My reader will say that I leave him here embarrassed, and that instead of giving him any light on the subject of the apparition of spirits, I cast doubt and uncertainty on the subject. I own it; but I better like to doubt prudently, than to affirm that which I know not. And if I hold by what my religion teaches me concerning the nature of souls, angels, and demons, I shall say that being purely spiritual, it is impossible that they should appear clothed with a body except through a miracle; always in the supposition that God has not created them naturally capable of these operations, with subordination to his sovereignly powerful will, which but rarely allows them to use this faculty of showing themselves corporeally to mortals.
If sometimes angels have eaten, spoken, acted, walked, like men, it was not from any need they had to drink or eat to sustain themselves and to be able to live, but to execute the designs of God, whose will it was that they should appear to men acting, drinking, and eating, as the angel Raphael observes,[444]--"When I was staying with you, I was there by the will of God; I seemed to you to eat and drink, but for my part I make use of an invisible nourishment which is unknown to men."
It is true that we know not what may be the food of angels who are substances which are purely spiritual, nor what became of that food which Raphael and the angels that Abraham entertained in his tent, took, or seemed to take, in the company of men. But there are so many other things in nature which are unknown and incomprehensible to us, that we may very well console ourselves for not knowing how it is that the apparitions of angels, demons, and disembodied souls are made to appear.
[443] M. Lock. de Intellectu Human. lib. iv. c. 3.
ON THE GHOSTS WHO RETURN TO EARTH BODILY, THE EXCOMMUNICATED, THE OUPIRES OR VAMPIRES, VROUCOLACAS, ETC.
Every age, every nation, every country has its prejudices, its maladies, its customs, its inclinations, which characterize them, and which pass away, and succeed to one another; often that which has appeared admirable at one time, becomes pitiful and ridiculous at another. We have seen that in some ages all was turned towards a certain kind of devotion, of studies and of exercises. It is known that, for more than one century, the prevailing taste of Europe was the journey to Jerusalem. Kings, princes, nobles, bishops, ecclesiastics, monks, all pressed thither in crowds. The pilgrimages to Rome were formerly very frequent and very famous. All that is fallen away. We have seen provinces over-run with flagellants, and now none of them remain except in the brotherhoods of penitents which are still found in several parts.