txbvaxy of <£he Cheolocjtcal gmimry 
 
 PRINCETON • NEW JERSEY 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2014 
 
 https://archive.org/details/outlinesofswedenOObeek 
 
Plate 1 
 
OUTLINES 
 
 SWEDEN BORG'S 
 COSMOLOGY 
 
 BY 
 
 LILLIAN G. BEEKMAN 
 
 bryn athyn, pa. 
 Academy Book Room 
 1907 
 
ACHEY & GORRECHT 
 PRINTERS 
 LANCASTER, PA. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Chapter I. page. 
 
 The Finiting of the Infinite i 
 
 God. the only substance, and origin of all created 
 substances, p. r. Swcdenborg's definitions of 
 universal*, p. 4. The accommodation of the In- 
 finite to the finite, p. 7. Production of Vortex 
 rings, p. 8. The First Natural Point, its product- 
 ive action and essential characteristics, p. 9. The 
 Primitives of the Spiritual Sun, p. 13. First 
 Finites, p. 19. Second Finites, p. 20. The first 
 Aura, p. 21. 
 
 Chapter II. 
 
 The Derivation of the First Substance of Creation. 23 
 A Resume, p. 23. The first atmosphere and it* 
 uses, p. 26. Its internal construction, p. 27. The 
 human spirituous fluid, p. 31. The simple fibre, 
 p. 33. The celestial cortex, p. 34. The Second 
 or Magnetic Aura, and its bullae, p. 38. The 
 accommodation of the Spiritual Sun. p. 41. The 
 volumes of the Second Aura. p. 42. Discrete 
 Degrees, p. 44. 
 
 Chapter II T. 
 
 Natural Suns and Planets 51 
 
 Third Finites and their origin, p. 54. The bulL-e of 
 the Second Aura, p. 58. Fourth Finites. p. 59. 
 The planetary masses, p. 61. The Satellites, p. 64. 
 
 iii 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 The Sun Spots, p. 65. Further development of 
 Planets and Satellites, p. 66. 
 
 Chapter IV. 
 
 The Natural Atmospheres and Water 72 
 
 The Solar Vortex, p. 72. The Active Solar Centre, 
 p. 78. Light, p. 79. Progress of the Earihs to 
 their Orbits, p. 84. The Third Aura, or Ether, 
 p. 86. The Fourth Aura or Air, p. 92. Origin 
 of the Water Molecule, p. 94. 
 
 Chapter V. 
 
 Salts and the Crust of the Earth. Protoplasm 98 
 
 The Centrifugal and the Centripetal Forces, p. 98. 
 The Compression of the Fourth Aura. p. 100. 
 The Primeval Ocean, p. 100. Formation of the 
 Salt Molecule, p. 101. The Ramenta of broken 
 Salt particles, p. 104. Primitives of Carbon, p. 
 104. First formation of Oils or Hydro-carbons, 
 p. 105. Origin of the Earth-crust, p. 106. The 
 Formative substance of the Vegetable Kingdom, 
 p. 108. The first Seed-soil, p. 109. Corroborative 
 Evidences, p. no. Growth of the Ear'h-crust, 
 p. 1 12. Protoplasm, p. 112. Life-formative func- 
 tions of the Ether, p. 114. Salt as the Con- 
 junctive of Oil and Water, p. 116. Rise of 
 Animalculate Life, p. 118. 
 
 Chapter VI. 
 
 The first Vegetative Formation, and its living Ser- 
 
 iv 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PACE. 
 
 vice in preparing an Atmosphere for breathing 
 
 creatures 121 
 
 The Divine in ultimates, p. 121. First vege- 
 tative forms, p. 124. Preparation of an Atmo- 
 sphere for Breathing, p. 128. The Aerial Salt, 
 p. 130. Its Identity with Oxygen, p. 132. 
 
 Chapter VII. 
 
 A Chapter in Geology 137 
 
 Rise of floating, vegetative Land. p. 137. First ap- 
 pearance of the Nitrogen family, p. 139. Silicon 
 and Carbon, p. 142. Evolution of the Halogens 
 and the Alkaline and Earthy Metals. Sweden- 
 borg's interpretation of the succession of early 
 Geological strata, p. 150. The Sub-saline layer, 
 and its connection with the Upheaval of moun- 
 tains, the action of Volcanoes, and the forma- 
 tion of Magnetic ores, p. 154. Diluvial cause of 
 what is misnamed Glacial Action and Glacial 
 Drift, p. 166. The production of Metals and me- 
 tallic Ores. p. 168. 
 
 v 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Plate i. Frontispiece. 
 
 Plate II. A Vortex Ring, illustrating the perpetually 
 
 spiral form and interior fluxion of flnites 18 
 
 Plate lir. A Bulla of the First Aura 28 
 
 Plate IV. A Bulla of the Second Aura 38 
 
 Plate V. The Solar Vortex 72 
 
 Plate VI. A Bulla of the Third Aura; or Ether 87 
 
 Plate VI 1. A Bulla of the Fourth Aura or Aerial 
 
 Elementary 92 
 
 Diagram, illustrating the series of Finites and Auras, 
 
 and their mutual relations 96 
 
 Plate VIII. Group of nine molecules of Water 102 
 
 Plate IX. The same group, with central molecule col- 
 lapsed 103 
 
 Plate X. The Salt Particle 103 
 
 vi 
 
WORKS BY SWEDENBORG 
 
 REFERRED TO IN THIS TREATISE BY ABBREVIATIONS OR BY FULL 
 TITLE. 
 
 A. C.--The Arcana Ccelestia. 
 
 Adv. — The Adversaria. 
 
 A. E. — The Apocalypse Explained. 
 
 A. K. — The Animal Kingdom. 
 
 Ath. Cr. — On the Athanasian Creed. 
 
 Chem. — The Principles of Chemistry. 
 
 C. L. — Conjugial Love. 
 
 Corp. Phil. — Corpuscular Philosophy. 
 De Eibra — CEconomia Regni Animalis, Transactio III. 
 (London 1847). 
 
 D. Love — On the Divine Love, (Appendix to the 
 
 Apocalypse Explained). 
 D. L. W. — The Divine Love and Wisdom. 
 D. P. — The Divine Providence. 
 
 D. Wis. — On the Divine Wisdom, (Appendix to (lie 
 
 Apocalypse Explained). 
 Doc. — Documents concerning Swedenborg, by R. L. 
 Tafel. 
 
 E. A. K. — The Economy of the Animal Kingdom. 
 H. H. — Heaven and Hell. 
 
 J. Post. — The posthumous work On the Last Judgment. 
 
 Lesser Principia— A forerunner to the Principia. 
 
 Misc. Obs. — Miscellaneous Observations. 
 
 On Copper — Vol. III. of Opera Philosophica et Min- 
 
 ERALIA. 
 
 vii 
 
WORKS BY S\VEDENBOR(J. 
 
 Post. Tracts — Posthumous Tracts. 
 
 Principia — Vol. I. of Opera Philosophica et Mineralia. 
 
 S. D. — The Spiritual Diary. 
 
 The Infinite — On the Infinite. 
 
 The Soul— Rational Psychology. 
 
 T. C. R. — The True Christian Religion. 
 
 Worsh. and Love of God— Worship and Love of God. 
 
 viii 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE FINITING OF INFINITY. 
 
 The First Finiting of Infinity is in the nature 
 of vortex rings small as points, produced in the 
 substance of the Infinite. These are the "natural 
 points" of Swedenborg's Principia, and the "sim- 
 ples" and "primitives" of his work On the Infinite. 
 They are the primitives of the Spiritual Sun. They 
 are "the Only Begotten." "the nexus," the Logos, 
 the seed of creation. 
 
 Around the Spiritual Sun are two successive radi- 
 ant belts ; these are the volumes of the first and sec- 
 ond finites. The third thing in succession is an 
 atmosphere, which is the atmosphere of the celestial 
 heaven and of the universe. By this atmosphere 
 the Lord is immediately and universally operative 
 and active in the spiritual world and in the natural. 
 
 God, who is Infinite, the Divine Esse, the I 
 Am, is substance in Itself, and as the Infinite and 
 the only substance, He is everywhere. There is no 
 place where He is not. Therefore the universe and 
 all the finite or bounded things thereof are brought 
 
 I 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 forth in Him. The universe is finited only in the 
 Infinite. 1 Hence there exists an apparent vacuum 
 which still is not a vacuum ; for an interstitial noth- 
 ing is not possible. What appears empty is filled 
 by the living Substance in Itself, the Divine which 
 Is. 2 Thus in God we live, and move and have our 
 being. 3 
 
 God wills to create finite, bounded, recipient 
 forms, individuals, which He can both infill, and 
 act upon. 4 God, by the predicates of His living 
 Esse, could not bring those recipient individuals 
 into existence by fiat. But He could form them 
 from small discrete particles of substance, or sub- 
 stantial, previously produced. 5 
 
 God, the Origin of created Substances. What 
 is the source of these substantial, these minimal, 
 first finited particles of substances, these primordial 
 substantials from which God creates His universe? 
 Since their creation by fiat, or from nothing, is pre- 
 cluded, 0 therefore the Infinite, the living expanse, 
 
 'Principia, part. III. chap. I. II. 
 2 J. Post. 265. D. L. W. 82. 
 
 -D. L. W. 30. E. A. K. part II. 238. A. E. 1121. 
 <D. L. W. 53- T. C. R. 30. 
 
 r 'D. Love. II. Principia part. I. chap. III. 7. D. P. 6. 
 A. E. 1 121 
 «D. L. W. 55, 282, 283. 
 
 2 
 
THE FINITING OF INFINITY. 
 
 Substance in Itself, must be the Source and Origin 
 of these minima of substance, of these primordial 
 leasts, which are to act as the seeds and primitives 
 of creation. There is no other substance from which 
 recipient forms may be created. 7 
 
 God, the Infinite Esse, must needs give of His 
 own substance to frame creation. This is the sac- 
 ramental gift, as of His flesh, to be the bread and 
 the flesh of His creatures. s 
 
 The primitive substantial of creation must be 
 formed from the substance of the Infinite Esse. 
 God must give portions of His own substance to 
 be the substantia prima from which He creates all 
 things. God, therefore, must first finite His In- 
 finity as a preparation for a universe. 
 
 The mode of the first finiting. The concept 
 of the accommodation of Infinity to finiteness, in 
 order that the finite may exist, arises here. How 
 can the Infinite God, who is Substance Itself, finite 
 His Infinity, without destroying His own non-finite- 
 ness? In what manner can the accommodation of 
 the Infinite to finiteness be given, without the es- 
 
 TD. P. 46. Principia. part I. chap. II. f. D. L. W. 282. 
 
 B Principia, part I. chap. II. 1. The Infinite, chap. I. sec. 
 III. 5. sec. IV. 2. D. Wis. I. A. E. 617. Ath. Cr. pages 8. 
 17. 19. 32. 41. 
 
 3 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 sential infringement of the Infinity of God, and of 
 His Infinite Oneness ? 
 
 This problem is perhaps the most central among 
 the problems of creation ; and the answer will qualify 
 all our thoughts of God the Creator, and of the re- 
 lation of the universe to Him. 
 
 Swedenborg approaches this problem directly ; 
 and the answer he gives impresses its stamp and 
 feature on his whole system of the universe. It un- 
 derlies as a very foothold the Theology of the New 
 Church, and is regnant in it from first to last. It 
 conditions alike the heavens and the earths, the or- 
 ganic and the inorganic kingdoms. 
 
 Swedenborg's Definitions. In following Swe- 
 denborg we approach this subject in a series of 
 comparative definitions of what is meant by Infinite 
 and finite: a series covering expanse, origin, dura- 
 tion, characteristics 'of substance, and activity or 
 motion. 
 
 These definitions are as follows : 
 
 Expanse, in relation to the Infinite signifies 
 that which is without bound, term, or limit ; when 
 predicated of the finite, it signifies that which is 
 comprised within definite terminations, that which 
 is of limited extense, bounded. 
 
 Origin cannot be predicated of the Infinite, since 
 as to substance the Infinite is sclf-existent ; is not 
 
 4 
 
THE FINITING OF INFINITY. 
 
 framed or put together of something in prior ex- 
 istence ; is not concreted from prior entities. But 
 origin is predicated of all finite entities: for a finite 
 is always framed or put together of parts already 
 existent; always owes its substance to something 
 else, to something prior to itself. 
 
 Neither can duration be predicated of the Infinite, 
 since it is without bound or term, without beginning 
 or end, always was, and is, and will be. But for all 
 finite entities there are distinct ages, epochs, periods 
 of time, prior to which they did not exist ; and an 
 hour in which they began to be formed. There is 
 also an hour in which they are broken up or come 
 to an end, their substance being scattered to enter 
 into combination with other particles, in other forms 
 of some other period of duration. For all created 
 entities or individuals, — save the universe as a 
 whole, solar systems, and man, — have such an end. 
 Animals have it. and almost all inorganic individua, 
 although the latter have the longest duration. 
 
 In respect to characteristic of substance, the In- 
 finite is one and indivisible. It does not consist of 
 parts, or is not compounded of smaller particles. It 
 is one purely continuous substance. 0 In it, infinite 
 things are distinctly One. 
 
 "Principia, part I. chap. II. I ; A. E. 1121 ; and in the 
 Writings passim. 
 
 5 
 
SWEDENBORG S COSMOLOGY. 
 
 The characteristic of finite substance is that it is 
 framed of myriads of distinct particles. It there- 
 fore consists of parts, or is compounded of smaller 
 discrete particles contiguous to each other. It is not 
 a continuous substance. 10 
 
 And finally in respect to activity or motion, the 
 Infinite is infinitely active. It is without any pass- 
 ivity or inertia. It is therefore frictionless. The 
 current of its motion, as it is in itself, never bounds, 
 never encloses, nor fihites, that is, never describes a 
 circle ; for to describe a circle of any diameter is to 
 describe and bound an area of that diameter. In- 
 finite motion cannot describe an area, or make an 
 enclosed field. 
 
 On the other hand a Uniting motion is a motion 
 the current of which defines or bounds, and dis- 
 covers lines of least resistance, of opposition, of re- 
 action with or against the current. The simplest 
 motion which describes a boundary is a circular 
 motion. Therefore a finiting motion is a circling 
 motion, or that which describes a circle or closed 
 field of some diameter. 11 The ideal of the circular 
 
 ]0 Principia, part I. chap. II. I. 8; chap. III. 7; The In- 
 finite, chap. I. sec. IV. 2, sec. XV. conclusion; chap. II. 
 sec. I. 6. 
 
 "Principia. part I. chap. II. 21 ; chap. IV. l8. part 2. 
 line 48. 
 
 6 
 
THE FINITING OF INFINITY. 
 
 motion, that which comprises in itself every type 
 and degree of circling motion, is the circulo-spiral, 
 or perpetually vortical motion. ♦ 
 
 The Accommodation of the Infinite to the 
 Finite. Under which of these five definitions can 
 we see possible a first accommodation of the In- 
 finite to the finite, a primal finiting of the Infinity of 
 God, which will not infringe upon the Infinity of the 
 Creator, and which will contain the seed adequate 
 to the purposes of creation ? 
 
 The accommodation of the Infinite to the finite, 
 under the first, second, and third heads, viz., under 
 expanse, origin, and duration, are at once negatived ; 
 on their faces they are absurd, impossible, and in- 
 competent to the purpose. 
 
 The accommodation of Infinity to finiteness under 
 the fourth head, namely, character of substance, is 
 also negatived. For since the Infinite, as Sub- 
 stance Itself, is a unity or a one, purely continu- 
 ous, the distinction and marking off of the portions 
 thereof, by any means involving severance, cutting 
 off. separation, while it would indeed finite the por- 
 tions so given and cut off, would also finite the re- 
 mainder ; and so in destroying the continuity of the 
 Infinite, it would essentially infringe upon the one- 
 ness of the Creating Substance. Moreover that 
 
 7 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 which is severed from its first is by that act anni- 
 hilated. 
 
 Under the fifth head, activity or motion, Sweden- 
 borg places the primal accommodation of the In- 
 finite to the finite, or the first finiting of Infinity. 
 Under this head alone accommodation is at once 
 possible without essential infringement of the non- 
 finiteness and unity of the Infinite, and adequate to 
 the purpose ; at once setting aside, distinguishing 
 and defining portions of the Infinite Substance to be 
 the substantia prima and see l of creation ; and by 
 the very mode of defining, imparting to the por- 
 tions thus defined and appropriated, certain active 
 powers of motion, capable of being a further means 
 to their self-composition or concretion into a series 
 of derivative finites, substantial, or substantiates ; 
 and abiding as a spring of reflexing motor force in 
 all things of creation forever. Moreover in finiting 
 by means of motion, there is no actual severance 
 from the substance of the Infinite. 
 
 The Production of Vortex Rings. The first 
 finiting of Infinity, is, according to Swedenborg, the 
 production of minimal and simplest points of circmo- 
 spiral motion, that is, the production of vortex rings, 
 small as points, in the Substance of the Infinite. 
 The interior conatus to circulation of these vortex 
 points is circulo-spiral ; so that the whole point is 
 
 8 
 
THE FINITING OF INFINITY. 
 
 not only in a vortex flow, but also gyres continually 
 around its own axis. 12 
 
 So long as the vortex flow of these minimal rings 
 is continued and sustained by the will of God, they 
 continue to exist as entities in the Substance of the 
 Infinite ; they continue in one aspect distinct and 
 bounded, enclosed and limited; that is, the circling 
 motion of their flow is a first delineation of finiting. 
 
 These simple minimal vortices were existent in 
 the Infinite before any finite or concrete entity had 
 existence. 13 They are to be called the medium be- 
 tween the Infinite and the finite. 14 They are not 
 only the primitives of the first substantial or com- 
 posites of creation, but they are its force and life. 15 
 They are immediately Divine and superlatively per- 
 fect. 10 In them are supremely involved the ends of 
 the universe, its human result, and the providence 
 of the future. 17 
 
 The Natural Point. The natural points, there- 
 
 12 Principia, part I. Chap. II. 12. 21. 22; Chap. III. 19. 
 13 Principia, part I. Chap. II. 8. 12. 
 14 Principia, part I. Chap. II. 10. 
 
