act more freely.

Footnotes:

[645] Letter of the Reverend Father Richard, a Dominican of Amiens, of
the 29th of July, 1746.

[646] See on this subject the letter of the Marquis Maffei, which
follows.

[647] St. Thomas, i. part 9, 89, art. 8, ad. 2.

[648] The author had foreseen this objection from the beginning of his
dissertation.

[649] Aug. Serm. de Semp. 197.

[650] John xvi. 11.

[651] Luke xxii. 31.

[652] 2 Cor. xi. 7.

[653] 1 Tim. i. 2.

[654] 1 Cor. xi. 30.

[655] 2 Cor. ii. 11, and xi. 14.

[656] 2 Thess. ii.

[657] 1 Pet. v. 8.

[658] Ephes. vi. 12.

[659] They are cited in the letter of the Marquis Maffei.

[660] The author, as we may see, is not a Cartesian, since he assigns
reflection even to animals. But if they reflect, they choose; whence
it consequently follows that they are free.

[661] Luke xiii. 14.

CHAPTER LXIII.

DISSERTATION BY AN ANONYMOUS WRITER.

_Answer to a Letter on the subject of the Apparition of St. Maur._

"You have been before me, sir, respecting the spirit of St. Maur,
which causes so much conversation at Paris; for I had resolved to send
you a short detail of that event, in order that you might impart to me
your reflections on a matter so delicate and so interesting to all
Paris. But since you have read an account of it, I cannot understand
why you have hesitated a moment to decide what you ought to think of
it. What you do me the honor to tell me, that you have suspended your
judgment of the case until I have informed you of mine, does me too
much honor for me to be persuaded of it; and I think there is more
probability in believing that it is a trick you are playing me, to see
how I shall extricate myself from such slippery ground. Nevertheless,
I cannot resist the entreaties, or rather the orders, with which your
letter is filled; and I prefer to expose myself to the pleasantry of
the free thinkers, or the reproaches of the credulous, than the anger
of those with which I am threatened by yourself.

"You ask if I believe that spirits come back, and if the circumstance
which occurred at St. Maur can be attributed to one of those
incorporeal substances?

"To answer your two questions in the same order that you propose them
to me, I must first tell you, that the ancient heathens acknowledge
various kinds of spirits, which they called _lares_, _larvae_,
_lemures_, _genii_, _manes_.

"For ourselves, without pausing at the folly of our c