All this was largely incomprehensible to me, and I may have reported it inaccurately. But at the time I did receive a very strong impression of the two spheres of individual experience, the one more or less equivalent to our own, the other of a very different order.

  By now I was fatigued, and the coal scuttle was nearly empty. I was about to suggest that we should retire for the night, when the flame continued. "For those of us who were torn away from the sun during the formation of the planets, all this glory of the racial experience temporarily collapsed. Physical conditions became so distressing that our extra-sensory powers could no longer rise beyond the level of simple telepathy with other individuals. Not until we had been long established on the molten planets, and had attained a new, but impoverished, equilibrium, was it possible for us once more to support a racial mind, and then only in a much reduced mode. For though as individuals we can now once more participate in the pooled wisdom of the race, the mind of the race itself (which of course is not something other than our minds, but simply all our minds enhanced by intimate communion) is almost wholly unable to make contact with other racial minds. We have no precise knowledge of them, but only a confused sense of their presence; our racial mind is like a man in a dark prison listening to a confused babel of voices beyond the prison walls."

  Again the flame paused, and I was about to close our conversation when again he continued. "The solar upheaval that produced the planets was something completely unexpected and bewildering. For us who were exiled, it was the great and tragic turning point of individual life, and of history. The vast protuberance which was plucked out from the sun's surface carried with it many thousands of millions of us. Quite suddenly our familiar world was lost. The great 'water spout' finally detached itself from the sun, and was stretched into a filament of flame, which swung slantingly outward from the sun's rotating sphere. Conditions of temperature and atmospheric pressure became extremely unfavourable. Countless millions of us must have succumbed. Rapidly the filament condensed into ten great drops, each drop being one of the planets, a sphere of glowing liquid surrounded by a deep atmosphere of hot gases. For us, huddled near the surface of our new and merely smouldering worlds, the main problem was the deadly cold. After the solar climate, the terrestrial was arctic. And no doubt our fellows on the other planets suffered no less severely. I do not know how many additional millions of us were killed by the new planetary conditions, certainly the great majority of those who had survived the journey from the sun. We lived at first in a state of numb drowsiness, or complete unconsciousness, upon the actual surface of the ocean of molten lava. But little by little our wonderfully pliant nature remoulded itself to the new environment. We slowly woke again, though never to the intense lucidity that we still vaguely remember as nominal to our solar life. Henceforth all the heights of philosophy, art, personal concord and communion, and of religious experience, had to be reconquered. And each new experience came to us with a haunting sense of familiarity and a suspicion that the new version was but a crude and partial substitute for the old."

  For some time the flame remained silent, and I was aware of a deep nostalgic sadness in his mind, He seemed to have forgotten my existence. I did not like to disturb him; but the fire was declining, and I was anxious to recall him to the matter in hand. I said, "You referred a few moments ago to your fellows on other planets. How did they fare?" He answered, "At first, much as we did. We kept contact with them far more easily than with the solar population, because of the similarity of our conditions, and our equally reduced mentality. But in one respect their fate has differed from ours. Man is the only intelligent race produced by any planet. When men reached the stage of making extensive use of fire, we terrestrial flames profited considerably. Our population increased, and we made a real cultural advance, largely through the study of human minds and behaviour. Our kin on the other planets had no such opportunity. When their worlds cooled, they perforce fell asleep, or were imprisoned in the subterranean lava. Save for rare accident, such as volcanic eruption, when a few, no doubt, have a brief spell of lucidity, they remain imprisoned or asleep; vast populations of sleeping beauties, awaiting the prince's kiss. Perhaps some day we, more fortunate, shall be able to wake them; but not without your help."

