Page:Immanuel Kant - Dreams of a Spirit-Seer - tr. Emanuel Fedor Goerwitz (1900).djvu/137

 Rh new conceptions concerning powers in our thinking selves which, as yet, are hidden to us. Thus the observations of later days, analysed by mathematics, have revealed to us the power of attraction in matter, concerning the possibility of which we shall never be able to learn anything further, because it seems to be a fundamental power. Those who would have invented such a quality without first having obtained the proof from experience, would rightly have deserved to be laughed at as fools. Because, in such cases, reasons are of no account whatever, neither for the sake of inventing, nor of confirming the possibility or impossibility of certain results: the right of decision must be left to experience alone. Just as I leave to time, which brings experience, the ascertainment of something about the famous healing-powers of the magnet in cases of toothache, when experience shall have produced as many observations to the effect that magnetic rods act upon flesh and bones, as we have already proving their effect on steel and iron. But, if certain pretended experiences cannot be classified under any law of sensation that is unanimously accepted by men: if, therefore, they would only go to prove irregularity in the testimony of the senses — which, indeed, is the case with rumoured ghost-stories — then it is advisable to simply ignore them. For the lack of unanimity and uniformity makes the historic knowledge about them valueless for the proof of anything, and renders them unfit to serve as basis for any law of experience within the domain of reason.