_LITERATURE IN SPIRIT LIFE_. To a mind familiar with the literature of the ancient Greeks and Romans, which has studied the Scandinavian Edda, and is intimate with the more modern German, French, and English authors, the literature of the spirit world opens up a mine of interminable wealth. The libraries in this world are vast catacombs or repositories of buried knowledge. Here are found histories of decayed races, dynasties, and nations which have vanished from earth, leaving scarce a monument of their progress in art, science, and mental culture. In these libraries the student of history will find the exploits of ancient peoples recorded, and a description of their cities, with the temples and towers which they built and the colossal images which they created. I own to the surprise which I experienced when I discovered that printed books were a part of the treasures of the spirit world. But the scholar will rejoice as I did to find the literary productions of remotest ages garnered in the spacious halls of science that adorn our cities. It is a principle of being--a condition of immortality--as inseparable from spirit existence as from earth life, that thought should express itself in external forms. Even the Great Spirit, the Creator of all, gives shape to his thoughts in the formation of trees, flowers, men, beasts, and myriad worlds with their constant motion, their sound and song. It has been aptly said that the “stars are the poetry of God.” He, the Great Spirit of all, writes his thoughts legibly; and so man, like his originator, whether living in the natural body or existing as a spirit, gives outward shape to his ideas; hence books become a necessity of spirit existence, and the writers from earth have still a desire to perpetuate their thoughts. Oral communication is too evanescent, and therefore the dear old books still find a place in the spheres. There are various modes of making these volumes, and the writer may become his own printer. Some authors prefer to dictate, and a little instrument marks off the variations of sound which make the word, and thus, as he speaks, the word is impressed on the sheet. Others, if the thought be clear and distinct enough, and the will sufficiently under abeyance, act through the mind upon a conductor, which dots down the thought in a manner somewhat similar to telegraphic printing. The material used to receive the impression is of a soft, vellum-like nature, which can be folded up in any manner without destroying its form; it is very light and thin, but opaque, like the creamy petals of a lily. The phonetic alphabet is used extensively, though we have many books printed in the mode usually adopted on earth.