they are sot invested with a material body, but with a body like that of the angels. They are in that higher or more interior sphere of human life, where all things; are more perfect than they are in this lower sphere; for it is a universal law, that the perfection of things increases, according to the progress towards interiors. Being spirits untrammelled by gross matter, they act immediately according to the promptings of their interior affections; and all their mental and bodily powers are more rapidly unfolded than those of infants in this world. Then they are far more wisely governed and instructed, being in constant association with, and under the immediate care and direction of, some of the best of the angels. To quote again the treatise on Heaven and Hell:
"The state of infants in the other life is much more perfect than that of infants in the world, because they are not clothed with an earthly body, but with a body like that of angels. The earthly body in itself is obtuse, and does not receive its first sensations and first motions from the interior or spiritual world, but from the exterior or natural world. Infants, therefore, in the world, must learn to walk, to use their limbs, and to speak; and even their senses, as the senses of seeing and hearing, are to be opened in them by use. It is otherwise with infants in the other life. They are spirits, and therefore they act immediately according to their interiors. They walk without previous teaching, and speak also; but at first they speak only from general affections not clearly distinguished into ideas of thought. In a short time they are initiated also into these, and acquire them speedily, because their exteriors are homogeneous to their interiors.
