In the Country of the Blest, which is a real place and no afterlife, but here and now and lying to the west of Spain, everybody goes about his or her business without minding anyone else, yet all works out well, with great amity on all sides. 

Food they have in abundance, for everything made is edible, and nutritious, and, if you eat of it, returns to its original form almost before you can blink your eye.  Milk, honey, wine and all manner of liquor spring up from the ground in streams, so no one ever need thirst, and remains always in a convivial mood.

The problem of jealousy in coupling they have solved in a most ingenious way.  Everywhere, the walls are hung with placards depicting beautiful men and women of all types, life-sized and examinable from all angles, so that all that is necessary is for the beholder to wish for the presence of the beheld and lo, she or he will be incorporated in the flesh, and willingly perform whatever acts you wish. Thus are manifold pleasures readily available to all with no disputes or sorrow.

In matters of property, much the same appertains.  A luxurious motor car, for example, will build itself up from a poster wish – and one may also imagine into existence an agreeable companion.  One may ride any and everywhere, and when your journey is done, leave the conveyance at any curbside where it will leap into the nearest poster frame.

Now all of these things I have seen with my own eyes and can attest to.  But it is told that further to the west lies a Country of the Damned, where none of these marvels are possible.  Men and women fall sick with undiagnosable maladies and in the course of things either get well or die without rhyme or reason, though supposed medicines and palliatives abound.  The wines they drink do not make them content, but cause them to double up and oftimes to vomit.  Nor, unlike the Island of the Blest, is this place to be found on any map, so if one, b y unhappy accident, is blown off course and lands there, escape is all but impossible.

But the worst of it – and this I heard from an old man who managed after many years to gain his freedom at great risk of being drowned or eaten by sea-beasts – is that in the Country of the Damned, the populace, rather than speaking to one another, reads broadsheets filled with tidings, and images that no matter how one tries, will not come to life.  And the tidings they read, though seeming true, can in no wise be reconciled with the circumstances of their lives, and so by degrees, they fall into a kind of madness, wherein their desires are aroused to no good purpose and those that linger to the age of four score or so rarely die of old age, but are consumed from within by the energies they can neither employ to good purpose, nor gain the mastery of.

And also, the old man said this:  In the Country of the Damned they will perform any act to obtain a piece of gold.  And in the doing of these acts they revel.  For however insalubrious or evil, they make of their meager lots a splendid heap of joy.