Page:Immanuel Kant - Dreams of a Spirit-Seer - tr. Emanuel Fedor Goerwitz (1900).djvu/141



 1 (p. 38).—"That the spirit of man after being loosed from the body is a man, and, in a similar form, has been proved to me by the daily experience of several years; for I have seen and heard them a thousand times, and I have spoken with them also on this subject, that men in the world do not believe them to be men, and that those who do believe, are reputed by the learned as simple. The spirits are grieved at heart that such ignorance should still continue in the world, and chiefly within the church. But this faith, they said, emanated first from the learned, who thought concerning the soul from things of corporeal sense, from which they conceived no other idea respecting it than as of thought alone, which, when without any subject in which and from which it is viewed, is as something volatile, of pure ether, which cannot but be dissipated when the body dies. But because the church, from the Word, believes in the immortality of the soul, they could not but ascribe to it something vital, such as is of thought, but still not any thing with sensation, such as man has, until it is again conjoined to the body. On this opinion is founded the doctrine in regard to the resurrection, and the faith that there is to be a conjunction when the last judgment comes. Hence it is, that when any one thinks about the soul from doctrine and at the same time from hypothesis, he does not at all comprehend that it is a spirit, and that in a human form. To this is added, that scarcely any one at this day knows what the spiritual is, and still less that those who are spiritual, as all spirits and angels are, have any human form. Hence it is, that almost all who come from the world wonder very much that they are alive, and that they are men equally as before, that they sec, hear, and speak, and that their body has the sense of touch as before, and there is no difference at all. But when they cease to wonder at themselves, they then wonder that the church should know nothing about such a state of men after death, nor about heaven and hell, when yet all