rooms, in the largest of which the dance was proceeding. In another room a luxurious supper was laid, varied and fine enough to tempt the eye and palate of the most fastidious gourmonde. Vulp-juice music and sense filled the air, witty conversation was stirring even the most languid faces to smiles. What could be more perfect on earth than the enjoyment of such a scene? Yet this was a deeper sloth of hell than any I had yet viewed. The whole of life was concentrated in the senses, the least progressive of all the organs of human nature, the organs soon assaided with what they desire. And what a horror of life was revealed beneath all this brilliancy. A crescendo of such pleasures was needed to drive off in we, and such a crescendo was not to be found. The young still lived in hopeful mirage. The middle aged were sick of it all. The old sneered cynically over everything or babbled the senility of second childhood. The vulgar consequences of vice or the entanglements of crime, the surfeit of pleasure or the tedium of life kept most of them within one step of suicide. Their course was ever downwards. I pitted these magnificent vulp-juaries in all their ephemeral pursuits and aims. The brilliancy was only an attempt to hide the ghastly grinning death and corruption in the reality underneath. Another change of the point of view and the world of fame revealed itself in its gilded horrors. I watched the struggling poet trample beneath the foot of luxury and contempt, happy if only he died early in the hateful wrestle for glory. I saw the drowning agonies of the novices in the sea of literature, appealing in vain for help to the wealthy as they passed in barges lulled by the rich music of flattery. Here and there a frantic swimmer clutched at help, and again he was thrust into the depths by the minions of literary fame. How little the rejected knew of the reality that they strove after! I looked into the hearts of the famous and soccer-up masses of jealousy and hate, or hollow shells echoing the misery of life. The most appalling sight was not the failures in art and learning, science and commerce, but the successes. Behind a mask of smiling prosperity and conventional enjoyment of the world there was but a handful of dust that bore the weary load of existence in agony. Generation after generation came and passed through this torturing fire, knowing not why they bore the pangs for three score years and ten, or whether they were born. They seemed to improve, but only sank deeper into the original barbarism. Here and there they picked out a name of one long dead and worshipped it, but the shrine was empty, it was only a name, and not the personality for which it had once stood. Behind I could hear the spirit wailing and cursing its fate and the falsehood and hypocrisy of his adorers. He knew the hollowness and pretense of the whole performance, he knew that the name had become a weapon for offending and maiming those who in their innocence were struggling for fame, as he had done, in vain. The deepest circle of hell was still to meet my eyes. I thought, as I guided to it, that it must be that of murderers and furious criminals. My amazement grew as I looked into the lens and saw that the actors, or I should more truly say the sufferers, were the great of the earth, the monarchs and statesmen and warriors, who drew all men's eyes to them as the masters of life. A movement on the part of my guide touched some key, and a strange gleam of unearthly light threw out into relief the hidden mechanism of their existence. Round every one was a network of threads like a spider's web, and the controlling ends of the threads led up obscurely into the hands of a crowd of miscreants, who lay out of sight of the applauding mobs, when a limb or a lip or an eye seemed to move of its own accord to the music of hussas. It was jerked by a thread in the control of some scowling villain who worked a movement for his own murderous purpose. These gorgeous figures were but puppets playing a marionette play upon the stage of life. One or two of the strongest seemed instinct with the breath of originality, but a still stronger light revealed adamantine chains woven around them, and attached to these one master chain which disappeared into infinity. They were in the spider web of fate. Still more awful was the sight of their own hearts. Each had a crimson talon vulture nine the vitals, and each saw every detail of the agonizing sight, nor could he move to the right or left, except to clutch at the bared heart of his rival and torture him. Who could imagine hell more appalling than this? Yet up the giddy approach to the seats of the mighty climbed eager competitors for any place in this torture chamber, death or defeat, might empty. Then behind all stretched the curtain of infinity, and as it rose the ranks of worlds and universes appeared, dwarfing into pettiness the sights that had racked my eyes. Life and the ideals of life rose higher and higher up through the regimented worlds, and the little inferno I had watched became a microscopic speck on the round of existence. The shadow of their heaven fell over their heads. The agony I had seen became but an atom in infinity. CHAPTER XVII The gaze into the probabilities of the future and into the realities of the