Page:The Works of Samuel Johnson ... A journey to the Hebrides. The vision of Theodore, the hermit of Teneriffe. The fountains. Prayers and meditations. Sermons.v. 10-11. Parliamentary debates.pdf/234

 they never saw, and of whose mental or bodily state they can have no knowledge, were so enfeebled and distracted in their powers of perception? Can it be proved, that apparitions of the dead, however astonishing, are impossible? Or, if not, upon what principle is it maintained invariably, that they who think they see such phantoms, see them only in imagination? According to this tenour of reasoning, all truth, not obvious to common experience, might be sacrificed to prejudice, and every rare fact, which we were unwilling to admit, might be exploded, by the short method of supposing, that the witnesses of it at the time must have been bereft of their senses. Writers, who thus get rid of evidence by presuming it the effect of fascination, betray some share of the infirmity they impute, and judge with a reason palpably overpowered and distorted by the influence of opinion.

Others, perceiving that few, if any, apparitions have been authenticated in the present day, are thence induced to infer too hastily that none were ever seen. These visible departed shades are extraordinary exhibitions in nature, reported to have been observed in all nations occasionally, but at no stated times. During some periods they may occur with more frequency, in others with less; and the proof of their former occurrence, once established, is not to be weakened, much less done away, by the protracted delay or discontinuance of their renewal.

Nor can it generally reflect discredit on averred appearances of the dead, that they are observed to abound most in ignorant and dark ages. At such junctures, a fabulous increase of these, and other strange casualties, we may expect, will be supplied by the reveries of superstition, or the interested impositions of craft upon credulity. But because in times of ignorance, prodigies of this sort will seem to multiply by the more than usual obtrusion of such as are false; is it reasonable to conclude, that none we hear of, either in those times, or at any other, are true? Does the utmost abundance of counterfeits, in this or in any case, disprove the existence of genuine originals? On the contrary, without the supposition of some