Limanora the island of progress
higher and higher division of the vital way the elements became more
vigorous and more distinct in their characteristics; it is therefore
traces of the higher animals that are most apt to appear in man. And
the only means of ridding these of their retrogressive influence is to
make the newer and higher spiritual qualities more dominant. The first
rule of a civilisation that means to advance in reality and not in mere
appearance is to monasticise all atavistic natures and prevent them
from handing on their retrogression to a posterity; the second is to
encourage only the higher and more spiritual features of those that
remain.
It took many months to examine and catalogue my powers and tendencies.
I often awoke unconscious or with a confused recollection of the dreams
they had stimulated and recorded. The first few were most distinct,
and seemed to follow me when I waked with the reality and perspective
of life. But I could not interpret them; they seemed fanciful and
capricious, and when I puzzled over them, yielded nothing. And yet,
when I saw my dream-confession and autobiography, I was startled with
the truth of its great features; thoughts that I had never uttered to
mortal ear were there; words that had been spoken in the secrecy of
confidence far off in my village home were recorded; actions light and
insignificant had their due place, and seemed to have new and infinite
meaning in their new setting. So circumstantial were the details of
much of my past life and character that I could not but accept the rest
as absolute truth. And what a strange array of facts it was! Parts of
my immediate ancestral history I knew, more I had conjectured, some I
could never have guessed at; but here it was spread out as on a map,
with every new advance or retrogression any progenitor had accomplished
or suffered. I seemed to see my inner nature photographed and by the
light of a magic-lantern.
At first, when I saw it stand out detail after detail in lifelike
truthfulness, I felt in the presence of some supernatural power. But
when I came to know the methods they had employed, it seemed as simple
as a child’s puzzle. Every conclusion had been reached in the most
scientific way. All the minutiæ of every dream had been faithfully
recorded and microscopically examined. Then they were tabulated and
compared with the most untiring industry. And out of the shapeless
mass had come by the aid of their logical methods or dream-tests the
clear, unquestionable truth. Their brilliant, but by no means reckless,
imaginations did the rest, evolving order and lifelikeness out of
seemingly barren and confused facts. It is true, they did not make
any attempt at the chronology of the past; they had been able only
to group the facts in great spaces of time, and in a certain order
of development. Their minute knowledge of the evolution of life, and
especially of human life, gave them the framework for this grouping. I
was astonished at the quickness of their work, when I considered the
fulness of the natural history of my mind and character; it seemed as
if they should have taken years and not months to investigate with such
care every atom and cell of the tissue of my brain.
CHAPTER III
SLEEP, REST, AND FLIGHT
I COULD not but surrender myself into the hands of men whose wisdom
seemed to me to approach omniscience; and this I was the more inclined
to do that I felt, instead of exhaustion from their operations on my
brain during sleep, the greatest sense of exhilaration I had ever
experienced in my life. They acted on the principle of giving complete
rest to one set of nerves and tissues by stimulating the others. They
could produce the deepest sleep in all the brain- and nerve-centres by
gathering the life-energy that remains during sleep into one minute
point, which they stimulated by magnetism.
They smiled at the clumsy methods of resting that Western civilisation
had adopted, the awkward, unyielding beds and chairs and sofas, and
the wasteful and futile attempts at exercise that were meant to give
rest. Ages ago they had banished dancing and all corybantic amusements
as extravagant waste of tissue, destroying a hundred cells or nerves
for every one that they saved or invigorated. All frantic and violent
exercise encouraged the animal part at the expense of the progressive:
it mangled and rent the delicate tissues of the brain and heart, and
sent the currents of sustenance into the muscles and bones of the legs
and arms. The riding and hunting and athletics of the aristocracies
only helped the animal to persist, and clearly identified their
ancestry with the conquering nomad hordes that swept down on the
peaceful plains and destroyed primitive civilisations. Exercise, they
held, should help, on the one hand, to increase the store of energy to
be transformed into the higher elements, and on the other to rest the
spiritual forces and faculties.
Rational rest was one of the great secrets of the prolongation of
life. There was a latent passion in living things for rest: and this
rose to its highest in man. To balk it was to shorten the career of
all the powers. And they had set themselves to understand this passion
and the methods for its satisfaction as one of the first duties of an
advancing people. They knew that there never could be any complete rest
for a living system short of death. Even in the soundest sleep the
functions proceeded, though feebly, and there was a misty consciousness
of existence; else it would lapse into annihilation. They realised that
they must provide for many gradations of rest between the edge of death
and the borderland of full activity. Nor should any portion or element
of the human system go long without its period of rest and its period
of exercise.
