How does vice perpetuate itself in spirit-life?

What do you mean by living over again their base lives?

These earth-bound spirits retain much of their earthy passion and propensity. 

The cravings of the body are not extinct, though the power to gratify them is withdrawn. 

The drunkard retains his old thirst, but exaggerated, aggravated by the impossibility of slaking it. 

It burns within him―

The unquenched desire―

Urges him to frequent the haunts of his old vices and to drive wretches like himself to further degradation. 

In them he lives again his old life and drinks in satisfaction, grim and devilish, from the excesses, which he causes them to commit. 

And so his vice perpetuates itself and swells the crop of sin and sorrow. 

The besotted wretch, goaded on by agencies he cannot see, sinks deeper and deeper into the mire. 

His innocent wife and babe starve and weep in silent agony, and near them hovers―over them broods―the guardian angel who has no power to reach the sodden wretch who mars their lives and breaks their hearts.