exaggerates the connection of Kant with Swedenborg, still we are not to fall into the other error of denying altogether a positive relation of Kant to Swedenborg which shows itself occasionally even in the period of the 'Critique,' as for example Critique of Pure Reason: A. 394: A. 808: B. 836 (idea of the Corpus mysticum of rational beings). Critique of the Practical Reason, I. 2, 7 (Ros. VIII., 242; Hart v., 112)."—Vaihinger: Kant Commentar II., p. 431.
Finally, in a chapter of General Observations, the author compares Kant's intuitus originarius with Swedenborg's "pneumatische Anschauung" or "Soul-vision":
"As B. Erdmann (Reflex II., 313) rightly remarks,
attitude of Kant is here no longer perceptible." (Du Prel—Introduction to Kant's "Lectures on Psychology," pp. vii., viii.)
"The faculty ascribed to Swedenborg answers completely to Kant's conception of a being inhabiting two worlds at the same time." (Du Prel,—Ibid., p. xxiv.)
That Kant at the time of the letter to Fraeulein von Knobloch felt the deepest interest in Swedenborg is freely admitted by Robert Hoar in his Inaugural Discussion, entitled Der Angebliche Mysticismus Kant's. Brugg: 1895.
"So soon as Swedenborg's 'Arcana Cœlestia' was printed, for whose publication he had been eagerly waiting, he bought the volumes at seven pounds sterling, and this at a time when Kant, the privat-docent, was anything but well off, and when that amount of money meant more than it does now. That he also studied other works of Swedenborg besides the 'Arcana,' appears from a letter of Hamann to Scheffner, Nov. 10, 1784, where he mentions Swedenborg and Kant: 'As our Kant at that time prescribed to himself all the works of the Dreamer, so I had the patience to wade through the whole set of thick Quartos."
