V.
EXTRACTS FROM PROFESSOR HEINZE'S "OBSERVATIONS ON KANT'S LECTURES ON METAPHYSICS."
As to the state of the soul after death Kant will say nothing with assurance, since the limits of our "reason" stop here. Nevertheless he speaks with more certainty than one would expect from this precaution!
After death the soul possesses self-consciousness, otherwise it would be the subject of spiritual death, which has already been disproved. With this self-consciousness necessarily remains personality and the consciousness of personal identity. This and the self-consciousness rest upon the inner sense which remains without body, and thus the personality remains.
But if the body is a hindrance to life and yet the future life be the perfect life, then it must be purely spiritual; the soul cannot therefore resume its body. If we ask as to the future place of the soul we are not to think of the separation of the soul from the body as a change of place, since the soul has no determined place in a corporeal world, and, in general, occupies no place, but is in the spiritual world and in communion with spirits.
If the soul is in the society of good and holy beings then it finds itself in heaven; if with the evil, then in hell. Thus the soul does not enter into hell if it has lived wickedly, but it will only now find itself in the society of evil spirits, and this is called being in hell; and so conversely with heaven.[1]
Similarly in the "Religion within the Bounds of the Pure
- ↑ Swedenborg, in "Heaven and Hell," says "That the Lord casts no one into hell, but evil spirits cast themselves in," &c. (545.)