past ejected from my system whatever dangerous admiration I might have felt for the career of such a military adventure as Chuck Drew. In spite of my self-control and rapidly developing reasoning faculty, there lurked in me the same longing for power that had been so evident in my cabin boy. Though he had fallen so wretchedly, there was a romance about his career which appealed to something deep-seated in my spirit. I knew what a hypocrite and scoundrel he had become in order to make his success, yet the success seemed to condone his offenses against the progress of humanity. The lust of rule that lies in the hearts of all men had not yet been eradicated from mine. I had advanced so far as to be ashamed of it, and I tried to reason it down or to conceal even from myself the fact of its existence. But my guardians knew that it was there, and they took the necessary precautions against its growth. Thus did I pass with the whole people through the national purification ending with a glimpse of their heaven and their hell. And now I was ready to re-enter on my process of education. The more spiritual portions of my nature had been remoulded or confirmed to follow in the true path of Lymanoran development. The last purificatory process had been revealed in me the virtuous or progressive balance that in short success in the island. The minds of my guardians were now at rest with regard to my spiritual future, and I was on the fair way to become one of the community. Still my physical constitution lagged far behind the race. Nor had I any hope of ever making up this lost time. So much had the education of generations and the accumulations of heredity done for them. My senses were but feebly developed compared with those of the Lymanorans, and though they gave sensuous faculties a far lower place than the most advanced thinkers I had ever known of in Europe, they by no means neglected them, but considered them important instruments of progress in the material conditions of their life. My pro-parents thought it necessary that I should be brought in the development of my sensuous perceptions near to their own level, now that my love of reason was so strong as to preclude the possibility of being overwhelmed by sensuous energy. They began with the most intellectual of the senses, the eyesight, and by the help of magnetism, hypnotic suggestion, and constant practice under their tuition. They soon brought me to see farther afield and more keenly into the structure of things around me than I had in Europe thought it possible for the human eye to accomplish. I could perceive with the naked eye stars that I had been able to see before only through the telescope. I began to note the changes of tissue underneath the skull of my neighbors when any great thought or emotion stirred in them, and could use their wonderful instruments of far and near research with appreciation. Through these instruments faint stars appeared moons, and near planets revealed many of the secrets of their surface, whilst the elements resolved themselves into even simpler constituents. What still lay beyond I could not imagine, yet there were manifestly worlds intensive and extensive, still to be explored beyond the limits of these aids to sight. In the life of an individual I could not expect to approach the development of optic faculty attained by this people. This impressed itself more deeply upon me when my guardians tried to evolve me in the magnetic power of I, which every limonorn had by nature. When any one of them turned his full glance upon me, it was like encountering the direct beams of the sun. I had to drop my eyelids in self-defense. It was this that gave them such hypnotic power over Choctru and his followers. Their eye was an active exponent of the soul within, as well as the passive recipient of messages from the world without, and could concentrate into its glance the energy of their powerful wills. Any one of these limonorns amongst the feebler-eyed millions of the rest of the world would have proved himself a master spirit. He would, with his unhesitating will and the magnetism of his eye, have kept masses of men in check and molded them into a unity, and the great commanders of history would have blanched before his gaze. From the first I had felt uneasy under the full glance of my island friends, in spite of its kindliness and benevolence. Before I left England, I had been supposed to have the mesmeric faculty to an exceptional degree. Now I found it pale before those marvelous limonorn eyes, and all the training and physical aid my pro-parents could give me in this direction, though they added greatly to my energy of will and I, only brought out my hopeless inferiority. I was able at last to bear their glances with ease, and even to raise my eyes to theirs for a few seconds, but I ceased to hope for the attainment of their ocular command or their magnetic power. Even their passive electric sense was far beyond my possibility in many of its ramifications. For years I had wondered why their couriers into far regions of the sky could, without any chart or landmarks, find their way back to their island home with such ease. It could not be by means of vision, for they often went flying above the clouds to the antipodes, nor could it be by smell, for