Far more important than these water baths were the baths of ether, baths of magnetism, and solar baths, in which any portion of the body or the whole of it could be submitted to the purified forces of the world. From the ethereal baths all terrene elements were exhausted, and there remained the pure medium of life beyond our atmosphere, the divine air which spiritual beings breathe. Nothing so raised the power of the mind over the body or the part of the body immersed in this. It partially and for the time being dematerialised the part, withdrawing its earthy tendencies, and giving it an exhilarant atmosphere in which it acquired new life and energy, and resisted the encroachments of lower parasitic life. The two other kinds of baths had somewhat the same effect, but were less powerful than this. Magnetism allowed the ether a more direct influence than either water or air; it concentrated the force of the purer medium on any point. The solar baths had been used from time immemorial. It had been one of the earliest discoveries of their science that the lower organisations and microscopic forms of life that battened on the human frame lost vitality in the full beams of the sun. Later their investigators had found that solar radiance dispelled the vapours and terrene elements which floated in the air, clinging invisibly to bodies and forming the feeding-ground of quickly generative microbes. It purified by its energy all that it came into contact with, and in short allowed the ether which was its medium freer play. For generations sunshine had been one of their most successful curative agencies and was now used to reinforce and stimulate human life and energy. The rays of the sun, blanched to some extent of their heat and excessive force, were concentrated in rooms made wholly of transparent irelium, or upon irelium glasses of various shapes and forms to suit the part of the body to be subjected to their influence. These were their solar baths; but their whole system of life was one continuous solar bath: for every corner of their houses both public and private was laid open to the sun’s influence from dawn to twilight, and this stored up in the atmosphere of the rooms and halls forms of energy which during the night gave ease and exhilaration to those who slept. They fully realised that it was not merely heat and light they got from the sun, but subtle energies, a fine aroma from the diviner medium that filled the interstellar spaces.