Let us now fancy this dispossessed soul entering on its new career, amazed, and no more able than when it was in the body to accommodate itself at once to conditions of existence for which it was unprepared. If its aspirations had previously been heavenward, these conditions would not be altogether new, and it would speedily find itself at home in a sphere in which it had dwelt before; for, as I have formerly said, a spirit must be where its thoughts and affections are, and the soul, whose thoughts and affections had been directed to heaven, would only awaken after death into a more perfect and unclouded heaven. But imagine the contrary of all this. Conceive what this awakening must be to an earth-bound spirit—to one altogether unprepared for its new home—carrying no light within it—floating in the dim obscure—clinging to the earth, where all its affections were garnered up: for where its treasure is, there shall it be also. It will find its condition evil, more or less, according to the degree of its moral light or darkness, and in proportion to the amount of the darkness will be its incapacity to seek for light. Now, there seems nothing offensive to our notions of the Divine goodness in this conception of what awaits us when the body dies. It appears to me, on the contrary, to offer a more comprehensible and coherent view than any other that has been presented to me; yet the state I have depicted is very much the hades of the Greeks and Romans. It is the middle state, on which all souls enter—a state in which there are many mansions; that is, there are innumerable states—probably not permanent, but ever progressive or retrograde; for we can not conceive of any moral state being permanent, since we know perfectly well that ours is never so; it is always advancing or retroceding. When we are not improving, we are deteriorating; and so it must necessarily be with us hereafter.