I should not have been thus particular upon these ridiculous horrors, did not I find them so very much prevail in all parts of the country. At the same time, I think a person (98: 5) who is thus terrified with the imagination of ghosts and spectres much more reasonable than one who, contrary to the reports of all historians, sacred and profane, ancient and modern, and to the traditions of all nations, thinks the appearance of spirits fabulous and groundless. (10) Could not I give myself up to this general testimony of mankind, I should to the relations of particular persons who are now living, and whom I cannot distrust in other matters of fact. I might here add, that not only the historians, to whom we may join the poets, but likewise (15) the philosophers of antiquity have favoured this opinion. Lucretius himself, though by the course of his philosophy he was obliged to maintain that the soul did not exist separate from the body, makes no doubt of the reality of apparitions, and that men have often appeared after their (20) death. This I think very remarkable: he was so pressed with the matter of fact which he could not have the confidence to deny, that he was forced to account for it by one of the most absurd unphilosophical notions that was ever started. He tells us that the surfaces of all bodies (25) are perpetually flying off from their respective bodies one after another; and that these surfaces or thin cases that included each other, whilst they were joined in the body, like the coats of an onion, are sometimes seen entire when they are separated from it; by which means we often behold the shapes and shadows of persons who are either dead or absent. I shall dismiss this paper with a story out of Josephus, not so much for the sake of the story itself as for the (99: 5) moral reflections with which the author concludes it, and which I shall here set down in his own words: "Glaphyra, the daughter of King Archelaus, after the death of her two first husbands,--being married to a third, who was brother to her first husband, and so passionately (10) in love with her that he turned off his former wife to make room for this marriage,--had a very odd kind of dream. She fancied that she saw her first husband coming towards her, and that she embraced him with great tenderness; when in the midst of the pleasure which (15) she expressed at the sight of him, he reproached her after the following manner: "'Glaphyra,' says he, 'thou hast made good the old saying that women are not to be trusted. Was not I the husband of thy virginity? Have I not children by thee? (20) How couldst thou forget our loves so far as to enter into a second marriage, and after that into a third?... However, for the sake of our past loves I shall free thee from thy present reproach, and make thee mine for ever.' (25)