an to write thee better books. I take for granted that my health
will there be improved, and that Swedenborg has not deceived me. He
relates, namely, with great confidence, that we shall peacefully
carry on our old occupations in the other world, just as we have done
in this; that we shall there preserve our individuality unaltered,
and that death will produce no particular change in our organic
development. Swedenborg is a thoroughly honorable fellow, and quite
worthy of credit in what he tells us about the other world, where he
saw with his own eyes the persons who had played a great part on our
earth. Most of them, he says, remained unchanged, and busied
themselves with the same things as formerly; they remained
stationary, were old-fashioned, _rococo_--which now and then produced
a ludicrous effect. For example, our dear Dr. Martin Luther kept
fast by his doctrine of Grace, about which he had for three hundred
years daily written down the same mouldy arguments--just in the same
way as the late Baron Ekstein, who during twenty years printed in the
_Allgemeine Zeitung_ one and the same article, perpetually chewing
over again the old cud of Jesuitical doctrine. But, as we have said,
all persons who once figured here below were not found by Swedenborg
in such a state of fossil immutability: many had considerably
developed their character, both for good and evil, in the other
world; and this gave rise to some singular results. Some who had
been heroes and saints on earth had _there_ sunk into scamps and
good-for-nothings; and there were examples, too, of a contrary
transformation. For instance, the fumes of self-conceit mounted to
Saint Anthony's head when he learned what immense veneration and
adoration had been paid to him by all Christendom; and he who here
below withstood the most terrible temptations was now quite an
impertinent rascal and dissolute gallows-bird, who vied with his pig
in rolling himself in the mud. The chaste Susanna, from having been
excessively vain of her virtue, which she thought indomitable, came
to a shameful fall, and she who once so gloriously resisted the two
old men, was a victim to the seductions of the young Absalom, the son
of David. On the contrary, Lot's daughters had in the lapse of time
become very virtuous, and passed in the other world for