CONCLUSION OF THE TREATISE ON APPARITIONS.
After having made this exposition of my opinion concerning the
apparitions of angels, demons, souls of the dead, and even of one
living person to another, and having spoken of magic, of oracles, of
obsessions and possessions of the demon; of sprites and familiar
spirits; of sorcerers and witches; of spectres which predict the
future; of those which haunt houses--after having stated the
objections which are made against apparitions, and having replied to
them in as weighty a manner as I possibly could, I think I may
conclude that although this matter labors still under very great
difficulties, as much respecting the foundation of the thing--I mean
as regards the truth and reality of apparitions in general--as for the
way in which they are made, still we cannot reasonably disallow that
there may be true apparitions of all the kinds of which we have
spoken, and that there may be also a great number very disputable, and
some others which are manifestly the work of knavery, of
maliciousness, of the art of charlatans, and flexibility of those who
play sleight of hand tricks.
I acknowledge, moreover, that imagination, prepossession, simplicity,
superstition, excess of credulity, and weakness of mind have given
rise to several stories which are related; that ignorance of pure
philosophy has caused to be taken for miraculous effects, and black
magic, what is the simple effect of white magic, and the secrets of a
philosophy hidden from the ignorant and common herd of men. Moreover,
I confess that I see insurmountable difficulties in explaining the
manner or properties of apparitions, whether we admit with several
ancients that angels, demons, and disembodied souls have a sort of
subtile transparent body of the nature of air, whether we believe them
purely spiritual and disengaged from all matter, visible, gross, or
subtile.
I lay down as a principle that to explain the affair of apparitions,
and to give on this subject any certain rules, we should--
1st. Know perfectly the nature of spirits, angels and souls, and
demons. We should know whether souls by nature are so spiritualized
that they have no longer any relation to matter; or if they have,
again, any alliance with an aerial, subtile, invisible body, which
they still govern after death; or whether they exert any power over
the body they once animated, to impel it to certain movements, as the
soul which animates us gives to our bodies such impulsions as she
thinks proper; or whether the soul determines simply by its will, as
occasional or secondary cause, the first cause, which is God, to put
in motion the machine which it once animated.
2d. If after death the soul still retains that power over its own
body, or over others; for instance, over the air and other elements.
3d. If angels and demons have respectively the same power over
sublunary bodies--for instance, to thicken air, inflame it, produce in
it clouds and storms; to make phantoms appear in it; to spoil or
preserve fruits and crops; to cause animals to perish, produce
maladies, excite tempests and shipwrecks at sea; or even to fascinate
the eyes and deceive the other senses.
4th. If they can do all these things naturally, and by their own
virtue, as often as they think proper; or if there must be a
particular order, or at least permission from God, for them to do what
we have just said.
5th. Lastly, we should know exactly what power is possessed by these
substances which we suppose to be purely spiritual, and how far the
power of the angels, demons, and souls separated from their gross
bodies, extends, in regard to the apparitions, operations and
movements attributed to them. For whilst we are ignorant of the power
which the Creator has given or left to disembodied souls, or to
demons, we can in no way define what is miraculous, or prescribe the
just bound to which may extend, or within which may be limited, the
natural operations of spirits, angels, and demons.
If we accord the demon the faculty of fascinating our eyes when it
pleases him, or of disposing the air so as to form the appearance of a
phantom, or phenomenon; or of restoring movement to a body which is
dead but not entirely corrupted; or of disturbing the living by ill
dreams, or terrific representations, we should no longer admire many
things which we admire at present, nor regard as miracles certain
cures and certain apparitions, if they are only the natural effects of
the power of souls, angels and demons.
If a man invested with his body produced such effects of himself, we
should say with reason that they are supernatural operations, because
they exceed the known ordinary and natural power of the living man;
but if a man held commerce with a spirit, an angel, or a demon, whom
by virtue of some compact, explicit or implicit, he commanded to
perform certain things which would be above his natural powers, but
not beyond the powers of the spirit whom he commanded, would the
effect resulting from it be miraculous or supernatural? No, without
doubt, supposing that the spirit which produced the result did nothing
that was above his natural powers and faculties.
But would it be a miracle if a man had anything to do with an angel or
a demon, and that he should make an explicit and implicit compact with
them, to oblige them on certain conditions, and with certain
ceremonies, to produce effects which would appear externally, and in
our minds, to be beyond the power of man? For instance, in the
operations of certain magicians who boast of having an explicit
compact with the devil, and who by this means raise tempests, or go
with extraordinary haste when they walk, or cause the death of
animals, and to men incurable maladies; or who enchant arms; or in
other operations, as in the use of the divining rod, and in certain
remedies against the maladies of men and horses, which having no
natural proportion to these maladies do not fail to cure them,
although those who use these remedies protest that they have never
thought of contracting any alliance with the devil.
To reply to this question, the difficulty always recurs to know if
there is between living and mortal man a proportion or natural
relation, which renders him capable of contracting an alliance with
the angel or the demon, by virtue of which these spirits obey him and
exert, under his empire over them, by virtue of the preceding compact,
a power which is natural to them; for if in all that there is nothing
beyond the ordinary force of nature, either on the side of man, or on
that of angels and demons, there is nothing miraculous in one or the
other; neither is there either in God's permitting secondary causes to
act according to their natural faculties, of which he is nevertheless
always the principle, and the absolute master, to limit, stop,
suspend, extend, or augment them, according to his good pleasure.
But as we know not, and it seems even impossible that we should know
by the light of reason, the nature and natural extent of the power of
angels, demons, and disembodied souls, it seems that it would be rash
to decide in this matter, as deriving consequences of causes by their
effects, or effects by causes. For instance, to say that souls,
demons, and angels have sometimes appeared to men--_then_ they have
naturally the faculty of returning and appearing, is a bold and rash
proposition. For it is very possible that angels and demons appear
only by the particular will of God, and not in consequence of his
general will, and by virtue of his natural and physical concurrence
with his creatures.
In the first case, these apparitions are miraculous, as being above
the natural power of the agents in question; in the second case, there
is nothing supernatural in them except the permission which God rarely
grants to souls to return, to angels and demons to appear, and to
produce the effects of which we have spoken.
According to these principles we may advance without temerity--
1st. That angels and demons have often appeared unto men, that souls
separated from the body have often returned, and that both the one and
the other may do the same thing again.
2d. That the manner of these apparitions, and of these returns to
earth, is perfectly unknown, and given up by God to the discussions
and researches of mankind.
3d. That there is some likelihood that these kinds of apparitions are
not absolutely miraculous on the part of the good and evil angels, but
that God allows them sometimes to take place, for reasons the
knowledge of which is reserved to himself alone.
4th. That no certain rule on this point can be given, nor any
demonstrative argument formed, for want of knowing perfectly the
nature and extent of the power of the spiritual beings in question.
5th. That we should reason upon those apparitions which appear in
dreams otherwise than upon those which appear when we are awake;
differently also upon apparitions wearing solid bodies, speaking,
walking, eating and drinking, and those which seem like a shade, or a
nebulous and aerial body.
6th. Thus it would be rash to lay down principles, and raise uniform
arguments, and all these things in common, every species of apparition
demanding its own particular explanation.