MY EDUCATION CONTINUED THE gaze into the probabilities of the future and into the realities of the past ejected from my system whatever of dangerous admiration I might have felt for the career of such a military adventurer as Choktroo. In spite of my self-control and rapidly developing reasoning faculty, there lurked in me the same longing for power that had been so evident in my cabin-boy. Though he had fallen so wretchedly there was a romance about his career which appealed to something deep-seated in my spirit. I knew what a hypocrite and scoundrel he had become in order to make his success, yet the success seemed to condone his offences against the progress of humanity. The lust of rule that lies in the hearts of all men had not yet been eradicated from mine. I had advanced so far as to be ashamed of it; and I tried to reason it down or to conceal even from myself the fact of its existence; but my guardians knew that it was there, and they took the necessary precautions against its growth. Thus did I pass with the whole people through the national purification ending with a glimpse of their heaven and their hell. And now I was ready to re-enter on my process of education. The more spiritual portions of my nature had been remoulded or confirmed to follow in the true path of Limanoran development. The last purificatory process had revealed in me the virtuous or progressive balance that ensured success in the island. The minds of my guardians were now at rest with regard to my spiritual future, and I was on the fair way to become one of the community. Still my physical constitution lagged far behind the race. Nor had I any hope of ever making up this lost time, so much had the education of generations and the accumulations of heredity done for them. My senses were but feebly developed compared with those of the Limanorans; and though they gave sensuous faculties a far lower place than the most advanced thinkers I had ever known of in Europe, they by no means neglected them, but considered them important instruments of progress in the material conditions of their life.