to conceive any other mode of existence than one similar to what they had experienced in life, nor any other world as the scene of such an existence but this we inhabit, beyond the bounds of which the mind extends itself with great difficulty.  Admiration, indeed, was able to exalt to heaven a few selected heroes:  it did not seem absurd that those who in their mortal state had distinguished themselves as superior and overruling spirits should after death ascend to that sphere which influences and governs everything below, or that the proper abode of beings at once so illustrious and permanent should be in that part of Nature in which they had always observed the greatest splendor and the least mutation.  But on ordinary occasions it was natural some should imagine that the dead retired into a remote country, separated from the living by seas or mountains.  It was natural that some should follow their imagination with a simplicity still purer, and pursue the souls of men no further than the sepulchres in which their bodies had been deposited;[8] whilst others of deeper penetration, observing that bodies worn out by age or destroyed by accident still afforded the materials for generating new ones, concluded likewise that a soul being dislodged did not wholly perish, but was destined, by a similar revolution in Nature, to act again, and to animate some other body.  This last principle gave rise to the doctrine of Transmigration:  but we must not presume of course, that, where it prevailed, it necessarily excluded the other opinions; for it is not remote from the usual procedure of the human mind, blending in obscure matters imagination and reasoning together, to unite ideas the most inconsistent.  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.  They might have held both these opinions; and we ought not to be surprised to find error inconsistent.