After recounting this story, Mitford remarks—"The laying of disturbed spirits appears to form one of the regular functions of the Buddhist priests; at least, we find them playing a conspicuous part in every ghost story" (p. 50).
The next tale is one of a haunted house. No paying tenant will live there, but a poor fencing master takes it for nothing. He first hears a terrific noise in the garden pond, and, on looking, sees a dark cloud enshrining a bald head. He inquires, and discovers that a former tenant, ten years ago, murdered a money-lender, and threw his head into the water. The actual tenant now drains the pond, finds the skull, takes it for burial to a temple, causing prayers to be offered up for the repose of the murdered man's soul. Thus the ghost was laid, and appeared no more. This tale serves as an additional means of recognizing the descent of Papism from Buddhism.
Returning once again to Europe, we find that the ancient Greeks had not only an idea of the resurrection of the dead, and life after death, but that departed spirits could be summoned to appear by the living. For example, at the opening of the eleventh book of the Odyssey, Ulysses recounts how-he offered a certain sacrifice, and tells us that, after it, the souls of the perished dead came forth from Erebus—betrothed girls and youths—much enduring old men, and tender virgins having a newly grieved mind—and many Mars-renowned men, wounded with brass-tipped spears, possessing gore-smeared arms, who in great numbers were wandering about the trench, on different sides, with a divine clamour, and pale fear seized upon me.... At first the soul of my companion, Elpenor, came, for he was not yet buried.... The shade addressed the hero, and, after telling the manner of his own death, entreats to have his corpse burned, and a tomb to be placed over it After this shade, appears Ulysses' mother, then Theban Tiresias, having a golden sceptre (Bohn's translation, pp. 147, 8). The rest of the book is made up of a number of dialogues between the traveller and the illustrious dead.
The following, from Herodotus (vi. 68, 69), might have been introduced into chapter viii, for it is not only an example of a ghost, but of supernatural generation—but it is most appropriate here. Demaratus, having been twitted by certain persons that he was not the son of his putative father, who was known to be impotent, and that he was begotten by a mean man—a feeder of asses—adjures his mother, by a most solemn oath, to tell the truth. She replies—When Ariston had taken me to his own house, on the third night from the first a spectre, resembling Ariston, came to me, and having lain with me, put on me a crown that it had, it departed, and afterwards Ariston came; but when he saw me with the crown, he asked who it was that gave it me. I said, he did; but he would not admit it.... Ariston, seeing that I affirmed with an oath, discovered that the event was superhuman; and, in the first place, the crown proved to have come from the shrine... situate near the palace gates, which they call Astrabacus's; and, in the next place, the seers pronounced that it was the hero himself. We need not dwell upon the miracle, being only desirous to show that, in the time of Herodotus, ideas of the return of departed spirits to earth were common—had it not been so, the story would not have been conceived. See also Herod iv. 14, 15; Æsch Theb. 710; cf. Porson on Eur. Or. 401; Æsch Ag. 415.
Perhaps the most striking example of a phantom is given in Herodotus viii. 84, where a spectre, in a woman's form, appeared, and cheered the Greeks on shipboard to a battle, saying, so that all the warriors heard her—"Dastards, how long will you back water?"
In more recent times, Iamblicus (on the Mysteries, section ii, chap, iv.), speaking of different celestial and ordinarily invisible powers, observes—"In the motions of the heroic phasmata (or apparitions—phantoms or ghosts) a certain magnificence presents itself to the view." In the phasmata of the Archons the first energies appear to be most excellent and authoritative, and the phasmata of souls are seen to be the more moveable, yet are more imbecile, than those of heroes.... The magnitude of the epiphanies (or manifestations) in the gods, indeed, is so great, as sometimes to conceal all heaven.1' Then the author describes how this brilliancy is less in each inferior order of spirits, and is smallest in those souls below the grade of heroes (Taylor's translation, pp. 89, 90). In sect iii., chap, iii., the same writer remarks—"The soul has a twofold life, one being in conjunction with the body, the other being separated from all body." Again, in chap. xxxi.—"Still worse is the explanation of sacred operations, which assigns, as the cause of divination, a certain genus of daemons, which is naturally fraudulent, omniform, and various, and which assumes the appearance of gods and daemons, and the souls of the deceased" (Taylor's ed., p. 199). Le Dictionnaire Infernal, which I have previously described, gives two very modern-like histories from the Greeks, under the names Philinnion and Polycritus; but, as I cannot verify them by reference, I shall say no more of them.
When we come to speak about the Romans, the first history which occurs to my mind is the well-known statement, that the ghost of Cæsar appeared to Brutus before the battle in which the latter met with his death. The narrator of the story dwells somewhat upon the coolness with which the living hero encounters the shade of the dead, as if it were strange for people, when they saw ghosts, not to be terrified. I think that we may believe in the Etruscans having an idea of invisible spirits becoming occasionally apparent, inasmuch as in a sepulchral painting, in the tomb of the Tarquinii, the shade of Patroclus is represented as standing over Achilles as he kills the Trojan captives in sacrifice.
In later times, Otho declared that Galba's ghost had appeared to him, and had tumbled him out of bed (Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars, Otho, vii).
We may take our next illustration from Cicero upon the nature of the gods. In book 2, ch. ii.,—"Who now," he makes Lucilius say, "believes in Hippocentaurs and Chimeras? or what old woman is now to be found so weak and ignorant as to stand in fear of those infernal monsters which once so terrified mankind? For time destroys the fictions of error and opinion, whilst it confirms the determinations of nature and truth. And therefore it is that, both amongst us and amongst other nations, sacred institutions and the divine worship of the gods have been strengthened and improved from time to time; and this is not to be imputed to chance alone, but to the frequent appearance of the gods themselves. In the war with the Latins... Castor and Pollux were seen fighting with our army on horseback... and as P. Vatienus... was coming in the night to Rome... two young men on white horses appeared to him, and told him that king Perses was that day taken prisoner." He told the news and was imprisoned as a liar; but further information confirmed the ghost's story, and he was liberated and rewarded."... The voices of the Fauns have been often heard, and deities have appeared in forms so visible that they have compelled everyone, who is not senseless or hardened in impiety, to confess the presence of the gods" (Bohn's translation, p. 46). In page 186 of the same edition, two remarkable instances are given wherein supernatural voices told of approaching trouble, and how it was to be avoided. No notice was taken of the warning, and the misfortunes which had been foretold occurred. The second miracle very closely resembled the modern voice of the Virgin at Lourdes.
Whilst I was writing the preceding remarks, my attention was called by a friend to the following remarks in The Examiner, which seem to me so appropriate to this chapter and the preceding one, that I gladly quote them:—"If there is anything more striking than the thoughtless credulity with which men accept statements agreeing with their preconceptions, it is the stubborn incredulity with which they receive statements at variance with those preconceptions. The devotees of each religion, and even of each sect into which a religion is so commonly split up, accept and even adore the absurdities of their own belief, while they scan, with a sceptical severity that cannot be surpassed, the not greater follies of other systems of belief. In no respect is this fact more glaring than in the case of miracles. Each Church has its own special miracles, devoutly believed in, but repels with contempt or horror the alleged miracles of other religions. Happy that it is so. Were superstition not in its essence and nature a dividing folly, could it but muster in one herd all its votaries, common sense and truth would have a hard battle for existence."