28a ANTIENT METAPHYSICS. Book IV, 



without breaking the ice: And, in the fame weather, he was or- 

 dered to wear nothing but a linen tunic, to go barefoot, and to flcep 

 in the open air. Once, he fays, after ufing the cold bath, he was 

 not only immediately relieved, as to all his bodily complaints, but 

 he was in a flate of Mind fo pleafant, that, he fays, he cannot de- 

 fcribe it, otherwife than by telling us, that it was fomething more 

 than human *. 



Thofe who believe that there is nothing in Heaven or Earth 

 but Body, will, I know, laugh at fuch ftories, becaufe they can- 

 not account for them by any Powers of Matter or Mechanifm; 

 but I, who firmly believe that I have a Mind, as well as a Body — 

 that there are other Minds in the Univerfe, infinitely fuperior to 

 mine in knowledge and power — and that thefe Minds may commu- 

 nicate with the Human, and at no time more probably than in 

 Sleep — cannot difcover any thing incredible in this narrative of A- 

 riftides. I therefore examine the evidence of it, as I do of any 

 other fa£l that appears extraordinary, but not impoflible ; and I can 

 fee no rcafon for rejeding the teflimony of a man of fuch reputa- 

 tion as Ariftides, fo much honoured and efteemed, by not only the 

 greateft, but the heft men of his age, particularly the Emperor Mar- 

 cus Antoninus, and by whole cities, fuch as the city of Smyrna, 

 that ereded a ftatue to him. When I alfo confider how much he 

 has been celebrated, not only in his own time, but by writers who 

 lived after him, without the leaft hint, by any one of them, of a fu- 

 fpicion that he was a liar or impoftor, which if Pope Pius the 

 Fourth had believed, he would never have ereded a ftatue to him 

 yet to be feen in the Vatican, I cannot perfuade myfelf that fuch a 

 man would have gone on, in a feries of lying and impofture, for 

 fo many years, without any motive, that appears, either of intereft 



or 



• Page 296. 



