Thyriel gave no answer, partly because she thought that the elders were more capable of answering, partly because she knew that the publication of the book on human sculpture was by no means finished. Next day my sense of community with the immediate yearning and aim of the Limanorans drew me unconsciously to Loomiefa again; and on my way the streaming wings through the sky showed me that my impulse was not purposeless; there was a general movement towards the same goal. Soon the whole amphitheatre was filled from height to hollow with spectators enriched in colour by the rays of the afternoon sun. I had scarcely settled in my rest and surveyed the scene when I knew that all eyes were fixed on the hollow of the valley. The platform had again run out with the globular magnifier covering it. But the succession of scenes upon it was almost too swift for my observation, untrained as I still was in my senses, and a certain confusion still rests over the spectacle in my memory. Many of the links in the chain were so amazing as to bewilder me, and yet the general purpose and effect of the scene as a whole rise above the confusion in my mind. I knew before it was done that it was a complete answer to my questions and scepticism. The Loomiamo were enacting the various stages in the evolution of the race which would connect its actual state with the possibility of artificial human propagation. One scene enacted what they had long been able to do, the production of animal tissue of all kinds; even the most subtle nerve was spun, and under their microscopes they could examine it like a rope. Another showed animal creation at work on the combination of tissue into one of the lower types of animal. One after another in a long series we saw the creative power rise in its ambitions and efforts through the animal creation up to the human. But the most striking scene was to come. It was the application of the newly discovered biometer to the search for the principle of life. We saw the creative artists investigate with the instrument plant after plant and animal after animal, and fail in their attempts to isolate it or produce it. They modified the biometer in innumerable ways. Then we saw them fly though the atmosphere, and set the new life-measuring apparatus afloat in space. After repeated attempts, ever pulling the faleena back empty, they at last showed by the joy on their faces that they had attained the goal of their quest. In the delicate test-tubes of their new biometers was found something that kept agitating their indicators. Soon they had it in their laboratories, and were experimenting with it. Again and again they gathered it from the vacuum above the atmosphere. At last by means of it they were enabled to find it in the plants around them, and in the animals of the surrounding islands. A series of scenes as amazing showed how they came at the discovery of the principle of soul by means of the psychometer.