Page:Immanuel Kant - Dreams of a Spirit-Seer - tr. Emanuel Fedor Goerwitz (1900).djvu/42



Professor Vaihinger, in the Archiv fur Geschicte der Philosophie, 1895, Berlin, calls attention to the work of P. von Lind: Kants Mystische Weltanschauung, ein Wahn der Modernen Mystik: Munich, 1892, in which the author criticises Du Prel's favourable view of Kant's so-called mystic tendency, and remarks that:—

Lind has correctly pointed out that Du Prel has interpreted the Träume too favourably for Swedenborg, but still he fails to recognise that Kant must have had a strong sympathy for the metaphysical hypotheses which he brings forward to explain Swedenborg's phantasies.

The well-known place in which Kant calls certain views of Swedenborg (regarding the two worlds to which we belong) "sublime," Lind endeavours in vain to interpret ironically. I called Du Prel's attention to this passage, which occasioned his new edition of the Kantian "Lecture on Psychologie." The passage also, Heinze admits, points out an inner principielle relation between the doctrines of both, which Kant discovered; indeed he took perhaps this doctrine of two worlds from Swedenborg direct. But only the doctrine! Not Swedenborg's pretended empirical proofs, which Kant has always discarded as phantasies. (Compare my Index of Du Prel's edition in Archiv. IV., 722, and also my Extracts in Commentary, II. 512ff). But Du Prel is in error, in that from that agreement in single points of theory he concluded that Kant would give up his opposition to the Praxis in view of the facts of modern spiritism. Lind has done valuable service in showing that Kant knew very familiarly this pretended material of facts, and always rejected it with the same determination. Lind has shown this by many extracts from Kant's works, especially from the Anthropology. On the other hand Lind goes far beyond the mark when he seeks to