Page:Immanuel Kant - Dreams of a Spirit-Seer - tr. Emanuel Fedor Goerwitz (1900).djvu/124

 106 come from themselves, although, as a matter of fact, they often flow into them out of the other world. Each human soul has already in this life its place in the spirit-world, and belongs to a society, always in accordance with the inner state of good and truth, i.e., of will and understanding.. But the places of spirits among themselves have nothing in common with space in the corporeal world. Thus the soul of a man in India can be next to the soul of another man in Europe, as far as their spiritual places are concerned, while those which, according to the body, live in one house, may be spiritually very far from one another. When man dies, the soul does not change its place, but only perceives itself to be in that place which, in relation to other spirits, it occupied already in this life. But although the relation of spirits among themselves is no real space, it has still with them the appearance of it,. and their conjunctions are perceived under the accessory condition of nearness, their differences, on the other hand, as distances. In the same way spirits possess no extent, but yet present to each other the appearance of human figures. In this imaginary space there exists a universal community of spiritual natures. Swedenborg talks with departed souls at will, and reads in their memory (power of perception) that state which they observe in themselves, and sees it just as clearly as with bodily eyes. Moreover, the enormous distances which divide the rational inhabitants of the world are nothing in regard to the spiritual universe, and