Page:The Other Life.djvu/246

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life, and act from external motives as they did here.

The consequence is that they at first build up around themselves, by the law of spiritual creation, things similar to those they had known and loved in the earth-life. They collect together in nationalities, are divided according to their religious opinions, and have civil cliques and social coteries just as we do here. The external world around them is somewhat similar to that they have left behind. The English have some spiritual counterpart of their London, the French of their Paris, the Italians of their Rome. They are concerned about what they shall do and how they shall live. They manifest the spirit of trade, the lust of office, the zeal for science, and have the same loves and appetites and opinions there as they had here. It is difficult for the new-comers into that extraordinary world to believe that they are dead to the world of nature and living in a world of spirits.

All this, however, is transitory. The population is ever shifting. Millions appear every week on this new field of action, where good and evil spirits are contending for the supremacy over man, but as many disappear as come. They do not die. What has become of them? No one sees them go away;