Limanora the island of progress
would develop her firla to the utmost. I felt solitary and forlorn as
I heard her ecstatic descriptions and resolves, and thought upon my
incapacity to understand them. In a moment she knew my dejection, and
realised how forgetful she had been of me and of her surroundings. She
at once threw off her imaginative trance of magnetic enjoyment, and
determined to keep pace with my advance. It was a slow and weary path
I had to travel; but her cheerful encouragement prevented despair.
Through the years between I was able by dint of constant and vigorous
practice to concentrate into my eyes and into the back of my head much
of the magnetic power and receptiveness that had existed before in my
body, but in a diffused condition. I was at last able to go with her
and appreciate the stellar imaginings which the flashing firlamans
excited.
There was another majestic arcade, in which Limanoran artists
themselves joined in sublime firlamaic music. On my first visit to
it, many years after my introduction to Oomalefa, I was appalled to
see human beings stand like Joves flashing long tongues of lightning
or flame from their eyes or fingers; they seemed to stand unscathed
in a fiery furnace, or rather to weave and plait and mould the flames
as if they had been threads of some plastic material. Had I come here
during my early novitiate in the island, I should have fled in terror
as from dreams of hell realised. There in the midst passed the artist
like a dark shuttle through a loom of lightnings as he wove them into
an ever-changing web of living colour. For a time I could not control
my terror, as I looked to see him shrivelled to ashes. At last through
my reason I managed to calm myself into feeling that he was the master
and creator of this display and that the dreadful tongues of flame and
swift meteors which rose and vanished around him were unstinged and
innocuous. Then began to creep into me a sweet sense of some magnetic
harmony, stirring my mind to contemplation of the mighty forces of
the world. I seemed to know the voiceless majesty of time, as if vast
ages were crushed into moments; I followed our orb as it swept away
from the immense concentric circles of flame wheeling round the core
of whirling fire; I saw it mass into an eye of passion fixed in gaze
upon the mother star it had left; alone it travelled into space tied
like an infant still by magnetic threads to the parent sun; out into
the infinite it yearned to rush seeking life and souls to nestle in
its bosom; yet never would the unseen mother cord give way. Out and
out flamed the earth into immeasurable space and the wild longing was
calmed; the tempests of fire lulled and fell; the luminous billows
ceased to rear their crests or toss their fiery spindrift; a dull,
still-glimmering crust imprisoned her torrid heart; the conflagrations
burst forth in wider and wider intervals. At last she wooed the germs
of life from the wandering infinities to rest for brief spaces on her
bosom. Night brought peace to her, and the stars with their cool and
unimpassioned rays bred within her through the ages gentle thoughts
and a love of teeming life; they quenched her superficial fires, and,
binding chains of magnetic power around her, drew her out into spaces
of infinity beyond the scorching flame tongues of her fervid mother.
Life born and nursed in the cold interstellar tracts teemed on her
breast. Back she sprang again into the warmer rays of the mother orb,
breaking the stellar bonds, and life leapt from sea to air and crawled
upon the new-won lands in monstrous forms. Last came the strangest
monster of all, erect like a bird, yet wingless, first swinging from
tree to tree, then skimming the plains upon the backs of fellow-beasts
he had mastered: man, the portent of God, had come. Slowly he grew and
slowly sloughed off his beast habits. Prehistoric time focussed into a
moment. First came tyranny and war as moulders of his spirit; then they
became monsters, barring his way to the divine. Great monarchies and
empires flew by like a lightning flash; thousands of years with their
events or somnolences passed swift as a dream. Stronger grew reason in
man’s brain, the love in his heart; divine influences surrounded him,
watching the dawn of the new power of thought and nursing the growth
of the spirit in him. Then out of the darkness came the historic ages
of this island’s progress towards diviner light, and rushed in a flash
across my brain.
Then I awoke from this ennobling dream, swift and beautiful as a trance
made up of moments, each of which contained an eternity. The electric
song of the history of our world had ceased, and my spirit fell like
a meteor from heaven, out of the exhilaration and the ecstasy. Never
before had I felt as if my life was that of a god watching from above
the flight of time. I scarcely knew that the darkness around me had
suddenly turned into daylight and the web of lightning flashes had
vanished; I was led from the arcade by Thyriel as in a dream. When we
reached the gallery which overlooked the ocean and I turned my eyes to
the dome of heaven, I was conscious that a new glory had come into my
life. Dim though my conception of the electric song of creation had
been, I realised with joy what a vast universe had been added to the
possibilities of my life by the discovery of this new sense and of
the sublime things I might perceive through it. I would not be behind
Thyriel in the cultivation of the magnetism in my system, but would
enter with redoubled ardour on the practice of my firla.