 15 Principia, part I. Chap. III. 6. 7. II. 10; The Infinite, 
 Chap. I. sec. IV. 3. 
 
 10 Infinite, Chap. I. last page; Chap. I. sec. V. 
 
 17 The Infinite, Chap. I. sec. XI, 2. 3; Principia, part I. 
 Chap. II. 5. 
 
 9 
 
S\Y liDENEORG S COSMOLOGY. 
 
 fore, are the first substance and source of that which, 
 in its derivative composition, we call the created 
 universe. They are the inmost, the first and primi- 
 tive both of the spiritual world and of nature. 18 
 They are produced by the Infinite, and are the im- 
 mediate act of the Infinite finitiug itself by reactive 
 motion. They are in space without space ; for the 
 Infinite, prior to this first finiting, was everywhere 
 existent without space ; for space was not until the 
 lower finite came into existence, being simultaneous 
 and coincident with that act. They exist in all space 
 without space in relation to the Divine ; but in rela- 
 tion to derivative creation there is in them the first 
 beginnings and motions of space. Hence space and 
 time have their origin in God, who is in all space and 
 time without space and time. 19 
 
 The natural points or first simples are thus the 
 medium between the Infinite and the finite ; they are 
 the first entia, and in their multitude and activity 
 they so fill all the spaces of the universe that a 
 vacuum is precluded. Their composite is the first 
 substantial. 
 
 First substantiate are the first boundary of mat- 
 ter ; that is, they are the first of the series of concrete 
 
 18 Ath. Cr. page 41. 
 »T. C. R. 31. 
 
 IO 
 
THE FINITING OF INFINITY. 
 
 substances, the beginning and end of the Daedalian 
 thread from which the compound universe is woven. 
 In them the natural points or primitives become as 
 it were a part of nature, since nature begins with 
 them. For the natural points have in them an end 
 and purpose toward the creation of man, for the 
 sake of whom nature is. with all its suns and stars 
 and solar systems. 
 
 For the leasts and greatests of every series 
 mutually regard each other, and have coincident ex- 
 istence in the Creative Will. Thus the least vorticles 
 of motion regard the greatest ; the motion of singu- 
 lars regards the motion of mass ; the motion of 
 natural points regards solar centres and systems ; 
 and both together, operating as one in God, regard 
 the production of man, as a sensitive microcosm, 
 loving God and reacting to Him. 
 
 Tnii productive Action of these Natural 
 Points is as follows: — 
 
 The perpetually vortex conatus in the natural 
 points, or first simples of finition, is such that it sets 
 these points into a local motion or gyre, of a pat- 
 tern emulous of its interior circulation. This is of 
 immense importance since it involves the law and 
 the pattern of all the derivative production of the 
 
 20 Principia, part I. Cliap. II. 22. 
 
 II 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 series of finites or substantials. 20 And from this it 
 is that all things which involve an end, constitute a 
 circle. 21 
 
 All the motion of these simples is thus perpetu- 
 ally reflexive or circular, all their action, all the 
 lines in which they flow. For what they are within, 
 that they do, that they act. That which is the pattern 
 of their interior conatus or endeavor, that they re- 
 produce in all their derivative motions. 22 
 
 Moreover, the perpetually reflexive flow of these 
 vortex points, these primitives and simples of frui- 
 tion, involves something deeper, more living still. 
 In them is present in very figure and embodiment 
 the image which manifests the inmost action of 
 love, of love as a substance. For all love tends to 
 return as a circle to the source from which it came. 23 
 And love exists as a substance in God the Creator. 24 
 There is thus a conatus in each thing of creation to 
 return to its source. Therefore the primitive force 
 in a simple is most perfectly adaptable and modi- 
 fiable along all human building lines ; for the In- 
 finite is capable of varying it in infinite ways. 25 
 
 21 A. K. 260. note s. 
 
 22 Principia, part I. Chap. III. 19 part 2. 
 "Divine Love X. 2. 
 2 *T. C. R. 76. 
 
 2r, Principia, part III. Chap. II. 4. parts 2. 3. 
 
 12 
 
THE FINITING OF INFINITY. 
 
 Moreover in this perpetually reflexive, or circulo- 
 vortical flow, all powers afterwards manifested in 
 mechanics are actively infolded. 25 
 
 It is indeed this perpetually circling character, 
 both of their interior conatus. and of their operation, 
 in which resides the power which enables the primi- 
 tives, which are the first finiting of Infinity, to com- 
 posite themselves, to flow together into new com- 
 pound entities, substantial, or finites; 27 into sub- 
 stantials or finites of definite form, size, power of 
 permanent cohesion, and of derivative motion ; 2S and 
 in fact into substantial of definite powers to produce 
 a series of such substantial, or finites. or concrete 
 corpuscles, of five descending grades or degrees. 29 
 
 The Primitives of the Spiritual Sun. This 
 series of finites or substantial originating in the 
 primitives, points, or simples of the Principia, 30 are 
 the same with the substantiates originating from 
 the primitives of the Spiritual Sun. 31 In the per- 
 petually refiexing conatus of the points or simples 
 of finition, all those things have their in-being, which 
 
 "Principia, part I. Chap. III. 24. 26; Chap. IV. iS. 
 27 Principia, part I. Chap. III. 1-6. 
 28 Principia, part I. Chap. III. 11. 12. 14. 
 "Principia, part I. Chap. IV. 2. 5. 16. 
 3°Part I. Chap. III. 2; Chap. IV. 2. 5. 16 
 »D. P. 6. T. C. R. 33 
 
 13 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 exist throughout the scries of finites or substan- 
 tiates, successively compounding themselves, even to 
 the most gross and ultimate, such as we see exist- 
 ing in the world. 82 
 
 The importance of this conatus and potcnev of 
 circular motion in the primitives or vortex points, is 
 seen when we consider that the primitives and firsts 
 of finition constitute what is called the Spiritual Sun, 
 which is the prime substance, the first finiting of 
 the Infinity of God, the primitives of which are given 
 to be primordial seeds of creation. 33 The intrinsic 
 circulo spiral motion of these primitives of the Spirit- 
 ual Sun, therefore, acts as the instrumental means in 
 compounding the series of derivative substantiates 
 or finites ; a series composed of five distinct grades 
 of composite vortex-ring corpuscles, destined for 
 distinct grades of use, both in the composition of 
 the successive degrees of auras or atmospheres, and 
 in the composition of distinct degrees of structure 
 in recipient organic formis, reactive or reflexive to 
 the Divine. 
 
 Thus by means of the perpetually reflexive mo- 
 tion inhering in the primitives of the Spiritual Sun, 
 that is, in the firsts or simples of uniting, a series 
 
 32 Principia, Part I. Chap. III. 13. 
 "T. C. R. 27. 33- 
 
 14 
 
THE FINITING OF INFINITY. 
 
 of substantial* or fmites is produced, or concreted, 
 by which the substances and forces of the universe 
 are successively finited "more and more."' 
 
 Moreover, it is from this perpetually reflexive im- 
 petus, in the primitives or simples of the Spiritual 
 Sun, and derived from them into all their composites 
 or substantiate, — embodying the generic impulse of 
 love as a substance in God, — that the elementaries 
 or active atmospheres derive their peculiar and char- 
 acteristic habit and nature of motion which is al- 
 ways circular. So that the very reaction of the 
 auras to any action, or beginning, or centre of in- 
 citing force, is always to run into a vortex or circ- 
 ling gyre ; 34 nor do they ever move by other than 
 circling lines. 85 
 
 It is from the same primitive substantial cause 
 that animate forms are characterized by some kind 
 of interior circulation ; 3e for the order and round of 
 the bloods arises from this deep and living conatus 
 in the leasts of the substances from which they are 
 framed. 
 
 There is an emulation of a circulation even in the 
 non-animate kingdom. Vegetables have it ; the mole- 
 
 8 *Principia, part I. 25. Chap. II ; chap. III. 26, 27. 
 35 Principia. part I. Chap. VI. 33, 37, 38, 39; part II. 
 Chap. I. I. 2; A. K. 288. note t. 260. note s. 
 3«D. Wis. X. 3. 
 
 r 5 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 cules of the mineral kingdom have it, and crystals 
 themselves strive toward it internally. 37 Moreover, 
 in order that the molecules of the mineral kingdom 
 may not exhale and emanate themselves out of ex- 
 istence, by the ethers which flow through the mole- 
 cular pores and channels, as bloods through vessels, 
 there is a perpetual renewal of the form, and a per- 
 petual giving forth of effluvial spheres, as its con- 
 tribution to the finer uses of the world. That which 
 has not some type of circulation does not exist, or 
 swiftly ceases to exist, dissolves, dissipates. Thus 
 the primitives of the Spiritual Sun by means of 
 their circling motion give some stamp and feature 
 of themselves upon every substantiate form, derived 
 or moulded from them, — the image of the Divine 
 Love going forth and returning to Itself. 
 
 The essential Characteristics of the Nat- 
 ural Point. The firsts of primordial finiting, the 
 simples and natural points of the Principia, stand- 
 ing as intermediate between the Infinite and the 
 finite, 38 arc the same with the primitives and simples 
 of the work On the Infinite.™ These primitives and 
 simples are there called the nexus between the In- 
 finite and the finite. The name they are known by 
 
 "T. C. R. 499- 
 
 38 Principia, part I. Chap. II. 10. 12. 
 39 Chap. I. sec. IV. 2. 
 
 16 
 
THE FINITING OF INFINITY. 
 
 in the Sacred Scriptures, is the Only Begotten, the 
 Son from eternity. 40 They are themselves infinite.* 1 
 They are the first creative essence mentioned in the 
 Spiritual Diary, (n. 4847), Itself Divine or Infinite, 
 and Man in conatus or beginning, (fieri), or Man 
 reflcxivelv. They are therefore the "Divine Es- 
 sence." related to the Infinite Esse, as the Essence 
 is related to the Esse, in the True Christian Re- 
 ligion (nos. 18, 36). They are the Existere of God 
 Man described in Divine Love and Wisdom (n, 14) ; 
 in whom Esse and Existere arc one, yet one distinct- 
 ly ; the Esse being the soul of God Man, the Ex- 
 istere His Divine Body. Of the Divine Essence the 
 Spiritual Sun consists : 42 and it is alive. 43 
 
 These simples, primitives, or points, are therefore 
 not dead, but are living, life itself, Infinite. They 
 are not the fortuitous points "of no predication and 
 therefore not in themselves anything," nor the atoms 
 of Epicurus, nor the monads of Leibnitz, nor the 
 simple substances of Wolf ; and so are not what is 
 condemned in the True Christian Religion, n. 20, and 
 Divine Providence , n. 6. 44 They are the Infinites 
 
 40 Infinite, Chap. I. sec. X. 3, 4. 
 "Ibid. 
 
 «T. C. R. 29. 
 «D. L. W. 163-166. 
 
 "See also Infinite. Chap. I. sec. IV. 8, 49; E. A. K. 
 part I. 612. 618. 622. part II. 242. 
 
 17 
 
SWEDEN BORG's COSMOLOGY. 
 
 of God Man, and the origin of the finites of the uni- 
 verse.* 6 They are the seeds of the universe, the sole 
 substance of which all substances are made. 10 They 
 involve supremely all the human end of creation, 
 sustainment, providence, redemption. 47 For ends 
 are in the Spiritual Sun, causes in the spiritual 
 world, and effects in the natural world ; 48 en is are 
 then Infinite. Hence in the finiting conatus of the 
 points or simples, all the human ends of the created 
 universe have their in-being, and arc supremely in- 
 volved and embodied in them ; while their derivative 
 activity or motion presents as in a figure the uni- 
 versal endeavor of love to return as by a circle to 
 its source. 
 
 Moreover, as has already been indicated, the cir- 
 cling figure of the motion of the primitives is the 
 sole instrumentality needed, to enable them to 
 conflow together by myriads, and impel them 
 to coalesce into compound vortex ring corpuscles. 
 These are the substantial, substantiates, or finites. 49 
 
 45 D. L. YV. 17, 155, 169. Principia, part III, Chap. I. 1. 
 
 "Infinite, Chap. I. sec. IV. 2. 4. 5; Principia, part I. 
 Chap. II. 20; Chap. III. 2. 6. 7- D. L. W. 300. 
 
 ♦"Infinite, Chap. I. sec. IV. 4. 5. sec. V. 17. compared 
 with sec. XI. 2. 3. and sec. XIV. 5. 
 
 4S D. L. W. 154- 
 
 "Principia, part [. Chap. III. D. P. 6. 
 
 18 
 
THE FINITING OF INFINITY. 
 
 Here the finite really begins. For the derivative 
 corpuscles or substantiate are concrete, but the com- 
 ponent primitive points, or simples are not. There- 
 fore the latter arc not to be called finite, but only 
 the first of Uniting, or the intermediate, or nexus, 
 between the Infinite and the finite, as was shown 
 above. 
 
 These finest concrete substantials. or first finites, 
 are only less perfect than the pure simples or prim- 
 itives themselves, of which they are the first and 
 only direct production. For while the primitives 
 are "immediately Divine.'' the first finites or sub- 
 stantials are only mediately Divine through the 
 primitives or simples. 50 
 
 The First Fixites, or simplest concrete substan- 
 tials, are bodies of a vortex ring form ; each com- 
 posed of great numbers of primitives bound to- 
 gether into a cohering aggregate corpuscle by their 
 common circling motion. 
 
 These finites have an interior circulation coincid- 
 ing with the reflective endeavor and activity of 
 the primitives, which is actually produced by the 
 flow of those primitives in them. From this interior 
 circulation they have, all of them, a derivative en- 
 deavor and potency of local motion, of the same 
 
 50 Infinite, Chap. II. sec. I ; Chap. I. last page. 
 
 19 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 general reflexive or perpetually circling type as the 
 motion of the primitives. For with them also, "as 
 is their interior circulation, so they do, so they move, 
 so they act.'' But the diameter of this composite 
 substantial is vastly larger, and its velocity of motion 
 and momentum in collision, is greatly less than that 
 of tli c primitives. 
 
 Thus originated the first substantial composites 
 from the primitives of the Spiritual Sun, produced 
 in a volume vast enough to fill the universe. And as 
 it were instantly in and from their volume, by means 
 of their own circling motions among each other, a 
 myriad volume of second substantiate was formed, 
 swinging on towards the production of an aura or 
 atmosphere or volume of bullae, in which was at- 
 tained the first equilibrated rest of creation. 51 
 
 The Second Finite. The second substantiate 
 are related to the first, as the first to the primitives. 
 And although they are of like generic form, interior 
 circulation and derivative power of circling or or- 
 bital motion, these second unites arc still larger, still 
 more finited, move in still larger orbits, have less 
 velocity of movement, and a weakened force of 
 penetrative impact. 
 
 These are the second successives of accommoda- 
 
 51 Principia, part I. Chap. VI. 5. 
 
 20 
 
THE FINITING OF INFINITY. 
 
 tion and finiting, produced from the primitives 
 of the Spiritual Sun. And the volumes of the first 
 and second finites are the two radiant belts under 
 the Spiritual Sun, above the angelic heaven. 52 The 
 corresponding belts below the natural sun are the 
 volumes of third and fourth finites, which are the 
 primitives of the family of metals. The fifth finites 
 are formed near the earth, and are able to exist only 
 in the vicinage of earths. 
 
 The First Aura. Next in order after the first 
 and second degrees of finiting, or the creation of 
 volumes of first and second finites, follows the for- 
 mation of the first atmosphere, or the first plane of 
 the Divine as to Use, — the first and universal aura 
 of the Principia, the Infinite and the Economy, — 
 the first created volume of elastic bullular forms. 
 
 This is the third successive under the Spiritual 
 Sun, 53 the third thing brought forth ; the atmosphere 
 at once of the celestial heaven, and of the whole uni- 
 verse ; the particular atmosphere by which the Lord 
 is present, as in firsts so in lasts ; as within so with- 
 out; as in heavens immediately so also immediately 
 in all His world. 34 It is the first proceeding of the 
 
 5 =A. C. 7270. H. H. 120. 
 "A. C. 7270. 
 
 64 A. C. 7270. 7004. 3627. T. C. R. 63. 70. E. A. K. part 
 I. 635; part II. 312. 339. 
 
 21 
 
SWEDENBOfiG S COSMOLOGY. 
 
 Lord, formed as use or atmosphere, going forth and 
 filling both worlds, the spiritual and the natural, 
 operating the effects of the ends of creation ; for it 
 is the supreme conjugial sphere. 68 In accordance 
 with this we find that the human formative sub- 
 stance, the soul, the human internal, the human 
 spirituous fluid, which receives the influx of the life 
 of God, is formed from and in this aura. 50 And 
 moreover this first aura describes a vortex and uni- 
 verse embracing and directing all other vortices or 
 universes ; and it is that supreme aura without which 
 the minutest forms could not be held together in 
 connection ; nor could effects flow from their first 
 causes, according to the order of nature. 57 
 
 "C. L. 386. T. C. R. 63. 70. 
 
 s«E. A. K. part II. 168. 221. 228. 245. 
 
 S7 E. A. K. part II. 272. 312. 
 
 22 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE DERIVATION OF THE FIRST 
 SUBSTANCE OF CREATION. 
 
 A Rhsume. We have already shown that the In- 
 finite Esse is Substance in Itself, that it does not 
 consist of a sum of bounded particles, that it is a 
 purely continuous substance, 58 but that creation be- 
 gins with myriads of minimal leasts finited in the 
 Substance of the Infinite. These primal points are 
 afterwards massed, concreted, arranged by God into 
 forms or individua, and held together by Him. For 
 to create is not only to cause to be. or to bring into 
 existence, but afterwards to hold together. 
 
 Tbe first finiting of Infinity, then, is the produc- 
 tion of vortico-spiral rings of motion, small as 
 points, in the substance of the Infinite ; these are the 
 primitives of the Spiritual Sun, and the seeds of the 
 universe from which all creation is framed by God. 
 
 The only finiting in the substance of the Infinite, 
 possible to take place without severance or infringe- 
 ment of the Substantial Unity of God, is a finiting 
 by means of motion which delineates a boundary 
 
 "A. E. 1 121. 
 
 23 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 and encloses and marks an area ; and the simplest 
 motion that can enclose and bound an area, is a 
 circling motion. The ideal and fulness of a circling 
 motion is the circulo-spiral, or perpetual vortical. 
 In it are summed all possible circling motions of all 
 degrees and types ; and in it all the powers of Me- 
 chanics, both active and passive, exist in potency. 
 
 We have also observed that Love in God is a sub- 
 stance, and that the nature £>f all love is perpetually 
 to return as in a circle to its source. Hence the 
 activity of love as a substance flows into recircling 
 lines ; supremely so in the primitives and firsts of 
 finiting, which embody, and are, the creative love of 
 God in immediate outgo, activity, and gift. And all 
 things framed and concreted thereof show feature 
 of a like reflexing potency and activity. 
 
