“The bands separate and strings and lines of the phosphorized spirits train away without direction to the choruses that attract them, although only a sort of subdued and confused murmur reaches them from the halls.

“Throughout the first stages of life here, the spirits are somnambulous.  They move and act unconsciously and in obedience to their imbedded instincts and tastes.  Only, as under the influence of music and light and afterwards occupation, they are transmuted by consolidation into the fair material race, which outside of the City of Light controls the planet, does consciousness and curiosity and language arise.  I sat a long, long time in the chorus hall, to which I was drawn, which produced grave music.  I knew nothing, felt nothing, was but dimly cognizant of what was about me, but I thrilled with the music.

“I felt the process of condensation going on, and it was a process exquisitely blissful.  Now and then, a spirit form would arise and step down the rising forms and go out, another and another, while as silently spirits from the Hill of the Phosphori would enter and take their seat and bathe in the almost unbroken surges of music that come from the field outside, from the multitude beneath the almond blossom laden trees.  Movement is without volition in the spirit stage; attraction that follows a hidden impulse, that seems indescribable at first, directs them.  It is only as the process of consolidation in the City of Light individualizes, that the spirits become, as you would say, human.  But it is a humanity of great beauty.  Material particles invade or transfuse them, replacing the diaphanous phosphorescent spirit fluid, and they grade into supple white and rosy figures, strong, strenuous and splendid.

“After remaining a long time, perhaps, in the chorus hall, I felt the restlessness that causes one after the other of the spirits to go out.  I followed the solitary line out into the city, the solemn, swaying music still heard as I stepped out upon the broad steps which face the city.  I was now more observant, something like sight and feeling and memory were slowly generated within me, and I noticed that whereas the arriving spirits moved like apathetic ghosts, those with whom I now was, turned with interest this way and that, seemed apprehending and alive.

“The spirits from the Hill of the Phosphori came on the broad avenues leading to the chorus halls like waifs of cloud driven by a zephyr, with no visible distention of parts, no leg, or arm, or head or body motion.  Now they moved with some anatomical suggestions.

“I stood amid a colonnade of arches, the white shining columns rose around me to the high, shining roof, before me a long descent of steps, and beyond me and around on a softly swelling eminence was spread the City of Light.  It was a marvellous picture.