Page:Immanuel Kant - Dreams of a Spirit-Seer - tr. Emanuel Fedor Goerwitz (1900).djvu/15

Rh SO manifest as to make a longer delay in its translation into English inexcusable.

At the same time the growing appreciation among students of the profound philosophic principles which underlie the teachings of Swedenborg make the occasion of this publication an opportune one for placing side by side with the leading affirmations made by Kant in the Dissertation and his University Lectures, a citation of those passages in Swedenborg by which they were evidently suggested or with which they stand in interesting relation.

In this way the "Seer," however it may fare with the "Metaphysicians" in Kant's hands, will at least be allowed to speak for himself, and the reader may form his judgments at first hand. To the student of modern philosophical development it will not be time lost to witness here, where it has been least suspected, the first decided and controlling influence of Swedenborg's spiritual philosophy upon modern idealistic thought.

To aid the reader in arriving at a truer understanding and appreciation of these "Dreams" and of their import in Kant's entire system I have translated and brought together the recent utterances of German and other philosophers on the subject of Swedenborg's real influence upon Kant, as shown especially in the latter's Lectures on Psychology and Lectures on Metaphysics.

2em

Washington, D.C., U.S.A., December, 1899.