Page:Immanuel Kant - Dreams of a Spirit-Seer - tr. Emanuel Fedor Goerwitz (1900).djvu/115

 Rh wolf to be a hyena, although any rational man can easily see that an African beast would not disport itself in the woods of France. The weakness of man's reason, together with his curiosity, brings it about that, in the beginning, truth and deceit are snatched up promiscuously. But, gradually, the ideas are purified; a small part remains, the rest is thrown away as offal.

He to whom these ghost stories seem to be of importance, if he has money enough and nothing better to do, may, at any rate, make a journey for the sake of more accurate information, just as Artemidor travelled in Asia Minor to satisfy himself about the interpretation of dreams. Posterity of the same turn of mind will be very grateful to him for making it impossible for a second Philostratus to rise after many years, and make out of our Swedenborg a new Apollonius of Tyana, when the hearsay shall have matured to positive proof, and the inconvenient, though highly necessary, examination of eye-witnesses will have become impossible.