Page:Immanuel Kant - Dreams of a Spirit-Seer - tr. Emanuel Fedor Goerwitz (1900).djvu/63

 Rh and their whole, matter. Either the name of a spirit is a mere word without any meaning, or, its significance is of the nature described.

From the explanation of what a spirit consists in it is a long step indeed to the proposition that such natures are real, yea, even possible. We find in the works of philosophers many good and reliable proofs that everything which thinks must be simple; and that every substance which thinks according to reason, must be a unit of nature; and that the undivisible Ego could not be divided among many connected things which make up a whole. My soul, therefore, must be a simple substance. But this proof leaves still undecided, whether the soul be of the nature of such things as, united in space, form an expanded and impenetrable whole; whether, therefore, it be material, or whether it be immaterial, and, consequently, a spirit; and, what is more, whether such beings as are called spirits, are possible.

At this point I cannot but recommend caution against rash conclusions which enter most easily into the deepest and obscurest questions. For that which belongs to the common conceptions of experience is commonly regarded as if the reason why it existed was also comprehended. But of that which differs from experience, and cannot be made comprehensible by any experience, not even by analogy, we of course can form no conception, and, therefore, are apt to reject it immediately as impossible. All matter offers resistance in the space in which it is present, and on that account is called