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Doc. 272.] 625
KANT’S LETTER TO KNOBLOCH.
in his work of 1766 Kant declared that the three extraor- C
dinary facts respecting Swedenborg had " no other foundation
than common report, which is very exceptionable" (p. 86) ;
while in his letter he gave two of these facts on the authority of
his English friend, who had carefully examined them on the spot.
We therefore consider it established that Kant’s letter to
Charlotte von Knobloch was not written in 1758, but in 1768 ;
and from our investigations, as given in Document 271, we
likewise consider it satisfactorily proved that the conflagration
in Stockholm happened, not in 1756 as is twice asserted in
Kant’s printed letter, but in 1759.
By whom this falsification was perpetrated, whether by
Kant himself or his biographers , we do not undertake to
determine here ; we content ourselves with having restored
its true dates to the following letter, which contains some of
the most important testimony preserved to us respecting two
of the extraordinary facts which are now engaging our attention :
IMMANUEL KANT242 TO CHARLOTTE VON KNOBLOCH.*
"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
careful examination. I am not aware that anybody has ever
perceived in me an inclination to the marvellous, or a weakness
.
tending 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
* The German original of this letter is contained in Borowsky’s "Dar
stellung des Lebens und Charakters Immanuel Kant’s," Königsberg, 1804,
pp. 211 to 225.
The first English translation of this letter was printed in the "Intellectual
Repository" for 1830, p. 53, to which, according to Mr. Noble, it was
furnished by the Rev. J. H. Smithson.
40
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