Page:Immanuel Kant - Dreams of a Spirit-Seer - tr. Emanuel Fedor Goerwitz (1900).djvu/40

22 senses of this body? Since the spatial extent and the endurance, or what we would call the "reality," of even this sensuous world is seen, in the Æsthetic, not to exist in the world itself but in something more real, of which we are in some secondary sense subjectively the agents—the real question remaining is, granting that many such worlds may exist and with them the various modes of cognition, what connection of these worlds and their mutual relation or their internal order shall we regard as consistent with the demands of pure reason? And here it is that Kant's recognition of Swedenborg's system of the two worlds and their correspondence as "sublime" finds its real and only important significance. Neither of the two great system builders asks the support of the other. Their mutual testimony, while of use for illustration, would be only a source of weakness if accepted in a constructive sense. If Swedenborg has given future spiritual philosophy the legend seen in one of his symbolic visions: nunc licet intelleciualiter intrare in mysteria fidei, he would resent any trifling with that fair instrument, the intellect, through a bias of whatever kind, spiritual or anti-spiritual. Kant was equally consistent in saying to spirits and to spirit-seers: My mission is neither to confirm nor reject your messages, it is to define the limits of the intellectual judgment itself, and to keep the mind a clear and perfect instrument for the disposing of all subjects that are brought for its reception and determination. As Kant was necessarily critical, this being the