ide 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.

Man is not only active in constructing and exploring in the spirit world,
but he is also engaged in inventions. Most of the discoveries that have
lessened manual labor and made gross matter subservient to man's use
originated in the land of spirits. The inventor finds full field for his
talents in the superior state.

Man naturally delights in knowledge, and the individual who knows how to
construct a steam locomotive finds a thrill of satisfaction in the
possession of that ability. So does he who can arrange and construct any
piece of mechanism