ILLUSION OF SPECTRES.

"More strange than true. I never may believe These antique fables."-Midsummer Night's Dream. Ev. YOUR holy thoughts, fair Ida, are but an echo of my own. The grand causes and awful judgments of the inspired æras of the world prove the truth by the necessity of the miracles, not only in answer to the Pharisees and Sadducees, who required a sign, but even before the eyes of the early disciples, whose apathetic hearts soon forgot the miracles, and their divine Master himself; for, as he was walking on the sea, at the fourth watch, they thought he was a spirit."

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I would fain, however, adopt the precept of Lord Bacon, to waive theology in my discussions and my illustrations, because I am unwilling to blend the sacred truths of spiritual futurity with arguments on the imperfection of material existence.

In the abstract spiritual evidence of all modern superstition I have little faith. These records are scarcely more to be confided in than fairy tales, or fictions like those of many antique sages: as the rabbins, that "the cherubim are the wisest, the seraphim the most amiable, of angels;" or of the visionary Jew of Burgundy, whom, in 1641, John Evelyn spoke with in Holland: "He told me that, when the Messias came, all the ships, barkes, and vessels of Holland should, by the powere of certaine strange whirle winds, be loosed from their ankers, to convey their brethren and tribes to the holy citty;" or even that of Melancthon, that his sable majesty once appeared to his own aunt in the shape of her husband, and grasping her hand, so scorched and shrivelled it that it remained black ever after. These are fair samples of credulity.

You will call me presumptuous, but, believe me,

Astrophel, it is superstition which is presumptuous and positive, and not philosophy; for credulity believes on profane tradition, or the mere assertion of a mortal. But the glory of philosophy is humility; for they who, like Newton, and Playfair, and Wollaston, and Davy, look deeply into the wonder and beauty of creation, will be ever humbled by the contemplation of their own being, an atom of the universe. A philosopher cannot be proud; for, like Socrates, he confesses his ignorance, because he is ever searching for truth. He cannot be a skeptic; for when he has dived into the deeps of science, his thoughts will ascend the more towards the Deity: he has grasped all that science can afford him, and there is nothing left for his mighty mind but divine things and holy hopes. Philosophy is not confident either, because she ever waits for more experience and more weight of testimony.

How often, Astrophel, must we be deceived, like children, by distance, until experience teaches us truth. By this we know that the turrets of distant towers are high, yet they dwindle in our sight to the mere vanishing point, as the child believes them. Such is the power of demonstration.

The ancient polytheists could not be other than idolaters and believers in prophecy. The rabbins were schooled, in addition to the books of Moses, in those of Zoroaster, in the Talmud, which was the magic volume of the Jews, and the Takurni, or Persian Almanac, the annual expositor of natural and judicial astrology in the clime of the sun.

The sages who lived immediately after the light of Christianity had been shed over the Holy Land had not forgotten the miracles wrought in the holy city, but they profaned Omnipotence by making them purposeless.

Superstition then formed a part of the national

creed: even a mere word, as "Epidamnum," they dreaded to pronounce, as it was of such awful import; and credulity and blind faith in the prophetic truth of omens and oracles prevailed. We read in Montfaucon that twelve hundred believed in this miracle of Virgil:

Captus a Romanis invisibiliter exiit, ivitque Neapolim :" that he rendered himself invisible to the Romans and escaped to Naples. The influence of this blind infatuation was the spring of many actions, which, like the daring of the Indian fatalist in battle, were vaunted as deeds of heroic self-martyrdom.

Marcus Curtius, the trembling of the earth having opened a chasm in the Roman forum, leaped into it on horseback, when the soothsayers declared it would not close until the most valuable thing in the city was flung into it. And the two Decii offered themselves as the willing sacrifice to ensure a victory for their country, one in the war with the Latins, the other in that of the Etrurians and Umbrians.

Aristotle and Galen were exceptions. It is true that Socrates believed himself under the influence of a demon, a sort of delegate from the Deity-indeed, that God willed his death; for when his friend pressed him on his trial to compose his defence, he answered thus: "The truth is, I was twice going about to make my apology, but was twice withheld by my demon." But remember, Astrophel, the Greek word which the philosopher employed, Tò daiμóviov, and you will rather confess that it implies the Deity, as if some divine inspiration taught him; or perchance, as some of his commentators believe, this invisible monitor was merely the impersonation of the faculty of judgment, and of that deep knowledge and forethought with which his mind was fraught.

Cicero, too, is said to have written arguments to prove the divine origin of the oracle of Delphi; but it is well believed by classics that Addison has, in his letter in the Spectator, mistaken Cicero for Cato.

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Recollect, Astrophel, this is an old point with us, when we were reading the subject of Auguries in his book, De Divinatione," in which he wonders "that one soothsayer can look another in the face without laughing;" and you remember Lucian ridicules ghost-seeing as the whim of imagination. You have cited Pliny. True, Pliny is an interesting story-teller, although he warps somewhat the phantoms of his dreams. But what is the first sentence of his letter to Sura? "I am very desirous to know your opinion concerning spectres; whether you believe them to have a real existence, and are a sort of divinities, or are only the visionary impressions of a terrified imagination."

And what did Johnson confess? That "this is a question which, after five thousand years, is still undecided; a question, whether in theology or philosophy, one of the most important that can come before the human understanding." So you see the vaunted creed of Johnson was at least, like the coffin of Mohammed, poised between the affirmative and negative of the proposition. The sage was a strict spiritualist, and, as Boswell says, "wished for more evidence of spirit in opposition to materialism." On some points he was also mighty superstitious, and constantly affirmed his conviction that he should himself run mad. augury failed, and therefore the prophetic nature of second sight needs more convincing proof than the creed of Johnson. In his own words, "Foresight is not prescience."

This

As to the second sight of Caledon, he confesses

that, although in his journey he searched diligently, he saw but one seer, and he was grossly ignorant, as indeed they usually are. "He came away only willing to believe," the learned and literary even in the far Hebrides, especially the clergy, being altogether skeptics.

In the consideration of this question in the study of psychology, it has been an error to conclude that, because in some certain works arguments are adduced by imaginary characters in support of the appearance of departed spirits, such was the positive belief of their authors. If, then, for instance, the arguments of Imlac, in Rasselas, which aim at the proof of spectral reality, or, rather, the appearance of departed beings, be adduced as an evidence of Johnson's own belief, I might observe that it were equally rational to identify the minds or dispositions of Massinger and Sir Giles Overreach, of Shakspeare and Iago.

Like the Catholic priesthood, who rule the ignorant by the force of superstition, leaders have been induced to profess the possession of this faculty to overawe their proselytes by their own deeper knowledge, as Ñuma vaunted his intimacy with the nymph Egeria at her fountain.

For this purpose even the Corsican general, Pascal Paoli, assumed the profession of a seer, and the mystery of his prescience was on the lips of every Corsican. When Boswell asked if the fulfilments of his prophecies were frequent, a Corsican grasped a bundle of his hair, and whispered, "Tante, tante, signore!"

But I will not play the dullard, Astrophel, while you, with your legendary romance, charm the listening ears of ladyes fayre. I will have my turn of story-telling (avoiding the myriads of queer tales told by superstitious and unlettered visiona