h him by sea and land everywhere
during her life, would not have failed to visit him every night, and
come to console him in his troubles; for we must not suppose that she
was become less compassionate since she became one of the blest:
_absit ut facta sit vita feliciore crudelis_.

The return of spirits, their apparition, the execution of the promises
which certain persons have made each other, to come and tell their
friends what passes in the other world, is not in their own power. All
that is in the hands of God.

Footnotes:

[556] Vol. iv. p. 57.

[557] Aug. de Cura gerend. pro Mortuis, c. xiii. p. 526.

CHAPTER XL.

DIVERS SYSTEMS FOR EXPLAINING THE RETURN OF SPIRITS.

The affair of ghosts having made so much noise in the world as it has
done, it is not surprising that a diversity of systems should have
been formed upon it, and that so many manners should have been
proposed to explain their return to earth and their operations.

Some have thought that it was a momentary resurrection caused by the
soul of the defunct, which re-entered his body, or by the demon, who
reanimated him, and caused him to act for a while, whilst his blood
retained its consistency and fluidity, and his organic functions were
not entirely corrupted and deranged.

Others, struck with the consequence of such principles, and the
arguments which might be deduced from them, have liked better to
suppose that these vampires were not really dead; that they still
retained certain seeds of life, and that their spirits could from time
to time reanimate and bring them out of their tombs, to make their
appearance amongst men, take refreshment, and renew the nourishing
juices and animal spirits by sucking the blood of their near kindred.

There has lately been printed a dissertation on the uncertainty of the
signs of death, and the abuse of hasty interments, by M. Jacques
Benigne Vinslow, Doctor, Regent of the Faculty at Paris, translated,
with a commentary, by Jacques Jean Bruhier, physician, at Paris, 1742,
in 8vo. This work may serve to explain how persons who have been
believed to be dead, and have been buried as such, have nevertheless
been found alive a pretty long time after their funeral obsequies had
been performed. That will perhaps render vampirism less incredible.

M. Vinslow, Doctor, and Regent of the Medical Faculty at Paris,
maintained, in the month of April, 1740, a thesis, in which he asks if
the experiments of sur