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TESTIMONY OF EMANUEL KANT. 125
lady of quality, Madame de Knoblock, afterwards widow
of Lieut. -Gen. Klingsporn, Kant replied in the following
letter, dated Königsberg, August 10th, 1758 :
" I would not have deprived myself so long of the
honour and pleasure of obeying the request of a lady,
who is the ornament of her sex, in communicating the
desired information, if I had not deemed it necessary
previously to inform myself thoroughly concerning the
subject of your request. Permit me, gracious lady, to
justify my proceedings in this matter, inasmuch as it
might appear that an erroneous opinion had induced me
to credit the various relations concerning it without care
ful examination. I am not aware that any body has ever
perceived in me an inclination to the marvellous, or a
weakness approaching to credulity. So much is certain,
that, notwithstanding all the narrations of apparitions and
visions concerning the spiritual world, of which a great
number of the most probable are known to me, I have
always considered it to be most in agreement with the
rule of sound reason to incline to the negative side ; not
as if I had imagined such a case to be impossible,
although we know but very little concerning the nature
of a spirit, but because the instances are not in general
sufficiently proved. There arise, moreover, from the
incomprehensibility and inutility of this sort of pheno
mena, too many difficulties ; and there are, on the other
hand, so many proofs of deception, that I have never
considered it necessary to suffer fear or dread to come
upon me, either in the cemeteries of the dead, or in the
darkness of night. This is the position in which my
mind stood for a long time, until the accounts of Sweden
borg came to my notice.
"These accounts I received from a Danish officer, who
was formerly my friend, and attended my lectures ; and
who, at the table of the Austrian ambassador, Dietrich
stein, at Copenhagen, together with several other guests,
read a letter which the ambassador had lately received
from Baron de Lutzow, the Mecklenburg ambassador at
Stockholm ; in which he says, that he, in company with
the Dutch ambassador, was present, at the queen of
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