be
better able to dispute or assent to them. For there is every
appearance that the dead people resuscitated by AEsculapius were only
persons who were dangerously ill, and restored to health by that
skillful physician. The girl revived by Apollonius of Thyana was not
really dead; even those who were carrying her to the funeral pile had
their doubts if she were deceased. What is said of Simon the magician
is anything but certain; and even if that impostor by his magical
secrets could have performed some wonders on dead persons, it should
be imputed to his delusions and to some artifice, which may have
substituted living bodies or phantoms for the dead bodies which he
boasted of having recalled to life. In a word, we hold it as
indubitable that it is God only who can impart life to a person really
dead, either by power proceeding immediately from himself, or by means
of angels or of demons, who perform his behests.

I own that the instance of that boy of Dalhem is perplexing. Whether
it was the spirit of the child that returned into his body to animate
it anew, or the demon who replaced his soul, the puzzle appears to me
the same; in all this circumstance we behold only the work of the evil
spirit. God does not seem to have had any share in it. Now, if the
demon can take the place of a spirit in a body newly dead, or if he
can make the soul by which it was animated before death return into
it, we can no longer dispute his power to restore a kind of life to a
dead person; which would be a terrible temptation for us, who might be
led to believe that the demon has a power which religion does not
permit us to think that God shares with any created being.

I would then say, supposing the truth of the fact, of which I see no
room to doubt, that God, to punish the abominable crime of the father,
and to give an example of his just vengeance to mankind, permitted the
demon to do on this occasion what he perhaps had never done, nor ever
will again--to possess a body, and serve it in some sort as a soul,
and give it action and motion whilst he could retain the body without
its being too much corrupted.

And this example applies admirably to the ghosts of Hungary and
Moravia, whom the demon will move and animate--will cause to appear
and disturb the living, so far as to occasion their death. I say all
this under the supposition that what is said of the vampires is true;
for if it all be false and fabulous, it is losing time to se