Here and there in other civilisations was bred a nature that had fitful consciousness of this divine medium, at times through great creative imagination, but oftener through noble life. Such a nature is spoken of as inspired; and so far is it true in that it has come into communication with the most refined and most creative medium of the universe, that through which what we call the divine seems to work; but only through patient self-moulding and development has it reached such a height of nobleness. Oftenest in past ages these natures have found shelter in religion; for in the world ambition must make use of the coarsest tools and the grossest energies to reach its aim; and the growth of a loftier spirit is at once checked, and noble aspiration stifled. Peace and the shadow of devotional thought were the only conditions allowing such a nature any scope in a world based upon war and guided in its search for the right by might alone. It was different with Limanoran civilisation. There it was the rule, and not the exception, to raise the spiritual energies to sympathy with the diviner media of the cosmos, and every condition favoured the pursuit. Life began with but a fitful consciousness of it, but it grew more continuous and surer. The young could scarcely distinguish its impulses from those of their own lower energies. But the old had seldom any hesitation as to when they were inspired; they seemed to keep in touch with all that is divine in the world. They needed no retreat, no religious shelter, to nurse the magnetic sympathy with the divine. Their affinity to it grew more and more the essence of their being, without ever having to leave their daily routine of duties. It was this that gave them their wisdom and character, and that made the young feel them to be almost a type apart from the ordinarily human. They became more distinct and striking in their personality as they grew older and felt this affinity. It had come to be a common observation of daily life that the nobler the aspirations and the closer the intercourse with the ethical media of the cosmos, the stronger and more distinctive was the character; and science was not far from the conclusion that on this intercourse depended persistence of individuality, and that the higher they reached in their sympathies with the more refined media of the universe, the less need was there of change in their personality at death, of making alliance with other lower energies when they shed their inferior and earthly forms of energy.