Why the Female Ghosts appear unto _Ulysses_, before the _Heroes_ and masculine spirits? Why the _Psyche_ or soul of _Tiresias_ is of the masculine gender; who being blinde on earth sees more then all the rest in hell; Why the Funeral Suppers consisted of Egges, Beans, Smallage, and Lettuce, since the dead are made to eat _Asphodels_ about the _Elysian_ medows? Why since there is no Sacrifice acceptable, nor any propitiation for the Covenant of the grave: men set up the Deity of _Morta_, and fruitlesly adored Divinities without ears? it cannot escape some doubt.
The dead seem all alive in the humane _Hades_ of _Homer_, yet cannot we speak, prophesie, or know the living, except they drink blood, wherein is the life of man. And therefore the souls of _Penelope's_ Paramours conducted by _Mercury_ chiriped like bats, and those which followed _Hercules_ made a noise but like a flock of birds.
The departed spirits know things past and to come, yet are ignorant of things present. _Agememnon_ fortels what should happen unto _Ulysses_, yet ignorantly enquires what is become of his own Son. The ghosts are afraid of swords in _Homer_, yet _Sybilla_ tells _Æneas_ in _Virgil_, the thin habit of spirits was beyond the force of weapons. The spirits put off their malice with their bodies, and _Cæsar_ and _Pompey_ accord in Latine Hell, yet _Ajax_ in _Homer_ endures not a conference with _Ulysses_: And _Deiphobus_ appears all mangled in _Virgils_ Ghosts, yet we meet with perfect shadows among the wounded ghosts of _Homer_.
Since _Charon_ in _Lucian_ applauds his condition among the dead, whether it be handsomely said of _Achilles_, that living contemner of death, that he had rather be a Plowmans servant then Emperour of the dead? How _Hercules_ his soul is in hell, and yet in heaven, and _Julius_ his soul in a Star, yet seen by _Æneas_ in hell, except the Ghosts were but images and shadows of the soul, received in higher mansions, according to the ancient division of body, soul, and image or _simulachrum_ of them both. The particulars of future beings must needs be dark unto ancient Theories, which Christian Philosophy yet determines but in a Cloud of opinions. A Dialogue between two Infants in the womb concerning the state of this world, might handsomly illustrate our ignorance of the next, whereof methinks we yet discourse in _Platoes_ denne, and are but _Embryon_ Philosophers.