By far the largest portion of mankind believe in a _natural state_ hereafter, corresponding to their earth existence, but the European nations which are supposed to be advanced in science, art, and philosophical attainments beyond all the nations of the earth, have, in their speculations and in their efforts to penetrate the mysteries of the world of spirits, lost sight, of the natural and entered the supernatural, where they are surrounded by fogs, clouds, and _ignes-fatui._
Now if these people are told that the spirit world is divided into states and continents, cities and towns, as is their own world (though under spirit appellations), they would scoff at the statement.
But as mankind has a natural love of locality, and as congenial minds will select similar locations, adapted to their ideas of beauty and comfort, the result is that spirit inhabitants unite and form cities and towns as on earth. Thus combining, they must have some points of interest to occupy their minds, and as they still possess their power of construction and ingenuity, their love of beautiful forms and of architecture, they prefer not to live in the open air and on the bare ground (as they can certainly do), but choose rather to employ their various faculties in building cities and habitations in accordance with their tastes and ideas of convenience.
Once grant that man is provided with a spiritual body after he emerges from his original one—accept the hypothesis that this body must possess form and sensation, and with sensation, eyes, ears, mouth, taste, and motion—then you must provide means for that body to exist. In providing these means you must place him upon a soil capable of producing vegetation, where his intelligence may compound the various articles adapted to his use.
Some individuals enter the spirit world deformed, some feeble in intellect, some incapable of constructing or arranging. All these must have provision made for them; their wants must be supplied. The effort to supply want or demand produces a system of exchange or barter.
Many of the inhabitants of the spirit world are both good and kind. They are spiritualized in their natures, and are influenced by a desire to assist those who are needy.
Nature, or God, has ordained that existence should depend upon effort; that a state of inactivity should produce dissolution; and much the same means are taken there to enforce activity as in the material world.
True, some men possess natural gifts, by which knowledge is acquired without labor. The power of seeing before the demonstration belongs to all humanity. It is the negative form of knowledge; but combined with that power is the positive, which compels man to desire a visible representation or demonstration of the knowledge he has received by intuition.
The astronomer thus, before he constructs his telescope, perceives intuitively the very stars which his telescope proves as existing, where none are visible to the eye.
It was this active-positive principle, that made him construct the instrument; and in the spirit world, as on earth, that active-positive principle acts in conjunction with the negative-intuitive one, in impelling him to exertion, and forcing him to acquire knowledge in every department of science, art, philosophy and religion. As well expect this earth to rest in her revolution and still retain her place in the solar system, as to suppose that the spirit of man can lose its activity and sink to rest eternal.