matter think on always, or only at times; and when it has ceased to
think, who will make it think anew? Will it be God, will it be itself?
Can so simple an agent as the soul act upon itself, and reproduce it
in some sort by thinking, after it has ceased to think?

My reader will say that I leave him here embarrassed, and that instead
of giving him any light on the subject of the apparition of spirits, I
cast doubt and uncertainty on the subject. I own it; but I better like
to doubt prudently, than to affirm that which I know not. And if I
hold by what my religion teaches me concerning the nature of souls,
angels, and demons, I shall say that being purely spiritual, it is
impossible that they should appear clothed with a body except through
a miracle; always in the supposition that God has not created them
naturally capable of these operations, with subordination to his
sovereignly powerful will, which but rarely allows them to use this
faculty of showing themselves corporeally to mortals.

If sometimes angels have eaten, spoken, acted, walked, like men, it
was not from any need they had to drink or eat to sustain themselves
and to be able to live, but to execute the designs of God, whose will
it was that they should appear to men acting, drinking, and eating, as
the angel Raphael observes,[444]--"When I was staying with you, I was
there by the will of God; I seemed to you to eat and drink, but for my
part I make use of an invisible nourishment which is unknown to men."

It is true that we know not what may be the food of angels who are
substances which are purely spiritual, nor what became of that food
which Raphael and the angels that Abraham entertained in his tent,
took, or seemed to take, in the company of men. But there are so many
other things in nature which are unknown and incomprehensible to us,
that we may very well console ourselves for not knowing how it is that
the apparitions of angels, demons, and disembodied souls are made to
appear.

Footnotes:

[441] Gen. xviii.

[442] Tob. xii. 19.

[443] M. Lock. de Intellectu Human. lib. iv. c. 3.

[444] Tob. xii. 18, 19.

DISSERTATION

ON THE GHOSTS WHO RETURN TO EARTH BODILY,
THE EXCOMMUNICATED,
THE OUPIRES OR VAMPIRES, VROUCOLACAS, ETC.

PREFACE.

Every age, every nation, every country has its prejudices, its
maladies, its customs, its inclinations, which characterize them, and
which pass away, and succeed to one another; often th