MAN AND THEMETHOD OFEVOLUTION 117
the life, the more keenly will rest be enjoyed. Sickness,
sorrow, and pain are unknown quantities. This is the
Summerland of the spiritualists. There the thoughts of the
devout Christian have built the New Jerusalem. Beautiful
hous es, flowers, etc., are the p ortion of thos e who aspired t o
them; they build them themselves by thought from the subtle
desire stuff. Nevertheless these things are just as real and
tangible to them as our material houses are to us. All gain
here the satisfaction which earth life lacked for them.
There is one class there who lead a particularly beautiful
life—the children. If we could but see them we would
qu ickly ceas e our grief. When a child dies b efor e the birth of
the desire body, which takes place about the fourteenth year,
it does not go any higher than the first heaven, because it is
not responsible for its actions, any more than the unborn
child is responsible for the pain it causes the mother by
turning and twisting in her womb. Therefore the child has no
purgatorial existence. That which is not quickened cannot
die, hence the desire body of a child, together with the mind,
will persist until a new birth, and for that reason such
children are very apt to remember their previous incarnation
as instanced in the case cited elsewhere.
For such children the first heaven is a waiting-place
where they dwell from one to twenty years, until an
opportunity for a new incarnation is offered. Yet it is more
than simply a waiting-place, because there is much progress
made during this interim.
When a child dies ther e is always s ome r elative awaiting
it, or, failing that, there are people who loved to “mother”
children in the earth life who find delight in taking care of a
little waif. The extreme plasticity of the desire stuff makes it
easy to form the most exquisiteliving toys for the children,