Page:Immanuel Kant - Dreams of a Spirit-Seer - tr. Emanuel Fedor Goerwitz (1900).djvu/37

 Rh Swedenborgian conceptions had, to some degree, entered into his position of 1770, which we have admitted to be entirely possible, still, even in 1770 Kant had declined to enter further upon such indagationes mysticas. As completely as Kant from the middle of the year 1770 set himself to the working out of the germs of his Criticism, i.e, his critical doctrine of experience, as this is developed in the Analytic, just so completely must henceforth all serious contemplation of Swedenborg's phantasies be given up. That he had, for a time, lent an ear to these phantasies served henceforth as a warning against any attacks from Swedenborg's delusion. If he speaks in the Critique of Pure Reason of the corpus mysticum, still this is not mysticism, for the grossly dogmatic teaching of Swedenborg becomes changed in Kant to merely " a bare but still practical idea." If a somewhat drastic comparison may be allowed, one might say: as little as the various tar-products are tar itself, so little are these 'ideas' of criticism to be identified with dogmas of mysticism. Kant's world of experience, governed, as it is, by the 'analogies of experience,' excludes all invasion of the regular system of nature by incontrollable 'spirits'; and the whole system of modern mysticism, so far as he holds fast to his fundamental principles, Kant is 'bound to forcibly reject.'"—-Vaihinger, Kant Commentar, vol. II., pp. 512. 513.