 It is from this ground, and no other, that all the 
 atmospheres, which are four, successively formed, 
 move by circling and recircling lines. At every 
 touch they flow into such lines ; nor can they move, 
 act, or react, in any other way or path. The celes- 
 tial atmosphere, or first aura, has this character es- 
 sentially ; and the others, though grosser in consti- 
 tution, are not much behind it in their aptitude to 
 run into vortices and circuits at every touch, 
 stimulus, or strain acting upon them. It is their 
 form of reaction. 
 
 24 
 
FIRST SUBSTANCE. 
 
 In the organic world it is the same. It is from the 
 same deep cause in the perpetually reflexing or cir- 
 cling motion in these seeds of creation, (supremely 
 involving as they do the living ends of the created 
 universe), that bloods arise and are established, and 
 circulations run their rounds. The vegetative world 
 also partakes in this gyre and power. And the min- 
 eral world has its emulation thereof. Even the dust 
 of the ground is framed and compacted of the prim- 
 itives of the Spiritual Sun. For there is no other 
 substance given of which creation is formed. And 
 the striving and tendency of these primitives of the 
 Spiritual Sun, from which they are made, is in 
 them, even in their far off concreteness. 
 
 We have also seen that the points or primitives of 
 the Spiritual Sun are not inert, nor quiescent. And 
 what they are in conatus, the like they are in ac f . 
 They gyre about among themselves perpetually, in 
 reflexing, recircling orbits, patterned after their 
 inner endeavor. This circling and reflexing mo- 
 tion, pattern of their own interior conatus and flow, 
 is the very thing, the very power and action, which 
 carries the endeavor of creative love to farther ulti- 
 mation, governs the form of that ultimation, acts in 
 it as the spring of new and emulous endeavor, and 
 serves as the efficient instrument of the orderly con- 
 fluence and composition of the primitives into a 
 
 25 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 series of derivative finites or substantiate of five 
 grades or degrees. 59 But as they are produced in a 
 series, they ever increase in size, with lessening 
 velocity and penetrative force of impact; although 
 the larger they arc. the larger is the diameter of the 
 vortical orbit they circle. By this series of derivative 
 substantiate the universe is successively finited more 
 and more. 
 
 The First Atmosphere and its Uses in the 
 Macrocosm and Microcosm. The third thing 
 brought forth from the Spiritual Sun, is an atmo- 
 sphere. This is the first atmosphere or aura, the 
 third successive, received into the celestial heaven, 
 and extended throughout the universe to the ulti- 
 mates thereof. 00 For that which proceeds from the 
 inmost extends everywhere. 01 This is the Divine 
 proceeding from the Lord, which is called the 
 sphere or atmosphere, 62 which fills both worlds, the 
 spiritual and the natural, which operates the effects 
 of those ends which the Lord predestined at crea- 
 tion, and for which He provides ever since the crea- 
 tion, — the very conjugial itself. For from this aura 
 
 8B Principia, part T. Chap. IV. 18. par. 2. 3. 4. 
 60 A. C. 7270. 
 "A. C. 10188. 
 82 C. L. 386. 
 
 26 
 
FIRST SUBSTANCE. 
 
 and in it is generated the human soul, by which the 
 Lord weaves the organic man. 03 
 
 This first atmosphere, proximate to the Spiritual 
 Sun, is of the very essence of that Sun. 64 It is the 
 first aura of the Principia and the Economy, with- 
 out which no effects could flow from their first causes 
 according to order. 65 Generated from this first or 
 universal aura, the human soul receives the life of 
 God immediately ; and in this is the ground of hu- 
 man immortality. 68 For the Lord enters with it, 
 frames, sustains, and dwells within the human or- 
 ganism or individual forever. 
 
 This aura, then, is the plane and determinant of 
 the soul, or human spirituous fluid, or human forma- 
 tive substance, which therefore derives from this 
 aura, or first atmosphere of the universe, its own 
 power of forming, by descent and derivation, all the 
 degrees of the human form in mind and body. 67 
 
 Moreover, as is the rank, use, and office of the 
 formative substance in the microcosm, so is the 
 rank, use, and office of the first aura in the macro- 
 cosm. 68 
 
 "Compare C. L. 204 and 183. 
 
 "D. L. W. 300. 
 
 65 E. A. K. Part II. 272. 
 
 « 6 E. A. K. part II. 245. 352. 168. 300. 350. 
 
 "E. A. K. part I. 635. 636. 
 
 « S E. A. K. part II. 228. 221. 274. 276 
 
 27 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 This first aura, third from the primitives of flni- 
 tion, from the Spiritual Sun, in one sole unique 
 volume fills the extense of the universe. 69 It is the 
 universal atmosphere by which the Lord is imme- 
 diately present and immanent alike in the universe 
 as He is in heaven ; and acts alike upon and in the 
 lasts of order, as upon and in the firsts ; without 
 which indeed there would be no sustentative ground 
 in the universe for the Lord's immediate presence 
 and operation in all things from first to last. 70 
 
 As belonging to the human conjugial sphere, or 
 being that sphere, 71 it is the very sphere of religion 
 itself, and of the Church; and it is that universal 
 sphere or atmosphere of the Divine as to use or 
 operation, which fills all the natural world and all 
 the spiritual world, and elevates all to heaven. 71 
 Being the most universal and most elevated of all, 
 it is that by which all things are created, sustained, 
 and held together, and which effects all arrange- 
 ments into order. It is both creation and provi- 
 dence. 73 It is that primal plane of the Divine pro- 
 
 60 E. A. K. part II. 312. 339; Principia, part I. Chap. VI. 
 39- 50. 
 
 ™A. C. 7270. 
 
 71 C. L. 222-225, 386-397, 434 ct seq. 
 
 "T. C. R. 652. 
 
 "A. C. 6483. 6482. 6338. 
 
 28 
 
FIRST SUBSTANCE. 
 
 ceeding, formed as atmosphere, by which the 
 heavens were created, and all the worlds of the uni- 
 verse. 74 
 
 The internal Construction of the First 
 Aura. The first aura is not in the nature of a third 
 substantiate or finite, or a new, larger, more com- 
 pounded vortex-ring corpuscle. It is a combination 
 of the two grades of finites already in existence, the 
 first and second. These two compounded make a 
 finest bullular or foam-like form, very flexible, very 
 elastic, constituting a volume or sphere, extended in 
 the Infinite, vast enough to fill the universe. 
 
 The walls or envelopes of the particles or bullae 
 of this aura are formed of the second grade of finites 
 or substantial, set side by side, operating in long re- 
 circling lines. Within this envelope, certain un- 
 combined first finites play in their free reflexive ac- 
 tivity. They are called the first actives. These in- 
 terior active spaces are the souls of the bullae; the 
 envelopes which encircle and finite the active spaces 
 are the bodies of the bullae. 
 
 This elastic bullular aura is the first form created 
 that is able to transmit light, for it is the first form 
 that is capable of elastic reciprocation. And the 
 whole volume of this marvellous aura, in its whole 
 
 74 Ath. Cr. page 41 ; A. E. 726. 
 
 29 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 and in each bulla, is kept forever in the stream and 
 rhythm of the life of God Man, and everywhere 
 beats and pulsates with the cardiac motion of the 
 Spiritual Sun. 
 
 These two things, the bullular structure and the 
 perpetual expansion and contraction, characterize 
 every atmosphere or aura, from the first to the last. 
 All the planes of the Divine proceeding from the 
 Spiritual Sun, formed successively into four auras, 
 are bullular or foam-like structures ; and all are 
 kept in a rhythmic beating of alternate expan- 
 sion and contraction. Although the bullae are suc- 
 cessively larger, and the cardiac beating increas- 
 ingly reluctant and slow in the descending series, 
 yet all four of the auras are kept forever in the 
 stream of such alternate expansion and contraction, 
 or they would lose their pristine elementary or atmo- 
 spheric character. 75 But this animatory motion is 
 derived to each aura, or the bullae thereof, direct or 
 indirect from its source in the Spiritual Sun. The 
 one and universal volume of the first aura derives this 
 motion from the Spiritual Sun immediately. The 
 second aura derives it mediately through the natural 
 sun ; the third through the second aura, and the 
 fourth through the third. 
 
 75 A. K. 392, note o. 
 
 30 
 
FIRST SUBSTANCE. 
 
 In the first atmosphere, which, as we have said, is 
 the third successive from the primitives of finking, 
 all these things are in their supreme, and as it were 
 incomprehensible to the lower sensory and thought ; 
 so elevated and so active are they. 76 Yet we may 
 conceive of it, by elevation of thought, as a marvel- 
 lous pulsating aura, extended through the universe, 
 spiritual and natural, in volume wide as creative 
 thought and operation, brought forth in the Infinite 
 Esse of God ; everywhere throbbing, and in all its 
 bullae beating in and out, in rhythm with the Spirit- 
 ual Sun, where the cardiac and pulmonic motion of 
 the Divine acts perpetually. It is from this won- 
 drous protoplasm of the universe, this living plasm, 
 this homo-plasm, that we are given to understand 
 that the created universe is organic. 77 And, as we 
 have already seen, the origin of the human organic 
 form is in this universal aura, and the human spirit- 
 uous fluid, the human formative substance, is gen- 
 erated from it, even in all men on every earth. 
 
 This Human Spirituous Fluid, the human in- 
 ternal, is not a mind, it is not a body ; it is a blood, 
 supremely fluent, a sublime essence, the life itself 
 of man. It is not our own, although it forms, 
 builds, makes us men, and holds us individual and 
 
 T6 E. A. K. Part I. 635; part II. 312; De Fibra. 290. 
 "S. D. 3576. 3577. 
 
 31 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 one. It is wise for us, elevates, sustains, and strives. 
 It is the Lord with us, since it lives the life of God, 
 ami not our own. 78 By it the Lord is immediately 
 present with and in mpn, whether he be in heaven 
 or hell; though the man live at one side of the 
 universe or the other, be bodied upon our little 
 earth, or on an earth in the remotest bound of the 
 universe. In it all who are human, all in the uni- 
 verse, are one. For the aura which generates it is 
 one and universal, and looks and acts to one uni- 
 versal end. 70 It is as wise in the unborn babe as in 
 the sage." 0 Though suns and solar systems be dis- 
 persed, it would remain unharmed, as the aura that 
 gave it birth. 81 It flows as life and light into every 
 plane of our minds, having all the wisdom of crea- 
 tion connate in it, the abundance of which shall be 
 ours, so soon as we present the cups meet to be 
 filled with such wine. 82 And it flows into the whole 
 body, also, and all the viscera, with instant and 
 immediate providence. 
 
 7S S. D. 2829, 2835. 2836. E. A. K. part I. 311, part II 
 238. 390. 
 
 ™E. A. K. pari II. 294; T. C. R. 366. 
 »E. A. K. part II, 294; The Soul, 134; T. C. R. 166-169. 
 R1 Adv. 919. K. A. K. part II. 350. 
 8 -E. A. K. part IT. 29-). 29:. 293. 296-298; T. C. R. 154- 
 366; S. D. 4016. 
 
 32 
 
FIRST SUBSTANCE. 
 
 Such are the qualities, the predicates, the rank, 
 the office, of the human spirituous fluid or sou 1 , as 
 given in the Economy, the Animal Kingdom, and 
 the Principia. Such in the succession from the In- 
 finite is the rank, office, and predication of the 
 primal aura in the scheme of God's creation of the 
 univers?. 
 
 This human spirituous fluid, in its circling outgo 
 and return, outlines all the vessels and structures of 
 the four degrees of human faculties. 83 It is not a 
 brain, nor a fibre, tissue or membranous structure, 
 or a mind, but it is verily a fluid, a blood, and thus 
 Swedenborg calls it an essence. It is above imagina- 
 tion. It partakes of Life. It is far above the "ana- 
 tomical sphere." It is the motive and determinant 
 principle, the life and essence of all our human 
 form. 84 Swedenborg says, "words fail us to express 
 what it is, for words are taken from a lower sphere." 
 Still we must use words; and the use of the term 
 fluid or blood marks a necessary distinction, since 
 we know the distinction between a fluid and its ves- 
 sel, or between blood and tissue, between the con- 
 tent and the containant. 
 
 The Simple Fibre. This flowing human in- 
 
 « S E. A. K. part II. 283. 284. 289. 291. 292. 
 "The Soul, 159; De Fibra, 249, 252, 269; E. A. K. 
 part II. 311. 
 
 33 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 ternal, however, this human spirituous fluid and soul, 
 is not the whole organic stake which the human 
 form possesses in the first aura. From a portion of 
 the substance of its own flowing stream, compressed, 
 condensed, it forms as it were the analogue of a 
 tunic or vessel, to clothe and garment its streaming 
 substance. It gives a portion of its own self sub- 
 stance to be used to frame a reflexing containant 
 vessel, which becomes something like a membrane.* 5 
 This tunic is sensitive, alive, wonderful. 89 and is as 
 to substance a compressed and compacted form of 
 that supreme fluid, which "is perfectly alive in all 
 its singulars or individual parts. 87 
 
 This is the most eminent fibril or tunic, wonderful 
 beyond measure or imagination, which transmits the 
 human formative substance, the human spirituous 
 fluid ; and from which all other forms and substances 
 of the human organism, sensitive or motor, receive 
 the form of their existence. 88 
 
 The Celestial Cortex. The first determination 
 or use, which the human internal or soul makes of 
 this fibril, is to weave therewith the sensitive and 
 motor organism of a plane of supereminent faculty ; 
 
 BS E. A. K. part II. 296. 297. 
 8G De Fibra, 250, et scq. 
 8 "E. A. K. part II. 352. 
 88 De Fibra, 249-256. 
 
 34 
 
FIRST SUBSTANCE. 
 
 an organic structure and faculty of celestial mind and 
 life ; to become its own immediate consort on the 
 plane of the first aura, — a sort of celestial cortex, as 
 it •were, a simple full celestial brain, to act as its 
 own proximate correspondent, its own form an^ 
 body. 89 
 
 This is the human faculty, the supra-mental 
 faculty, the celestial, which the human soul forms 
 first, — the celestial cortex founded in the first aura 
 as the eye is founded in the ether, or the ear is found- 
 ed in the air, as the universal human is founded in 
 God. And because this is the first form of the hu- 
 man, which the Lord creates after the very soul 
 itself, without which no other human organic is de- 
 termined, no cortical glands, no fibres, nor weaving 
 body, 00 therefore, this inmost or celestial cortex 
 may be called the first organic, or membranous hu- 
 man plane, where finite bounded man first begins to 
 be man, existent, objectized, recipient. This also is 
 given in the father's seed. 91 
 
 Since this celestial faculty, this inmost human 
 cortex, exists in all human beings in the universe, 
 
 "The Soul, 127. 128. 166. 
 00 The Soul, 134. 126. 
 
 •'Posthumous Tracts: Origin and Propagation of the 
 Soul, Chap. II. 
 
 35 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 the way to it may be opened, 02 and man may live 
 the celestial life, or belong- to the celestial heaven. 
 And as the first aura, in which the life of this cor- 
 tex is founded, is one and universal for all earths 
 and solar systems of the created universe, so all 
 men from all earths, in whom this degree of the hu- 
 man organism is opened, dwell in one common 
 heaven. 93 
 
 This simple cortex, or simple cortical substance 
 is the truly celestial form. 94 It is the simplest, 
 purest, most eminent of all the organs, and at the 
 same time the supreme sensitive and compositive of 
 the human form. 98 It is, as a faculty, as wise in the 
 embryo as in the adult and the sage. 04 
 
 In all the operations of the cerebellum, and in the 
 cerebrum itself during sleep, every force begins in 
 the simple cortex, the celestial organic, or pure in- 
 tellect. A defect alone of instrumental causes, or 
 intermediates, hinders its full act in the cerebrum, 
 during waking hours. 97 It cannot be instructed from 
 below or from the outside, for it is already full of 
 
 » 2 The Soul, 155. 
 B3 A. C. 6701, 7078. 
 
 "The Soul, 135 ; De Fibra, 251-254. 279. 
 ••The Soul, 126. 
 ••The Soul, 134. 155. 
 "The Soul, 171, 132. 
 
 36 
 
FIRST SUBSTANCE. 
 
 the arcana of nature and the created universe. es 
 It presents already simultaneously in itself, all that 
 the middle mind, or the rational, will ever attain 
 to successively. 09 It is called the pure intellectory 
 or intellect, 100 which mediates between the soul it- 
 self, and the mind, or understanding, the rational. 101 
 It would seem therefore to be that intellectual 
 referred to in A. C. 1495. where the warning is 
 given not to proceed from scientific and rational 
 truths to the celestial, without intellectual truths as 
 media. 
 
 This celestial or super- rational form and cortex, 
 then, is that most holy place and degree, in man, 
 viewed as a little tabernacle for the Divine, where 
 the ark of the covenant of life abides ; and God 
 alone is the light thereof. 
 
 The soul builds this plane answerable to the 
 primal aura; but there are four successive atmo- 
 spheres, or auras, which are as it were the four 
 apartments of the Divine Proceeding, as the Taber- 
 nacle in the universe, where God appoints to meet 
 with man. To these four atmospheres are formed, 
 or in them are founded, as many successive fibrous 
 
 9S The Soul, 134. 166. 
 "The Soul, 131, 132. 
 100 The Soul, 125, 166, 171. 
 • ioiThe Soul, 136. 
 
 37 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 or membranous planes in man, the celestial, the 
 rational or intermediate mind, the natural sensory 
 and the physical itself. But the full consideration 
 of these must be reserved for a future occasion ; 
 and so let us return to the general subject of the 
 auras themselves. 
 
 The Second Aura. The first aura is one and 
 in one volume throughout the universal creation, 
 spiritual and natural ; but the second aura is not 
 brought forth as one volume, but as many. For 
 there are as many volumes of second aura as there 
 are starry suns in the created universe. 
 
 For this reason the celestial heaven, which is 
 founded in the first and universal atmosphere of 
 creation, is one heaven. But the spiritual heaven, 
 which is founded in the second aura, is not one but 
 many ; it consists of as many heavenly societies, or 
 heavens, as are the number of the starry suns of 
 creation ; 102 each society or heaven thereof being 
 founded in a specific volume and vortex of second 
 aura, generated by and around its own star or sun. 
 Thus as the first aura is answerable to the highest 
 or inmost place of the tabernacle where God is the 
 sufficient light thereof, the second aura may stand 
 as the holy place, the second room of the tabernacle 
 
 102 T. C. R. 160. 
 
 38 
 
FIRST SUBSTANCE. 
 
 heavens, where the candles of the stars give light. 
 
