Page:The Other Life.djvu/105

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or other substance these visual images made upon the mind by the objects of nature. This pictorial writing preceded the alphabet and books. It corresponds to the pictorial speaking of the spiritual world already described. The Aztec artists thus informed the Mexican government of the landing of the Spaniards, by sending forward rude paintings of their ships, horses, arms, clothing and banners, articles which they had never seen before.

Our highest products in art, in painting, sculpture, and architecture, flow from the effort of the human mind to make its ideas visible.

By abbreviations, condensations, etc., of this pictorial writing, an alphabet and finally words were obtained, representative of things and significative of our ideas. In that spiritual language into which we shall all consciously come after death, every letter, point, iota and little curve, not only represents things, states, qualities, and affections, but involves mysteries of wisdom incommunicable to man whose thought is still limited by the shackles of time and space.

There are writings in heaven not produced by the intervention of the hand. These are correspondences of the thoughts and soon fade away. Those written out or printed are permanent, and