that sense was not nearly so much developed as the others. In some of my now more distant flights with Thyreal I discovered that they homed by the electric sense. It had become keen in the measurements of amounts of electricity, and every locality had its own electric possibilities, not to speak of a certain peculiar quality in its electricity which differentiated it from all others. One of the most important branches of their education was the magnetography of the earth and sky. Although I never got beyond a vague perception of differences in the degrees of electricity, it was of some use to me in my flights to have learned the elements of this great descriptive science. I could tell with fair accuracy how high I was above the earth, and whether I was drifting away from Limonora or towards it, for the amount of electricity in any region varied within certain definite limits and the conditions governing it were constant for long periods of time. These were, roughly, the metals beneath the surface of the earth. The difference is in temperatures of the strata of air above, the evaporation of chemical changes on the earth below, and the periodicity of the influence of the sun and the stars. Their electric charts of the sky and air were ever in process of correction, but so slightly and gradually in each region that it was only after long periods that the Limonoren couriers had to revise their magnetographic knowledge. Indeed it was their reports after long flights which generally led to the minute corrections of their charts. It was the work of a few minutes only to learn the new modifications, for their charts were exact miniature models of that which they were intended to represent. The learner had only to touch a spring and by the inner mechanism of the globe out would ray to each point of it the electricity that indigree and quality belong to the region indicated. The member of the electric family who guided him would explain the changes that had occurred since he last consulted the instrument, and his own electric sense would tell him the rest. Nor was this magnetographic training useful merely for the purpose of pilotage through the heavenly vault. It enabled any courier to seek the region where he would most easily recharge the little engines which he bore with him under his arms to aid in his wing journey. Although he could prevent the complete exhaustion of these power auxiliaries by supplying them with some of the magnetism in his own body, it was only in emergencies that he did this. For his own system needed electric recuperation as well. Whenever this was required he made for some region of the air that he knew to be highly electric, and there he floated, wiltsed with his receptive sense he drew in new stores for his own system and for his little armpit engines. Then he went on his way rejoicing, exhilarated by his new energy. One of the purposes of their frequent flight into atmospheric spheres other than their own was to drink in new magnetism from one of the great sky fountains. When a Lymanoran returned from an aerial flight there was renewed life in him. His eyes glowed with a heightened radiancy. I could see a soft light play about them in the dark, and this, if needed, he could make even piercing in its brilliancy. He required no light to guide him in the deepest night. His electric sense gathered in from the atmosphere the scattered radiance that was hidden from my sight, and from his eyes he could emit this electricity in the form of light. For me, who, under all their training, was never able to develop such power over the unseen forces of the air. The eyes of Thariel were a guide in our flight through the night sky, and by day so gentle of brilliance played around them it was little wonder they fascinated and drew me ever to them. After experiencing their power I was not surprised at the hypnotic influence Lymanoran eyes had had over the leaders of the hostile expedition. It did not astonish me to find that by means of their electric energy they could move vast masses which no mere muscular force could have touched. I had a constitution that seemed to be physically far stronger than Thariel's, yet, if she had time to reinforce her store of magnetism, she could accomplish feats of strength I could not approach. In her fragile system there seemed to reside a giant's energy, but this was only at times, and especially after she had made some long journey into the regions of the air. The tissues and fibers of her body seemed to grow tenfold stronger when the new electric energy tingled along her nerves. In only the faintest way was I ever able to develop my electric receptive sense so far as to realize what a new store meant to their physical powers. Yet my guardians set themselves to bring out my latent electric sense or furla. After much practice and the application of many stimuli I began to feel impulses more keenly even when they came from a distance. The back of my neck grew more and more sensitive so that I would wheel round instinctively when anyone looked at me from behind. There was almost hope that I should, after many years of practice, come to distinguish the different kinds of emotion with which anyone, though unseen, might look at me, and I could produce by a concentration of will-force