On these principles they built their methods of alternating rest and
activity, all duly subordinated to their great aim,--the advance of
the higher nature. The only reason for muscular pursuits was that
the intellect and the imagination might be relaxed and the higher
energy reinforced. Even the loftiest thought resulted in certain waste
products, that, if left to accumulate, would soon clog and stifle it.
This waste must be carried off by reposeful exercise of the lower
and more physical organs. All the lower elements which remain to
mingle with those of a higher plane after they cease to be needed as
regenerators of energy grow at once poisonous and must be removed by
exercise.
For many months I occupied one of their beds, half hammock, half
framework, made of soft, flexible stuff that looked like metal, yet
yielded like down. These beds were hung not only at the four corners,
but along the two sides, so that the body lay in a kind of groove; yet,
by a second series of rests, the material was kept from contact with
the sides of the body or from any pressure upon it. Within this groove
was laid an air-cushion of still softer and more elastic material,
which fitted itself to every irregularity of the body and to its
various changes of position. The pillow was of the same soft network,
and so shaped as to fit the head. I afterwards found that through
the whole fabric of the pillow passed a mild current of positive
electricity, that drew the energy from the nerve-centres of the head,
and soothed every tissue to rest. The framework of the lower portion of
the bed was charged with the mildest currents of negative electricity,
and thus the circulation and the life were kept up, however deep might
be the sleep. The sense of exhilaration and replenished stores of
energy with which I rose each morning was enough to make me enamoured
of life. Day by day I grew lighter in step, and seemed to walk and
rest on air. It was the grosser particles of my system that were being
withdrawn from it by this nightly process of rest. I gained energy and
lost weight till I felt that I could soon rise on wings. I noticed
before long that I had acquired the tripping, elastic gait that I had
remarked in Noola. My movements and footfall came to leave almost
no impression on my senses, and I could have played the ghost with
appalling effect in the superstitious atmospheres of my native land. I
did not seem to grow much smaller in bulk; yet in a year or more I must
have weighed one half what I did when I arrived. Whether they applied
some other degravitating process to my bones and tissues besides the
magnetic sleep I never ascertained. But they had the power of reducing
their own weight considerably in a few moments. It seemed as if their
bones were hollow like those of birds; for I could lift even the
largest of them with my one hand; and they had some reserve store of
an element lighter than air in their bodies, which they could increase
and distribute over their system at will. When they were asleep I found
I could raise them as lightly as a feather, but when awake they could,
whether by muscular effort or by some other process of their bodies,
prevent me lifting them even the fraction of an inch from the ground.
They seemed able at a thought to increase their weight tenfold, and
though they had wonderful strength of muscle, I am certain that was not
all, for I observed they made little use of it on such occasions.
It can be easily imagined then how little friction of the body there
was during sleep; indeed, they never moved whilst resting, for there
was no need of relieving the tension of any part. I enjoyed still
more another kind of rest they had; it was half chair, half bed, and
consisted of an incline of the softest netting made out of their usual
metal and in such a way that the body could not collapse when loosed
in sleep. Even pleasanter was the swing-sleep; here a huge magnet kept
the supple incline gently swaying whilst at the same time it drew the
blood from the head. The float-rest was as pleasing; in this the head
rested on a floating pillow whilst two air-cushions stretched along
one side of the body and supported it on a network held between them.
But the most complete of all rests was that in which the Limanorans
were supported in the air by a cloud of sweet-scented and wholesome gas
blown from innumerable jets with steady power; electric fences kept it
from spreading into the atmosphere around. I never reached that power
of reducing myself in weight so that I could enjoy this rest. It needed
fine skill of poise to climb to this bed and remain there, and I was
ever afraid of falling.
The same physical incapacity prevented me from reaching the most
graceful and soothing of all their combinations of exercise and
repose. This was the wing-rest. I had often seen the albatross, as it
followed in the wake of our yacht, swoop down and float up the curves
of the wind without apparent effort, its broad wings motionless but
for occasional adaptation, like sails, to the changes in the strength
or direction of the breeze. I had never expected to see human beings
master this bird-power over the air; but it became the commonest sight
in the breezes of the dawn and the sunset to see old and young of both
sexes in Limanora fasten great wings to their arms and feet, and,
charging their small wing-engines with new stores of energy, sail up
underneath the chameleon clouds, and float hither and thither like
spirits of the storm. This was part of their night’s rest and their
morning’s exercise; and they used to descend from it with heightened
colour in their cheeks and the look of profound repose in their eyes.
The long training they had had from youth in the management of their
wings and in gauging the force and current of the winds had made their
skill and knowledge habitual, if not instinctive. They could shut their
eyes and rest their intelligence as they floated up and down the