Page:Immanuel Kant - Dreams of a Spirit-Seer - tr. Emanuel Fedor Goerwitz (1900).djvu/56

38 yet unrefuted, and creep even into systems of doctrine, although they do not have in their favour that most convincing of proofs, the proof derived from utility (argumentum ab utili)? What philosopher has not at one time or another cut the queerest figure imaginable, between the affirmations of a reasonable and firmly convinced eye-witness, and the inner resistance of insurmountable doubt? Shall he wholly deny the truth of all the apparitions they tell about? What reasons can he quote to disprove them?

Shall he, on the other hand, admit even one of these stories? How important would be such an avowal, and what astonishing consequences we should see before us, if we could suppose even one such occurence to be proved? A third way out, perhaps, is possible, namely, not to trouble one's self with such impertinent or idle questions, and to hold on to the useful. But because this plan is reasonable, therefore profound scholars have at all times, by a majority of votes, rejected it!

Since it is just as much a silly prejudice to believe without reason nothing of the many things that are told with an appearance of truth, as to believe without examination everything that common report says, the author of this book has been led away partly by the latter prejudice, in trying to escape the former. He confesses, with a certain humiliation, that he has been naive enough to trace the truth of some of the