in the eyes a certain luminosity, noticeable when I stood in deep darkness. My power of sight was greatly strengthened by this new electric faculty that the eyes acquired. I began to raise my eyelids before the penetrative glance of a Lymanoran, or even the full majesty of the sun, but never could I hope to reach their analytic power of vision. Their senses were distinguished from those of the rest of mankind by intellectuality, and were, a thought, not merely the observers and reporters of the mind, but its outline parts or functions. The eye especially seemed to do what through its means reason and experiment might have done. At a glance a Lymanoran could tell to an inch the distance of any object, and was not far wrong in his estimate of the space between the Earth and any star when its rays reached his eye. He could distinguish one ray from another by its color or color constituents and by its magnetic affinities. What he had learned in the use of the ennemar or spectroscope in the laval wells and in the fusion of metals in remla had come to be a visual instinct. With scarcely a minute's hesitation he would tell the predominant elements of any one of the heavenly bodies. Doubtless the furlough had something to do with his analytic power. One of their imaginative pioneering books held out the by no means remote possibility of catching symptoms of the life which, they knew well, filled the dim worlds above. Their auditory powers had been far less developed than their visual, and gave but faint hope of transcending interstellar space, and my training soon brought me within easy distance of their hearing capacity. The range of this faculty both at its upper and its lower limit had been considerably extended. Sounds dangerous on account of their loudness to the inner mechanism of ordinary ears were by means partly of strengthening the protective cartilages and partly of a trievamelan or graduated modifier of sound, which they constantly wore, made harmless and even gentle and enjoyable. Those that were too faint to reach any human ear became audible to me after some training in the use of their vamelans or macro-macraucos. So greatly had these been improved along with the power of hearing, that they could discriminate the different noises of microscopic life. These vamelans, in their application of electricity to hearing, could make the buzzing of an insect sound like the roar of thunder. By modifications of them any of the sounds heard through them could be recorded forever. Thus had been formed a library and museum of the phonology of animal life. They had been able to study the records of sounds emitted by the various species of animals, and had come to know the meaning of each sound before they had driven all but microscopic life from the island. Thus they had learned by means of the recording vamelans the language of animals. The birds of the air I have seen follow the cries of Thyrielle, gathering around her in clouds as she flew, until by a sudden change of tone she would scatter the fluttering masses to the four winds. Even the fish of the sea would rise and leap above the waters to her notes. Ferocious, devouring monsters would leave their prey and follow gently in her train. Most of this power over the undeveloped creation was due to the record and study of their cries, but not all. The magnetism of her personality had a strange effect upon the wildest birds of prey. It seemed to bear with it tacitly the lesson of Lymanoran civilization that no life was to be destroyed by those who meant to make the best of life. There was a gentle, merciful spirit in the glow of the eyes. I have seen her take a wounded bird to her bosom as she flew, and, putting new life into it by the stroke of her fingers, set it free, strong and happy. There was a life-giving power in the tips of Lymanoran fingers that puzzled me at first. Why the mere touch should so soothe the lower creation that the agony of their wounds would soon vanish and their cries cease bewildered me for a time. My own pains rapidly disappeared under the touch of my pro-parents. I afterwards knew that part of the active magnetism of their system came through their hands, and they helped me to develop this channel of influence in myself. I couldn't last by passing my fingers over Thyriel's hair or face, relieve any tension of her nerves which might have produced pain. Nay, I could hear her hair crackle under my touch when I had charged my system with much electricity. Once or twice I was able to draw a wounded bird to me, and change by my stroke on the feathers, its cries of pain into low notes of content. But I could never draw the winged creation to me in clouds as Thyriel did. It was all the more surprising to me that they fenced off animal life from their island. What might they not have done with such powers over the lower creation? When I put my question into words, the answer was unhesitating and unanswerable. All failures in development had to be thrust from the path of progress. They could do nothing but clog it. If the Lymanorans had little hesitation in the case of their own flesh and blood, they had still less when they had to deal with animals. It was quite true that many of the more highly developed of the servants of man had nobler natures than most