[Their power is limitless -- chilling words. Just as chilling, Saunder's clear belief in them. Watson hesitated -- but Holmes never drew back from knowledge and this was knowledge that might be neccessary to help a friend.]

I'm afraid I don't understand -- if anyone can become an active, what did your colleague mean by saying actives represented the next stage of human evolution? Did he mean that wiping and rewriting the brain constituted making full use of the brain's cognitive powers?

Or was it the ability of those actives who retained vestiges of themselves or remembered all their ... incarnations that so impressed him?