Kant returned to the theme in ‘Anthropologische Didaktik.’  He discusses the unconscious, or sub-conscious, which, till Sir William Hamilton lectured, seems to have been an absolutely unknown topic to British psychologists.  ’So ist das Feld dunkler Vorstellungen das groesste in Menschen.’  He has a chapter on ‘The Divining Faculty’ (pp. 89-93).  He will not hear of presentiments, and, unlike Hegel, he scouts the Highland second-sight.  The ‘possessed’ of anthropology are epileptic patients.  Mystics (Swedenborg) are victims of Schwaermerei.

This reference to Swedenborg is remarked upon by Schubert in his preface to the essay of Kant.  He points out that ’it is interesting to compare the circumspection, the almost uncertainty of Kant when he had to deliver a judgment on the phenomena described by himself and as to which he had made inquiry [i.e. in his letter re Swedenborg to Mlle. de Knobloch], and the very decided opinions he expressed forty years later on Swedenborg and his companions’ [in the work cited, sections 35-37.  The opinion in paragraph 35 is a general one as to mystics.  There is no other mention of Swedenborg].

On the whole Kant is interested, but despairing.  He wants facts, and no facts are given to him but the book of the Prophet Emanuel.  But, as it happened, a new, or a revived, order of facts was just about to solicit scientific attention.  Kant had (1766) heard rumours of healing by magnetism, and of the alleged effect of the magnet on the human frame.  The subject was in the air, and had already won the attention of Mesmer, about whom Kant had information.  It were superfluous to tell again the familiar story of Mesmer’s performances at Paris.  While Mesmer’s theory of ‘magnetism’ was denounced by contemporary science, the discovery of the hypnotic sleep was made by his pupil, Puysegur.  This gentleman was persuaded that instances of ‘thought-transference’ (not through known channels of sense) occurred between the patient and the magnetiser, and he also believed that he had witnessed cases of ‘clairvoyance,’ ‘lucidity,’ vue a distance, in which the patient apparently beheld places and events remote in space.  These things would now be explained by ’unconscious suggestion’ in the more sceptical schools of psychological science.  The Revolution interrupted scientific study in France to a great degree, but ‘somnambulism’ (the hypnotic sleep) and ‘magnetism’ were eagerly examined in Germany.  Modern manuals, for some reason, are apt to overlook these German researches and speculations. (Compare Mr. Vincent’s ’Elements of Hypnotism,’ p. 34.) The Schellings were interested; Ritter thought he had detected a new force, ‘Siderism.’  Mr. Wallace, in his preface to Hegel’s ‘Philosophie des Geistes,’ speaks as if Ritter had made experiments in telepathy.  He may have done so, but his ‘Siderismus’ (Tuebingen, 1808) is a Report undertaken for the Academy of Munich, on the doings of an Italian water-finder,