Now before I come to tell this next part of my story, there are several
things which seem in want of explanation. I speak of people as looking
old and young, and of there being relations between them such as
fatherly and motherly, son-like and lover-like. It bewildered me at
first, but I came to guess at the truth. It would seem that in the
further world spirits do preserve for a long time the characteristics of
the age at which they last left the earth; but I saw no very young
children anywhere at first, though I came afterwards to know what befell
them. It seemed to me that, in the first place I visited, the only
spirits I saw were of those who had been able to make a deliberate
choice of how they would live in the world and which kind of desires
they would serve; it is very hard to say when this choice takes place
in the world below, but I came to believe that, early or late, there
does come a time when there is an opening out of two paths before each
human soul, and when it realises that a choice must be made. Sometimes
this is made early in life; but sometimes a soul drifts on, guileless in
a sense, though its life may be evil and purposeless, not looking
backwards or forwards, but simply acting as its nature bids it act. What
it is that decides the awakening of the will I hardly know; it is all a
secret growth, I think; but the older that the spirit is, in the sense
of spiritual experience, the earlier in mortal life that choice is made;
and this is only another proof of one of the things which Amroth showed
me, that it is, after all, imagination which really makes the difference
between souls, and not intellect or shrewdness or energy; all the real
things of life--sympathy, the power of entering into fine relations,
however simple they may be, with others, loyalty, patience, devotion,
goodness--seem to grow out of this power of imagination; and the reason
why the souls of whom I am going to speak were so content to dwell where