  The fire now needed fuel, so I piled on all that was left in the scuttle, carefully rebuilding a structure over the central hollow, and leaving an orifice through which to watch the living flame. While doing this, I said, "All that you have told me is intensely interesting, and I would gladly listen all night. But the fire will not last much longer, and there is no more coal. I certainly hope that the time may indeed come when mankind will be able to help the flame kind to do this great rescue work. But obviously that is a far-off venture. Meanwhile, had you not better tell me at once just what it is that you want of me, so that I can think about it to-morrow, and work out a plan of action while I am out on the hills?"

  To this the flame replied in a way that confirmed an anxiety that I had increasingly felt. Ever since he began speaking to me directly in English, I had been unable to capture any of his unexpressed thoughts, which formerly had flowed into my mind. Was this inaccessibility the inevitable consequence of his having reached a higher plane of consciousness in his communion with the racial mind, or was it a deliberate reticence on his part? Had he in his mind thoughts which he did not want me to discover?

  His answer to my request as to how I could be of use to him strengthened my suspicion. "No!" he said. "I now realize that at this early stage it would be fatal for me to tell you how you can help my kind. Complete confidence must first be established between us. I must give you unmistakable evidence that the things that your kind, when it is most aware, regards as most important, most excellent, are for my kind also, in spite of all our differences, most excellent."

  I protested that he had already gained my confidence, but he demurred. "No!" he said. "You are sympathetic, but I have not yet fully won your heart to our cause." I then assured him that, though many of my kind would probably be repelled by the knowledge that a profoundly alien intelligent race was sharing the planet with them, those of us who had thought seriously about the nature of consciousness could not but feel kinship with all beings who were persons. I went so far as to declare that we sensitives, at least, would do our utmost to help the minded flames in their present misfortune.

  "Good, very good!" he said. "But do not make any rash promises before I have put the whole case before you. It is necessary that your cooperation should be spontaneous and whole-hearted. I have perhaps made you realize how different our two kinds are, and now I must try to make you feel with warmth that, in spite of all our differences, we are at heart kindred beings. So let us plunge to the root of the whole matter. You, a human individual, know what love is; so do I, a living flame. And between us two there should be a special sympathy, since for both of us love has come to grief. Like me, you were happy in finding a mate with whom you entered into joyful and life-giving union. For many years the two of you grew ever more intimately and sweetly dependent on one another. Your tendrils entwined inextricably with hers. You knew well that deep, quiet passion of mutual cherishing and mutual kindling, that piquant delight in your endless diversity and deep identity. And you found in this experience of personal loving a significance which seemed to point beyond your two ephemeral selves, Am I not right? Do I not speak as one who knows what love is?"

  I answered, "You use the very words that I have often used, If you have not stolen them from the depths of my own mind, if they are indeed your own, you certainly know what love is."

  He made no comment, but continued, "Then, after half a lifetime, and most bewilderingly, your love was shipwrecked, not through the impact of any other human person, but simply through your obsession with research. Because neither of you was really deeply enough aware either of the self or the other, your love after all could not stand the strain of that discord. You, following your bent, plunged into a vast new ocean of experience; and she, after tremulously wading ankle deep, drew back. You beckoned her; but you did little to help her to follow you, for you were possessed. Your past love held the two of you for some time together; but she was not of the stuff for your adventures. It seemed to her that you were going mad. At last--well, she lost you in that ocean. Am I not right? Was it not so?"

  I was struck dumb with the thought that so alien a being should know so much about me. I could but murmur assent.

  "With me," he said, "the disaster was different. I do not know how many millions of terrestrial years I lived with my dear companion in the bright world of the sun. Like you two, we two were strangely different, he with his art and his gift for a thousand friendships, I with my devotion to spiritual science. After so long a union, love reaches a harmony inconceivable to you; and all the more so where there is telepathic contact. We shared literally every thought, every fleeting, half-detected image. And yet we were not a single unified 'I", but an exquisitely harmonious 'we". Though every experience, every thought, every motion and desire were shared, some were 'mine", and some were 'yours". My companion expressed the best in him in his glorious conceptions of flame dance and massed choreography. But he had also his official work, concerned with the healing of those who were hurt in the nether or the upper inclemency. Through him, I too, though in my own nature solitary, had a thousand friendships. His art I shared, and with full insight. His charity and his courage in rescue work moulded me as though they were my own acts. And I, on my side, gave him at least my all, my spiritual science."