It was thus too I came to understand the passion they had for
Firlalain, as this section of Oomalefa was called. The young were not
allowed to enter it, lest it should act as a narcotic on their sense
of duty to the ultimate aim of their civilisation. Not till they had
gained full mastery of themselves, and especially of their appetites
and passions, were they admitted, and even then it was with a caution
which showed the greatness of the risk they incurred. The delights of
the new sense were apt to grow intoxicating, and there had been at one
time a fear of some becoming magnetic drunkards, who would spend their
days in Firlalain besotted with indolent enjoyment of the exhilarating
flight through the realms of fancy, and heedless of the health and
interests of their other tissues. Once they had reached maturity, there
was no such fear; and no curb was then set upon their liberty to enter
these halls of electric harmony.
After they had come to that stage of life when the walls of their
blood-vessels began to lose flexibility, it became almost a duty to
frequent Firlalain. The stimulus given to the currents of life by the
mere physical influence of the electricity was enough to overcome
the growing rigidity of cell and tissue; but the rush of thought and
fancy gave the whole nature such impetus that the torrent of the
blood through its channels induced the plasticity of youth again.
They had other methods of postponing the approach of old age; they
could withdraw from the walls of the various vessels of the body the
accumulation of lime and other hardening elements; there were several
chambers of diet the atmosphere of which neutralised the increase of
salts and carbons in the body, and other medicinal chambers which could
bring off by the pores any deleterious or obstructive matters forming
in any of the tissues; but Firlalain was the most effective postponer
of that stage of life when yearnings come into the heart for final and
complete rest, for it flooded the whole being with new impulse and new
energy. Most of all was the great stellar arcade frequented by the old
in order to drive off the ennui of existence; a feeling which indicated
the gradual calcarescence or induration of the brain and heart-tissues.
Here any region of the starry night they chose could be made to
concentrate its magnetic influence upon their firla. A man might take a
new tract and new blending of imaginative impulse every day of life for
centuries and yet not exhaust the limit of variety; for the stars moved
through infinite space as the earth moved, but in different directions,
and ever new universes or worlds were coming within the range of the
Limanoran electric sense.
I shall not easily forget my first experience of this astral gallery.
Along it at intervals were placed great electroscopes and magnetic
magnifiers, that gathered in electric influences from various portions
of the heavens. Almost every seat was occupied by one of the older
inhabitants of the island, and as they sat with the focus of the huge
instrument resting on their neck their faces seemed almost to have a
halo round them, so brightly did they beam with ecstasy. Their eyes
were closed, and I would have said that each was dreaming some dream
of glory which inundated his being, had I not seen their eyes open
for a moment as we passed, in consciousness of the world around; the
vision came to their waking imagination. Then I looked up through the
great magnifying domes and saw the stars and constellations mass upon
the face of heaven, and huge spheres concentrating upon themselves the
sheen of some starry circle.
Thyriel led me to one vacant seat, and before I turned my back to the
magnetic lens, I gazed upwards and saw the Southern Cross pouring down
its silver arrows. I had not sat there long before a thrill came upon
me which spread throughout my system; my pulse fluttered like a bird
in contending storms; every nerve began to throb with expectation and
delight; I could have created worlds in my ardour; sublime thoughts
swam in from eternity upon my soul; I had the mother passion within
me which would have moulded nobler spirits than my own. At last I
felt the currents of my existence centre upon one realm of space and
was conscious of countless life around me which struggled and mounted
upwards. I felt my nature drawn to higher levels than any terrene
existence I had ever known. I seemed to breathe with difficulty the
diviner airs of greater purpose, and yet there were strains of discord
from lower types of being revealing gradations in the new universe.
Some orbs were already on the path of decay; and on them the higher
life was succumbing to the weakened vitality. Others had just attained
to life; and on them had settled migrants from other spheres, whose
elevating powers they had exhausted. Some were flitting like ghosts
about their mother suns with but a thin ethereal life now darting
between atmosphere and solid crust. Only one planet in each system
was passing through the climax in its history, and near it my rapture
became too great to bear; my veins seemed on the point of bursting
with the fulness of life; my soul was dragged above my natural level,
till the physical bonds which fettered me were about to break, and I
was glad to be attracted to other circling orbs that with coarser but
stronger magnetism drew me to them. The median point of balanced joy
was reached when, resting between two spheres, I felt their magnetic
currents neutralise each other, and yet the higher influence of the
new system raise the pulsing of my spirit. As full bliss was it when,
darting from system to system, I experienced the power of life that
dwelt in each, and felt the varied types of existence mingling their
magnetic thought with mine; I could feel the struggling of worlds up to
their goal thrill through my spirit; on the underside it was like the
wail of one who has abandoned the upward conflict and plunged into the
waters of oblivion; on its upper side it was like the fervour of souls
who see through mists of life the elysium they have yearned for. I was
conscious of the infinite tragedy being enacted upon each orb, and yet
not near enough to see what destiny awaited it. I was drawn within the