Curiosities & wonders > Demonology and witchcraft

4
LETTERS ON
for its abode, shall seek its own place, as a sentinel
dismissed from his post. Unaided by revelation, it
cannot be hoped that mere earthly reason should be
able to form any rational or precise conjecture concern¬
ing the destination of the soul when parted from the
body; but the conviction that such an indestructible
essence exists, the belief expressed by the poet in a
different sense. Non omnis moriar, must infer*the exist¬
ence of many millions of spirits, who have not been
annihilated, though they have become invisible to mor¬
tals, who still see, hear, and perceive, only by means
of the imperfect organs of humanity. Probability may
lead some of the most reflecting to anticipate a state of
future rewards and punishments ; as those experienced
in the education of the deaf and dumb, find that their
pupils, even while cut off from all instruction by ordi¬
nary means, have been able to form, out of their own
unassisted conjectures, some ideas of the existence of a
Deity, and of the distinction between the soul and
body—a circumstance which proves how naturally
these truths arise in the human mind. The principle
that they do so arise, being taught or communicated,
leads to farther conclusions.
These spirits, in a state of separate existence, being
admitted to exist, are not, it may be supposed, indiffer¬
ent to the affairs of mortality, perhaps not incapable of
influencing them. It is true, that, in a more advanced
state of society, the philosopher may challenge the pos¬
sibility of a separate appearance of a disembodied spirit,
unless in the case of a direct miracle, to which, being a
suspension of the laws of nature, directly wrought by