of their masters, deeper loyalty, greater sincerity, truer and more lasting courage. Much might and did come from companionship with their primitive and guilt-proof natures. But the fact that when associated with man they were destined to serve, made such good impracticable and rather brought out the mean and brutal tyranny of man than helped to implant in his nature their own virtues. Even with such noble qualities as they had, it was impossible for them to overleap the many ages their systems had lagged behind in other respects, the open offensiveness of their grosser animal appetites and needs, their lack of that great instrument and teacher of the brain, a fully developed hand, and the inability to foresee beyond a few hours, days, or months. Nor could any human process prolong their period of life and postpone their day of resolution. It was not a good thing for these pioneers of the human race to see the approach of death and its agonies in a being that could not assuage or postpone it. Still less beneficial was it to touch the carcasses and reduce them to harmless atoms. The presence of animals meant the daily intrusion of offensive sites that would either shock or degrade their natures. All that animals could do for them was already done by their science or their machinery. Nothing that had fallen so far behind in the race of life was worth the trouble of missionarism, for the energy that was in it had a better chance of rising swiftly in the scale of existence by dissolution and entrance into some other form. Nonetheless, they had studied the language of animals when they had had the opportunity. It belonged to the orchestration of the world, and all the sounds of nature were of interest to them. They were in the habit of visualizing what they heard by a refined and complicated instrument which they called a thinamar, and had long been able to translate into its appropriate form and color every sound, in articulate as well as articulate. Through long use of this instrument the tones of nature bore with them something that appealed to their eye. I never grew expert enough in its use to make the visualization of sound an instinct. Still less could I reverse the process. A modification of their thinamar had enabled them to translate sites into the symbols of sound, and by skill in using it they had come to attach certain notes to certain sites. Thus a noble landscape would appeal to their imagination, not only through the eye, but in the form of music, and they spoke of hearing the beauty of a star or a flower. A section of this instrument did for complicated sounds what the spectroscope or inamar as they called it did for light. Every substance, every individual living thing, had its natural and peculiar note, and the linamar analyzed what seemed to me the simplest sound into its constituent primary notes, each of which revealed its source. Aided by their micrakos and macrakaus, it enabled the Lymanorans to analyze the chemical elements of any object, whether at a great distance from them or to minute to appeal to their senses. Their macrakaus were instruments by which means of electric currents and magnetisms could make a beam of light transmit any sound to its source, or make the ear gather in the same way whatever sounds were filling the air at any point on its course. I knew when I saw a steady flash in any direction that the sound of some point was getting tapped by one of these instruments. Each had an apparatus for laying and keeping fixed its luminous telegraph wire along which it received and transmitted. An application of this in the gossip telegraph enabled them to listen to the comedy of life as it went on in any one of the adjacent islands of the Archipelago. Their micrakaus used the same means for gathering the faint sounds which echoed from the clouds or through the upper regions of the atmosphere and turning them into clouds, which might be recorded, analyzed, and interpreted. Their magnifying power was quite equal to that of the clearolan. Faint buzzings of insects at vast distances could be collected and made as loud as thunder. It was even applied to cosmic sounds that impinged on the atmospheric envelope of the earth. Micrakaus tick balloons rose into the upper air and after gathering whatever sounds wandered thither from outside the world, were drawn back again to divulge their secrets, eavesdroppers of the cosmos they were, and perchance in some future age they would enable the Lymanoran to listen to voices from other worlds or even to communicate with the dwellers there. A more immediate and practical advantage of these instruments was found in medicine. They told in clear accents the unexpected or dangerous changes in the tissues or organs of any man's system. They were used in the weekly medical inspection which every member of the Commonwealth underwent. When the keen eye, hated by the camera microscope, could detect nothing abnormal in the body, the micrakaus would tell the examiner's ear of some obstruction or deleterious change. He knew the normal sounds of healthy action in every part when they were magnified thousands of times by this instrument and every departure from them readily caught the ear. All the citizens were trained to use it as an aid in diagnosis so that they might