or unimportant" and its "loose narrative forms" are unified "when viewed in relation to the novel's theme". C. A. Coates also notes, in John Cowper Powys in Search of a Landscape that "The novel contains more Powys-personae than any other", and adds Cadawg and the dead Pelagius to the list. What is important to these Powysian personae, and which provides one of the central organizing theme of Porius, is "the pluralist sensationalism that Powys has been attempting to describe for so long", Powys's "elementalism", what Porius calls cavoseniargizing. American literary critic Denis Lane claims, that Powys filled his "Romance of the Dark Ages", with a sense of elementalism far surpassing that of other novels. Every aspect of the novel is drawn with reference to the elemental world – human thought, speech, action, contemplation, are all viewed as coordinative with other parts of nature. Canadian literary scholar John Brebner, in his essay "The Anarchy of the Imagination", also concludes that "Porius is in many ways Powys's most comprehensive and successful statement of his life-vision". Equally important as Powys's concern with elementalism is his concern with individual freedom: "The central issue is the autonomy of individual human choice and vision over every creed and pressure from without", Its "central message [is] voluntarism, [a concern with] the creative power of the imagination and [how] the human will [determines] the course of our evolution in the face of political and religious tyrannies". Powys's "emphasis is upon individual rights [...] that permit a plurality of choice independent of moralistic constraints," and "the sanctity of the individual imagination". Associated with these themes is Powys's favourable presentation of the ideas of the Christian heretic Pelagius, and his belief in free will and rejection of original sin, and the implied condemnation of Christianity's subsequent development into "an authoritarian system". Race and religion Powys's presentation of Britain in 499 AD as a multi-racial society provides him with the opportunity to comment on themes related to the rise of totalitarian regimes and racial nationalism in the 20th century. The period he represents is one in which "[t]he racial mingling throws up a froth of religious and philosophical controversy". Michael Ballin calls Porius "both a diagnosis and a criticism of Western contemporary culture." Among the different ethnic groups are the Romans, the Forest People (the "true Welsh aboriginals", a non-Aryan race which originated in Africa), the Gwyddylaid (Goidels or Irish Celts),