remote from the usual procedure of the
human mind, blending in obscure matters imagination and reasoning
together, to unite ideas the most inconsistent. When Homer represents
the ghosts of his heroes appearing at the sacrifices of Ulysses, he
supposes them endued with life, sensation, and a capacity of moving; but
he has joined to these powers of living existence uncomeliness, want of
strength, want of distinction, the characteristics of a dead carcass.
This is what the mind is apt to do: it is very apt to confound the ideas
of the surviving soul and the dead body. The vulgar have always and
still do confound these very irreconcilable ideas. They lay the scene of
apparitions in churchyards; they habit the ghost in a shroud; and it
appears in all the ghastly paleness of a corpse. A contradiction of this
kind has given rise to a doubt whether the Druids did in reality hold
the doctrine of Transmigration. There is positive testimony that they
did hold it; there is also testimony as positive that they buried or
burned with the dead utensils, arms, slaves, and whatever might be
judged useful to them, as if they were to be removed into a separate
state. They might have held both these opinions; and we ought not to be
surprised to find error inconsistent.

The objects of the Druid worship were many. In this respect they did not
differ from other heathens: but it must be owned that in general their
ideas of divine matters were more exalted than those of the Greeks and
Romans, and that they did not fall into an idolatry so coarse and
vulgar. That their gods should be represented under a human form they
thought derogatory to beings uncreated and imperishable. To confine what
can endure no limits within walls and roofs they judged absurd and
impious. In these particulars there was something refined and suitable
enough to a just idea of the Divinity. But the rest was not equal. Some
notions they had, like the greatest part of mankind, of a Being eternal
and infinite; but they also, like the greatest part of mankind, paid
their worship to inferior objects, from the nature of ignorance and
superstition always tending downwards.

The first and chief objects of their worship were the elements,--and of
the elements, fire, as the most pure, active, penetrating, and what
gives life and energy to all the rest. Among fires, the preference was
given to the sun, as the most glorious visible being, and the fountain
of all life. Next they ven