When Homer represents the ghosts of his heroes appearing at the sacrifices of Ulysses, he supposes them endued with life, sensation, and a capacity of moving; but he has joined to these powers of living existence uncomeliness, want of strength, want of distinction, the characteristics of a dead carcass.
This is what the mind is apt to do: it is very apt to confound the ideas of the surviving soul and the dead body.

The vulgar have always and still do confound these very irreconcilable ideas.

They lay the scene of apparitions in churchyards; they habit the ghost in a shroud; and it appears in all the ghastly paleness of a corpse.

A contradiction of this kind has given rise to a doubt whether the Druids did in reality hold the doctrine of Transmigration.

There is positive testimony that they did hold it; there is also testimony as positive that they buried or burned with the dead utensils, arms, slaves, and whatever might be judged useful to them, as if they were to be removed into a separate state.