Limanora the island of progress
of Limanoran civilisation 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 Limanoran 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 proparents. I afterwards knew that part of the
active magnetism of their system came through their fingers and they
helped me to develop this channel of influence in myself. I could at
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 Limanorans 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 dissolution. 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 carcases and reduce them to harmless
atoms. The presence of animals meant the daily obtrusion of offensive
sights 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 missionaryism; 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.
None the less had they 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 visualising 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 colour every sound,
inarticulate 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 visualisation
of sound an instinct; still less could I reverse the process. A
modification of their thinamar had enabled them to translate sights
into the symbols of sound, and by skill in using it they had come to
attach certain notes to certain sights. 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 analysed what seemed to me the simplest sound
into its constituent primary notes, each of which revealed its source.
Aided by their mikrakousts and makrakousts, it enabled the Limanorans
to analyse the chemical elements of any object, whether at a great
distance from them or too minute to appeal to their senses.
Their makrakousts were instruments which by means of electric currents
and magnetism could make a beam of light transmit any sound to its
source, or make the ear gather in the same way whatsoever 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 mikrakousts 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
loud notes, which might be recorded, analysed, and interpreted. Their
magnifying power was quite equal to that of the clirolan. 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. Mikrakoustic balloons rose
into the upper air, and after gathering whatever faint 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 Limanoran 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, aided by the camera-microscope, could
detect nothing abnormal in the body, the mikrakoust 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 mikrakoust and to interpret its physiological revelations.
But these instruments were getting antiquated by the rapid
development of the electric sense that could, by the aid of their
various electro-magnifiers and analysers, 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, whither common terrestrial influences could reach
only in such faint waves as to be neutralised; 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 universes far out of the reach of even their lavidrolans or
camera-telescopes,--perturbations in the atmospheres 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 recognise 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 idrolans or electric telescopes, and
other electric instruments, they felt that they were getting nearer and
nearer to the centre of this interwoven epicycloidal movement and were
almost convinced that it did not proceed infinitely, but that there
was some ultimate centre 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 remitted their
ardour 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 researches 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 notes
which preceded or followed and formed marvellous 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 firla up 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 monalan 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 firla and varied with the substance from which the
impulse came or through which it passed. All substances and elements
in the terrestrial system were classified according to their electric
impulses. Even before the Limanorans brought the firla to its high
state of sensitiveness and efficiency, they had been able to examine
the stars and other distant bodies and analyse their elements by means