Page:Immanuel Kant - Dreams of a Spirit-Seer - tr. Emanuel Fedor Goerwitz (1900).djvu/142

124 who have ever lived in the world, are in another life, and live as men.—''De Cælo et ejus mirabilibus et de inferno ex auditis et visis (Swedenborg). Heaven and its wonders and Hell: from Things heard and seen.'' No. 456.

2 (p. 46).—"Without a knowledge of discrete degrees nothing whatever can be known of the distinction between spiritual and natural, thus nothing of correspondence. Nor, indeed, can anything be known of any difference between the life of men and that of beasts, or between the more perfect and the less perfect animals: neither of the differences among the forms of the vegetable kingdom, nor among the matters of the mineral kingdom. From which it can be seen that they who are ignorant of these degrees are unable by any judgment to see causes; they see only effects, and from these judge of causes, which is done for the most part by an induction that is continuous with effects. But causes do not produce effects by continuous but by discrete modes; for cause is one thing, and effect is another. The difference between the two is like the difference between prior and subsequent, or between that which forms and that which is formed.

"I am not aware that anything has been known hitherto about discrete degrees, yet nothing of the real truth about cause can become known without a knowledge of degrees of both kinds. These degrees therefore shall be treated of throughout this Part (III. ), for it is the object of this little work to uncover causes, that effects may be seen from them, and thus the darkness may be dispelled in which the man of the church is in respect to God and the Lord, and in respect to Divine things in general which are called spiritual things. This I may mention, that the angels are in grief for the darkness on the earth; saying that they see light hardly anywhere, and that men eagerly lay hold of fallacies and confirm them, thereby multiplying falsities upon falsities; and to confirm fallacies men search out, by means of reasonings from falsities and from truths falsified, such things as cannot be overturned, owing to the darkness in respect to causes and the ignorance respecting truths."—''Swedenborg: Sapientia angelica de divino amore et de divino sapientia. Angelic Wisdom concerning the Divine Love and Wisdom.'' Nos. 185, 188.

3 (p. 47).—"There are in the natural world spaces and times, but these are in the spiritual world appearances.

