To this Edition is added [at p. 208] a Prayer now in my possession in Dr. Johnson's own handwriting, in which he expressly supposes that Providence may permit him to enjoy the good effects of his wife's attention and ministration by appearance, impulses, or dreams. It is well known, that he admitted the credibility of apparitions: and in his Rasselas,[1] he maintains it, in the person of Imlac, by the following acute train of reasoning:
"That the dead are seen no more," said Imlac, "I will not undertake to maintain, against the concurrent and unvaried testimony of all ages and of all nations. There is no people, rude or learned, among whom apparitions of the dead are not related and believed. This opinion, which, perhaps, prevails as far as human nature is diffused, could become universal only by its truth; those that never heard of one another, would not have agreed in a tale which nothing but experience can make credible. That it is doubted by single cavillers, can very little weaken the general evidence; and some who deny it with their tongues confess it by their fears."
Cavillers have indeed doubted the credibility of this tale, rejecting it in every instance as the dream of delusion, or the fiction of imposture.
That many tales of apparitions have originated in delusion, and many in imposture, cannot be denied; and the whole question to be considered in this case is, how far we have authority for believing that any are founded in truth or probability.
Some have thought all such reported appearances liable to suspicion, because in general they seem called forth by no exigency, and calculated to administer to no end or purpose. This
- ↑ Vol. 1. Chap. xxxi.
