as that which has been borne to shadowy re-appearances of the dead. These, as our authour intimates, have been uniformly attested in every age and country by persons, who had no communication or knowledge of each other, and whose concurrence of testimony in this case can be accounted for only by a supposition of its truth. It is evidently a far greater improbability, that witnesses so numerous, so dispersed, and unconnected, should concur in forging so extraordinary a relation, than that such a relation, extraordinary as it is, should be true. For though the several objects we meet in the world be in general formed according to observably stated laws; yet anomalies in nature may occur, and their occurrence has been occasionally asserted and believed on less accumulated attestation. We now at length have ceased to question the supernatural stature of the Patagonians; why, then, are we so unwilling to admit the more amply witnessed existence of apparitions? Because the degree of prodigiousness implied in the supposition of a visible spirit strikes the imagination as too stupendous for belief. This is the effect of measuring the credibility of the attested achievements of nature by our own narrow experience, not by the power of Him, who is the authour of nature, and to whom all things, even the investing spirits with visibility, are possible. We have constant assurance of other natural processes not less difficult to account for than this, which we contemplate with such indignant mistrust. Nor can it on reflection appear more surprizing or incomprehensible, that a spirit should assume a visible shape, than that it should animate and move a material body. The wonders we see may soften our incredulity to patience of those which we have not seen, but which all tradition attests. Nothing possible in itself, and proved by sufficient evidence, can be too prodigious for rational belief.

But even the evidence of our own senses is disputed by some reasoners, who pronounce every believed view of these unsubstantial forms to be a mere illusion of the fancy, engendered by disease, indigestion, and other bodily af

fections. Bodily affections, it is certain, have been known to bewilder the views of the mind; and instances enough may be produced of men not generally supposed insane, who have been deluded and possessed with the most extravagant conceptions, by the vapours of distempered health. But by what token do these philosophers discover, that the witnesses of the fact in question, whom they never saw, and of whose mental or bodily state they can have knowledge, were so enfeebled and distracted in their powers of perception? Can it be proved, that apparitions of the dead, however astonishing, are impossible? Or, if not, upon what principle is it maintained invariably, that they who think they see such phantoms, see them only in imagination? According to this tenour of reasoning, all truth, not obvious to common experience, might be sacrificed to prejudice, and every rare fact, which we were unwilling to admit, might be exploded, by the short method of supposing, that the witnesses of it at the time must have been bereft of their senses. Writers, who thus get rid of evidence by presuming it the effect of fascination, betray some share of the infirmity they impute, and judge with a reason palpably overpowered and distorted by the influence of opinion.

Others, perceiving that few, if any, apparitions have been authenticated in the present day, are thence induced to infer too hastily that none were ever seen. These visible departed shades are extraordinary exhibitions in nature, reported to have been observed in all nations occasionally, but at no stated, times. During some periods they may occur with more frequency, in others with less: and the proof of their former occurrence, once established, is not to be weakened, much less done away, by the protracted delay or discontinuance of their renewal.

Nor can it generally reflect discredit on averred appearances of the dead, that they are observed to abound most in ignorant and dark ages. At such junctures, a fabulous increase of these, and other strange casualties, we may expect, will be supplied by the reveries of superstition, or

the interested impositions of craft upon credulity. But because in times of ignorance, prodigies of this sort will seem to multiply by the more than usual obtrusion of such as are false; is it reasonable to conclude, that none we hear of, either in those times, or at any other, are true? Does the utmost abundance of counterfeits, in this or in any case, disprove the existence of genuine originals? On the contrary, without the supposition of some such originals, might it not be difficult to conjecture, how even the counterfeits of occurrences so strange should become so universal? And does not their experienced universality hence strongly tend to prove, that at least the earliest of them were imitations of some real models; shadows devised after substances; forgeries of fancy or fraud, which derived their origin, and received their form, from the suggestion and example of fact?

Possibly it may yet be objected that the belief in the existence of the soul in a separate state, which has always obtained extensively, might lead to the belief, without the experimental witness, of its appearance.

It were easy to shew, that disembodied souls have been believed, not only to exist, but to be constantly present, where they were not imagined to be visible; and consequently that the supposition mentioned, which can be proved true in no case, is ascertained to be groundless in some cases, and upon the balance of its evidence not probable in any.

But it is needless to contend against a supposition so manifestly visionary. All men, in all times, must have perceived, that the soul, however it might continue to exist after its separation from the body, did not ordinarily appear on earth; and, till it had appeared, they could have no reason for supposing, in opposition to their past experience, that it ever would. The departed spirit, for aught they could foresee, might always survive invisibly; and their belief, if they afterwards entertained any, could be induced only by their sensible perception of its appear

ance.

Accordingly, tradition informs us, that sensible evidence has not been wanting in this case. In every age and country the posthumous appearance of the soul has been believed, not on the authority of conjecture, but on the attestations of persons who severally declared themselves eye-witnesses of it in distinct instances. If it be said, that these attestations might all be founded, as many of them confessedly were, in delusion or imposture; still it will be difficult, if not impossible, to account for so general a consent in so strange a fiction. One true report that a spirit has been seen, may give occasion and birth to many false reports of similar incidents. But universal and unconcerted testimony to a supernatural casualty cannot always be untrue; nor is it conceivable, that they who lived in distant ages and nations, who never heard of one another, should agree, either in a delusion or imposture so remote from common conception, and so unlike any thing observable in the ordinary course of events. An appearing spirit is a prodigy too singular in its nature to become a subject of general invention. That this prodigy has been every where counterfeited, proves only that it has every where in reality occurred to view. The fable bears witness to the fact of its existence; and, to a mind not influenced by popular prejudice, it will be scarce possible to believe, that apparitions of the dead could have been vouched in all countries, had they never been seen in any.

The opinion we have been considering, whether true or false, may at last be thought of too trivial moment to require or justify a discussion in this place. But to shew the credibility of this opinion, chiefly by our authour's own arguments, to which nothing of equal weight can be added, seemed not only due to him on the present occasion, but requisite in another important view. Appearances of departed spirits are occasionally recorded in Scripture ;* and as all indiscriminate objections against the reality of such appearances hence evidently impeach the testimony of Scripture, the above notice of the fallacy of some currently

* See 1 Sam. xxviii. 14. and Matt. xvii. S.

urged objections of this sort was not unseasonable, and may not, it is hoped, be altogether useless. It was the superstition of the dark ages to believe in many false miracles and apparitions; whence it seems often the insinuated wisdom of our enlightened times, to accept none, however authenticated in any age, for true: as if the folly of baseless unbelief were less than that of credulity; and it were not the province of instructed judgment to decide in no case capriciously or blindly, resist prejudice, and be determined by evidence.

GEORGE STRAHAN.

ISLINGTON, May 2, 1789.