of Samuel, after which time the evocation would have
had no power over his spirit.

The pagans thought much in the same manner upon it. Lucan introduces
Pompey, who consults a witch, and commands her to evoke the soul of a
dead man to reveal to him what success he would meet with in his war
against Caesar; the poet makes this woman say, "Shade, obey my spells,
for I evoke not a soul from gloomy Tartarus, but one which hath gone
down thither a little while since, and which is still at the gate of
hell."[377]

The Egyptians[378] believed that when the spirit of an animal is
separated from its body by violence, it does not go to a distance, but
remains near it. It is the same with the soul of a man who has died a
violent death; it remains near the body--nothing can make it go away;
it is retained there by sympathy; several have been seen sighing near
their bodies which were interred. The magicians abuse their power over
such in their incantations; they force them to obey, when they are
masters of the dead body, or even part of it. Frequent experience
taught them that there is a secret virtue in the body, which draws
towards it the spirit which has once inhabited it; wherefore those who
wish to receive or become the receptacles of the spirits of such
animals as know the future, eat the principle parts of them, as the
hearts of crows, moles, or hawks. The spirit of these creatures enters
into them at the moment they eat this food, and makes them give out
oracles like divinities.

The Egyptians believed[379] that when the spirit of a beast is
delivered from its body, it is rational and predicts the future, gives
oracles, and is capable of all that the soul of man can do when
disengaged from the body--for which reason they abstained from eating
the flesh of animals, and worshiped the gods in the form of beasts.

At Rome and at Metz there were colleges of priests consecrated to the
service of the manes,[380] lares, images, shades, spectres, Erebus,
Avernus or hell, under the protection of the god Sylvanus; which
demonstrates that the Latins and the Gauls recognized the return of
souls and their apparition, and considered them as divinities to whom
sacrifices should be offered to appease them and prevent them from
doing harm. Nicander confirms the same thing, when he says that the
Celts or the Gauls watched near the tombs of their great men to derive
from them knowledge concerning the future.

The ancient northern nations