Dreams of a Spirit-Seer.
ILLUSTRATED BY DREAMS OF METAPHYSICS.
BY
IMMANUEL KANT.
Velut aegri somnia, vanae
Finguntur species.
A PREFACE
WHICH PROMISES VERY LITTLE FOR THE DISCUSSION.
The land of shadows is the paradise of dreamers. Here they find an unlimited country where they may build their houses ad libitum. Hypochondriac vapours, nursery tales, and monastic miracles, provide them with ample building material. Their ground plans are sketched by the philosophers, who keep on changing or rejecting them, as is their wont. Holy Rome alone possesses in this land profitable provinces; the two crowns of the invisible kingdom support the third, which is the frail diadem of earthly sovereignty; and the keys which open the gates of the other world open at the same time, sympathetically, the money chests of the present. Such jurisdiction of the spirit world, when policy furnishes the proofs for its claims, is far above all feeble objections of the learned, and its use, or abuse, is already too venerable to feel the need of being exposed to their depraved scrutiny. But the common tales which are so strongly believed by some, while disputed by others, who have as little foundation for their opinion, why do they still float about for no visible reason, and yet unrefuted, and creep even into systems of doctrine, although they do not have in their favour that most convincing of proofs, the proof derived from utility (argumentum ab utili)? What philosopher has not at one time or another cut the queerest figure imaginable, between the affirmations of a reasonable and firmly convinced eye-witness, and the inner resistance of insurmountable doubt? Shall he wholly deny the truth of all the apparitions they tell about? What reasons can he quote to disprove them?
Shall he, on the other hand, admit even one of these stories? How important would be such an avowal, and what astonishing consequences we should see before us, if we could suppose even one such occurence to be proved?[1][2] A third way out, perhaps, is possible, namely, not to trouble one's self with such impertinent or idle questions, and to hold on to the useful. But because this plan is reasonable, therefore profound scholars have at all times, by a majority of votes, rejected it!
Since it is just as much a silly prejudice to believe without reason nothing of the many things that are told with an appearance of truth, as to believe without examination everything that common report says, the author of this book has been led away partly by the latter prejudice, in trying to escape the former. He confesses, with a certain humiliation, that he has been naive enough to trace the truth of some of the stories of the kind mentioned. He found—as usual where it is not our business to search—he found nothing. This is indeed by itself a sufficient reason for writing a book; but add to this what has many a time wrung books from modest authors, the impetuous appeals from known and unknown friends. Moreover, he had bought a big work,[3] and, what is worse, had read it, and this labour was not to be thrown away. Thence originated the present treatise, which, we flatter ourselves, will fully satisfy the reader ; for the main part he will not understand, another part he will not believe, and the rest he will laugh at.
Notes edit
- ↑ 1 (p. 38).—"That the spirit of man after being loosed from the body is a man, and, in a similar form, has been proved to me by the daily experience of several years; for I have seen and heard them a thousand times, and I have spoken with them also on this subject, that men in the world do not believe them to be men, and that those who do believe, are reputed by the learned as simple. The spirits are grieved at heart that such ignorance should still continue in the world, and chiefly within the church. But this faith, they said, emanated first from the learned, who thought concerning the soul from things of corporeal sense, from which they conceived no other idea respecting it than as of thought alone, which, when without any subject in which and from which it is viewed, is as something volatile, of pure ether, which cannot but be dissipated when the body dies. But because the church, from the Word, believes in the immortality of the soul, they could not but ascribe to it something vital, such as is of thought, but still not any thing with sensation, such as man has, until it is again conjoined to the body. On this opinion is founded the doctrine in regard to the resurrection, and the faith that there is to be a conjunction when the last judgment comes. Hence it is, that when any one thinks about the soul from doctrine and at the same time from hypothesis, he does not at all comprehend that it is a spirit, and that in a human form. To this is added, that scarcely any one at this day knows what the spiritual is, and still less that those who are spiritual, as all spirits and angels are, have any human form. Hence it is, that almost all who come from the world wonder very much that they are alive, and that they are men equally as before, that they sec, hear, and speak, and that their body has the sense of touch as before, and there is no difference at all. But when they cease to wonder at themselves, they then wonder that the church should know nothing about such a state of men after death, nor about heaven and hell, when yet allwho have ever lived in the world, are in another life, and live as men.—De Cælo et ejus mirabilibus et de inferno ex auditis et visis (Swedenborg). Heaven and its wonders and Hell: from Things heard and seen. No. 456.
- ↑ The figures refer to the extracts from Swedenborg in Appendix I.
- ↑ This refers to his purchase of Swedenborg's Arcana. See quotation from Hoar, in foot-note on page 14.