It was little wonder then that they had no great abhorrence for the obliteration of the past from their energy at death. If the other alternative were the true, and if, as so many religions teach, they were to be herded with the criminal and besotted and undeveloped souls that have passed from the earth, then might they bid farewell to true progress beyond death. And what is the meaning of continuity of existence and memory, unless it be the intercourse of terrene souls in the life outside of life? To be rid of the flesh and its inert energies is still to be enslaved to worse evils, the possibility of contact with the foul beings that inhabit the human form, even the noblest and most belauded human form. The Limanorans would gladly abandon the delight of recognising and loving again the souls they knew and loved, if only to be free from such a horror. Better almost annihilation than enslavement to the retrogrades of earth in another sphere. Whence the terror of discontinuity of memory, if the burden of the past were to be lifted off us, and a new and more progressive career given to our energy? The Limanorans believed that when unyoked from the inert forms which had come from their animal past, their higher energy would enter on a progress that would make all they now did seem almost stagnancy; and the power of remembering any past would only mean shame at its having been theirs. It never gave them pause to think that what came after death was still unknown. They had passed a happy bright life upon the earth, free from the pangs and agonies as well as the fierce pleasures, the snaky involvements as well as the passionate amours, of other civilisations. But, when the effort to live had come to be so great as to overbalance the compensations and utilities of their life, then was it no pang for them to leave it; for they were scientifically sure that death would be no break in their progressive existence; if anything, it was certain to be an intensification of the progress which they loved most.