| Quemadmodùm multa fieri non posse, priusquam facta sunt, judicantur; ita multa quoque, quæ antiquitùs facta, quia nos ea non vidimus, neque ratione assequimur, ex iis esse, quæ fieri non potuerunt, judicamus. Quæ certè summa insipientia est.—Plin. Hist. Nat. lib. vii. c. 1. |
My dear Henry—
I inscribe these volumes with your name to record a friendship whichhas lasted from our infancy, taint suspicion, and darkened byno shadow.
So long as eminent talents can challenge admiration, varied andextensive acquirements command respect, and unfeigned virtues ensureesteem and regard, so long will you have no common claim to them all;and none will pay the tribute more gladly than your affectionate
Friend and Cousin,
HENRY CHRISTMAS.
Sion College, March, 1850.
Among the many phases presented by human credulity, few are moreinteresting than those which regard the realities of the invisibleworld. If the opinions which have been held on this subject werewritten and gathered together they would form hundreds of volumes—ifthey were arranged and digested they would form a few, but mostimportant. It is not merely because there is in almost every humanerror a substratum of truth, and that the more important the subjectthe more important the substratum, but because the investigation willgive almost a history of human aberrations, that this otherwiseunpromising topic assumes so high an interest. The superstitions ofevery age, for no age is free from them, will present the popularmodes of thinking in an intelligible and easily accessible form, andmay be taken as a means of gauging (if the expression be permitted)the philosophical and metaphysical capacities of the period. In thislight, the volumes here presented to the reader will be found of greatvalue, for they give a picture of the popular mind at a time of greatinterest, and furnish a clue to many difficulties in theecclesiastical affairs of that era. In the time of Calmet, cases ofdemoniacal possession, and instances of returns from the world ofspirits, were reputed to be of no uncommon occurrence. The church wascontinually called on to exert her powers of exorcism; and theinstances gathered by Calmet, and related in this work, may be takenas fair specimens of the rest. It is then, first, as a storehouse offacts, or reputed facts, that Calmet compiled the work now in thereader's hands—as the foundation on which to rear what superstructureof system they pleased; and secondly, as a means of giving his ownopinions, in a detached and desultory way, as the subjects came underhis notic