 The Bull.*: of the Second or Magnetic Aura 
 are larger than those of the first, and cannot be 
 kept in their palpitant motion by the finer action of 
 the Spiritual Sun directly or without a medium. 
 The bullae are not only larger, but at the same time 
 stiffer and slower in elastic expansion and contrac- 
 tion ; they are of less velocity and aptitude to mo- 
 tion, and their circling orbits are of a lower type. 
 The living cardiac motions of the Spiritual Sun are 
 too rapid, too subtle, too fine, to set the stiffer, 
 larger bullae of the second aura into consonant pul- 
 satile motion. But they can be maintained in their 
 rhythmic expansion and contraction by the ani- 
 matory motion of the Spiritual Sun. acting as a 
 large centre or soul, in and by the medium of the 
 gross radiant envelope 'of primitive metallic sub- 
 stantial and fourth Unites, which form the encrust- 
 ing body of a star or sun, such as we behold it with 
 our natural eyes. 
 
 For natural suns as we see them are double suns. 
 The Spiritual Sun is their centre and soul, the very 
 active central space within ; and fiery least metallic 
 substantial s are their body. The two act as one 
 sun. From this origin all things are double. As 
 men we live in a double world, the spiritual and 
 the natural ; we are double men, having a soul and 
 
 30 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 a body. All things that exist in the world of effects 
 are double things, having as it were a soul and a 
 body, or a spiritual cause and a natural effect, or a 
 spiritual active center and a natural envelope or 
 body, which act together as one cause. It is thus 
 that the law of correspondence arises. 
 
 Moreover, the first and second successive, con- 
 stituting the two radiant belts below the Spiritual 
 Sun, do not afford materials sufficing for the stiffer 
 envelopes of the larger bullae of the second aura. 
 For them some substantial or finites, more highly 
 compounded still, are requisite ; some new finites of 
 larger mass, lowered velocity, and widened circle 
 of motion.* These are the third finites, formed by 
 compression and composition of the particles or 
 bullae of the first aura ; which together with the 
 fourth fTnites form the mass of the natural sun as 
 seen by our eyes, that is, the mass of the fiery me- 
 
 *Compression as an agent or engine in the concretion of 
 substance begins only with the production of the third 
 substantiates or finites. With the first and second grades 
 of finites, compression does not enter as a cause of forma- 
 tion. Their only agent of formation or composition, their 
 only bond of connection, is the motion of their component 
 particles or vortex-points in like circular orbits. This is 
 the only tie that holds them together. (Principia. Part I, 
 chap. III. 12.) 
 
 4Q 
 
FIRST SUBSTANCE. 
 
 tallic shell or envelope around the active centre of 
 the Spiritual Sun within. 
 
 The Accommodation of the Spiritual Sun. 
 In order that the Spiritual Sun might form the 
 second degree or atmosphere, that in which the 
 spiritual heaven is founded, it was necessary for 
 that Sun to accommodate and instrument itself 
 about with a certain dense envelope or body. It is 
 this accommodation and embodiment of the Spirit- 
 ual Sun which appears in the natural world as a sun 
 or star. For the spiritual or soul is always first 
 and takes to itself a body, that it may do uses. The 
 natural sun thus lies around and encloses the active 
 spiritual centre, as the shell of a nut around its 
 living kernel. 
 
 But the greater the accommodation, the more 
 narrowed the range of outgoing action. Hence the 
 Spiritual Sun, acting into and from a sun or star, 
 as an enveloping body, does not extend its influence 
 far. Hence many natural suns are required in the 
 universe to develop volumes of second aura. There 
 are thus as many volumes of second atmospheres or 
 aura, as the number of the stars in the sky ; each 
 volume being developed about its parent star, and 
 localized about it for its very maintenance ; and each 
 volume of the second aura, as we have said, is the 
 ground and habitat of one society of the spiritual 
 
 41 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 heaven, that is, the angels of the spiritual heaven 
 dwell interiorly of the expanse of the second aura. 
 For "although the expanse around the Sun of the 
 angelic heaven is not an extense, still it is in the ex- 
 tense of the natural sun, and with the subjects there 
 according to their form." 103 
 
 The Volumes of the Second Aura. It is 
 further apparent, that, as no two suns are pre- 
 cisely alike, as star differs from star in glory, the 
 volumes of second aura differ likewise. Great vol- 
 umes belong to great stars, small volumes to small 
 ones ; and modifications as to form extend even to 
 the bullae thereof. And such a difference is the 
 basis of a special individuation of genius and type 
 in the society of the heavens founded therein. That 
 no two worlds or systems are precisely the same, as 
 to atmospheres, earths, or forms arising out of them, 
 sec the Divine Love and Wisdom, n. 318. 
 
 Now as this second aura differs somewhat in 
 every solar system of the created universe , it is evi- 
 dent that the correlated plane in man, the intermedi- 
 ate human, the rational, is framed in and to the 
 second aura of the individual solar system, upon 
 one of whose earths he is brought forth, grows, and 
 is educated ; and that all the form and genius, — in- 
 
 ">»C. L. 380. 
 
 42 
 
FIRST SUBSTANCE. 
 
 dividual and social, — of that solar system, with all 
 its peculiar features, will be stamped upon him. 104 
 The result would be so markedly different, that men 
 of two solar systems could scarcely understand each 
 other. 105 And it is evident that, after death, a man 
 who goes only to the spiritual heaven, which is 
 founded in this second aura, will remain in relation 
 with the volume of the second aura around that 
 particular sun, under whose rays he was born. For 
 only there do those live who are of like genius with 
 himself ; and only in the range and sphere of that 
 partcular vortex can ha abide, and be free and at 
 home. 
 
 For the units of the gray or cortical glandular 
 forms of the human organic mind are built to the 
 size of the bulla? of the second aura, and natively 
 expand and contract in sympathetic rhythm and 
 consonance therewith ; that is. they expand and con- 
 tract with the animatory pulsation of the natural sun 
 of their own solar system. 
 
 Herein follows a marvel ! Even as the myriads 
 of cortical glandules in the microcosmic man, so in 
 die Grand Man is the number, the order, the situa- 
 tion, and relation of the societies of the spiritual 
 
 1<M Principia, part I. Chap. I. 12. 
 108 Principia, part III. Chap. II. 4. 
 
 43 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 heaven ; and the same is the number, the order, the 
 connection of the starry suns of creation, and their 
 vortices about them. Hence the order and situation 
 of the suns and their solar systems in the universe, 
 are as the order and situation of the cortical gland- 
 ules which form in their complex the intermediate 
 and proper faculty of man. 109 Therefore it is that 
 the Lord from creation, foreseeing the number of 
 such units of the second order or degree, which 
 would be necessary to fill the human form of that 
 degree, provided even from the first of creation for 
 as many suns or stars. 107 
 
 These innumerable starry suns with their vor- 
 tices are linked each with each in a stupendous 
 order and form, connecting throughout the universe. 
 And Swedenborg says that no change can happen 
 in one which is not perceived in all the others. 101 
 Nor is the form ever full and closed. Stars as yet 
 latent may blaze forth. Ever new forms, new heav- 
 ens and new earths, may arise carrying the human 
 creation to fuller and more varied perfection with- 
 out end. 
 
 Discrete Degrees. The history of the formation 
 of the volumes of second aura instructs us as to the 
 
 106 S. D 270. A. C. 4039-4041- D- L- W. 366. 
 107 T. C. R. 160. 
 
 108 Principia, part III. Chap. I. 9. 11. 
 
 44 
 
FIRST SUBSTANCE. 
 
 formation of discrete degrees. Every created thing 
 is finite, and in the progress of creation one thing 
 was formed from another. Thence were made de- 
 grees. 109 
 
 The Economy notes that an understanding of de- 
 grees is basic to the knowledge and recognition of 
 correspondence ; 110 and we learn therefrom how 
 derivative forms are concreted, formed, and main- 
 tained, from the substance of a plane, older, finer, 
 more fluid, and more active, and at the same time 
 more universal, more all-embracing, than the deriva- 
 tive, posterior, more compounded, and more ulti- 
 mate degrees. 111 Also how these new and more 
 finited forms, although consubstantiate with the 
 higher and prior plane, shall be in quality and de- 
 termination so distinct from that prior, that they 
 deserve to receive a new and distinct name, 112 and 
 become a substance that exists as it were by itself. 
 The doctrine of degrees then exhibits the very lad- 
 der of universal creation ;* 13 and the understanding 
 of it teaches the very nature of order in the actual 
 successions and subordinations of creation. 
 
 "»T. C. R. 33. 
 
 110 E. A. K. part II. 281. 
 
 1J1 E. A. K., part I. 614-617. 
 
 112 E. A. K., part I. 579; part II. 281. 
 
 ll3 E. A. K., part II. 210. 
 
 45 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 "We rarely entertain a distinct idea of degrees." 114 
 
 We think of discrete degrees as if they were 
 something that existed eternally. But according to 
 Swedenborg degrees are finite things, and have come 
 about by finiting processes and definite laws. They 
 were made, and can be conceived as unmade. In 
 the organic world discrete degrees are actually at 
 every instant made and unmade, compounded and 
 resolved. At every round of the transcendent cir- 
 culation of the three- fold human blood, there is a 
 perpetual descent and ascent according to degrees, 
 an 1 this most distinctly and discretely. 115 
 
 Moreover, the history of the rise, succession, and 
 the correspondential relations of the four auras or 
 atmospheres of the universe, is the making of the 
 great elemental series of four degrees, distinct, dis- 
 crete, extended in the universe as the tabernacle of 
 the heavens with its four distinct apartments. 
 
 Now when a posterior or more finited degree is 
 to he brought into existence, the substance of the 
 prior degree, by means of flowing currents in its 
 volume, outlines and delineates the form, or faculty, 
 about to be created. This representation of the yet 
 unborn posterior in the prior, extends, Swedenborg 
 
 114 E. A. K., part II. 205. 
 
 11B A. K. 260. s.; E. A. K., part I. 148-154. 161. 199. 602; 
 part II. 222. 
 
 46 
 
FIRST SUBSTANCE. 
 
 says, as a cause to all causates, both in the king- 
 dom of the auras, and in the animal body. 11 ' And 
 after the posterior is constructed as an individual 
 form or plane, the flowing currents of the prior, 
 which delineated the posterior or secondary form, 
 still hold the second form together, and maintain it 
 perpetually. 
 
 The lines of the pattern, thus primarily repre- 
 sented in the prior substance, are afterwards as it 
 were infilled with entia, bullae, particles, or finitcs, 
 proper to the degree of the plane to be produced, 
 having been first formed from the prior degree by 
 composition and compression. These myriads of 
 infilling particles are then held together in the flow- 
 ing matrix of the superior plane which surrounds 
 and encompasses them. 
 
 Whatever be the potency of the units or sub- 
 stantiates in themselves, so soon as they enter with 
 others into the construction of a more finited and 
 concrete form, their active potency is finited to the 
 general choral march or gyre of the form of which 
 they are now part and parcel. There remains in the 
 substance but the effort and the intuitive instinct to 
 endeavor back again, to ascend again to the source 
 from which it set forth ; and thus operate an inner en- 
 
 116 E. A. K, part II. 276. 
 
 47 
 
swedenborg's cos m ology. 
 
 deavor to resolve the form of which it is part, and 
 
 ascend even by the death of that form to its own 
 purer and higher degrees ; especially if the ultimate 
 form becomes non-correspondent to the ends of 
 creation, to the reception of the Divine, and co- 
 operation in the service of its uses. It seems to 
 have been from this action of the Divine endeavor 
 in ultimates, that the antediluvian race was cor- 
 poreally destroyed at the time of the flood. 117 
 
 It is, indeed, a common law of spiritual compound 
 form, that whatever may be the power of action of 
 the primal units or substantiate in themselves, in 
 their own prior plane, whenever they unite together 
 to frame compound forms of a lower character and 
 degree, their action is then limited and defined to 
 the form and plane of which they now make a part ; 
 there remaining only a conatus to resolve and as- 
 cend to the higher degree. 
 
 A celestial man loses his wisdom when he de- 
 scends to a lower plane ; and the human spirituous 
 fluid, — in which resides per se a range of knowl- 
 edge and of action commensurate witli creation,— 
 when its substance is mated with etherial and aerial 
 salts and compounded into the red blood, lives but 
 
 *"Ath. Cr - P- l S> 
 
 48 
 
FIRST SUBSTANCE. 
 
 a common and obscure life. 118 In it, during the 
 stage of its composition as red blood, there remains 
 only the endeavor towards resolution through the 
 walls of the capillaries. — the endeavor towards the 
 death of its composite form, by the laying down of 
 the inert copulating salts, and thereby its own free- 
 ing, separation, resolution, ascent and return to its 
 pristine activity and life. 
 
 Indeed, the death of the outer body as a whole, 
 and at the same time the resurrection to higher 
 planes of knowledge and life, is but a laying down at 
 once en masse, of all the salts and inert particles in 
 the blood, and from the blood in the tissues. By 
 that death the human spirituous fluid ascends and 
 returns to its own full human life together with the 
 simplest fibre which is released with it, in all its 
 complex of organism, — the latter being conditioned 
 according to the modification of its form, stamped 
 by the habit of individual mental life, — and carry- 
 ing with it such and so much of the subtle spheres, 
 given off by lower organic planes of the mind and 
 their activities, as have contributed to its own open- 
 ing and infilling. 
 
 The story of the formation, then, of a human or- 
 ganism at birth, by successive compositions of the 
 
 "Tost. Tracts, The Red Blood, Chap. XIV. 
 
 40 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 spirituous fluid or human internal, and the re-ascent 
 at death, is exactly the story of the circle of descent 
 by discrete degrees of compounding, and ascent by 
 uegrees of death or lying down or resolution, which 
 is repeated momentarily in the course of the trans- 
 cendent circulation of human internal to ultimate 
 effect, form, and use, and back again to its origin 
 and source. 119 
 
 The Principia instructs us therefore as to the tru: 
 mode and manner of the formation of discrete de- 
 grees, in the story of the successive formation of 
 finites from their first origin in the Spiritual Sun, 
 by successive stages of composition even to the ulti- 
 mates of nature. The Writings repeat the same 
 story in general, summing together the details that 
 are given in the Principia. 120 
 
 119 E. A. K., part I. 158. 161. 199; A. K. 407. note s. 
 i=»Sec T. C. R. 33. "6; D. L. W. 94. 302-305. 310. 
 
 SO 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 NATURAL SUNS AND PLANETS. 
 
 Natural Suns have an internal, or soul, and a 
 natural envelope or body ; and their internal is the 
 beginning, their bodies being an accretion a ided 
 later. After they have been brought into their full 
 and ultimate form, the two act as one cause on the 
 plane of effects, as the soul and body of man. 
 
 The internal of natural suns is a pure active space 
 of the Spiritual Sun, together with the first active 
 proceedings or radiant belts from it. This internal 
 exists primitively as a vast and apparently vacuous 
 abyss, but a spherical abyss of living force, sur- 
 rounded by the foam structure of the universal aura. 
 
 This vast sun-internal or star soul is in a per- 
 petual animatory motion, 121 a most eminent cardiac 
 and pulmonic motion which God Man acts from 
 Himself into the forms of universal creation. 122 
 Therefore, the origin of this motion is living, su- 
 
 121 E. A. K., part I. 170. 300; II. 312. 
 12 =D. L. W. 392: E. A. K.. part I. 169. 170. 300. 302. 
 314; D. Wis. XII, 3, 5. 
 
 51 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 premely living, since it is from the life and action 
 immediately from God Man Himself. 128 
 
 In this internal are the seeds of suns and solar 
 systems, and the volume of the universal aura is as 
 the common mother by which all suns and worlds 
 arc produced. Thus the enveloping body of suns is 
 taken from the matrix or mother. 124 . This body 
 presents itself in the shape of a sort of double radi- 
 ant envelope, composed of volumes of third and 
 fourth finitcs. 125 These latter are the primitives of 
 the finer and grosser members of the metallic family 
 in nature. 126 
 
 When the internal or Spiritual Sun has at length 
 formed such a body about itself, it thereafter acts 
 its animatory motion into its own enveloping body ; 
 and that envelope, receiving this animatory motion, 
 in turn acts from itself a derivative animatory mo- 
 tion ; 127 even as we are taught that an internal or 
 soul always acts into and upon its body, and the 
 body then acts from itself. 128 This derivative ani- 
 matory motion is of a slower rhythm, more bounded 
 
 L. W. 157- 392. T. C. R. 472. 
 t**D. Wis. III. 2; T. C. R. 92. 
 
 125 Principia, part I. Chap. VIII; part III. Chap. III. 
 12C Corpuscular Philosophy. 
 127 E. A. K. part I. 170; D. L. W. T57. 392. 
 "*T. C. R. 154. 
 
 52 
 
SUNS AND PLANETS. 
 
 I 
 
 and finited, and of far greater breadth of difference 
 between expansion and constriction. Thus it is able 
 to act upon and affect large, gross, less elastic 
 bullae, and to reduce the more non-living forms into 
 sympathetic reciprocations and expansions, such as 
 the fine animations of the pure spiritual centre or 
 Spiritual Sun itself cannot do ; 129 even as a nerve 
 cannot act upon a stone immediately, but only by 
 means of its grosser body or instrument, a muscle. 
 
 Suns are thus bodied about with an envelope of 
 something like a flamy metallic vapor, the splendor 
 of which we see as fire. This flamy fire in its sub- 
 stantiates is the very beginning of what we may cad 
 the natural. The third and fourth finites which con- 
 stitute it are in a primal freedom of activity beyond 
 earthly comparison. But as a whole this envelope is 
 under an equilibrium of pressure from the activity 
 of the Spiritual Sun within and the reacting aura 
 without which condenses, presses, and steadies it, 
 almost into a viscous mass. This is where metallic 
 primitives have their rise and origin, and what Swe- 
 denborg teaches of the primitive metallic nature of 
 the fiery envelope of the sun has been observed by 
 the spectrum. 
 
