Page:Immanuel Kant - Dreams of a Spirit-Seer - tr. Emanuel Fedor Goerwitz (1900).djvu/50

 32 as under its own ruler and as necessary to the moral conception of the world, even if at the time of the "Critique" he is afraid to insist on these views dogmatically.

If we add to this the idea of the corpus mysticum of rational beings in the sense-world—that it "consists in the free will of these rational beings under moral laws, this being in perfect systematic unity with the freedom of themselves and of each other," we cannot wonder that both in modern and earlier times the "mystics" have claimed Kant as being of their number, even if we can in no case admit that modern spiritism has any claim on him.

Jachmann has reported Kant as denying totally that his words have any mystic sense, or that he is in any way a friend to mysticism. It all depends on what is meant by the mystic. Truly the whole idea of freedom is with Kant a mystic one. Where he differs from mysticism is seen from the Lectures (Pölitz, 101), where he says: "If one supposes there are thinking beings of whom one can have intellectual vision, that is mysticism, so long as the vision remains only sensual."

When Kant says of the virtuous man "he is in heaven," but cannot see himself there and only infers this from reason, the statement resembles the thought of Swedenborg which Kant communicated in his earlier lectures, but without clearly designating it as his (Swedenborg's).

Now our souls are all as spirits, associated in this union and society, even in this world ; only here we do not see ourselves as being in this society, because here we have only our sensuous vision; but although we do not see ourselves in this society (of spirits), we are nevertheless in it. If a man has lived righteously in the world, and his will has been well disposed, and he has endeavoured to obey the moral law, he is in this world already in the society of all well-disposed and righteous souls, whether they be in India or in Arabia, only he does not see himself to be in this