f volumes--if
they were arranged and digested they would form a few, but most
important. It is not merely because there is in almost every human
error a substratum of truth, and that the more important the subject
the more important the substratum, but because the investigation will
give almost a history of human aberrations, that this otherwise
unpromising topic assumes so high an interest. The superstitions of
every age, for no age is free from them, will present the popular
modes of thinking in an intelligible and easily accessible form, and
may be taken as a means of gauging (if the expression be permitted)
the philosophical and metaphysical capacities of the period. In this
light, the volumes here presented to the reader will be found of great
value, for they give a picture of the popular mind at a time or great
interest, and furnish a clue to many difficulties in the ecclesiastical
affairs of that era. In the time of Calmet, cases of demoniacal
possession, and instances of returns from the world of spirits, were
reputed to be of no uncommon occurrence. The church was continually
called on to exert her powers of exorcism; and the instances gathered
by Calmet, and related in this work, may be taken as fair specimens of
the rest. It is then, first, as a storehouse of facts, or reputed
facts, that Calmet compiled the work now in the reader's hands--as the
foundation on which to rear what superstructure of system they pleased;
and secondly, as a means of giving his own opinions, in a detached and
desultory way, as the subjects came under his notice. The value of the
first will consist in their _evidence_--and of this the reader will be
as capable of judging as the compiler; that of the second will depend
on their truth--and of this, too, we are as well, and in some respects
better, able to judge than Calmet himself. Those accustomed to require
rigid evidence will be but ill satisfied with the greater part of that
which will be found in this work; simple assertion for the most part
suffices--often first made long after the facts, or supposed facts,
related, and not unfrequently far off from the places where they were
alleged to have taken place. But these cases are often the _best_
authenticated, for in the more modern ones there is frequently such an
evident mistake in the whole nature of the case, that all the
spiritual deductions made from it fall to the ground.

Not a few instances of so-called demoniacal possession