 First and second substantials, the finites which 
 
 129 T. C. R. 308; D. Wis. XII. 2. 3. 5. 
 
 53 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 constitute the two radiant belts below the Spiritual 
 Sun, are framed immediately from the primitives of 
 that Sun, by means of their own conflowing and 
 conglobation. They arise directly from the Spiritual 
 Sun, belong to the whole universe, and are framed 
 into the bullular structure of the universal aura. 
 The latter is thus of the very essence of the Spiritual 
 Sun. 130 
 
 Third and Fourth Substantial^ or Finites 
 are formed in the immediate vicinage of suns, just 
 on the border between their active souls or centers 
 and the surrounding volumes of first and second 
 auras; and they are formed by condensations and' 
 compressions of the foam-texture of these auras. 
 The volume of third and fourth finites, thus formed 
 about a given sun, belongs not to the universe, but 
 to one particular solar system, and serves for its 
 individual uses and materia. Fifth finites, however, 
 come into existence only around the individual 
 planetary masses. 131 Each local volume of fifth 
 finites, therefore, is confined near the surface of its 
 own parent planet, and is appropriate to the uses 
 and grosser materia of that particular planet. 
 
 Fifth Finites are the active primitives or pro- 
 
 130 D. L. W. 300. 
 
 13 ^Principia, part III Chap. VI. 
 
 54 
 
SUNS AND PLANETS. 
 
 genitors of the sixth and seventh families of the 
 periodic system of chemical elements, that is, the 
 Oxygen-sulphur and halogen families ; for Sweden- 
 borg says that the fifth finites are the elementary 
 primitives of our earthly or culinary fire, 132 and that 
 they enter chiefly into those angular acid salts, de- 
 rived by the functional activity of the vegetable king- 
 dom into the interstices of the bullae of the fourth 
 elementaries ; 133 and by which the venous blood is 
 changed into arterial in the lungs. 134 This volatile 
 aerial salt, floating in the bullular interstices of the 
 aerial elementary, is derived from the soil into the 
 interstices of the aerial elementary, through free 
 vegetative activity by means of the current of 
 vaporous exhalation from the leaves. 135 These 
 finites arc also the primitives composing one of the 
 two substances entering into the structure of the 
 water unit, 130 and are also the primitives which 
 enter into one of the two constituents of the sea or 
 halogen salts. 137 
 
 Since the fifth finites originated strictly at the sur- 
 
 "sPrincipia, part III. Chap. VIII. 
 133 T. C. R. 470; Corp. Phil; De Fibra, 273. 
 134 A. K. 406, 407, 485, 488. E. A. K., part I. 50. 
 135 D. L. W. 310. 420; Doc. 302. On Odours; Principia, 
 part III. Chap. IX. 4. 
 
 l3B Principia, part III. Chap. IX. 1; Chap. III. I. 
 137 Principles of Chemistry, Chap. I. and X. 
 
 55 
 
SWEDEN BORG's COSMOLOGY. 
 
 face of the planets, and began to be formed there 
 only when the planets were at a great distance from 
 the sun, none of the derivatives of the fifth finites 
 can be formed in the enveloping body of the sun. 
 This fact, viz., that the primitives of the sixth and 
 seventh periodic families of chemistry exist in the 
 vicinage of the planets, and not in the envelope of 
 the sun, has been independently discovered within 
 the last generation by the aid of the spectroscope. 
 The reason why the sun is without these elements so 
 common upon the earth, on any supposition that the 
 earth mass was itself part of the common belt of the 
 sun, is one of the puzzles of modern research. Swe- 
 denborg gives the clue to its cause, in his teaching 
 as to the origin of the primitives of the metallic 
 families immediately about the solar center, and the 
 origin of the larger, grosser primitive substanti- 
 ates, as those of the oxygen-sulphur and halogen 
 families, about the planets. 
 
 Origin of the Third Finites. The third finites, 
 which form the envelopes of the bullae of the second 
 aura, are prepared by compression from the primal 
 aura. The compression of the bullae of the first 
 aura is effected at the expense of their active 
 centers. The first finites, active in these nuclear cen- 
 ters, escape, leaving the empty envelopes of second 
 finites, which by compression then form the third 
 
 56 
 
SUNS AND PLANETS. 
 
 finites, ready to be used to form the crust or en- 
 velope of the particle of the second aura. 
 
 The first substantial s or finites, which form the 
 active center of the primal aura particle, and which 
 escape on the compression of this particle, are for 
 the most part eventually compounded or brought to- 
 gether to form second substantiate active, and very 
 many of them enter the internal active space of a 
 sun. 1 " For second and first substantiate can move 
 without mutual interference in the same field, if the 
 space is not confined. 133 
 
 The third grade of fini f es or substantiate thus 
 come into existence by compression of the foam 
 substance of the primal aura. They are the first of 
 the finites to be formed by the instrumentality of 
 compression. They possess the same vortex ring 
 figure as the first and second. They have the like 
 vortico-spiral internal circulation, and the like 
 conatus and potency of spontaneous activity and 
 orbital motion ; but of a lessened velocity and a 
 wider orbit. Their interior texture is relatively 
 coarse and comparatively open. 140 
 
 These third finites are produced in innumerable 
 volumes about the primitive internal of a solar cen- 
 
 138 Principia, part I. Chap.VI. 8. 
 139 Principia. Part I. Chap. VII. 8. 9. 
 ll0 Principia, part I. Chap. VII. 7. 
 
 57 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 ter. Of them is formed the enveloping body of a 
 sun. They always remain in the envelope as a 
 part of it. They never enter the internal space of 
 higher power. Their entrance is guarded against by 
 the very coarseness of their texture. Thev are a 
 discrete degree below, and, as we have seen, Nature 
 properly begins with them. 
 
 The Bullae of the Second Aura. And now 
 new bullae are formed with active centers similar to 
 the active center of the sun itself, and with a similar 
 circumference or envelope, — first and second ffnitcs 
 active forming the active center or soul of these 
 bullae, while third finites passive form their bound- 
 ing envelopes. These are the bullae of the second 
 aura. Their very endeavor and motion is vortical; 
 they are carried out from the sun along the stream- 
 ing vortex gyre of the primal aura ; and they are 
 produced in such abundance that they at length 
 form a volume of as great breadth as the breadth 
 of the solar system which is then to he. This vol- 
 ume of the second or magnetic aura is itself in the 
 shape of a vast vortex ring, lying all about the 
 sun, and of which that sun is the center, a vol- 
 ume revolving in rotary wheel and gyre forever. 141 
 This is the great circumambient atmosphere of the 
 
 141 Principia, part III. Chap. I. part I. Chap. X. 5. 6. 7. 
 
 58 
 
SUNS AND PLANETS. 
 
 sun, constituting its own aura and vortex, the 
 second aura, the first of the natural. 
 
 Fourth Finites. From the bullae of this grosser 
 aura, the second, in turn and after a like fashion, 
 condensations are formed in the immediate vicinage 
 of the sun ; for the law by which creation descends 
 by successive degrees of compression and composi- 
 tion, continues its operation. The result is finites of 
 the next degree, or fourth finites. 14 - Of these finites 
 an enormous passive volume was formed about the 
 sun in the epoch of the primal birth of the system. 
 This chaotic volume of fourth finites at that period 
 was increased and concreted until it formed a dense 
 darkening crust around the sun, of incredible thick- 
 ness and resistance. 143 Still it was whirled and ro- 
 tated about the sun, by the general wheeling motion 
 of the vortex of the second aura of which it is 
 practically a part. 144 And this perpetual rotating 
 motion continued, until the centrifugal whirl of the 
 vast stiffening shell resulted in its disruption. Then 
 were formed three kinds of astronomical bedies. 1 " 
 
 "zPrincipia, part I. Chap. IX. 10; Part III. Chap. IV 
 I. 3. 
 
 143 Principia, Part III. Chap. IV. 2. 3. 4. 
 144 Principia, part III. Chap. IV. 5. 6. 7. 
 145 Principia, ibid 7, et seq. (fig. 103.) 
 
 59 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 t. Where masses of the envelope were rounded 
 into simple balls, the solid planets were formed. 
 
 2. Where the outer side of the envelope curled 
 over outwards, and conglobated like a thick en- 
 velope round a sort of nucleus of the aura of the 
 vortex, the non-solid fluctuant satellites came into 
 existence. 
 
 3. Where the inner passive dense crust was 
 driven outward by the expansive force of the active 
 center, the edges of its broken fragments curled over 
 and globed about masses of the inner solar space, 
 forming great expansile bulla? like pseudo suns. 
 These are the vast solar bubbles or sun spots, sure 
 to burst as soon as the outside pressure lessens. 
 
 Sufficiently immense for this threefold use was 
 the primal mass of the first bodiment of the sun. In 
 the epoch after the formation and breaking up of the 
 first dense envelope, the body of the sun was formed 
 again for its age-long uses. And again the epochal 
 story of the period of compression and disruption is 
 rhythmically told in tensions and releases of twelve 
 year periods. But never again does the solar en- 
 velope grow so thick amd stiff that it ceases to vibrate, 
 and darkens the sun ; nor ever again does it attain to 
 anything like the thickness adequate to the mak- 
 ing of planetary masses. Only at periods is the sur- 
 face tossed ; magnetic storms of irregular current 
 
 60 
 
SUNS AND PLANETS. 
 
 stream in the vortex; and the new sun-spots, tak- 
 ing birth and origin on the inner side of the en- 
 velope, make their way through, until, as they touch 
 a less dense region, they break, like the vast bub- 
 bles they are; and toss their films of metallic fire 
 into the plane of the vortex volume about the sun's 
 equator, there to add their quota to the meteoric 
 dust, shining in that far region like moths in a sun- 
 beam ; and in the long ages giving rise to the lens- 
 shaped ray of that serene fairy illumination we call 
 the zodiacal light. 
 
 The Planetary Masses. First in importance 
 are the planetary masses or primitive earths. These 
 are spherical masses of the materia of the solar 
 crust, the fourth substantials, and can be formed only 
 where the ring of that materia is thickest. They are 
 homogeneous all through. They have no rarefied 
 elastic central space, but are as solid as anything can 
 be, and, if anything, are more compressed at their 
 core than at their surface. 140 
 
 These resistant solid globes, though spherical, are 
 yet flattened at their poles, the reasons for which we 
 may here briefly consider. 
 
 Since primitive earths are made of substantials or 
 finites ; since finites of every grade have a vortex- 
 
 '"Principia, part TTT. Chap. Ill, 7 ct scq. 
 
 6l 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 ring configuration, and a conatus to circulo-spiral 
 motion ; since finites of such figure can be more 
 closely packed wl en they are set in orderly arrange- 
 ment, flattened pole to flattened pole ; since this is 
 the arrangement into which they bring themselves 
 when greatly crowded and in sufficient volume ; since 
 around the starry suns the vast masses of fourth 
 finites find themselves under the required conditions 
 of mutual pressure ; and since the finites composing 
 these immense globular masses will arrange them- 
 selves in such foulcaux, pole to pole ; therefore, the 
 result will be a vast ball emulating the flattened dis- 
 coid shape of the constituent finites. The primitive 
 earth mass thus became as it were a huge image of 
 the finites entering into its composition. 147 And it is 
 worthy to be noted as remarkable, that the close set 
 rouleaux of finites, though compacted into such a 
 mass, yet carry on a slow oppressed circulation, from 
 an inherent conatus to it which is retained even in 
 the dark moveless condensation of its core. By 
 virtue of this fact, the great g'obes as a whole have 
 in them a striving to an orbital motion of their own, 
 emulous of the circulo-spiral orbit in which the 
 finites themselves run. 
 
 The single finites possess native orbits of small 
 
 i«Principia, part III. Chap. XI. 2. 3. 
 
 62 
 
SUNS AND PLANETS. 
 
 diameters, inconceivably small. But the earth mass 
 images of finites have native orbits of millions of 
 miles ; the orbit being proportioned to the size of the 
 body. Therefore, the great earth masses, solid, re- 
 sistant all through, are yet emulous finites or sub- 
 stantiate, and have in themselves the conatus and 
 power of running forever in an orbital circulo- 
 spiral path. 
 
 If such bodies pass from the vicinage of the sun, 
 outwards along the lines of its revolving vortex, to 
 a situation where the pressures of the surrounding 
 ether-foam are less, to a situation where the aura 
 around them is more rarefied than near the sun, no 
 abrupt or disastrous consequences can befall them. 
 For instance, they cannot explode, since this does 
 not happen to solid bodies. The only thing that 
 can happen to them, on coming to a region of less 
 density, is that the layers of finites on their imme- 
 diate surface will tend to free themselves, and, in 
 clouds like vapor from the water, will rise, circle, 
 and curl about the solid surface of the planets. 
 
 The part which these freed streams of fourth 
 finites play will be taken up in the later study of the 
 formation about each planet of two terrestrial at- 
 mospheres, the third and fourth discrete degrees in 
 the atmospheric series, or the third and fourth auras, 
 which are the ether and the aerial elementary. 
 
 63 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 The Satellites. Second in importance, in the 
 breaking up of the primal solar crust, are the satel- 
 lites; and, third, the sun spots. These, unlike the 
 planetary masses, or earths, are not solid bodies. 
 They are hollow ; they are like bubbles or immense 
 bullular forms, denser on the outsi le than they are 
 w ithin. They are bodies, therefore, whose internal 
 structure predicts possible abrupt and grave changes, 
 so soon as they shall be carried beyond the dense 
 environment, the strong outside pressures, of the 
 locality where they are brought forth, to a more 
 rarefied region of the solar vortex. 14S 
 
 The primitive earth masses, as we have said, were 
 formed in the midst of the thickest portions of the 
 ring or belt around the sun, when its substance fell 
 in together upon itself. But on the outer side of 
 that belt, away from the solar center, facing towards 
 the outer space, another type of body, the satellite, 
 is formed. When the great encrusting belt is 
 broken, the vortex pressing inward tends to catch 
 great sheets of the viscous metallic matter, and bend 
 them inward, so that they belly in toward the sun 
 like great sails. These great be'lving sheets, by 
 virtue of their viscous state, and the proneness of 
 all their constituent finities to press towards circling 
 
 14s Prinoip:n, part III. Chap. 111. 7. 
 
 6 4 
 
SUNS AND PLANETS. 
 
 orbits of motion, will tend to drop their edges to- 
 gether, to meet, to close about the volume of the 
 vortex aura caught within it. The result will be 
 the formation of a vast hollow cosmic bal'. consist- 
 ing of a more or less thick crust or enve'ope of 
 fourth finites which enclose a great volume of the 
 second aura. Nor will these new bodies have a 
 polar flattening as the planets have, but will be per- 
 fectly round by reason of the equal pressure extended 
 in every direction by the enclosed elastic bu'lae. 
 Such are the satellites, according to Swedenborg. 
 
 The Sun Spots. And now as to the sun spots, — 
 their point of origin is on the inner side of the great 
 encrusting girdle of the sun, when this gird : breaks 
 up; that is, on the concave side, facing the active 
 star center. Here the force of the central space acts 
 immediately upon it. Therefore, when it gives way, 
 great sheets of the crust on the inner side will be 
 bellied and driven out. and the viscous metallic 
 matter curling back over its edges dropping to- 
 gether and meeting, will close in about the volume 
 of fiery second finites driven against them. 
 
 Thus arise great cosmic bodies, hollow, with en- 
 veloping crusts of metallic primitives, surrounding 
 fiery active high-pressure centers of second sub- 
 stantiate. They are thus vast cosmic bubbles aris- 
 ing at the junction of the star center with its envelop- 
 
 65 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 ing crust or girdle ; and their state is necessarily that 
 of bombs highly charged. And so soon as the 
 wheeling vortex carries them out of the region of 
 condensation pressure, they have in their constitu- 
 tion the inevitable conditions of instant expansion 
 and explosion. Such are the bodies to which the 
 phenomena of sun spots are due. according to Swe- 
 denborg. 149 
 
 Further Development of Planets and Satel- 
 lites. All the types of bodies, formed from the 
 viscous metallic crust of the sun, planets, satel'ites, 
 and sun bubbles or sun spots, continue to rotate 
 about the sun, even as the substance from which 
 they were formed rotated about the sun before they 
 were shaped. 
 
 Gathered up by the aura-flow, they swing at first 
 round and round the sun in the plane in which they 
 were formed ; but little by little, at every circling 
 round, their wheeling motion enlarges its diameter; 
 and they arc imperceptibly carried awav from the 
 region where they were formed, where the outside 
 pressures are great, to regions where the aura about 
 them is less compressed, less dense, more and more 
 rarefied. 
 
 During this progress from the center of the vor- 
 UB Principia, part TIT. Chap. TIT. 7 el scq. 
 
 66 
 
SUNS AND PLANETS. 
 
 tex. not much can happen to the genuine planets, the 
 resistent solid masses of the primitive earths. They 
 will grow smaller as they go. in proportion as the 
 outer layers of their materia are lifted and wound 
 off, in the weaving of their enveloping garments of 
 third and fourth ether. This we have already in- 
 dicated, and shall return to it in detail. 
 
 With the satellites a different possibility comes 
 into play. Satellite forms, as we have seen, are 
 shell-like crusts of viscous metallic primitives en- 
 closed around a volume of the vortex-ether, the 
 second or magnetic aura which makes the vortex 
 of each sun, or solar system. 
 
 Now when forms of such constitution are borne 
 outward to regions where the surrounding volume 
 of second aura is under less pressure and more rare- 
 fied, then, in proportion as the volume of second aura 
 outside the shell of the satellite is lessened, the vol- 
 ume of second aura inside the satellite will expand, 
 or strive to do so. until it is in the same state of den- 
 sity as the aura outside. So long as the crusting 
 substance is viscous, this will lead onlv to a gradual 
 enlargement of the satellite, as it travels away from 
 the vicinage of the sun. And if the crust is thick 
 enough and yielding enough, to accommodate itself 
 to the strain without breaking, nothing further will 
 happen. But if the outer crust grows too thin in 
 
 67 
 
SWEDEN BORG's COSMOLOGY. 
 
 places, or too stiff to yield, vents will be opened in 
 the crust like safety valves, permitting sufficient of 
 the inner volume of aura to escape, in order to 
 equalize the pressure of the aura without and the 
 aura within. In that case, the crust of the satellite 
 will probably wrinkle back, puckered and folded, 
 like an apple when half its juice has evaporated from 
 it. This seems to be what has happened to our 
 moon, judging by its appearance. 
 
 There is, too, always a possibility that these open- 
 ing vents and cracks may be so large, and so abrupt- 
 ly made, that the whole crust of the satellite will 
 break up into a dozen pieces ; in which case there 
 would no longer be any satellite, but there would be 
 a dozen little asteroids or meteors, swarming and 
 swimming around on the tide of the vortex. 
 
