They laughed at the idea of the science as merely therapeutic: it must be creative. The inter-relations of the higher and lower elements of the nature were unremittingly studied in the case of every member of the community, and every means of change in them that would lead to the ennobling of Limanoran humanity was carefully prescribed. I was led through their food factories and grew deeply interested in their processes of analysis and combination. They seemed never to have any hesitation about the exact quantity of each element and the exact temperature and pressure needed to produce any given kind of sustenance. One of the most singular departments of these factories was that in which they had yoked the infinitesimal plant and animal life of the universe to the chemicalisation of their food and medicine. They knew how to utilise all the life they could come across, however microscopic, and here under their marvellously powerful magnifying instruments I could see the minutest of all life enslaved to their purposes. Nothing could surpass the exactitude with which they had defined the functions and spheres of these mysterious beings invisible to the naked eye. Each had its own department of industry. No one of them interfered with the other. It was life put to its best purpose of sustaining the noblest life. When I saw the huge irelium tubes bearing out the results in aërial or vaporous form, I grew anxious to test the effects at the other end of them. At my own request I was taken one day to Oomalefa, the great series of public halls and baths which formed the chief centre of associative life in the island. I had not known of the institution before; for I was still too little advanced in physical nature to be clear of the inner chemical processes needed for nutrition, and it had not been thought necessary to show me a section of their public life in which I could have no special share. But, now that my own eagerness for knowledge had brought me to the stage of education which demanded insight into this institution, they were willing that I should inspect it and see all its peculiar features. CHAPTER IX OOMALEFA