be able to locate in the system any beginning of disease. It was part of the training of my ear to use the micrakaus and to interpret its physiological revelations. But these instruments were getting antiquated by the rapid development of the electric sounds that could, by the aid of their various electromagnifiers and analyzers, gather in cosmic news from distances which the sense of hearing and its aids would count infinite. Magnetic kites and balloons rose to the uttermost fringe of our atmosphere. Whether common terrestrial influences could reach only in such faint waves as to be centralized, there they gathered the electric impressions and impulses coming from other planets and even other systems. On them were recorded the varying strengths of the waves and their direction. From these records the astronomical families could tell what was happening of a cosmic character in the universes far out of reach of even their rollens, or camera telescopes, perturbations in the atmosphere of great unseen suns, collisions between worlds that circled round them, births of new universes from these lost systems, periodic disturbances of the routine revolutions through the approach of some meteoric wanderer, the settlement of life on worlds grown ripe for it, and the death of outworn stars. For many generations had they kept and classified these reports of cosmic history, and were beginning to recognize a wide periodicity in many of them and to draw conclusions as to the path of our universe through infinite space. It seemed to them that there was some point far distant in the cosmos, round which our sun and its satellites with innumerable other systems of stars revolved, and that this point, with its satellites, had its own independent movement. Age by age, with the aid of their edrolans, or electric telescopes, and other electric instruments, they felt that they were getting nearer and nearer to the center of this interwoven epicycloidal movement, and were almost convinced that it did not proceed infinitely, but that there was some ultimate center which had no movement round another. Their instincts told them that this was the divine consciousness towards which all things rose in the scale of being. They never emitted their adore and diligence in the development of their electric sense, and of the instruments that aided it to become a receiver of cosmic news and a recorder of cosmic history, for they were confident that this was one of the tracks that led up through the intricacy of the cosmos to God. One of my greatest regrets was that my electric sense could not follow the footsteps of these pioneers in the infinite. It had but a dim consciousness of the reports of their instruments, and train it as eagerly and diligently as I would. It lagged behind my power of vision and even my sense of hearing. On this account I preferred to learn the results of their researchers through these two senses, for the electric reports were carefully translated into appeals to the eye and the ear. I could see their wonderful discoveries in the unknown, as they worked them into picture and mechanism, and I could listen from day to day to the orchestration of their newly discovered spaces and movements. What seemed at the moment an intolerable discord chimed in with the results which preceded or followed and formed marvelous harmony. Not the least part of my education lay in this cosmic stimulus to my imagination. Out of my terrestrial conditions and limits I daily rose into spheres which seemed to me more and more divine. Sight and hearing became noble channels of the influences of infinity, instead of gross senses. I struggled to bring my furlough to the enjoyment of their labours, but ever fell back hopeless. This was especially the case when I was brought to examine and test their monoland or electrical distance analyst. For a fully developed electric sense was needed to appreciate its refined analysis of impulses from far distances. It was an ingenious application of an alloy called by them Labramor, or Electricity Sponge, and had the power of splitting up any electric wave or impulse into its constituent movements. Each of these had its own clear and distinct effect upon the furlough and varied with the substance from which the impulse came, or through which it passed. All substances and elements in terrestrial systems were classified according to their electric impulses. Even before the Lymanorans brought the furlough to its high state of sensitiveness and efficiency, they had been able to examine the stars and other distant bodies and analyze their elements by means of this classification and the application of their alloy, Labramor. Every substance or element had its place in their tables, according as it was positive or negative in its electric impulse towards some other substance or element, and all its affinities, strong or weak, were tabulated. Thus, when they turned their monolan upon any distant body like a star, they were able to analyze its elements by means of these tables. Even now that their furlough interpreted the analysis of the monolan without the intervention of classifications and tables, they had another electrically analytic instrument which appealed to the eye. This turned the electric impulse into a flash or glow, which