Limanora the island of progress
molecules; and these molecules, moving with varying degrees of rapidity
round and across each other’s orbits, consist themselves of still more
minute atoms that are but points of living energy. Send another form of
energy, like heat, through this apparently torpid mass, and it stirs
palpably to our senses; what was dormant to us before has awakened,
and, as the supply of the foreign energy increases, the rock moves
and changes beneath our gaze; not that the long-torpid mass has not an
energy of its own; it is a store of energy, every atom of it waiting
but for the touch of another kind to awaken from its age-long sleep,
and to send most of it free and a step higher into the wandering sphere
again. The difference between solid and liquid and between liquid
and gas is only a question of time. In the solids the molecules take
longer to move through the same space than those of the liquid, which
in their turn take longer than those of the gas; for solids flow under
the influence of gravitation or other force just as truly as liquids or
gases flow.
It is the same with energies; one differs from another in pace; time is
the only essential difference between them. The pace of vital energy is
so distinctive in its swiftness that it forms a new order of existence.
Thought is the swiftest of the vital energies that we know, and to
rise in the scale is to quicken the pace. The civilised man thinks as
much more rapidly than the savage as the savage thinks more rapidly
than the mollusc, if the last may be said to think or feel at all. And
there are heights above existing human thought for man to climb. Higher
and ever higher the scale of energies in the cosmos must go, till time
becomes what would seem to us but a vanishing point; immediately above
us lies the vital energy to which a thousand years are but as a moment.
To the microbe, if it could think, human life would seem an eternity.
To creative thought, which is the Limanoran ideal, eternity, future as
well as past, is focussed into a moment.
Up through the scale of energy the whole cosmos is ever climbing,
with occasional lapses and falls, time being the only differentiating
quality. To quicken the pace of development is the one immediate aim
of Limanoran civilisation, and the morality of an action is measured by
its contribution to this aim. The higher they climb, the nobler, the
more ethereal, becomes their energy; the less governed and clogged by
animal conditions, the more easy to quicken the pace of development.
For the cosmic law of influence is that the closer in quality and
degree the spheres of energy, the more likely is the higher to mould
the lower and raise it near to its level. The source of the everlasting
movement and life in the cosmos is the unstable equilibrium of all
nuclei and stores of energy. Every world differs from every other world
in its capacity for various forms of energy; and so does everything in
it differ from everything else in the amount of any particular form
of energy it can contain. Comparative proximity sets up a current
between any two nuclei of energy that thus differ. Whenever the two
reach stable equilibrium, that is, whenever they come to have equal
shares of the energy, the current of influence ceases, and they are
dead to each other. The socialistic ideal is political and social
death; when all the members of a community are equal and alike in their
share of its privileges and products and capacities, its rights and
duties, it ceases to grow or develop; stagnation is the law of its
being, especially if there are no neighbouring communities differing
from it on which it can react. The Limanorans deliberately strove to
keep up and strengthen the differences between not only families, but
individuals, in rights, duties, capacities, aims. The differences were
an everlasting fountain of renewing life. The law of political and
social life is exactly the same as that of gravitation and of all the
other cosmic forces. Two sources of energy will continue to influence
each other, till they reach equality, the greater giving of its share
of energy a larger proportion than the less. What keeps the cosmos
eternally alive is the complexity of the mutual influences. There
are no two bodies or centres of an energy so isolated or so simply
constituted as to remain for ever dead or unchanging, once they have
reached stable equilibrium towards each other in respect to their
special form of energy. And so it is with men; the socialistic ideal is
an impossibility in this universe.
In the human sphere this cosmic law has farther-reaching issues than
the merely political. The Limanorans were willing to do much for
the advance of mankind, but they had come to see that apostolism is
a case of this law of mutuality of influence as truly as any other
phenomenon; the higher must not only give voluntarily of his influence
and character to the lower, but the lower must give of his to the
apostle; and if the proximity continues long enough, this mutual
give-and-take will end in the missionary coming nearer to the original
moral standard of the convert than the convert comes to his patron’s
original standard. Where the grades of the two civilisations are widely
separated, though the process of assimilation may be long, extended
over even many generations, it will be most disastrous to human
progress. It is better, they concluded from their long experience, to
isolate an advancing race that is far ahead of all other races, and
thus to give it the chance of coming within the sphere of still higher
intelligences.
Most advanced religions have begun with the impulse towards this,
yearning for a loftier sphere than that in which they are hedged. They
try to isolate their followers from the lowering influences of the
world around, in order that they may reach the ideal and influence
that are just above them. But, as they apostolise and expand, the
worshippers become mere parasites of their God; they try to batten upon
Him with their lower natures, and thus drag Him down to their level.
