Nor did the filammu of any in the island fail to thrill to the influence. Thyriel felt before I did that there was something exceptional in the atmosphere. But even my will-telegraph seemed to respond. I longed to go out and conquer the unknown, to outpace the slow movements of human discovery. At first I thought the impulse had come from Thyriel, and then from my proparents or my teachers. And so it was with every Limanoran; his first thought ran to his closest friend as the source of the magnetic thrill. But after much consultation and report, the conclusion appeared that no one in the island had originated the impulse, that all in the air had felt it simultaneously in their filammus, and after them all down in the island had felt it simultaneously. The truth gradually forced itself home on the investigating families that the magnetic vibration had had its source far beyond the limits of the earth; for they knew that from no other country or race upon the surface of the globe could it have come. Ages before, they had abandoned the belief in what seemed supra-terrene influence as unscientific and leading to superstition. Faith had been in the past so often the cue and basis of the worst of tyrannies, the inspiration of the grossest immoralities and irrationalities, the impulse to most retrogression. It had also, it is true, been the nurse of gentle and just spirits. But it made them so timid that they were afraid to go forward; it wound round the soul such a network of fears and observances that its life was useless to the race. As soon as the final purgation of the people had been accomplished, it was found that every citizen ceased to speak of faith, or to use it as the basis of any work or practical step. They did not thrust it out by any public act, nor consciously reject it, they only left off giving weight to any of its commands or suggestions; not that they might not be true or on the side of all that was best; but that it had so often discredited its authority by prompting, or allowing itself to be used as the pretext for, retrogression or baseness. They preferred to take every step in life on ground made sure by investigation and proof that appealed to reason.