 The opening of vents in the crust of a satel'ite 
 would not militate against the existence of human 
 beings upon it. The satellites are embosomed in the 
 auras, which bathe them about and touch them on 
 every side; and wherever the auras are, there is 
 life, and formative life. 150 
 
 The substance of the satellite crust is of the min- 
 eral kingdom, and sends out continual radio-emana- 
 tions in impalpable clouds. Wherever these are, 
 
 isoAth. Cr. p. 8 39; Corp. Phil. 
 
 68 
 
SUNS AND PLANETS. 
 
 there exist the substances out of which the life- 
 formative fashions to itself bodies of use. Given, 
 therefore, the life-formative of the foam auras, and 
 the radio-emanent spheres of the mineral kingdom, 
 vegetation can begin. And when vegetation once 
 begins, new radio-cmanent spheres or clouds of 
 effluvia are sent forth from this new kingdom, pro- 
 viding thereby for the next grand stage, the creation 
 of the animal kingdom. Tt is literally thus that crea- 
 tion does begin on any planet, airl so does it climb 
 from clod to plant, from plant to beast and nan. 
 There needs to be first but the life-formative, the 
 living auras, as the active: and for its passive the 
 stuff and substance of the sateHites and planets, with 
 their radio-emanent spheres of particles, indefinitely 
 ponderable, but capable of being organized into forms 
 of use by the inflowing and encompassing auras. 
 And we would note in addition a remarkable fact, 
 that when such a sphere has been given forth from 
 an organic form, the sphere remains even though 
 the parent form itself dies. The oxygen salt, vola- 
 tile, aerial, which the plant gave off last year, the 
 animals breathes to-day. Thus do the living auras, 
 framing vegetative bodies from the radio-emana- 
 tions of the mineral kingdom, prepare for animal 
 and human life upon the earth ; and thus do we see 
 imaged nature itself immortal life and immortal 
 
 69 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 use in a higher sphere, after the original form is 
 dead. 
 
 The supremely human formative, the first or celes- 
 tial aura, is universal ; and thus prior to suns and 
 systems. The second aura must also come into ex- 
 istence, before the satellites and planets can be 
 created, for these exist by the compression of the 
 particles of that aura. They are, in fact, afloat in 
 it, carried on its solar tide. The third aura, the 
 vegetable formative, begins to be woven about the 
 satellites and planets, as soon as they leave the sun. 
 The aerial elementary follows next in the series. 
 Then water. Then the stuff of the mineral king- 
 dom, the very earth crust of the planet or satellite. 
 
 All these are now at hand and ready for vegeta- 
 tion to begin ; and as soon as it begins, the planets 
 and satellites begin to give off, into the interstices 
 of the aerial elementary, spheres of inert, angular 
 particles, indefinitely ponderable, which are the 
 primitives of the whole family of oxygen and 
 sulphur, and on down the list. Nothing more is 
 needed, one might almost say, but the dust of a 
 world, and the living hands of the bullular auras to 
 conjoin that poor dust to their own vital motions; 
 nothing more is needed but the unition of the pass- 
 ive of the earth's crust to the active of the auras, a 
 salt to a bullular form, and the framing of these 
 
 70 
 
SUNS AND PLANETS. 
 
 two into a concrete unit, reactant to the Divine, — 
 able to bring forth therefrom spheres for present 
 and for future use ; for the sphere remains, as we 
 have said, even though the parent form itself was 
 broken long ago. 
 
 The Satellites, finally, as we have shown, are 
 bodies of a bubble constitution, — not the constitution 
 of a bubble or bulla with an active self directive 
 center, as the bulla? of the auras, but with an atmo- 
 spheric or passive center, their crust enclosing a 
 volume of the second aura. This bullular constitu- 
 tion of the satellites seems to account for their be- 
 havior in their relation with the planets. 
 
 A body of such a constitution, variable and elastic 
 within, cannot serve as an object upon which the 
 pressures of a surrounding sphere concenter, able to 
 react to them as a stable fulcrum, such as the un- 
 yielding solid planets arc : thus they cannot remain 
 stably in place, as a pure passive subject of converg- 
 ing pressures ; nor are they able as little suns to serve 
 as the active soul or parent of a developing system. 
 This relegates thems, for their freedom and their ex- 
 istence, to occupy the circumambient sphere of some 
 other center. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE NATURAL ATMOSPHERES AND 
 WATER. 
 
 The Solar Vortex. The envelope of the sun. 
 and the surrounding volume of the second aura, con- 
 stitute the solar vortex. The mass of the second 
 aura is created around any star or sun by its ac- 
 tion in or upon the first or universal aura, and the 
 mass or volume, so brought into existence, is there- 
 after inseparable from that star or sun. 151 This 
 volume of second aura takes the shape of a great 
 vortex ring.'"' 2 The equatorial diameter of this ring 
 is as wide as the extense of the system which de- 
 pends upon the animatory motions of that star for its 
 light and heat. 153 The polar diameter of this vast 
 vortex ring is much less than the equatorial diame- 
 ter. 154 At the poles of the ring there are re- 
 entrance-spaces formed like cones, with their apices 
 towards the solar centre. 155 
 
 151 Principia, part III. Chap. I, 4. 
 l52 Principia, part III. Chap. T. 2-6. 
 153 Principia, part III. Chap. I. 2. 
 »*Principia, part I. Chap. III. 21. 
 tssPrincipia, part III. Chap. IV. 
 
 72 
 
NATURAL ATMOSPHERES. 
 
 The bulke of this entire volume of second aura at 
 length become disposed in a perfectly equilibrated 
 and regular arrangement. 150 The volume of the 
 vortex ring possesses en masse a perpetual vortico- 
 spiral circulation, as well as a general axillary rota- 
 tion. 1 "' 7 Tbe axis of the general rotation passes 
 through the cones, and is from West to East, as this 
 is the course of the revolution of the planets in their 
 orbiting around the sun ; and the planets revolve 
 around the sun chiefly because they are buoyed and 
 borne along by the rotating motion of the vortex 
 itself. 158 
 
 When the bulla? of this vortex-volume of second 
 aura are thus fully arranged and connected, the 
 bulla? nearer tbe sun being the more compressed, 
 then the perpendicular flow (N-S) of the vortex as 
 a whole will be impeded by the necessity that the 
 swifter currents near the sun should wait upon the 
 dragging slowness of motion in the circumference. 159 
 But the general rotary motion (W-E) will remain 
 in unimpeded actuality for the whole mass. Hence 
 the general axillary motion of the whole ring will 
 make a full revolution, while the vortex en masse 
 
 150 Principia, part III. Chap. XI. i. 
 
 357 Principia, part I. Chap. III. 22; Chap. VI. 36, ct seq. 
 
 158 Principia, part III. Chap. XI. 3. 
 
 "•Principia, part I. Chap. III. 23. 
 
 73 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 achieves only a single step of the N-S or vortexing 
 advance. 160 Hence the rotary motion of the volume 
 of the vortex around its axis will be rapid. But its 
 other motion, its perpendicular, vortex, or N-S flow 
 will be tranquil ; and as it were of a serene, almost 
 latent current and pressure. 101 
 
 The other or vortex motion, at the polar cones of 
 the solar vortex, is from North to South. This is 
 assured because the earth lies in the course of the 
 general flow of the solar vortex ; and the current of 
 that flow passes over the earth from its south to its 
 north pole, "and so tends back into its vortex." 18 * 
 
 Moreover, as the endeavor and motion of this vor- 
 tex current is not exactly perpendicular, or in a 
 straight line from South to North, but always acts 
 with a certain simultaneous side-trend and effort 
 from West to East, arising from its intrinsic vortico- 
 spiral activity, with a sort of screw-thread twist, — 
 this general twisting action of the vortex of second 
 aura or magnetic element, in its passage over the 
 earth, will tend to roll and revolve the earth itself 
 around and around on its axis. 103 And, as the sec- 
 
 1G0 Principia, part I. Chap. III. 23. 
 
 161 Principia, Tart II. Chap. XV. 3, 4; Part III. Chap. 
 
 I. 2. 
 
 162 Principia, part IT. Chap. XV. 3. 4. 5. 
 163 Principia, part III. Chap. XI. 3- 
 
 74 
 
NATURAL ATMOSPHERES. 
 
 oncl aura everywhere interpenetrates the bullae of 
 the ether, the air, the waters of the earth, and all its 
 layers of upper soils and minerals, it lays hold of the 
 globe as it were by slender but omnipotent fingers, 
 and turns it about day by day. 104 
 
 The Bull.e of the Second Aura are dilated to- 
 wards the circumference of the volume, and more 
 and more compressed towards its center, until this 
 increasing compression terminates abruptly in the 
 extreme condensation of the encrusting flamy me- 
 tallic envelope or body of the starry sun. 165 Thus 
 the envelope or body of a sun, and its vortex of sec- 
 ond ether, form as it were one body; and the two 
 rotate as one. Or we may perhaps call the volume 
 of second aura about the sun a sort of atmospheric 
 extension of the sun's envelope. And it is in such 
 intimately graded connection therewith that the two 
 necessarily turn about as one, as a man's body and 
 his sphere make one ; or as it is with the magnetic 
 needle and the magnetic sphere. And as the iron of 
 the magnetic needle is turned about by the turning 
 about of its sphere by a finer elemental vortex, 166 so 
 here we may consider that it is the living vortex 
 flow of the primal aura, both interpenetrating and 
 
 "*T. C. R. 30. 
 
 1C5 Principia. part III. Chap. XT. 1 ; part T. Chap. IX. 4. 
 lcc Principia. part II. Chap. XV. 8. par. 2. 
 
 75 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 surrounding the volume of second aura, which turns 
 it • continually and bears it along, and the flamy 
 crustal body of the sun with it, so that the two nec- 
 essarily revolve as one. 167 
 
 Hence the envelope or crusted body of the sun it- 
 self is in continual rotation, in the same direction 
 as the planets travel. And, moreover, whenever in 
 that enveloping flamy crust of the starry sun the 
 breaking solar bubbles we call sun spots are per- 
 ceptible, these also are seen to be carried along in 
 the same general direction ; as if they also travelled 
 around the sun. 
 
 The circumfluent volume of the aura of the solar 
 vortex never penetrates into the active interior space 
 of a star. 10s The spiraling curves of the vortex 
 therefore circle about it. as if they embraced its 
 space round about, in soft arching curves. From 
 this there results a peculiar irregularity in the abso- 
 lute rotation of the flamy, half-fluid encrusting en- 
 velope of a star or sun. The northern half of the 
 envelope always rotates a little faster from west to 
 east than the southern half. 
 
 The solar vortex, including the sun-envelope, al- 
 ways possesses some trace of the two motions proper 
 
 i"Principia, part I. Chap. IX. 5; part TI. Chap. I. I, 2. 
 E. A. K. part II. 312. 
 
 ,cs Frincipia, part III. Chap. IV. 2. 
 
 70 
 
NATURAL AT M OS PHERES. 
 
 to the intrinsic vortico-spiral conatus of its bullae. 
 The currents of the vortex gyre, near and about the 
 sun, are therefore not only in their common rotary 
 motion about the axis of the vortex ; but they retain 
 also their common endeavor and pressure along the 
 lines of the vortex or progressive motion ; although 
 this progressive or vortex motion of the aura vol- 
 ume is extremely slow. The stream of this motion 
 moves of its own impulse and nature in a large full 
 half curve from north to south. If the effect of this 
 slower subsidiary motion be considered separately 
 from the swifter and chief rotary motion, it will be 
 apparent that the general rotary movement of the 
 upper part of the vortex volume near the sun 
 would gain a little on that of the lower. 
 
 For the general slant of the curve of this subsi- 
 diary progressive motion, from the north pole of the 
 sun's envelope to its equator, will coincide in general 
 with the common rotary motion of the sphere. It 
 therefore adds itself thereto, producing a trifling ac- 
 celeration of the absolute speed of that rotation. 
 From the equator of the sun's envelope to its south- 
 ern pole, the reverse of this will be true. The slant 
 of the curving subsidiary motion will be counter to 
 the common rotary motion of the sphere, and will 
 subtract therefrom. It is as when a man on board 
 a boat paces the deck back and forth, now going 
 
 77 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 with the general stream of the boat's motion, and 
 now against it. 
 
 The fact that the northern hemisphere of the sun's 
 half fluid envelope rotates from west to east a trifle 
 faster than the southern hemisphere, a fact indi- 
 cated in Swedenborg's postulates as to the two direc- 
 tions of advance present in a true vortex circulation, 
 has been noted by astronomical observation. 
 
 The Active Solar Centre, of living animator v 
 force within this envelope or body, acts that anima- 
 tory motion continually into its enveloping body, 
 as a motion of alternating expansion and contrac- 
 tion ; and from its body, so intimately one with its 
 atmospheric spheres or vortex, the effect goes out 
 as communicated waves of alternate contraction and 
 expansion endlessly running through the elastic 
 bu'lae of the surrounding volume. Each recurrent 
 expansion of the active solar space sets the dense en- 
 ve 1 ope about that expanding solar center into sharp 
 fluctuations, which give an impulse and pressure to 
 the elastic foam-texture of the second aura around 
 it, and starts a sort of wave, the undulatory pressure 
 of which runs outward from the sun through the vor- 
 tex volume wave after wave ; every impulse of the 
 sun's expansions tending to expand the vortex also. 
 It is as if the solar space or sun were the great pul- 
 monary center of its system, and at each expansive 
 
 78 
 
NATURAL ATMOSPHERES. 
 
 motion of that miracle of inner solar breathing the 
 whole vortex like a mighty breast lifts and expands. 
 
 Light. Thus light is an undnlatory wave motion 
 or pressure running through the vortex, from the 
 sun outward. The impulse, the inciting force, of 
 these undulations of light, is the alternate expansion 
 and contraction of the active solar space within the 
 sun, called by Swedenborg its animatory motion, 
 derived from the reciprocal cardiac and pulmonic 
 activities of the Divine in His creation. That 
 light is an undulatory motion or pressure, see E. A. 
 K. part I. 170: Lesser Principia. 118. 121. 130. 
 That the spring and origin of light is animatory 
 motion, see E. A. K. part I. 300. That the origin 
 of the undulations of light is animatory motion of 
 the sun and the stars, see E. A. K. part I. 170. That 
 the animatory motion itself is an alternate expan- 
 sion and contraction perpetually kept up, see E. A. 
 K. part I. 29Q. That such animatory motion may 
 always be truly called a breathing, see A. K. 392. b. 
 That animatory motion is derived into the universe, 
 as into the heavens, by the pulmonic and cardiac 
 motions which the Lord acts into the Spiritual Sun, 
 see D. L. \Y. 392. That the interior activity of suns 
 and stars, in their use, is immediately the act of the 
 spiritual Sun within them, for if withdrawn they 
 would collapse, see D. L. W. 157. 
 
 79 
 
swedenborg's cosm-oloi ;v. 
 
 Outside the vortex-ring Volume of Second 
 Aura, the first aura exists ; for it is the universal or 
 interstellar aura. 100 The vortex ring volumes of a 
 second aura exist as it were submerged in, and em- 
 braced all about, by the first aura. The innumerable 
 stars and their vortices exist therein as local active 
 centers, where the series of creative-proceeding is to 
 be produced to new localized ultimat'on ; therefore 
 the circling motions of each volume of second aura 
 regard its central star or sun. 
 
 The Deter m i nations of the First Aura are not 
 the same as those of the second ; nor does the swe^n 
 of its currents regard any star, but they are co-ex- 
 tensive with the breadth of finite creation 170 There 
 fore the center it regards is a universal one, indeed ; 
 and the light it inmostly carries is that of God, the 
 Moral Sun. the Sun of Wisdom and of Life. 171 
 Hence all the vortices of the second aura ever creat- 
 ed, each with its springing motion about its own 
 active center, are thus wholly embraced around by 
 the primal aura and borne deep in its bosom, and 
 are carried by its supreme tides, as it were not 
 knowing, to such purposes and placvs as God w ills. 
 
 loa Principia, part T. Chap. VI. 50. 
 1T °E. A. K. part II. 272. 312. 339. 350. 
 "IE. A. K. Part I. 306; Part IT. 238, 255, ct scq., 260 
 ct seq. 
 
 80 
 
X ATURAL AT M OSP 1 1 ERES. 
 
 For by it the universe is ruled ; by it, greatest forms 
 and least arc held together ; and by it, ends flow 
 through orderly sequence of means, to results. 172 
 
 The first aura is not only present outside the vor- 
 tex volumes of second aura, embracing them about 
 and holding their mass of bullae together in a co- 
 herent contiguous volume; it is present within this 
 derivative vortex also, filling the interstices between 
 every bulla of its volume, and equilibrating all things 
 therein by its pressure. Thus everywhere within a 
 solar vortex, the bulla? of the first aura and the sec- 
 ond flow together in one vortex volume ; and noth- 
 ing so small can exist in that vortex that it is not 
 bathed about and acted upon by both the first and 
 second auras. 173 The primal planetary masses are 
 conditioned with this environment from their first 
 moment. The bullae of the first aura and the second 
 flow about the primitive earths, everywhere pressing 
 their surface, urging, acting, sustaining and mou'd- 
 ing as by liquid hands. 
 
 It is the common rotary motion of the vortex 
 which swings the primal earths about the sun from 
 their first existence. And it is a'ong the flow of the 
 vortex, as by the great highway of a common 
 
 i 72 A. K. Part IV., (VI.). 2. 6; E. A. K. Part II. 272, 
 312. 339- 
 
 173 Principia, part I. Chap. IX. 5. par. 2. 
 
 Si 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 stream, that those earths are carried outwards from 
 their common birth-place, immediately around the 
 active solar space, by widening circles, each to, his 
 own place and distance, there to circle in its own 
 orbit and freedom everlastingly. This distance is 
 not the same for any two earths; although the com- 
 mcn carrier-stream of the vortex is the same for all, 
 no two of t! e primitive earth masses find their own 
 place and freedom at the same point of the circle. 
 
