These opinions are consistent with the current persuasions of antiquity, of which the poets and historians afford many proofs; as for instance Homer, in describing the death of Patroclus; Virgil, that of Turnus; Cicero, that of Possidonius * : and Sir Thomas Browne has observed, that men sometimes, upon the hours of their departure, do speak and reason above themselves; for then the soul, about to be freed from the ligament of the body, begins to reason like herself, and to discourse in a strain above mortality +." This, however, is nothing but the elation of the mind, to which earthly things begin to fade, and the hope and expectation of immortality to brighten : no real foreknowledge obtains, excepting as founded on conjectural reasonings from experience; nor are there any well-established accounts of such, Naudæus in Bib. Casaubon Enthus. C. ii. p. 59. Boyle's Works, vol. v. p. 496. + Religio Medici, B. ii. §. 11. excepting in the instances mentioned in sacred history*. "The mind of man is ignorant of fate t." We may conclude therefore, in general deduction, from the considerations which have been stated, first, that the mind had no existence previously to its entrance into the body; since, in its most abstracted speculations, it exhibits no acquaintance with any ideas that are not acquired by the senses on earth and secondly, that it is immaterial, and capable of independent exertions, though it sympathizes with the body in its affections, when the latter is either sleeping or waking, and is pained by its sufferings, and enlivened by its vigour. It appears also that it developes powers and faculties of a spiritual nature; and that its perfections are sometimes manifested with equal, if not greater vivacity, when it is freed from the oppressive influence of the body; and that it has, in that state, been judged by God capable of receiving divine revelations. It appears likewise, that some faint notices have been discerned in it occasionally of an intuitive and prophetical discernment, though it is not naturally endowed with prophetic powers, capable of affording any light for the direction of the conduct of men. CHAPTER XVI. Wherefore, O Ruler of the World, impart IT has been an opinion countenanced in the preceding chapters, that the human mind is not naturally endowed with any power of foreknowing or presaging future events, however it may occasionally have been inspired with prophetic apprehensions by the immediate impulse of God's Spirit. It may be proper, therefore, to consider now what may be alledged in favour of the second sight, which has often been maintained to prevail in the Highlands of Scotland, as this inquiry is intimately connected * Lucan's Pharsalia, L. ii. with the subject of our present discussion; and since if it can be admitted that such faculty does really exist, it may be judged unreasonable to dispute the existence also of a prophetic power of the mind operating in dreams. That full scope may be allowed for the examination of this subject, I shall set down the result of the inquiries which were made by Dr. Johnson in his celebrated Tour with Mr. Boswell to the Highlands, accompanied with his reflections which are philosophical and just, and which it would be an injury to give any other words than his own. in "The second sight," says this great writer, "is an impression made either by the mind upon the eye, or by the eye upon the mind, by which things distant or future are perceived, and seen as if they were present; a man on a journey far from home falls from his horse, another who is perhaps at work about the house sees him bleeding on the ground, commonly with a landscape of the place where the |