Chap. XI. ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. 157 



we certainly hear and fee, and have other perceptions of fenfe, with- 

 out the life of the organs of fenfe; and do no nmore queftion the re- 

 ahtles of thefe appearances, than of what we perceive when we are a- 

 wake, and reafon and refled; upon them, in the fame manner as if 

 they were real. The account that Ariftotle gives of them cannot, as 

 I have faid, be admitted. And, as to Fpicurus*s notion, that they are 

 produced by thin membranes, or exwviae^ as Lucretius calls them, 

 which fly off from the furface of things, it is too ridxulous to be fe- 

 rioully refuted. There remains only, therefore, Baxter's hypothefis *, 

 that they arife from the agency of other minds operating upon ours, 

 while the body is at refi: ; a fyftem which, however f^range and im- 

 probable it may appear to many, I am not difpofed to reject, at leaft, 

 not till a better is found out, believing, as I do, that we are furrounded 

 by minds invifible, and that 



Millions of fpiritual creatures walk the earth 

 Unfeen, both when we wake, and when we fleep {-. 



But, 3^io, Not only have we dreams of what never fell under our 

 fenfes, or employed our waking thoughts, but we have vifions of the 

 fame kind when awake. And here 1 will not entertain the reader with 

 (lories of theT^Tom/y/^^/ J, which, however, I cannot entirely dif- 

 believe, unlefs 1 could, at the fame tin-e, be convinced that there are 

 not other minds l;ere below, befides ours, of greater knowledge, and 

 greater power, which may communicate with our minds, in the way 

 that fpirits communicate with one another : Neither will I relate the 

 well known ftories of the appearances to Dion and to Brutus, fome 

 time before theit dtath, though thefe bf fo well attefted, being feen, 

 not by vulgar men, but by philofophers, and men who were far from 



being 



♦ See the Enquiry'lnto the Nature of the Human Soul, Se£l. 6- p. 196. 



t Parad Loft. B.4 v. 678, 



X A v/ay of forcfeeinEr thinjis by v^fion, in which they are reprcfcnted in tlie mnnner 

 they happen. It is well known in the Highlands of Scotland, and, as I have been in- 

 formed, among other nations^^ who are nearer the natural ftate than jhq. 



