Page:Immanuel Kant - Dreams of a Spirit-Seer - tr. Emanuel Fedor Goerwitz (1900).djvu/165

Rh How Kant's critique of Swcdenborg was regarded by his contemporaries may appear from the following letter of the Dutch banker-poet, John Chiistian Cuno (1708–1780, the David Paulus ab Indagine, author of a widely published Letter to Swedenborg), addressed to a friend in Hamburg, in 1771. In this letter Cuno says of Swedenborg:—

"I am quite willing to confess that I do not know what to make of him. He remains to me a riddle which I cannot solve. In 1766 a little work was published in Koenigsberg, by John James Kanter, bearing the title: 'Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, explained by Dreams of Metaphysics.' The author is anonymous. In volume IV. of the 'Allgemeine Deutsche Bibliothek,' which is published in Berlin, (p. 281), he is called I. Kant. But this is a satire which is directed more against the learned in general, than against the spirit-seers in particular.  51 (p. 104).—"The man of the church at this day knows scarcely anything about heaven and hell, nor about his life after death, although they are all described in the Word; yea, also many who