ARGUMENTS CONCERNING APPARITIONS.
After having spoken at some length upon apparitions, and after having
established the truth of them, as far as it has been possible for us
to do so, from the authority of the Scripture, from examples, and by
arguments, we must now exercise our judgment on the causes, means, and
reasons for these apparitions, and reply to the objections which may
be made to destroy the reality of them, or at least to raise doubts on
the subject.
We have supposed that apparitions were the work of angels, demons, or
souls of the defunct; we do not talk of the appearance of God himself;
his will, his operations, his power, are above our reach; we
acknowledge that he can do all that he wills to do, that his will is
all-powerful, and that he places himself, when he chooses, above the
laws which he has made. As to the apparitions of the living to others
also living, they are of a different nature from what we propose to
examine in this place; we shall not fail to speak of them hereafter.
Whatever system we may follow on the nature of angels, or demons, or
souls separated from the body; whether we consider them as purely
spiritual substances, as the Christian church at this day holds;
whether we give them an aerial body, subtile, and invisible, as many
have taught; it appears almost as difficult to render palpable,
perceptible, and thick a subtile and aerial body, as it is to condense
the air, and make it seem like a solid and perceptible body; as, when
the angels appeared to Abraham and Lot, the angel Raphael to Tobias,
whom he conducted into Mesopotamia; or when the demon appeared to
Jesus Christ, and led him to a high mountain, and on the pinnacle of
the Temple at Jerusalem; or when Moses appeared with Elias on Mount
Tabor: for those apparitions are certain from Scripture.
If you will say that these apparitions were seen only in the
imagination and mind of those who saw, or believed they saw angels,
demons, or souls separated from the body, as it happens every day in
our sleep, and sometimes when awake, if we are strongly occupied with
certain objects, or struck with certain things which we desire
ardently or fear exceedingly--as when Ajax, thinking he saw Ulysses
and Agamemnon, or Menelaues, threw himself upon some animals, which he
killed, thinking he was killing those two men his enemies, and whom he
was dying with the desire to wreak his vengeance upon--on this
supposition, the apparition will not be less difficult to explain.
There was neither prepossession nor disturbed imagination, nor any
preceding emotion, which led Abraham to figure to himself that he saw
three persons, to whom he gave hospitality, to whom he spoke, who
promised him the birth of a son, of which he was scarcely thinking at
that time. The three apostles who saw Moses conversing with Jesus
Christ on Mount Tabor were not prepared for that appearance; there was
no emotion of fear, love, revenge, ambition, or any other passion
which struck their imagination, to dispose them to see Moses; as
neither was there in Abraham, when he perceived the three angels who
appeared to him.
Often in our sleep we see, or we believe we see, what has struck our
attention very much when awake; sometimes we represent to ourselves in
sleep things of which we have never thought, which even are repugnant
to us, and which present themselves to our mind in spite of ourselves.
None bethink themselves of seeking the causes of these kinds of
representations; they are attributed to chance, or to some disposition
of the humors of the blood or of the brain, or even of the way in
which the body is placed in bed; but nothing like that is applicable
to the apparitions of angels, demons, or spirits, when these
apparitions are accompanied and followed by converse, predictions and
real effects preceded and predicted by those which appear.
If we have recourse to a pretended fascination of the eyes or the
other senses, which sometimes make us believe that we see and hear
what we do not, or that we neither see nor hear what is passing before
our eyes, or which strikes our ears; as when the soldiers sent to
arrest Elisha spoke to him and saw him before they recognized him, or
when the inhabitants of Sodom could not discover Lot's door, although
it was before their eyes, or when the disciples of Emmaus knew not
that it was Jesus Christ who accompanied them and expounded the
Scriptures; they opened their eyes and knew him _only by the breaking
of bread_.
That fascination of the senses which makes us believe that we see what
we do not see, or that suspension of the exercise and natural
functions of our senses which prevents us from seeing and recognizing
what is passing before our eyes, is all of it hardly less miraculous
than to condense the air, or rarefy it, or give solidity and
consistence to what is purely spiritual and disengaged from matter.
From all this, it follows that no apparition can take place without a
sort of miracle, and without a concurrence, both extraordinary and
supernatural, of the power of God who commands, or causes, or permits
an angel, or a demon, or a disembodied soul to appear, act, speak,
walk, and perform other functions which belong only to an organized
body.
I shall be told that it is useless to recur to the miraculous and the
supernatural, if we have acknowledged in spiritual substances a
natural power of showing themselves, whether by condensing the air, or
by producing a massive and palpable body, or in raising up some dead
body, to which these spirits give life and motion for a certain time.
I own it all; but I dare maintain that that is not possible either to
angel or demon, nor to any spiritual substance whatsoever. The soul
can produce in herself thoughts, will, and wishes; she can give her
impulsion to the movements of her body, and repress its sallies and
agitations; but how does she do that? Philosophy can hardly explain
it, but by saying that by virtue of the union between herself and the
body, God, by an effect of his wisdom, has given her power to act upon
the humors, its organs, and impress them with certain movements; but
there is reason to believe that the soul performs all that only as an
occasional cause, and that it is God as the first, necessary,
immediate, and essential cause, which produces all the movements of
the body that are made in a natural way.
