Page:The Other Life.djvu/191

 between the occupations of the inhabitants of the respective spheres.

Abstract from the business of our world all the arts and trades and labors which are concerned in the feeding, clothing, housing and governing of mankind, what would be left? No seasons, no crops, no farming; no hunting, no fishing; no transportation of commodities, no bargain and sale; no wages, no property, no money or other representative of value; no manufactures, no housebuilding, no planting, no quarrying; no birth, no diseases, no death; no governments like ours, no elections, no taxes; no criminal jurisprudence; no wars, no treaties, no parties in Church or State. Take all these things and many others away from our conception of active life, and at first blush what an enormous vacuum is left! It seems to us as if all was taken away, all motives to action; yea, the very basis of affection and thought.

Now all these occupations, with the feelings, ideas and motives which they involve and engender, are peculiar to the natural world, to a realm of time and space in which fixed things are created, born, grow and die. They are necessary to this our first stage of existence, and are the very means of our rational development and of our