at once revealed in the ennemar or spectroscope the substances or elements once it had come. Their lower or more material senses I was more nearly able to approach, even though they too were highly intellectualized and were more the servants of the spirit than of the animal part. In developing mine, I had more hope in raising myself to the Lymanoran level, and yet there was less stimulus, for I felt that they looked down upon these senses of smell, taste, and touch because of their need of close contact with their objects. They were the primitive senses. They were narrow and bound down to immediate matter, and seemed poor gropers in the infinite and the dark compared with those rangers of infinity, the ear, the eye, and the electric sense. It was then, with a feeling of humiliation, that I saw those lower and more finite senses in me develop so quickly, proving me a being of more primitive and material type. Yet there was no neglect of these in their education and no contempt for them and their uses. In fact, contempt was one of the vices that they had with most pains weeded out of their systems and civilization. They had not merely considered that nothing in creation, if looked into scientifically, was worthy of contempt, but that contempt was the truest symptoms of creduity of character and ignorance of reality and nature. Even if they had had any remains of this primal savagery, they would not have felt it towards those finite-seeking senses. They only set themselves to make them more and more the servants of the soul, the instruments of the imagination. They rejected the idea that the arts belonged only to sight and hearing. The arts of the furlough were far more important and striking than any sculpture, painting, or music could be. Not merely as a variation on these and a relief from them did they have arts and brought in the senses of smell and taste and touch. These had their own special uses in their civilization. All of them, but especially smell and taste, were closely linked with memory and through memory with imagination. A special perfume and even a special taste would flash before the mind a scene or fact with more vividness than even a piece of music would. Perfumes and taste had been classified according to their affinity to certain virtues and ideas, and to the great deeds and scenes which best represented them. The island was one vast flower garden at all seasons of the year, a range not alone to please the eye, but to bring by the suggestion of their perfumes the noblest virtues and deeds constantly into the mind. For example, whenever a child or youth was being trained, the flowers possessing certain well-known scents which were closely connected with the finest qualities and ideas of the race shone profusely yet with striking art. The art of the gardening family did not consist merely in arrangement of the landscape and the varied coloration of it. The scent of every flower had to be taken into consideration, and the faint flavor or taste the seed or fruit might produce in the air when scent adrift or bruised. The problem of no science or art was so complicated as that of gardening in this island it had to take into account of so many senses, seasons, and conditions of growth. They were never done with creating and selecting new variations of flowers and plants, and color, scent, and taste in the vegetable world were as adaptable in their hands as tones in the hands of their musical composers. Their task was made comparatively easy by the great development of methods and appliances for rapid growth and decay. They had not only complete command of the weather and clouds and sunshine, but they could bring up and perfect flowers in a few nights over vast areas by use of their streams and watering platforms and of artificial light. When the lima noran slept, wonders were being accomplished in coloring the landscape. For first some of their great rivers would pour refreshing rain all over the plains, and then the electric glow, brought close over the plants, would develop their bloom-producing capacity. As careful were the gardeners that no withering or dead vegetable matter should ever taint the air of the island, the one set of blossoms had perfected and shone traces of decay. An electric pruner ran in a few minutes over the whole area, and not merely cut them off, but burnt them to dust that fell on the roots to stimulate the new growth of the plants. As soon as the plants had passed their bloom-productive point, an electric life destroyer plowed lightly through the soil in all directions, and by the mean what had been profusely flowered colored the day before was brown earth, ready for the new plant growth of next day. The slow-growing perennials and bushes and trees occupied separate and fixed quarters at a distance from the residences and the great centers of intercourse, and all rampant vegetation and rotting boughs and leaves were daily turned into good soil by the electric weed destroyer. No decay was ever allowed to approach the senses. Their knowledge of the secrets of the soil made them independent of rotting or offensive manures. The particular elements of which any kind of plant or flower robbed the soil were accurately ascertained, and their chemistry enabled them with ease to supply the