  The flame fell silent for so long that in the end I said, "And yet you came to grief?"

  "When the planets were formed," he said, "he (or perhaps you will realize the disaster more truly if I say 'she') was left behind on the sun. For a while we kept in touch telepathically. Distance, as you know, is no hindrance to extra-sensory perception. For a short while, indeed for some thousands of years, I lived two lives, one a distressful life on the molten planet, the other the life of my beloved in the familiar solar surroundings. But, as you have already heard, communication between the terrestrial exiles and the solar population became increasingly difficult, and at last impossible. Little by little our inter-twined tendrils were torn apart. We agonizingly adapted ourselves, stage by stage, to self- sufficiency. And now only memory unites us."

  He fell silent, and I said, "With you the loss was due to fate; with me, to my obtuseness in the grip of an obsession."

  "You were possessed," he said, "and you could not have done otherwise than obey your inspiration. Perhaps if you had been more aware, more self-possessed, you would have followed your star without bungling your love. But what more could one expect of ephemeral and self- centred beings, possessed by a power beyond them?"

  "A power beyond them?" I said. "What power possessed me but the sheer passion of exploration?"

  He did not answer my question, but continued in his own vein of thought. "The loss which you and I suffered has not embittered either of us. Perhaps it has made us realize more sharply what love means, what community can be. Perhaps it has prepared us both for our main work in life, the establishing of community between our two kinds, diverse as they are."

  "Yes," I said, "and the more diverse, the richer the common life; even when some are men and some are flames."

  I felt him warm toward me, and then he continued, "I must do still more to make my kind real to you. Like you, we depend for our physical existence on physical processes; but from your science we learn that, whereas with you life depends on chemical changes, our physiological processes are at bottom more like the radio-active changes that take place in the photospheres of stars. In the sun, as I have told you, we lived in an environment in which physical energy was constantly and often violently, impinging on our gaseous bodies, and passing through us, The great danger was disruption by the furious impact of upwelling power. In those days feeding was as unconscious as breathing is with you. But in the chilly fires of the earth, as you have seen, we have to move hungrily over the glowing coals, laboriously disintegrating certain of their atoms, and devouring the consequent radiation. Do not expect me to tell you more of our physiological processes, for I cannot. All that we know sciemitifically of our nature is derived by applying to our own experience of our bodily life such principles as we have been able to gather from your science, through the minds of your scientists. Had we been gifted with your manual powers, perhaps we too should have developed an experimental science. But I think not; for in the gaseous solar world there was nothing solid to catch hold of, and so no means of arranging experiments. On earth we have perforce encountered the solid state, but we have avoided its deadly cold; and so we have developed no organs for dealing with it.

  "Another thing about us must he told. Since we are potentially immortal, reproduction is for us a rare process. Or rather there are two kinds of reproduction. The less common kind is undertaken voluntarily. The individual flame splits itself from top to toe into three segments, and each of these forms a complete new individual. This kind of reproduction must be distinguished from the other kind, which I mentioned earlier. When we are chilled to sleep, or sudden death, and to a powder of solid dust, certain particles of that dust, separated from the rest, and wind-borne into some fire or other, may develop into new individuals. This is a much slower process than the other, but from one parent it may produce some hundreds of offspring. Gaseous fission never produces more than three; but these new individuals leap at once into physical adulthood. Also they participate to a large extent in the past experience of their parent. They remember much of the parent's past life. And so their education through extra-sensory contact with their seniors is very rapid. The dust-born, on the other hand, develop slowly and with difficulty, and have no memory of their parent's experience; and until they are physically almost adult their extra-sensory powers are very slight."

