Page:Immanuel Kant - Dreams of a Spirit-Seer - tr. Emanuel Fedor Goerwitz (1900).djvu/77

 Rh Explanations of that kind should be avoided as much as possible, so that those causes of the world's phenomena which rest on the laws of motion of matter alone, and which solely and alone are capable of being conceived, may be recognized in their full extent. Nevertheless, I am convinced that Stahl, who likes to explain animal processes organically, is often nearer to the truth than Hofmann, Boerhave, and others, who leave immaterial forces out of their plan and keep to mechanical reasons. Yet these follow thereby a more philosophical method, which sometimes perhaps fails, but oftener proves right, and which alone can be applied to advantage in science. For the influence of beings of incorporeal nature can only be said to exist, but it can never be shown how it proceeds, nor how far its efficiency extends.

The immaterial then would primarily comprise all created intelligences. Some of these are combined with matter, thus forming a person, and some not. It further comprises the sensating subjects in all kinds of animals, and finally all the principles of life wherever in nature they may be found, although such life may not make itself evident by the external characteristics of arbitrary movement. All these immaterial natures, I say, whether they exercise their influences in the corporeal world or not, and all the rational beings who are, accidentally, in an animal state, here on earth or on other terrestrial bodies, while they may be vivifying gross matter now or in future, or may have done so in the past, nevertheless form, according to these conceptions, a communion