Being permeated, then, with the atmosphere, he lost his distaste, found interest awakening. This latter was small wonder: an’ you had conquered dislike there is little doubt that attraction would follow. There was mystery enough in the Sage’s doings to stir curiosity, marvel enough to carry one forward, and a certain matter-of-fact exactitude, withal, which threw any hint of pure charlatanism aside, forced reality to the front, even while it brought dread with it. At the first he merely instilled certain teachings. Here are some of them. “Vibration,” he said, elaborating on the outline he had formerly given Peregrine, “is the first law to study. There is no single thing in the universe which does not emit vibrations,—matter, colour, light, and sound. To comprehend the whole riddle of life is but to attune oneself to the reception of these vibrations, and interpret them rightly. Like rushes to like. To make my meaning clearer, sound—the crash of a falling tree for example—emits vibrations to the ether. They travel across it till they reach some instrument attuned to receive them. Such is the normal human ear within a normal distance of the falling tree. The vibrations lessen in force the further they travel. Beyond a certain distance the physical ear is not sufficiently sensitive to receive them. But it is only on their reception by the instrument that the sound becomes interpreted in terms of fact. To an ear beyond the normal distance of sensing the vibrations, there would be no sound, because of the lack of its sensitiveness in receiving and recording them as they weaken. This would not prove their non-existence in the ether, but merely the defect in the instrument which might have received them. Have you followed me?” Peregrine frowning somewhat, but not uninterested, made known that he had done so. “Here,” quoth Menippus, “I have dealt with the merely physical and actual. This same question of vibration extends to our reception of the vibrations of form, light, and colour by the eye; of the vibrations of scent by the nostrils; more grossly to our reception of the vibrations of form and quality by the touch. Leaving the more material, we will pursue the matter further, dwell for a moment on thought. The vibrations of thought, though quicker, lighter, and therefore less easy of reception by the heavy and material vibrations of ordinary mortals, are yet infinitely more powerful, infinitely more enduring than the vibrations from material objects. I give it as my experience that the vibrations of a thought, strongly sent forth, can endure throughout the centuries. Hence it is that certain sensitized minds can receive the vibrations of thoughts of bygone ages. These they believe to be their own, having made, to their knowledge, no study of them as the thoughts of others.” Here Peregrine, who had followed the argument closely enough, demurred. Having a brain of his own he now used it to some purpose.