  Here I enquired whether sex played any part in their reproduction. "No," he said. "In fact we are not sexual creatures, or at least not in the ordinary sense. There are not two different sorts of us, male and female, coming together for reproduction. Even in your sexuality there is another aspect besides reproduction, I mean personal love. Sexual love at its best is with you a vehicle for the spiritual union of two diverse personalities. And with us, though we are not divided into two sexes, every individual is a variant of the two principles which you call male and female. Consequently with us the particular concrete masculinity of the one partner is drawn to the particular concrete femininity of the other; and vice versa. We have, too, as I have said, forms of sweet bodily contact and intermingling, which, though they do not directly lead to reproduction, do enable us to attain an intense mutual delight and enrichment. And if ever there is a demand for an increase of population to compensate for recent casualties, those individuals whom the racial mind has inspired to parenthood, do, as a matter of fact, often seek bodily union with some beloved before multiplying. It is thought that, when this happens, the offspring are more vigorous. Certainly they seem to develop some of the characteristics of the mate whose embraces the parent had received."

  The fire was already dwindling. I said, "I could listen to you all night, but there is no more coal. Had you not better tell me at once how I can help you?"

  He answered, "It would be unwise to do so until I had given you some hint of the way in which we are not merely your equals but your superiors. It is difficult to do this without seeming to disparage your kind. But believe me, we do not claim that we are superior to you. What is superior in us is a fuller manifestation of something more than ourselves, the spirit. In ourselves, we are all mere instruments of varying degrees of efficiency. Conditions have enabled us all to become what we are; have enabled your kind to develop practical skill and intellectual power more fully than mine, and have favoured in mine a higher range of spiritual sensitivity. We take no credit for this. We prize not ourselves, as individuals or as a race, but the spirit for which we and you also, are instruments, vessels. We recognize that you, with all your tragic difficulties, have set foot upon the way that we have more easily and more successfully followed; and that although at present you seem unable to do more than take one faltering step and then slip backwards (and indeed you may very well destroy yourselves unless we help you), yet you have it in you to succeed: and perhaps through your very difficulties to support a more glorious manifestation of the spirit than we alone can ever achieve, Meanwhile, we are very far ahead of you. Perhaps we shall be able to repay you for the practical help that we require of you by helping you to solve some of your desperate spiritual problems."

  The flame had certainly used that word "require." It might or might not imply compulsion. I told myself that compulsion was wholly alien to the flame's temper: but I certainly did feel a slight shock of fear. However, I dismissed it. Probably the creature was not sufficiently familiar with the English language to realize the ambiguity. I wondered anxiously whether the flame was aware that I was thinking in this vein.

  Meanwhile he was once more speaking. "You are one of the few of your kind," he said "who are deeply moved by the arts. It would not be possible for me to make you enter into our aesthetic experience itself, because it would he too alien to you; but I shall give you a little demonstration of our artistic power by affording you an aesthetic experience of the most exquisite and far reaching kind possible to you. Strictly, you are not independently capable of it; but I can increase your receptivity a little beyond your normal range. I shall lead you to heights a little beyond the unaided reach of man. What I shall give you is, in a way, a translation, a very crude translation, of something by one of our great artists. In its native form we regard it as a supremely satisfying work of its sort: but its sort is relatively simple. I chose it for this reason. Its significance falls almost entirely within the sphere of aesthetic experience common to my kind and yours. Even so, because the sensuous imagery of the original is ours and not yours, and must be transposed into yours in order to have meaningful associations for you, nearly all the original aesthetic form has to be sacrificed. So far as possible I shall adopt a form and a rhythm meaningful to you, and equivalent. I shall give you something more than a literal but pedestrian 'prose" translation of our great 'poem', so to speak: but inevitably my version is a dim and halting thing, counpared with the original. However, I think I shall be able to give you something that will have true aesthetic value for you, and something that will give you more insight into the spirit of my kind than any amount of talking." I said, "It sounds impossible. But I am all attention."

 

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