deficiency after a crop had been removed. The gardening family had to be familiar on the one hand with the innermost secrets of psychology, and on the other with the last discoveries of the more material sciences, for no one could avoid the effects of the flowers and trees as he could painting and sculpture, music, and furlamai. Gardening, in short, was the most public of all the arts and the most pervasive in its results. A garden, and in Limonora there was only one vast garden, was a great mnemonic instrument which could play upon the souls of the whole community at once. That it should not be in the hands of novices, or of the unwise or wrong-thoughted men and women was one of the prime cares of the people. Of all families those that managed the garden of the island had to be most simple hearted and true, most sure in their knowledge of the human heart, and most eager to stir to what is great and noble and humane. They were the lords of the sense of smell, one of the most immediate portals to memory and to imagination. To have the complete command of one out of the six dormant sense entrances to the soul was, they considered, the greatest of responsibilities, and no care was neglected in selecting, purifying, and training the families of gardeners. They, too, had the superintendents of Ilarim, a structure devoted to the arts of smell, taste, and sound combined. Aided by the musicians and chemists they produced symphonies which appealed to all three senses and roused the imagination to exceptional flights. The imaginative or pioneering families frequented the halls of this great building daily in pursuit of new stimulus to their faculty. Every chamber in it had special emotions to rouse. A garden could have only a mingled effect upon the memory and mnemonic imagination. Ilarim separated the effects and classified the emotions and imaginative ideas which were to be stimulated. Anyone entering could find out at the porch, either by looking in the index chamber or by consulting one of the superintendents, what hall or halls he ought to rest in. I had often during my education to take refuge in Ilarim, when clogged in my endeavors to advance by dullness of memory or imagination, or by the weakness of some emotion. After a time I did not need to consult a guide. I knew what element in my soul was deficient, and what emotion or memory would stir it to activity, and by aid of the index hall and its graphic representation of the effect of every chamber upon the spirit I could choose what symphony I needed. As soon as I had entered the hall that I had chosen, I lay down on one of their hanging wrists and shut my eyes. At once the medicated atmosphere began to affect my palate. Whilst the delicate perfume entered my nostrils and my ears, drank in the sweet sounding music. Before many minutes had passed, memories of striking scenes I had witnessed or heard of or seen represented in the island began to rise in my mind, and the emotion I needed thrilled me through. If it was heroism or courage, I felt myself urged to deeds of valor. If it was benevolence, I was soon inclined to rush to the help of the suffering and the poor. If it was hope, I saw bright visions of the future. But this exercise was too passive to be allowed for any length of time. The imagination and emotions were apt to gain at the expense of the will and the nervous energy by too frequent resort to Ilarime. Strenuous endeavor was held to be one of the prime essentials of progress, not only in the race, but even more in the individual. And, though all the prevailing odors and tastes and sounds of the island were agreeable, the Lymanorans carried with them a small instrument, called Margol, that by an adaption of electricity could blunt at will the acuteness of smelling and tasting and hearing, and, on the other hand, reduce the powers of perfumes and flavors and sounds. It acted by drying the air around the head and drying the moisture and heat from the nostrils, the tongue, and the ears. It was partly to mitigate the force of smells and tastes and sounds that they always kept the atmosphere dry and cool by day. In the Margol, too, there was a combination of chemicals and electricity which would modify any odor or flavor to suit the taste. But if they wished to increase the strength of any perfume or taste, they applied electric heat to the source of it, and moistened the nostrils and the mouth. It was one of the new peculiarities of the race that the mucus and the salivary flow was under the command of the will, and they could smell and taste with satisfaction to themselves without the aid of moisture on the organs. Their senses of smell and taste had become by means of their acuteness what they were originally meant to be, the guardians of the throat and the digestion. They told with accuracy the nature of the substances brought to the mouth, whatsoever would be deleterious to the system was offensive. In most civilized peoples what is grateful to the palate and the olifactory nerves is often pernicious to some tissue of the body, or some faculty of the mind. Here the two senses were the true friends and protectors of both body and soul. There was no seducing them or bribing them into evil or irrational reports, so completely had they been saturated with reason.