The Making of Religion by Andrew Lang
page 48 of 453 (10%)
page 48 of 453 (10%)
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know. If spiritualists knew their own business, they would translate and
publish Kant's first seventy pages of 'Träume.' Something like telepathy, action of spirit, even discarnate, on spirit, is alluded to, but the idea is as old as Lavaterus at least (p. 52). Kant has a good deal to say, like Scott in his 'Demonology,' on the physics of Hallucination, but it is antiquated matter. He thinks the whole topic of spiritual being only important as bearing on hopes of a future life. As speculation, all is 'in the air,' and as in such matters the learned and unlearned are on a level of ignorance, science will not discuss them. He then repeats the Swedenborg stories, and thinks it would be useful to posterity if some one would investigate them while witnesses are alive and memories are fresh. In fact, Kant asks for psychical research. As for Swedenborg's so costly book, Kant laughs at it. There is in it no evidence, only assertion. Kant ends, having pleased nobody, he says, and as ignorant as when he began, by citing _cultivons notre jardin_. Kant returned to the theme in 'Anthropologische Didaktik.' He discusses the unconscious, or sub-conscious, which, till Sir William Hamilton lectured, seems to have been an absolutely unknown topic to British psychologists. 'So ist das Feld dunkler Vorstellungen das grösste in Menschen.' He has a chapter on 'The Divining Faculty' (pp. 89-93). He will not hear of presentiments, and, unlike Hegel, he scouts the Highland second-sight. The 'possessed' of anthropology are epileptic patients. Mystics (Swedenborg) are victims of _Schwärmerei_. This reference to Swedenborg is remarked upon by Schubert in his preface to the essay of Kant. He points out that 'it is interesting to compare the circumspection, the almost uncertainty of Kant when he had to deliver a |
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