§ 1.
We have explained in another place how the notion of spirits came to be introduced among men, and proved that they were merely phantoms which existed only in their disordered imagination.
The first instructors of mankind were not very explicit in their “lessons to the million” as to the nature of these phantoms, but they could not help saying what they thought of them. One class, reflecting that these shadows melted into thin air and had no consistence, described them as immaterial or incorporeal, having shapes without matter, but coloured and defined. At the same time however, they denied that they were corporeal existences, or that they were coloured or figured; adding that they could clothe themselves with air as with a garment, when they wished to become visible to the eye of men. A second class assert that they were animated bodies, but that they were composed of air, or some still more subtle matter, which they could thicken at their pleasure, when they chose to make their appearance.