The Limanoran sages explain this reappearance of animal natures in human civilisations and individuals by showing how the elements of all exist in infinitesimal germ in the most primitive form of animal life; as this crept up the scale, certain elements grew stronger and led to new species still retaining the others in subordination; at each 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.