Page:Immanuel Kant - Dreams of a Spirit-Seer - tr. Emanuel Fedor Goerwitz (1900).djvu/55



The land of shadows is the paradise of dreamers. Here they find an unlimited country where they may build their houses ad libitum. Hypochondriac vapours, nursery tales, and monastic miracles, provide them with ample building material. Their ground plans are sketched by the philosophers, who keep on changing or rejecting them, as is their wont. Holy Rome alone possesses in this land profitable provinces; the two crowns of the invisible kingdom support the third, which is the frail diadem of earthly sovereignty; and the keys which open the gates of the other world open at the same time, sympathetically, the money chests of the present. Such jurisdiction of the spirit world, when policy furnishes the proofs for its claims, is far above all feeble objections of the learned, and its use, or abuse, is already too venerable to feel the need of being exposed to their depraved scrutiny. But the common tales which are so strongly believed by some, while disputed by others, who have as little foundation for their opinion, why do they still float about for no visible reason, and