Neither angel nor demon has more privilege in this respect over matter
than the soul of man has over its own body. They can neither modify
matter, change it, nor impress it with action and motion, save by the
power of God, and with his concurrence both necessary and immediate;
our knowledge does not permit us to judge otherwise; there is no
physical proportion between the spirit and the body; those two
substances cannot act mutually and immediately one upon the other;
they can act only occasionally, by determining the first cause, in
virtue of the laws which wisdom has judged it proper to prescribe to
herself for the reciprocal action of the creatures upon each other, to
give them being, to preserve it, and perpetuate movement in the mass
of matter which composes the universe, in himself giving life to
spiritual substances, and permitting them with his concurrence, as the
First Cause, to act, the body on the soul, and the soul on the body,
one on the other, as secondary causes.
Porphyry, when consulted by Anebo, an Egyptian priest, if those who
foretell the future and perform prodigies have more powerful souls, or
whether they receive power from some strange spirit, replies that,
according to appearance, all these things are done by means of certain
evil spirits that are naturally knavish, and take all sorts of shapes,
and do everything that one sees happen, whether good or evil; but that
in the end they never lead men to what is truly good.
St. Augustine,[415] who cites this passage of Porphyry, lays much
stress on his testimony, and says that every extraordinary thing which
is done by certain tones of the voice, by figures or phantoms, is
usually the work of the demon, who sports with the credulity and
blindness of men; that everything marvellous which is transacted in
nature, and has no relation to the worship of the true God, ought to
pass for an illusion of the devil. The most ancient Fathers of the
Church, Minutius Felix, Arnobius, St. Cyprian, attribute equally all
these kinds of extraordinary effects to the evil spirit.
Tertullian[416] had no doubt that the apparitions which are produced
by magic, and by the evocation of souls, which, forced by
enchantments, come out, say they, from the depth of hell (or Hades),
are but pure illusions of the demon, who causes to appear to those
present a fantastical form, which fascinates the eyes of those who
think they see what they see not; "which is not more difficult for the
demon," says he, "than to seduce and blind the souls which he leads
into sin. Pharaoh thought he saw real serpents produced by his
magicians: it was mere illusion. The truth of Moses devoured the
falsehood of these impostors."
Is it more easy to cause the fascination of the eyes of Pharaoh and
his servants than to produce serpents, and can it be done without
God's concurring thereto? And how can we reconcile this concurrence
with the wisdom, independence, and truth of God? Has the devil in this
respect a greater power than an angel and a disembodied soul? And if
once we open the door to this fascination, everything which appears
supernatural and miraculous will become uncertain and doubtful. It
will be said that the wonders related in the Old and New Testament are
in this respect, in regard both to those who are witnesses of them,
and those to whom they happened, only illusions and fascinations: and
whither may not these premises lead? It leads us to doubt everything,
to deny everything; to believe that God in concert with the devil
leads us into error, and fascinates our eyes and other senses, to make
us believe that we see, hear, and know what is neither present to our
eyes, nor known to our mind, nor supported by our reasoning power,
since by that the principles of reasoning are overthrown.
We must, then, have recourse to the solid and unshaken principles of
religion, which teach us--
1. That angels, demons, and souls disembodied are pure spirit, free
from all matter.
2. That it is only by the order or permission of God that spiritual
substances can appear to men, and seem to them to be true and tangible
bodies, in which and by which they perform what they are seen to do.
3. That to make these bodies appear, and make them act, speak, walk,
eat, &c, they must produce tangible bodies, either by condensing the
air or substituting other terrestrial, solid bodies, capable of
performing the functions we speak of.
4. That the way in which this production and apparition of a
perceptible body is achieved is absolutely unknown to us; that we have
no proof that spiritual substances have a natural power of producing
this kind of change when it pleases them, and that they cannot produce
them independently of God.
5. That although there may be often a great deal of illusion,
prepossession, and imagination in what is related of the operations
and apparitions of angels, demons, and disembodied souls, there is
still some reality in many of these things; and we cannot reasonably
doubt of them all, and still less deny them all.
6. That there are apparitions which bear about them the character and
proof of truth, from the quality of him who relates them; from the
circumstances which accompany them; from the events following those
apparitions that announce things to come; which perform things
impossible to the natural strength of man, and too much in opposition
to the interest of the demon, and his malicious and deceitful
character, for us to be able to suspect him to be the author or
contriver of them. In short, these apparitions are certified by the
belief, the prayers, and the practice of the church, which recognizes
them, and supposes their reality.
7. That although what appears miraculous is not so always, we must at
least usually perceive in it _some_ illusion and operation of the
demon; consequently, that the demon can, with the permission of God,
do many things which surpass our knowledge, and the natural power
which we suppose him to have.
8. That those who wish to explain them by fascination of the eyes and
other senses, do not resolve the difficulty, and throw themselves into
still greater embarrassment than those who admit simply that
apparitions appear by the order or the permission of God.
Footnotes:
[415] Aug. de Civit. Dei, lib. x. c. 11, 12.
[416] Tertull. de Anima, c. 57.