Page:The Other Life.djvu/62

 into the physical world in a material body, is a vulgar superstition. The spiritual body is to the spiritual world what the natural body is to the natural world. It is a real, definite, indestructible form, composed of spiritual substances which can never by any process get into the natural world and make itself objective to the natural senses.

That spirits sometimes appear at a distance in the spiritual world as lambs or wolves or serpents, depends upon the laws of correspondence and the operation of spheres, which are explained by the constitution of the spiritual world itself. Spirits are not metamorphosed into those creatures, for they appear constantly to themselves in the human form. But those creatures are presented to view as symbolically revealing the spiritual character of the persons they represent. When it is said that the evil one appeared in the form of a serpent or a dragon, it is meant that those monsters picture forth to the eye the corrupt sensual principle which is the animating power of hell. When it said that the Holy Spirit descended in the form of a dove, the dove simply represents the innocence and purity of the divine nature.

Why does not the spiritual body also die, being composed of organs and tissues so similar to those