Though making use of the active electric sense as channel, it was not the same as the firla, for it implied a greater effort and outwelling of the whole spirit. Only exceptional impulses and enthusiasms set it into full efficiency, such impulses as entangled the whole soul in their issue. It was no mere toy to be used for the amusement of the passing moment; dormant it lay, if ever summoned to such a purpose. It was the faculty that in other races and periods of history had set up men as heroes and leaders; not that these had even been conscious of its existence in them when they began their career; success and gathering enthusiasm in their followers gave it strength and issue, till their mere glance seemed to command. But when failure came, and the glamour or magnetic atmosphere rarefied about them, their faculty vanished; for it had no means of communicating its meaning or power. In certain periods of exaltation every Limanoran was conscious of the filammu or will-telegraph; he could not only receive but send emotional impulses through long distances. The intervening air was magnetised by their great enthusiasm or sympathy, and became a medium for transmitting emotional or imaginative thought from mind to mind. Not yet had they been able to send a definite piece of information by this means, unless it represented the spiritual crisis through which the sender was passing. But in movements that shook the whole race to its core, like Choktroo’s threat of invasion, even those who were still in pupillage seemed to feel the beginnings of the faculty, at least on its receptive side; secluded though they were far from the scene of deliberation, they knew the magnitude of the danger that threatened the life of the commonweal; the air seemed to tingle with it, and their embryonic filammu could not help responding to the vibration. Once awakened they were eager to bring out its latent power, that they might feel and know the impulses which sped the race onwards as a whole. They soon discovered that it ceased to grow or even work except under certain conditions; they must keep step with the people, and fix their eyes steadily on the future: they must never swerve from uprightness or candour, never let the perfect transparency of their lives be clouded.