Whether it was mere unconscious energy or energy conscious of its own unity that escaped from the body, when it was left to the disintegrant power of microscopic organisms, was still a question. The recent discoveries and investigations of the Ailomo or astrobiological families had revealed all space filled not merely with types of energy that were directed and did not guide themselves, but with embodiments of energy which were clearly individualities; not alone the poor microscopic attenuations of life that were waiting for a world to settle on, but highly organised beings, leading a vigorous, self-dependent life in the vast regions of infinitude. This much they knew from the filmy impressions which their air-transcending lavolans brought down from the heights of heaven they scaled. But whence those inhabitants of the ether came they had not yet been able to tell; for their presence affected no existing human sense, but only left on the irelium films certain visible impressions. Whether they were refugees from other stars, or everlasting occupants of interstellar space, and whether amongst them there were any of the emancipate from human trammels were questions they had not yet been able to answer. But they hoped soon to have an instrument which would indicate the presence of personality as apart from vital energy, and as apart from the thought and thought-faculty. Then would they be able to tell in what state the enfranchised energy fled from the body at death. Amiralno knew not, cared not, whether he would retain consciousness of his past, or would become but a part of the wandering energy of space; what he did know was that he would be released from the burden of his body and the growing weariness that dragged it down. Certain he was that his flesh-emancipated energy would find a career at least as noble as his past. And he believed that its development would not end there, whatever became of it; whether it was to continue the unity it had been conscious of for so many years, or to take another form and individuality, was to him a matter of little concern. One thing he knew, and that was the growing imperfection of the body as an instrument of the energy that functioned it. It weighted to the ground the soul, the spirit, the mind, or whatever name he might give to the fiery stuff which kept it still aflame, and yet chafed to be free. As long as it held this energy in leash, it would live and glow with thought. Nor was this fiery stuff mere vitality, the mere principle of life, though the two were yoked together. It was different in quality from that which merely vegetated in the plant, and that which did nothing but feed and evacuate in the mollusc. Nay, it differed in inner character, not merely from the mind of the savage, but from that of their own highly civilised exiles. Limanoran advance had purified it of grosser desires and passions and made it a thing of ethereal