"What I have read in Cardan seems to establish the opinion of Galen. He says that, being in the city of Milan, it was reported that there was an angel in the air, who appeared visibly, and having ran to the market-place, he, with two thousand others, saw the same. As even the most learned were in admiration at this wonder, a clever lawyer, who came to the spot, having observed the thing attentively, sensibly made them remark that what they saw was not an angel, but the figure of an angel, in stone, placed on the top of the belfry of St. Gothard, which being imprinted in a thick cloud by means of a sunbeam which fell upon it, was reflected to the eyes of those who possessed the most piercing vision. If this fact had not been cleared up on the spot by a man exempt from all prejudice, it would have passed for certain that it was a real angel, since it had been seen by the most enlightened persons in the town to the number of two thousand.
"The celebrated du Laurent, in his treatise on Melancholy, attributes to it the most surprising effects; of which he gives an infinite number of instances, which seem to surpass the power of nature.
"St. Augustine, when consulted by Evodius, Bishop of Upsal, on the subject I am treating of, answers him in these terms: 'In regard to visions, even of those by which we learn something of the future, it is not possible to explain how they are formed, unless we could first of all know how everything arises which passes through our minds when we think; for we see clearly that a number of images are excited in our minds, which images represent to us what has struck either our eyes or our other senses. We experience it every day and every hour.' And a little after, he adds: 'At the moment I dictate this letter, I see you with the eyes of my mind, without your being present, or your knowing anything about it; and I represent to myself, through my knowledge of your character, the impression that my words will make on your mind, without nevertheless knowing or being able to understand how all this passes within me.'
"I think, sir, you will require nothing more precise than these words of St. Augustine to persuade you that we must attribute to the power of imagination the greater number of apparitions, even of those through which we learn things which it would seem could not be known naturally; and you will easily excuse my undertaking to explain to you how the imagination works all these wonders, since this holy doctor owns that he cannot himself comprehend it, though quite convinced of the fact.
"I can tell you only that the blood which circulates incessantly in our arteries and veins, being purified and warmed in the heart, throws out thin vapors, which are its most subtile parts, and are called animal spirits; which, being carried into the cavities of the brain, set in motion the small gland which is, they say, the seat of the soul, and by this means awaken and resuscitate the species of the things that they have heard or seen formerly, which are, as it were, enveloped within it, and form the internal reasoning which we call thought. Whence comes it that beasts have memory as well as ourselves, but not the reflections which accompany it, which proceed from the soul, and that they have not.
"If what Mr. Digby, a learned Englishman, and chancellor of Henrietta, Queen of England, Father Kircher, a celebrated Jesuit, Father Schort, of the same society, Gaffarelli and Vallemont, publish of the admirable secret of the palingenesis, or resurrection of plants, has any foundation, we might account for the shades and phantoms which many persons declare to have seen in cemeteries.
"This is the way in which these curious researchers arrive at the marvelous operation of the palingenesis:—
"They take a flower, burn it, and collect all the ashes of it, from which they extract the salts by calcination. They put these salts into a glass phial, wherein having mixed certain compositions capable of setting them in motion when heated, all this matter forms a dust of a bluish hue; of this dust, excited by a gentle warmth, arises a stem, leaves, and a flower; in a word, they perceive the apparition of a plant springing from its ashes. As soon as the warmth ceases, all the spectacle vanishes, the matter deranges itself and falls to the bottom of the vessel, to form there a new chaos. The return of heat resuscitates this vegetable phœnix, hidden in its ashes. And as the presence of warmth gives it life, its absence causes its death.
"Father Kircher, who tries to give a reason for this admirable phenomenon, says that the seminal virtue of every mixture is concentrated in the salts, and that as soon as warmth sets them in motion they rise directly and circulate like a whirlwind in this glass vessel. These salts, in this suspension, which gives them liberty to arrange themselves, take the same situation and form the same figure as nature had primitively bestowed on them; retaining the inclination to become what they had been, they return to their first destination, and form themselves into the same lines as they occupied in the living plant; each corpuscle of salt re-entering its original arrangement which it received from nature; those which were at the foot of the plant place themselves there; in the same manner, those which compose the top of the stem, the branches, the leaves, and the flowers, resume their former place, and thus form a perfect apparition of the whole plant.
"It is affirmed that this operation has been performed upon a sparrow;[[669]] and the gentlemen of the Royal Society of England, who are making their experiments on this matter, hope to succeed in making them on human beings also.[[670]]