 So soon as the great crustal envelope of the sun 
 collapses into the globular masses, an ordering ac- 
 tion begins in these globes. Under the conditions of 
 the surrounding pressure, the finites or vortex rings 
 of which the spherical earth masses are composed, 
 must begin to slip into place among each other, pole 
 to pole ; since that is the mutual arrangement in 
 which they take up the least room. Moreover, all 
 the finites of which the earth masses are composed, 
 are compounds of the primitives of the Spiritual 
 Sun, and the everlasting reflexive conatus of these 
 primitives to a circHng and recircling motion is 
 everywhere within them. Thus as soon as the 
 finites composing the earth-mass are adjoined pole 
 to pole, a certain common push and endeavor of the 
 whole mass will make itself felt, from thejmsh and 
 endeavor common to each finite of that mass. In 
 this manner the enormous volume of the finites con- 
 
 82 
 
NATURAL ATMOSPHERES. 
 
 stituent of any planetary mass, will almost at once 
 come to be arranged into a perfect order and flow ; 
 slow, impeded, indeed, but yet real, and emulous of 
 tbe circulation in the interior of a finite. So soon as 
 this occurs, the primitive earth will cease to be a per- 
 fectly round bad-like mass, will become flattened at 
 the poles, in emulation also of the generic configura- 
 tion of a finite. At this stage each earth will assume 
 the character, and possess the active powers, of a 
 finite ; a large finite, or substantial. ''Every planet, 
 therefore, however great ... is only a larger 
 finite ; the difference between the two consisting only 
 in degrees and dimensions.'' 174 
 
 The powers and motions of earths, as astronomi- 
 cal bodies, refer themselves back to this interior con- 
 dition. The very conatus to axillary motion they 
 g2t from this interior arrangement and circulation 
 of their substance. 17 "' And it is from this intrinsic 
 ground that all earths derive their endeavor and 
 power to that large motion en masse, which de- 
 scribes continually about the sun the great circle of 
 their orbits : and presents a very image in vast out- 
 line of a finite left in its free and unimpeded mo- 
 tion. 170 
 
 174 Principin. part III. Chap. V. par. I. 
 "sprincipia, part III. Chap. XI. 2. 
 I7u Principia, part III. Chap. XI. 3. 
 
 83 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 The primitive earths, however, differ in size, as 
 finites also differ in size. No two earths, probably, 
 in all the universe, are exactly of the same dimen- 
 sions. Thus earths would come under the law of 
 finites. the law that all of their orbits are of the same 
 general type, but differ in size ; small finites de- 
 scribing - orbits of small diameter, and large finites 
 of large diameter. The diameter of the native orbit 
 of a finite is always in direct proportion to the mass 
 of the moving body ; so it is with the earths of the 
 universe of so many sizes ; yet each describes an 
 orbit strictly commensurate to its individual power 
 and form and mass. 
 
 The Progress of the Earths to their Orbits. 
 And now a word more as to the progression of the 
 primitive earths from the sun outwards to their or- 
 bits. As the second aura is a foam-structure of a 
 relatively coarse order, the ether of a solar vortex 
 cannot be regarded as a wholly frictionless medium. 
 This, however, does not oppress the motions of the 
 planets. That stream is frictionless to us, with the 
 flow of which we ourselves spontaneously run. 
 Thus the aura of the great solar vortex is friction- 
 less to the planets, which are borne along in its cir- 
 cling stream, as boats might ride in some great 
 maelstrom flow of the sea. Nor is there even so 
 much of friction as is implied in this image. The 
 
 84 
 
NATURAL ATMOSPHERES. 
 
 earths are not only passively borne in this revolving 
 flow ; they go spontaneously. 177 
 
 The primitive earths, all starting alike from the 
 near presence of the sun, travel by successively 
 widening circles from the region of greater density 
 to less ; until each earth reaches that particular circle 
 in the vortex, where it is in individual freedom in 
 its relation with the vortex and with respect to its 
 own proportional size and mass ; and where its own 
 conatus to orbital motion coincides with the diameter 
 of the revolving volume of aura which carries it. 173 
 Thus each earth finds its own free and rightful place 
 in the stream of the great whirling vortex which 
 carries it about the parent sun ; and it thereafter 
 continues to move on that particular wave of the 
 circling stream, as its own particular orbit, age 
 after age unceasingly. Nor will there ever be any 
 friction to stop the motion of the earths ; even 
 though the second aura is not abstractly a frictionless 
 medium. Still less is an aura in motion frictionless. 
 But the stream we go with is frictionless to us ; and 
 where the aptitude and power of the interior circula- 
 tion coincide with the measure and flow of the outer 
 cosmic stream in which it is borne, as in every 
 stream of Providence, there then exists the image 
 
 177 Principia. part III. Chap. XI. 3. 
 17S Principia, part III. Chap. IV. 7; Chap. XI. 5. 
 
 85 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 and ideal of freedom itself ; and the push and flow 
 and determining crowd of the surrounding stream is 
 unperceived. 
 
 During the time taken by the raw mass of a 
 primitive earth to pass by circling gyres from the 
 sun to its own place and orbit in the vortex, many 
 things are accomplished for it; an 1 many things 
 happen to it. 
 
 First and foremost of its conditioning is, that it 
 leaves the central region of the vortex, where the 
 density of the medium is high and where the undula- 
 tions of light and heat, communicated by the anima- 
 tor}- motion of the solar center, are in their fullest 
 and most immediate force. From this region each 
 earth travels by gradations through regions where 
 the vortex density continually lessens, and also the 
 undulatory pressure of the outgoing waves of light 
 and heat. And alike when near the sun, as when de- 
 parting from it. the earth mass is surrounded, acted 
 upon, compressed, and carried, by the vortex itself, 
 in which vortex both the first aura and the second 
 are distinctly together. For the first aura is in- 
 terstitially between all the bulke of the second aura ; 
 and so surrounds, embraces, and urges them all. 
 
 The Third Aura, or Ether. Now the primitive 
 earth masses, having the constitution of solid balls, 
 cannot expand, on reaching an environment of lesser 
 
 86 
 
NATURAL ATMOSPHERES. 
 
 density, as the sun spots and the satellites do. What 
 happens to the earths is contrary to this. Their 
 mass grows smaller. 179 For when an earth has en- 
 tered a region of somewhat lessened density, the 
 finites composing the surface layers of that primeval 
 earth mass, loosen and free themselves, especially on 
 the side turned towards the sun, and whole outer- 
 most layers of the dense earth-mass lift softly and 
 lightly. The finites freeing themselves from the 
 bond of their mutual pressure, begin to float in little 
 finest curves and turns, according to their own in- 
 herent will of motion. By this means, in the course 
 of the repeated diurnal rotations of the earth, it be- 
 comes surrounded by a sort of free halitus or 
 sphere of the same substance, the same substantial, 
 as those of which its core is composed. 
 
 So soon as this halitus of fourth finites begins to 
 arise from the earth, as if the earth were evaporat- 
 ing away at its surface, 180 it everywhere enters and 
 circles in and among the bulla? of the surrounding 
 vortex. Then little volumes of the first or celestial 
 aura gather up the finites of this floating sphere, 
 press them together, and form of them minute 
 spherical envelopes of a diameter commensurate 
 
 179 Principia, Part III. Chap. V. i ; Chap. XI. 2. 3. 
 1S0 Principia. part TIT. Chap. V. 2. 
 
 87 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 with their native orbits. The valuing of first aura, 
 which formed such an envelope of fourth finites 
 about itself, remains in that envelope, as it were the 
 soul and active interior space of that particular bulla ; 
 while the envelope is as a sort of body, formed from 
 the fine primeval mother-mass of that particular 
 earth ; — a body which the central volume or soul of 
 celestial aura has formed to itself for the per- 
 formance of a new and more ultimate degree of vital 
 use. 181 Thus it is that as the earth passes outwards, 
 all around it there begin to originate new bullae, of 
 a larger size than any hitherto ; and these new bullae 
 are as entities begotten by the first or celestial aura 
 as an active from the finites of the mother earth, as 
 reactive. These bulla? are the very bullae of the third 
 degree of atmosphere, technically called the ether. 
 
 These new bullse differ from those of tbe first and 
 second aura, not only by their greater size, but in 
 having envelopes which are perfectly round, and 
 without polar openings or cones. Thus it is im- 
 possible for bullae of the third degree of atmosphere 
 to be colligated pole to pole and form long pores and 
 channels, in the same way as can the bullae of the 
 first and second. 182 
 
 ls, Principia, part III. Chap. V. 2-7; Chap. X. par. 2. 
 182 Principia, part III. Chap. V. 4. 
 
 88 
 
NATURAL ATMOSPHERES. 
 
 As we see with bulke of warm vapor or steam, the 
 tendency is to rise from the surface of the earth, 
 where they are formed, into a higher region, and 
 that this tendency is great in proportion to their 
 heat ; so here with the bullae of the third atmosphere 
 or ether. As fast as they are formed, being as it 
 were exalted and empowered by the beams of the 
 sun near at hand, they expand and mount on all 
 sides from the earth ; and as they mount, new bulla?, 
 shaping from below, follow them, and still new ones 
 are shaped at the surface of the earth and pass up- 
 war 1. Thus an atmosphere of new and larger bulke 
 of a different type is as it were spun and woven as a 
 vestment about the surface of the earth. The volume 
 of it became very great. And it did not cease to be 
 formed in continually enlarging mass, until the earth, 
 in its farthest journey from the sun, entered regions 
 where his heat in a marked degree grew less. For 
 when it reached so great a distance that the bulla? of 
 the outermost circumference of volume of ether, al- 
 ready formed, began to lose the first warmth com- 
 municated by the near presence of the radiant sun, 
 then those bulla; of their own accord no longer sped 
 away from the earth, but as it were drove back upon 
 it : in every pressure seeking to return, as they chill- 
 ed and contracted. With this, the further formation 
 of the ether sphere would cease. Thus about each 
 of the primitive earths there was formed a sphere 
 89 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 of ether, or third atmosphere, individual and as it 
 were personal to that earth alone. 
 
 In all the productions and changes characterizing 
 the formation of this third aura, each earth-mass 
 must act as reagent in the process for that particular 
 volume originating around itself ; its own motor 
 powers, rotary and orbital, are part of the instru- 
 mental means of the production. Its own substance 
 is given off from its mass to form the envelopes of 
 the bullae ; and the site where those bullae are first 
 fanned is immediately about its surface, where the 
 first and second auras encompass and press upon its 
 rounded sides. To this ether the eye is formed. To 
 this is formed the common sensory p 1 ane and ani- 
 mus. 183 It gives also the life-formative of the vege- 
 table kingdom and of the insect world. . 1S4 
 
 The volume of third aura or ether is in no case 
 similar in all respects on any two earths of the uni- 
 verse. Therefore the pressure and habit of its ac- 
 tion differ on all earths of creation ; and the play 
 of tlie living sensory organs, afterwards framed to 
 receive and reciprocate the motions of this third de- 
 gree of atmosphere, will differ on every earth in the 
 universe ; and that so distinctly that sensory organs 
 
 l88 The Soul, 69. 95. 97. iot. 
 "♦Corp. Phil. 
 
 90 
 
NATURAL ATMOSPHERES. 
 
 framed to the powers of this ether upon one earth, if 
 transferred to the ether sphere of another earth, 
 would be without their usual power of sense-re- 
 ciprocation. The eye, seeing upon one earth, would 
 be blind upon another. The planes of imagination 
 would all lie differently. And the vegetation of one 
 earth would be of forms unusual to another ; and no 
 two worlds are the same as to atmospheres, earths, 
 or forms arising out of them. 1S3 
 
 This third atmosphere is the ground of the celes- 
 tial-natural heaven, the heaven of the vegetative 
 paradises. And the fact that the volumes of this 
 third atmosphere are as many as the satellites an.l 
 planets created, is the elemental basis of the further 
 fact, that the number of natural heavens is as many 
 as the number of satellites and planets ; that each 
 satellite and planet is surrounded by its own local 
 natural heaven; that their genius is not alike; and 
 that the man who has his interiors opened to the 
 degree of the natural heaven, who lives in the com- 
 mon imaginative sensory, is able to live and make 
 his everlasting home only in the near vicinage of the 
 surface of the earth upon which he was begotten and 
 brought forth. For only to the air and ether of his 
 own earth has his ear, his eye, his common sensory, 
 
 1S5 D. L. W. 318. Principia, part ITT. Chap. II. 3. 4. 
 
 91 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 and their plane of life, been framed responsive ; only 
 there do men exist of the same genius in lower planes 
 with his own , with whom he may be associated, and 
 of their life partake. 
 
 The Fourth Aura, or Air. The like law of 
 planetary differentiation and localization exists for 
 the fourth atmosphere, the aerial elementary, which 
 is the last of the active bullular atmospheres prop- 
 erly to he called ethers or auras. The second aura 
 and the primitive earth-mass bear the same mutual 
 relation and office in the production of the fourth 
 aura or atmosphere, as the first aura and the mother 
 mass of the earth in the production of the third aura 
 or ether. The first aura and the primal-earth mass 
 are as active and reactive in framing the constitution 
 of the bullae of the third atmosphere. The first aura 
 exists in the internal or nuclear centre ; the substan- 
 tial or fourth finites of which the earth is com- 
 posed forming their enveloping bodies. The sec- 
 ond aura is the active to the reactive of the sub- 
 stantiates of the primal earth in the production of 
 a fourth aura. The bullae of this aura will then 
 have a volume of second aura as a nuclear centre; 
 their enveloping body having been taken from the 
 mother mass of the natural earth. This fourth atmo- 
 sphere does not enter the human body ; although it 
 has an organ formed to itself, the ear. In this atmo- 
 
 92 
 
NATURAL ATMOSPHERES. 
 
 sphere the spiritual-natural heaven is founded. In 
 the formation of the envelopes of the bulla? of the 
 fourth aura, the substantial or fourth finites of the 
 earth mass are not used immediately or individually, 
 but certain grosser finites, called fifth finites, con- 
 creted from the fourth finites by free composi- 
 tion. Thus the fifth finites are more ultimate, 
 lower, and rlnited, than the mass of the planetary 
 core itself. This appears in all their uses. Indeed, 
 to the activity of the fifth finites our atmospheric 
 fire is due, 188 the activity of the fourth finites being 
 the elementary electric fire. 1 " 
 
 The formation of fifth finites takes place at the 
 surface of the planets, wherever great layers and 
 masses of the fourth finites have freed themselves 
 from old connections ; moving one among another 
 they mutually finite themselves into a new and 
 more compounded grade of vortex-ring entities than 
 has yet existed. 188 
 
 These new finites possess all the powers of the 
 previous finites; they have an interior circulation, 
 and spontaneously rise and run and circle in a cer- 
 tain orbit. 1S9 They move, however, far more slowly, 
 
 18C Principia, part III. Chap. VIII. 4. 8. 15. 
 137 Ibid. 16. 
 
 lss Principia, part III. Chap. VI. 
 "•Principia, part III. Chap. VIIT. 3. 
 
 93 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 than the fourth finites do ; and the diameter of the 
 orhit they describe in their motions is much greater. 
 When such finites, therefore, rise and move in 
 swarms over the surface of the earth, the circle of 
 their reflexing activities will be wide enough to in- 
 close in its limits a volume of the bullae of the second 
 aura. Then that volume of second aura, with first 
 aura bullae in its interstices, will convolute and roll 
 these finites, and form of them relatively large 
 spherical envelopes. Of the large bullae thus form- 
 ed, the volume of fourth elementary is composed. 100 
 Origin of the Water Molecule. The volume 
 of the air or fourth atmosphere was never so large 
 as that of the ether or third atmosphere ; and a large 
 portion of the original volume has been compressed 
 into materia for the earth's uses. There is now 
 left, therefore, but a comparatively thin envelope, 
 not m,any miles thick, pressing closely upon the 
 earth's surface. This is the atmosphere the lower 
 layers of which were compressed into the zvatcrs 
 and grosser materia of creation. For the waters 
 which cover the earth, the salts of the sea, the rocks 
 of its upper crusts, are formed directly, not from the 
 materia of the planetary mass, but from compress- 
 ions of that fourth aura. 
 
 "oPrincipia, part III. Chap. VII. 
 
 94 
 
NATURAL ATMOSPHERES. 
 
 The general cause of this compressive action is 
 the passage of the earth, with all its great surround- 
 ing volumes of third and fourth atmospheres about 
 it, into regions of the vortex sphere far colder than 
 those where the volumes of the third and fourth at- 
 mospheres were formed. The immediate agency of 
 the compression is the immense return endeavor, or 
 return pressure back upon the earth, of the cooling 
 and contracting bullae of the great volumes of the 
 third and fourth atmospheres. The sum of this 
 contraction-endeavor of the whole vast spherical 
 volume is directed and massed from every side to- 
 wards the centre of the solid resistant globe of 
 the primitive earth. The globe cannot yield nor 
 can it be pushed away. It is solid. And from 
 every side like pressure comes, from like causes, 
 which sustains and prevents escape. The im- 
 mense return conatus and effort of the vast cool- 
 ing sphere of atmospheric bullae, concentrating its 
 radii in towards the earth, brings an enormous 
 pressure to bear upon the bullular texture of its own 
 volume in the vicinage of the earth, and upon the 
 volume of the fourth elementaries particularly ; 
 since that volume is more ultimate and finite, and 
 with relatively less spring of interior resistance and 
 reaction. 
 
 The bulla? of the fourth atmosphere caught under 
 
 95 
 
svvedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 this cooling pressure, and driven towards the un- 
 yielding surface of the planet, are as it were com- 
 pressed to their lowest and smallest dimensions until 
 each is reduced to a small, round, unyielding little 
 mass. This new little mass is not homogeneous. 
 The fifth finites of the envelope of the parent bullae, 
 the same as those of the atmospheric fire, will still 
 form the exterior of the mass ; the third finites of 
 the envelopes of the bullae of the second aura, en- 
 closed in the nuclear centres of the parent bullae, 
 the same finites which constitute the primitives of 
 the finer group of metals, will fill the centre. Thus 
 the new particles, spherical in form, non-elastic or 
 solid, the first really material thing formed in crea- 
 tion, will consist, as we have said, of two constitu- 
 ents, namely, the primitives of the metallic family, 
 and fifth finites or those belonging to the later at- 
 mospheric fires. 
 
 Now these new, spherical, hard molecules or 
 masses, thus formed by the compression of the lower 
 layers of the fourth elementary or atmosphere, are 
 actually the molecules of water. The ether, inter- 
 fluent in their interstices, renders them fluid. 191 
 
 Hence under the enormous pressure of the cooling 
 ether-sphere about the earth, the coarse foam-bullae 
 
 "iPrincipia, part III. Chap. IX. i. 2. 
 
 96 
 
DIAGRAM 
 
 Infinite Esse. 
 
 First Natural Points, Iniliament of Finiting, 
 Primitives of the Spiritual Sun, Divine Essence. 
 
 First Finite. 
 
 Water Particle 
 
 First, Universal, Human Aur 
 lnmostly, the Divine Celestial. 
 
 Second, Solar, Magnetic, Animal Aura, 
 lnmostly, the Divine Spiritilal. 
 
