clude, we must in candour acknowledge, that we search more
industriously for arguments and illustrations to support our opinions,
than we should or _could_ do, under other circumstances. The effect on
the mind of the Master is not a bad test of any method of education.

ABSTRACT OF SWEDENBORGIANISM:

BY IMMANUEL KANT.

(_May, 1824._)

----But now to my hero. If many a forgotten writer, or writer destined
to be forgotten, is on that account the more deserving of applause for
having spared no cost of toil and intellectual exertion upon his
works, certainly Swedenborg of all such writers is deserving of the
most. Without doubt his flask in the moon is full; and not at all less
than any of those which Ariosto saw in that planet filled with the
lost wits of men, so thoroughly is his great work emptied of every
drop of common sense. Nevertheless there prevails in every part so
wonderful an agreement with all that the most refined and consistent
sense under the same fantastic delusions could produce on the same
subject, that the reader will pardon me if I here detect the same
curiosities in the caprices of fancy which many other virtuosi have
detected in the caprices of nature; for instance, in variegated
marble, where some have discovered a holy family; or in stalactites
and petrifactions, where others have discovered monks, baptismal
fonts, and organs; or even in frozen window-panes, where our
countryman Liscow, the humourist, discovered the number of the beast
and the triple crown; things which he only is apt to descry, whose
head is preoccupied with thoughts about them.

The main work of this writer is composed of eight quarto volumes full
of nonsense, which he presented to the world as a new revelation under
the title of _Arcana Coelestia_. In this work his visions are
chiefly directed to the discovery of the secret sense in the two first
books of Moses, and to a similar way of interpreting the whole of the
Scripture. All these fantastic interpretations are nothing to my
present purpose: those who have any curiosity may find some account of
them in the _Bibliotheca Theologica_ of Dr. Ernesti. All that I design
to extract are his _audita et visa_, from the supplements to his
chapters--that which he saw with his own eyes, and heard with his own
ears: for these parts of his dreams it is which are to be considered
as the foundation of all the rest. Swedenborg's style is dull and
mean. His narrations and their wh