Page:Immanuel Kant - Dreams of a Spirit-Seer - tr. Emanuel Fedor Goerwitz (1900).djvu/132

 114 and although I have offered him no new knowledge, I have nevertheless destroyed that vain belief and empty knowledge which inflates reason, and, in its narrow space, takes the place which might be occupied by the teachings of wisdom and of useful instruction.

The impatience of the reader, whom our considerations thus far have only wearied without giving instruction, may be appeased by the words with which Diogenes is said to have cheered his yawning listeners when he saw the last page of a tiresome book: "Courage, gentlemen, I see land!" Before, we walked, like Demokritus, in empty space, whither we had flown on the butterfly-wings of metaphysics, and there we conversed with spiritual beings. Now, since the sobering power of self-recognition has caused the silky wings to be folded, we find ourselves again on the ground of experience and common sense. Happy, if we look at it as the place allotted to us, which we never can leave with impunity, and which contains everything to satisfy us as long as we hold fast to the useful.