Page:Immanuel Kant - Dreams of a Spirit-Seer - tr. Emanuel Fedor Goerwitz (1900).djvu/121

 Rh against the perversion of which the rules of logic have little power. I distinguish, therefore, with our author, between delusions and the deductions thence, and pass over his incorrect reasonings, the consequences of his not stopping at his visions,—just as we often have to separate in a philosopher that which he observes from what he reasons, and just as even seeming experiences are, for the most part, more instructive than seeming reasons. While thus robbing the reader of some of the moments which otherwise he might have put to the study of the exhaustive discussion of the matter, without, however, being much more benefited, I have taken care, nevertheless, of his sensitive taste by leaving out many of the wild chimeras of the book, and reducing its quintessence to a few drops. I expect for that just as much gratefulness from the reader, as a certain patient believed he owed to his doctors because they made him eat only the bark of cinchona, while they might easily have compelled him to eat the whole tree.

Mr. Swedenborg divides his visions into three kinds. In the first kind he is liberated from the body, in a state mediate between sleeping and waking, in which he has seen, heard, even felt spirits. This he has experienced only three or four times. The second is being led away by the spirit, when he may be out walking on the street without losing himself, while at the same time his spirit is in entirely different regions and sees clearly elsewhere houses, men, forests, &c., and this perhaps for several hours, until he suddenly becomes aware again of his real