Page:Immanuel Kant - Dreams of a Spirit-Seer - tr. Emanuel Fedor Goerwitz (1900).djvu/91

 Rh story he hears even before investigating its truthfulness, which is in many cases impossible, and in still more is impolite to the narrator.

But if we balance against each other the advantages and disadvantages which might accrue to a person organized not only for the visible world, but also, to a certain degree, for the invisible (if ever there was such a person), such a gift would seem to be like that with which Juno honoured Teiresias, making him blind so that she might impart to him the gift of prophesying. For, judging from the propositions above made, the knowledge of the other world can be obtained here only by losing some of that intelligence which is necessary for this present world. I am not sure if even certain philosophers can be freed entirely from such a hard condition, when they turn their metaphysical telescopes upon such far-off regions and tell us of miraculous things. At least I do not grudge them their discoveries. But I am afraid that some man of sound sense but little polish might intimate to them what the coachman answered to Tycho Brahe, when, one night, the latter suggested to the man he might drive the shortest way by directing his course according to the stars: "My dear master, you may be an expert as to the sky, but here on earth you are a fool."