After the first noble impulse and inspiration, it is seldom that a
religion does not become as truly an instance of parasitism as the
meanest bacterial life. The lower all through the universe is eager to
parasite on the higher; minute organisms try to lodge in the tissues of
those that are larger and more developed. As long as host and parasite
can pursue their functions unhindered by their intimate relationships,
little harm is done; but as soon as the débris of the lower clogs the
organs of the host, what we call disease results and the minute guest
becomes a hurtful parasite. As long as the religious impulse sends the
nature higher on the path of development, so long does it give of its
best to the Deity, so long does it fail to clog the advance of the
cosmos. But when it extends its conquest to mean and unprogressive
natures, the common, unenthusiastic natures that are saturated with
envy and jealousy, then does it become mere parasitism; the religion
has grown into a disease. The warm, humane, and generous natures
which are touched by a new inspiration, rise to an exceptional pitch
of fervour under its influence, and develop at a pace that stirs the
alarm and envy of their neighbours; whilst the resultant persecution
continues unabated, there can be no degeneration, the worship can never
be parasitic. But as soon as the persistence and progress of the early
worshippers and their propagandist enthusiasm begin to invite the
commonplace, cowardly spirits of the mass, who can never appreciate
what is above them except to envy it and drag it down to their level,
its era of development is past. The cosmic law of reciprocity never
fails to act, and the united influence of the meaner majority is
greater in its power over the whole than the fervour of the noble few;
down falls the worship to the level of the many.
It was on this cosmic law that the Limanorans based their refusal to
go out and attempt to convert and raise the rest of mankind to their
standard. They knew from the nature of the universe that the attempt
would end in corrupting themselves and dragging them down farther than
they could drag up their converts. They preferred to give of their
best to the unorbed existence which filled space outside of the world,
and to make their best still better. Thus they knew they were serving
most truly the great end of all being, the development of the cosmos,
the elevation of the energy in it towards more and more spiritual and
progressive grades. They strove to perpetuate and strengthen their
consciousness of what was above them, and to break the yoke of the
lower self, the self that at death amalgamates with what is material
and stagnant, although the latter was needed as a stepping-stone as
long as they remained upon the face of the earth. In seeking the
proximity and influence of the higher energies and existences that
seldom touched the earth, they anxiously guarded themselves from all
parasitism which might drag these down in the scale of being; and
this led them to abandon attempts to personalise the relationship to
them. They would have no part in worshipping or prostrating themselves
before these beings in order to obtain their protection and patronage;
for this, they knew, becomes merely sectarian, the outcome of envy
and jealousy, the cause of bigotry and intolerance, persecution and
revenge. They did not desire the exclusive influence of a higher being,
nor to become obstructions to its further development; to rise to its
level was their active spiritual ambition in striving to gain proximity
to it.
As their senses, especially their inner senses, developed, they were
getting more and more certain of a vast universe of being just outside
the merely terrestrial, and new inspirations and senses were ever
awakening in them; nobler ideas and impulses pressed in upon them,
they scarcely knew whence. They were afraid to define the source,
lest they should humanise the idea of it and pollute it. What they
were sure of was that infinite space was filled with unorbed life and
energy, rising in higher and higher grades, as it receded from the
terrene. The energy of the worlds and of the other nuclei of force was
gradually rising through the grades of being, thanks chiefly to the
measureless existence which hovered round them, yet settled upon no
centre of fixed energy. Out of this unorbed life came the impulses and
inspirations that made such epochs in the history of a world. Their
magnetic sympathy with this they were strengthening and elevating
every generation, as they strove to rise higher and higher amongst
these existences in order that into their spirits might come nobler
and nobler influences. As long as they were conscious of qualities and
degrees of existence above them, so long would they be stimulated on
their upward development. They had no fear that they would ever reach
a point from which they could not see heights beyond. That, they knew,
would be complete spiritual death. But they knew too that there was no
such thing as death, or entire annihilation, in the whole cosmos. What
seemed to us death was but the final parting of two grades of being
or energy, the lower to coalesce with some fixed form of energy and
attach itself again to some more rapidly developing form, the higher
to range itself with the unnucleated energies of space, still to rise
by proximity to some higher life. They were scientifically certain
that there could be no end to this process of development upwards.
Aspiration was the duty and true function of all existence. To quicken
the pace of the evolution, to range themselves more and more swiftly
with the higher life of the cosmos, this was the prerogative of vital