'
We talked of belief in ghosts. He said, 'Sir, I make a distinction
between what a man may experience by the mere strength of his
imagination, and what imagination cannot possibly produce. Thus, suppose
I should think that I saw a form, and heard a voice cry "Johnson, you
are a very wicked fellow, and unless you repent you will certainly be
punished;" my own unworthiness is so deeply impressed upon my mind, that
I might IMAGINE I thus saw and heard, and therefore I should not believe
that an external communication had been made to me. But if a form should
appear, and a voice should tell me that a particular man had died at
a particular place, and a particular hour, a fact which I had no
apprehension of, nor any means of knowing, and this fact, with all its
circumstances, should afterwards be unquestionably proved, I should, in
that case, be persuaded that I had supernatural intelligence imparted to
me.'
Here it is proper, once for all, to give a true and fair statement of
Johnson's way of thinking upon the question, whether departed spirits
are ever permitted to appear in this world, or in any way to operate
upon human life.
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