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Carlyle, Thomas - Sartor Resartus - Ghosts!
Identifier
014227
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Sartor Resartus – Thomas Carlyle
"Again, could any thing be more miraculous than an actual authentic Ghost?
The English Johnson longed, all his life, to see one; but could not, though he went to Cock Lane, and thence to the church-vaults, and tapped on coffins. Foolish Doctor! Did he never, with the mind's eye as well as with the body's, look round him into that full tide of human Life he so loved; did he never so much as look into Himself?
The good Doctor was a Ghost, as actual and authentic as heart could wish; well nigh a million of Ghosts were travelling the streets by his side. Once more I say, sweep away the illusion of Time; compress the three-score years into three minutes: what else was he, what else are we? Are we not Spirits, shaped into a body, into an Appearance; and that fade away again into air, and Invisibility?
Ghosts! There are nigh a thousand million walking the earth openly at noontide; some half-hundred have vanished from it, some half hundred have arisen in it, ere thy watch ticks once.