Some of the wiser hearts of Limanora anticipated the danger, and saw that it would be better to give the discontented all than to let destruction ravage unmuzzled again. The whole of the property of the island was estimated, land, houses, furniture, and luxuries; and money equivalent to its full value was handed over to the malcontent socialists to divide amongst themselves, provided they migrated to another island. The offer was readily accepted; for it was clear that nothing would then be left in Limanora worth plundering. The ships landed the enraptured equalisers of human goods with their belongings on the shore of their new Eden, and returned. When the decks were cleared, and a census was taken of all that remained, it was found that the island in purging out the socialists was rid of the plague of orators. The price they paid for their deliverance was small indeed, they felt. They soon recreated the wealth they had surrendered. Everyone grew ashamed and afraid of anything that approached to oratory. Eloquence became a word of evil omen. To prate was now the greatest offence against the commonwealth. And for generations there reigned comparative silence and complete peace over the land. In the series of purgations every remaining trace of tongue-ambition was swept out. Much of the flattering kind was found to have migrated with the lecherous; much of the haughty kind with the aristocratic warriors; but most of it went with the liars. There remained a horror of all prating and tongue-valiance, and this repressed every atavistic tendency in that direction that appeared. CHAPTER V LITERATURE ALL mere word-mongering was to this people an immoral thing, a shameless waste of the tissue and energy that were needed by the evolution of the race, an offence against its aim and ideal, its progress upwards through the cosmic grades. They were persuaded that it was a base substitution of the shows of life for the reality to make an art of words which should absorb the imagination and the skill of hundreds for their whole lifetime. They would have nothing to do with attention to the appearance and ornamentation of a subject to the neglect of its true spirit. Into the very heart and purpose of life every worker must penetrate. His relation to the progress of the race must be clearly shown. No work that took up any of the time or energy of anyone of the community was to be useless or unfertile.