Page:Immanuel Kant - Dreams of a Spirit-Seer - tr. Emanuel Fedor Goerwitz (1900).djvu/164

 146 at length on the arguments for the existence of a spiritual world and on the nature of the life after death. See the Introductory Essay for the present work, p. 28.

48 (p. 93).—"A law of the Divine Providence is: That man should not be reformed by external means, but by internal; by external means are meant miracles and visions, fears and punishments; by internal, the truths and goods derived from the Word and the teaching of the church, and looking to the Lord. For these means enter by an internal way, and cast out the evils and falsities which reside within; but external means enter by an external way, and do not cast out the evils and falsities, but shut them in.—If man could have been reformed by miracles and visions, then all men throughout the whole world would be so. It is, therefore, a holy law of the Divine Providence that internal freedom should not in the least degree be violated; for by it the Lord enters with regard to man, even into the hell where he is, and by it He leads him there; and if man is willing to follow. He brings him out, and introduces him into heaven, there bringing him nearer and nearer to himself."—Ath. Cr., 53.

49 (p. 95).—A full account of all these clairvoyant experiences narrated of Swedenborg will be found in Tafel's Documents concerning Swedenborg, II., 613–692, under the heading, "Three remarkable facts."

50 (p. 101).—Kant, for reasons of his own, indulges in the pleasantry of characterising as "full of nonsense" and "void of the last drop of reason" the great work which he forthwith proceeds to subject to a careful analysis, resulting in conclusions so similar to those of speculative reason that he is compelled to admit the resemblance, even at the risk of the one falling or standing with the other. This affected ridicule was necessary to the carrying out of the purpose of the book itself, which was the discrediting of metaphysics as a source of knowledge. It is possible that he foresaw, in the course of his ingenious and daring essay, that the rationality of a spiritual world, such as Swedenborg described from experience, ex visis et auditis, might, after all, be turned by the reader to a corroboration of metaphysical doctrine rather than an argument against it, and that, therefore, unless he should undo his work and abandon his plan altogether there remained for him only one course, and that was to call Swedenborg's system "nonsense," while he treated it with the seriousness of the deepest rational and practical reflection.

