Page:Immanuel Kant - Dreams of a Spirit-Seer - tr. Emanuel Fedor Goerwitz (1900).djvu/70

 52 although it might be found in all these elements. From these considerations no valid reason can be brought forward, why my soul should not be one of the substances of which matter consists, nor why its peculiar manifestations should not originate in the place which it occupies in such an ingenious machine as the human body, where the combination of nerves favours the inner faculty of thinking and of will-power. In that case, however, there would remain no peculiar characteristic of the soul by which it could be surely recognized and distinguished from crude elementary matter, and the jocose suggestion of Leibnitz would not be laughable any more, that in our coffee we swallow, perhaps, atoms which are to become human souls. But in such a case would not this thinking Ego be subjected to the common fate of material natures, and, as it was drawn out of the chaos of all elements to vivify an animal machine, why should it not, after this casual combination has ceased, return in future to its origin? It is at times necessary to frighten the thinker who is on the wrong path, by the consequences, so that he may pay more attention to the principles by which he has been led off as in a dream.

I confess that I am very much inclined to assert the existence of immaterial natures in the world, and to put my soul itself into that class of beings." But then, how