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/235

 such originals, might it not be difficult to conjecture, how even the counterfeits of occurrences so strange should become so universal? And does not their experienced universality hence strongly tend to prove, that at least the earliest of them were imitations of some real models; shadows devised after substances; forgeries of fancy or fraud, which derived their origin, and received their form, from the suggestion and example of fact?

Possibly it may yet be objected that the belief in the existence of the soul in a separate state, which has always obtained extensively, might lead to the belief, without the experimental witness, of its appearance.

It were easy to show, that disembodied souls have been believed, not only to exist, but to be constantly present, where they were not imagined to be visible; and consequently that the supposition mentioned, which can be proved true in no case, is ascertained to be groundless in some cases, and upon the balance of its evidence not probable in any.

But it is needless to contend against a supposition so manifestly visionary. All men, in all times, must have perceived, that the soul, however it might continue to exist after its separation from the body, did not ordinarily appear on earth; and, till it had appeared, they could have no reason for supposing, in opposition to their past experience, that it ever would. The departed spirit, for aught they could foresee, might always survive invisibly; and their belief, if they afterwards entertained any, could be induced only by their sensible perception of its appearance.

Accordingly, tradition informs us, that sensible evidence has not been wanting in this case. In every age and country the posthumous appearance of the soul has been believed, not on the authority of conjecture, but on the attestations of persons who severally declared themselves eye-witnesses of it in distinct instances. If it be said, that these attestations might all be founded, as many of them confessedly were, in delusion or imposture; still it will be difficult, if not impossible, to account for so general a consent in so strange a fiction. One