Page:The Other Life.djvu/116

 What, then, is the fundamental difference between the spiritual world and the world of nature?

The natural world, or rather the physical universe, is fixed and permanent, being the last and lowest sphere of the divine emanations. It is utterly dead in itself, but is plastic to the inflowing and organizing forces of the spiritual sphere. It is, therefore, the basis, the footstool, the seed-field, the birth-place of all things. The spiritual grows and expands within the natural, like the chick within the egg, like the butterfly within the worm, until it bursts its bonds, and rises to its real and better life.

The physical cosmos has an externeity independent of the souls that live upon it, encased in their natural bodies. One sun shines upon all alike. The rain descends upon the evil and the good. Daylight and darkness come invariably to half the world at once. The wilderness does not blossom for our prayers; the flowers do not perish at our crimes. Times and spaces, cruel and inexorable as death, stand between us and our hopes, our longings and our loves.

In the spiritual world it is different. That sphere has no externeity independent of the souls inhabiting it. That world is momentarily created by the influx of the divine life through the spirits