In this way, a place can be Heaven to some and Hell to others.
Similarly, a human being who leads an evil life and goes to Hell would say that life on Earth was Hell. A human being who lives a just life on Earth and goes to Heaven would say that his life on Earth was Heaven.
Good and evil are “retrospective.” After a human being experiences good and evil, he can judge for himself whether his experiences were good or evil. MacDonald tries to explain the truth to the Narrator. Phantastes : A Faerie Romance for Men and Women by George MacDonald, first published in 1858, is a rare manuscript, the original residing in one of the great libraries of the world. And yet for those who choose to stay here, it will also be Heaven. The place in which the Narrator is currently standing is called the Valley of the Shadow of Life. But the people who manage to leave the grey town behind will have been in Purgatory, not Hell. The Narrator asks MacDonald, “Is there really a way out of Hell into Heaven?” MacDonald replies that the people who live in the grey town are in Hell. He explains to the Narrator that “the damned have holidays.” Occasionally, the people of Hell are allowed to visit the river, although most opt to visit Earth instead. They are portions of the living house wherein he abides.George MacDonald, addressing the Narrator as “Son,” thanks the Narrator for his enthusiasm and respect. No shining belt or gleaming moon, no red and green glory in a self-encircling twin-star, but has a relation with the hidden things of a man's soul, and, it may be, with the secret history of his body as well. The blank, which is only a forgotten life, lying behind the consciousness, and the misty splendour, which is an undeveloped life, lying before it, may be full of mysterious revelations of other connexions with the worlds around us, than those of science and poetry.
Else a grander idea is conceivable than that which is already imbodied. The community of the centre of all creation suggests an interradiating connection and dependence of the parts. Worlds cannot be without an intermundane relationship. “They who believe in the influences of the stars over the fates of men, are, in feeling at least, nearer the truth than they who regard the heavenly bodies as related to them merely by a common obedience to an external law.
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