Felices errore suo ...
Lucan.
The
Americans
believe that all Creatures have Souls, not only Men and Women, but Brutes, Vegetables, nay even the most inanimate things, as Stocks and Stones. They believe the same of all the Works of Art, as of Knives, Boats, Looking-glasses: And that as any of these things perish, their Souls go into another World, which is inhabited by the Ghosts of Men and Women. For this Reason they always place by the Corpse of their dead Friend a Bow and Arrows, that he may make use of the Souls of them in the other World, as he did of their wooden Bodies in this. How absurd soever such an Opinion as this may appear, our
European
Philosophers have maintained several Notions altogether as improbable. Some of
Plato's
followers in particular, when they talk of the World of Ideas, entertain us with Substances and Beings no less extravagant and chimerical. Many
Aristotelians
have likewise spoken as unintelligibly of their substantial Forms.