 Ether ; Planetary, Visual, Electric. 
 Vegetative Aura ; Celestial Ultimate. 
 
 I I 
 Aerial, Auditory Atmosphere. 
 Spiritual Ultimate. 
 
 Aqueous Vapoi, 
 Steam. 
 
 N. B. — Continuous lines >) indicate successive formation. 
 
 Dotted lines (>}¥i ») indicate influx into the interiors. 
 
NATURAL ATMOSPHERES. 
 
 of the aerial elementary or fourth aura, in its layers 
 next the earth, begin to be so hardly compressed 
 that they are each condensed into a molecule of 
 water. Then there appears over the surface of the 
 mother earth a mass of water, the tide of which rises 
 higher and higher, as layer after layer of the aura or 
 atmosphere above changes its nature an 1 form un- 
 der the compressing force, until the pressure of 
 the upper atmospheres is for a time satisfied ; and 
 a great unsalt sea, leagues in depth, covers the ball 
 oi the earth. 
 
 97 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 SALTS AND THE CRUST OF THE EARTH. 
 PROTOPLASM. 
 
 The Centrifugal Compressive Force. All the 
 compressive forces acting around an active solar 
 centre to condense new and more compounded sub- 
 stantiate from the foam-texture of the surrounding 
 aura, are centrifugal radiant forces. The means 
 of this compression is the action of the whirling 
 gyres excited in the aura by the presence and power 
 nf the active centre. For the whirling volume, be- 
 gun near the sun, everywhere drives outward against 
 the resisting expanse of aura round about. One 
 portion of the aura coerces and presses another por- 
 tion, — the momentum of that portion which is in mo- 
 tion, acting against the portion at rest, with a subtle, 
 irresistible force. It is in this manner that the third 
 finites were compressed from the first aura, and it is 
 thus that the fourth finites. of which the planets were 
 shaped, were compressed from second aura. 
 
 The Centripetal Compressive Force. The com- 
 pressing instrumentality brought into action about 
 the earths, to bring forth the waters and the angular 
 
 98 
 
SALTS. 
 
 particles or the salts, is the very reverse of the com- 
 pressive force active about a sun. It is a centripetal 
 force, a force originating not from an expansive but 
 from a contractive effort of an aura or ether — not 
 from a higher and finer foam ether in whirling mil- 
 lion, but from a lower and coarser foam ether, in all 
 its volume chilling and contracting. 
 
 This type of compressive force can only affect 
 planetary bodies and their immediate vicinage ; and 
 their own surrounding volumes of third and fourth 
 aura are the ministering means of Jhe compression. 
 This compression commenced at the period when the 
 two terrestrial atmospheres, already fully formed, be- 
 gan to he carried by their mother earth farther ami 
 far! her from the genial circle of greater solar light 
 and heat. For as the mother earth carried them into 
 regions continually further remote and more chill, 
 they themselves began to contract as they cooled ; 
 and not only did they thus contract individually or 
 as to everv bullular unit, but as a whole or en 
 masse. Then the force of the progressive cooling 
 and constriction of so vast a volume of ether, every- 
 where directed by narrowing radii inward upon the 
 parent earth, began to produce great and wonderful 
 results. 
 
 The earth-globe itself could not be further com- 
 pressed by the contractive pressures of the cooling 
 
 99 
 
SWEDEXBORG S COSMOLOGY. 
 
 volume of ether thus determined, and as it were 
 focussed. upon its surface. For the globe was al- 
 ready absolutely dense and resistant ; nor could it 
 be thrust from its position, since it lay as it were sus- 
 tained on all sides by centripetal pressures and equal 
 force. 
 
 The Compression of the Fourth Aura, or Air. 
 It was the comparatively small volume of fourth 
 aura, the aereal elementary, massed about the earth, 
 that could be affected by this contractive pressure. 
 For the volume of aereal elementary could be caught, 
 as it were, between the anvil and the hammer, be- 
 tween the earth and the pressing contracting ether. 
 Something must yield ; and the bullae, large, slug- 
 gish, gross, of the fourth atmosphere, were the only 
 forms in that locality apt to yield. 
 
 Under the growing pressure, then, of the whole 
 contracting volume, the elastic bulls of the fourth 
 aura, near the surface of the earth, grew denser and 
 denser, smaller and smaller ; until vast volumes of 
 them were reduced to small, hard, non-bullu'ar, 
 spherical masses, resistant, and inert. 192 
 
 The Primeval Ocean. These new forms, hard, 
 inelastic, round, were the primitive molecules of 
 water ; and the volume of such hard molecules, pro- 
 
 1!,: Principia, part III. Chap. IX. i. 
 
 IOO 
 
SALTS. 
 
 duced about the earth, was rendered fluent, and the 
 molecules themselves movable, one among another, 
 by the ether or third atmosphere interfluent in their 
 interstices. 193 
 
 There was formed at length a vast sea of such 
 water particles, miles in depth, fluent about the 
 planetary mass. This was the great unsalted sea, or 
 primeval ocean, which first swept around the 
 globe. 194 
 
 Formation of the Salt Molecule. The effect 
 of the contractive pressures did not stop here. Com- 
 pression was able to go a step further. The mole- 
 cules or units of this vast sea were still spherical in 
 form, and being spherical their surfaces pressed each 
 other only at their points of mutual contact. The 
 interstitial spaces between them presented places and 
 planes of less pressure or resistance. If. then, the 
 pressure acting upon them grew great enough, here 
 and there the circumference of the hard, round forms 
 would begin to yield in the direction of lesser press- 
 ure, and as it were bulge and give way toward the 
 interstitial spaces. The whole little mass of any 
 round water particle, thus yielding, would be crush- 
 ed into a new form, a form moulded after the shape 
 
 lo: 'Principia, part III. Chap. IX. 2. 
 
 194 Principia, part III. Chap. IX. par. I ; Chemistry, 
 Chap. I. 
 
 IOI 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 of the interstice existing between the adjacent round 
 particles which still retained their integral round- 
 ness. 195 
 
 Plate VIII represents nine molecules of water, 
 the central molecule being the first to yield to the 
 pressure. As its envelope, composed of fifth finites, 
 must be the first to give way, its substance will pass 
 into the adjacent interstitial spaces, shown in plate 
 IX, and the adjoining round water molecules set- 
 tling closer in upon the crushed and yielding par- 
 ticle, it will be pressed into the shape shown in plate 
 X ; this shape will be composed of a central cubic 
 block, consisting of the nuclear core of the original 
 water particle, — a cubic block, therefore, of metallic 
 primitives. At each angle of this central cube will be 
 a tetrahedron block, formed of the fifth finites from 
 the surface of the compressed particle of water. 
 This cubic block, Swedenborg terms an alkaline 
 particle ; the tetrahedral blocks are acid particles. 
 Therefore the primeval sea salt, as a compound of 
 both forms, the alkaline and the acid, is basic. 106 
 
 The sides of all angular particles so produced, are 
 of course slightly concave, being moulded to the 
 convexity of the surrounding round particles. 197 
 
 195 Chemistry, chapter I. 
 196 Chemistry, Chap. XI. sec. 9. 
 107 Chemistry, Chap. X. 
 
 102 
 
Plate VI II 
 
 Group <>f Nine Molecih.es of Water. 
 Cross section : the green represents fourth finite*, the brown fifth 
 
Plate IX. 
 
 The Same Group as Plate VIII, 
 with central molecule collapsed. 
 
Plate X. 
 
 Formed by the collapse of the central water molecules shown in Plates 
 VI II and IX. The green represents the cubical alkali salt particle of 
 fourth finites, the brown the triangular acid salt particle. 
 
SALTS. 
 
 This fits them to connect with any kind of round 
 particles of suitable size, in a sort of ball and socket 
 fashion. It is in this manner that the crystallization 
 of salt takes place ; the round molecular particles, 
 necessary to build up the structure of the crystalline 
 mass, being- furnished by the water of crystalliza- 
 tion. 198 
 
 These complex angular particles, thus formed at 
 the bottom of the ocean, are the very primitives of 
 the halogen salts and other typical bases. As they 
 were actually formed in situ at the bottom of the 
 sea, from water particles, and among water particles, 
 they were formed most perfectly and most abund- 
 antly. The water particles left uncrushed among 
 them, acted the part of the water molecules of crys- 
 tallization. The result was the formation of a vast 
 layer of rock salt at the bottom of the sea. 109 This 
 was the last great effect of the contractive pressure 
 of the cooling ether volume. 
 
 It was by the wash from this substratum of crys- 
 talline salt that the great primeval sea of sweet water 
 grew salt, and is to this day the salt-mother of 
 the earth and storehouse of the basic angular parti- 
 cles of creation. 200 
 
 The Ramenta of Broken Salt Particles. An- 
 
 198 Chemistry, Chap. XI. sec. 3. 
 199 Chemistry, Chap. I. sec. 5; Chap. X. sec. 2. 
 200 Chemistry, Chap. X. sec. 2, XI. sec. 1 
 103 
 
SWEDEN B0RGS COSMOLOGY. 
 
 other form comes into notice here, or rather a part 
 of the form presented by the primevally perfect ang- 
 ular particles of rock salt. Certain delicate wing-like 
 projections exist on every side. They are ramenta 
 curved like the blade of a sickle, thick on the convex 
 edge, but very fine on the concave. 201 
 
 These ramenta are formed of finer finites than the 
 main mass, disintegrated from the coarser, which 
 exist in some near interstice. Every angular or block 
 particle formed in that deep crystalline bed of salt in 
 the depths of the primeval sea, was thus delicately 
 winged at its edges. As the sea dissolved layer 
 after layer of the salt particles, these delicate lamel- 
 lar portions were broken off by the attrition of that 
 process ; and clouds as it were of them must have 
 been loosened, freed, and drifted to and fro in the 
 water of the deep sea. 202 
 
 The Primitives of Carbon. Forms of this type 
 have potencies of use of their own. They are the 
 angular or inert particles which are the mother or 
 passive particles generic to the oi's, the animal 
 spirits, the formative substance of animals and of 
 plants. Bullular particles of water vapor, of the 
 ether, the auras, give the active or father element. 
 
 Chemistry. Chap. XIV. I. 
 20 -Chemistry, Chap. XI V. i 
 
 104 
 
SALTS. 
 
 The passive ramental fragments cover the en- 
 velopes of the bulla;, either singly or in volume. 
 Bullae of the ether thus encrusted and loaded with 
 the finest ramented edges, broken from the angular 
 particles of primeval salts, are thus the very basic, 
 generic factors of the oils and spirits and the forma- 
 tive substances of plants, or what emulates spirits 
 in them. 203 
 
 Now in the depths of the primal sea, in the plane, 
 where the bed of rock salt was dissolving, the condi- 
 tions, the necessary factors for the formation of the 
 primal oils, or hydro-carbons, and the formative sub- 
 stance or seed of vegetative life, not only existed, 
 but existed abundantly, and existed in juxtaposition. 
 The attrition of the primal keen-edged perfect salts 
 as they dissolved must have given rise to a vast first 
 production of such free ramental particles ; the ten- 
 dency of which is to attach themselves to any free 
 ether bullae or volumes adjacent. 
 
 The first formation of Oils or Hydrocarbons. 
 Meanwhile, the conditions of dissolution of salt in 
 the water would cause free volumes of ether buVx 
 to rise everywhere in bubbles from the depth where 
 the salt was dissolving, to the surface of the sea. 
 
 203 Chemistrv, Chap. XIV. sec. 2; E. A. K. Part I. 75 
 76. 
 
 105 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 For the salt particles dissolving in water, Jo not 
 increase the volume of water, because they only fill 
 and occupy the interstices of the water particles. 204 
 Therefore, as the salt of the rock-salt bed dissolves 
 in the wash of the primal sea resting upon it, the 
 interfluent ether, or "subtle matter" rises to the sur- 
 face in the shape of bubbles ; and its place is occupied 
 by the salts. 203 Thus all through the lower level of 
 the sea where the dissolving salt is giving rise to a 
 cloud or sphere of ramental particles, the volumes of 
 displaced ether will be rising among them and 
 mounting to the surface in bubbles. It was thus 
 that oils or hydrocarbons first originated in the 
 primal sea. 206 
 
 Origin of the Earth-Crust. Under the condi- 
 tions just postulated for the primal sea, the displaced 
 and ascending bubbles of ether cannot but attract 
 to themselves the abundant ramental particles or 
 flakes broken from the fine curving edges of the 
 first angular or salt forms, and act as their carriers 
 to the upper regions of the sea. From this cause 
 there arises at length a kind of crust, or covering- 
 over of all the surface of the quiet sea. This crust 
 will be composed mainly of the bullae of the ether of 
 
 204 Chemistry, Chap. XI. sec. 2-6. 
 2or, Chemistry, Chap. XI. sec. 5, par. 2. 
 206 Chemistry, Chap. XIV. sec. 2. par. no. 4. 
 
 106 
 
SALTS. 
 
 the third order, loaded thus with fine ramental par- 
 ticles. Among these encrusted bulla? of the ether 
 will be drifts and heaps of free ramental carbon- 
 aceous particles, together with many salt particles, 
 acid and alkaline, rising entangled in the groups of 
 ascending oily bubbles. This first delicate crust will 
 be thickened continually from below, by the new 
 ramental-ladened bubbles of ether rising from the 
 ocean depths, where the salt of the great primal 
 rock-salt layer is being dissolved. 207 
 
 Moreover, some of the ramental fragments, car- 
 ried above the surface of the sea and dispersed there 
 by the breaking of bubbles, would readily transfer 
 themselves to the interstices of the elementaries , and 
 gather and encrust about the bullular particles of the 
 watery vapor, formed in the lower layers of the 
 warm, heavy brooding air pressing the surface of the 
 sea. The latter form is carbonic acid, the "volatile 
 urinous salt" of Swedenborg's Chemistry ; formed 
 also of the exhalations sent out in the course of the 
 purification of the sera of the bloods in the lungs. 20 " 
 
 20T Chemistry, Chap. XI. sec. 5. last par. no. 2; Chap. 
 XIV. sec. 2. par. 2. no 4; Worship and Love of God, 14; 
 Principia Part III. Chap. XII. Preface to work on Copper, 
 P. 379- 
 
 20!< See D. L. W. 420, 423. Chemistry, Chap. XIV. sec. 
 3 ; sec. 2. par. 2. no. 6 ; A K. 406. notes d. e. 
 
 107 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 The Formative Substance of the Vegetable 
 Kingdom. The primitive globules of the ether-oils 
 or spirits, the ramental-laden volumes and bullae 
 of ether, thus rising from the depths of the sea, and 
 collecting on its surface, present in very form the 
 first union of the bullae of the ether, as an active, 
 with the first passive particles or angular forms of 
 the earth. 209 Such forms are the lowest in the series 
 of the three formative substances of the degrees of 
 the organic individuals, i. e., the vegetative. 210 For 
 the ether bullae thus surrounded and encrusted by 
 the primal ramental fragments, literally constitute 
 the life-formative., the cosmic seminal principle of 
 the vegetative kingdom, and of the insect and cold- 
 blooded species of the animal kingdom. 2 * 1 
 
 This first crust, almost liquid, delicately jelly-like, 
 — an oily visco-fluid foam superinduced over the 
 surface of the warm quiet sea, — was formed then of 
 bullae of the ether, the atmosphere of the third order, 
 encrusted and clothed about with the finest passive 
 angular particles, the curving ramental edges of the 
 
 209 Worship and Love of God, 20 note, 25 note. 
 
 - 10 E. A. K., part II. 355. Ath. Creed, pages 8. 30 E. 
 A. K . part I. 76. A. E. 1208. Worship and Love of God, 
 20. 25. Corpuscular Philosophy. 
 
 211 E. A. K. part II. 355. Corpuscular Philosophy; Wor- 
 ship and Love of God, 20, 25. 
 
 108 
 
SALTS. 
 
 primitive broken salts ; these ramental edges being 
 broken away, in the depth of the sea. in the throb 
 and slide of its motion over the rock-salt bed : and 
 as the solid planet and liquid ocean revolve, it lifted 
 and dissolved layer after layer of the great salt 
 stratum formed in its depths. 
 
 The first Seed- Soil. We are to think of this 
 delicate crust, then, as the first ground of the earth. 
 We are to think that all its masses or "clods" of ra- 
 mental encrusted bullae were so many masses of the 
 little active elastic globules, each embodying a minute 
 volume of primal aura, enveloped in fourth finites. — 
 encrusted with ramental angular particles, — and 
 capable of acting as the very formative substance 
 of individuals, actively ultimating the vegetative and 
 lower animal degrees of life. These fine bullae, thus 
 clothed upon, or encrusted with such ramental par- 
 ticles, were as little seeds, or ova. Under touch of 
 the celestial power and life which they clothed about, 
 as soon as the heat of the sun gave expansion to 
 their delicate surfaces thev were able to combine, 
 and as a very vegetative soul or principle, gathering 
 to themselves waters and salts, to initiate the pri- 
 mordial germinations, in simple individuals, of the 
 vegetative and animalculate life. 
 
 Thus the first crust collecting over the warm 
 primal salt sea. the first ground formed, was com- 
 
 109 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 posed as it were of such little bullular ova, involv- 
 ing the very vital formatives of the vegetable life, 
 and was as it were a soil of pure seed. 
 
 Corroborative Evidences. In corroboration of 
 Swedenborg's teaching as to the first great basic belt 
 of rock-salt, formed at the bottom of the primal 
 ocean surrounding the earth, and the origin of the 
 first oils or hydro-carbons in the primal ocean, from 
 the dissolution and breaking up of the salt particles 
 of the upper layers of that stratum, under the wash 
 of the sea, the following may be of interest. 
 
 The great mountains of salt, and the beds of rock- 
 salt of the salt mines, are for the most part rem- 
 nants of that great first bed of rock-salt formed in 
 the depth of the primeval sea. the undissolved 
 remnants being in later ages covered over and pre- 
 served by deposited strata of other matter. 212 
 
 Now, as it happened at the first age of the earth, 
 swiftly under the solvent action of the water, that 
 the delicate ramental particles were detached from 
 the fine cubes and triangles, and, adjoining them- 
 selves to the bulla? or bubbles of the ether, gave 
 origin to the first forms of oils or hydro-carbons ; so 
 later it happened, and happens still, in the rock-salt 
 
 2,2 Chemistry, Chap. I. sec. i. 2. 5. 8; Chap. XI, sec. 10 
 postscript. 
 
 IIO 
 
SALTS. 
 
 mines, but more slowly. And the action of this 
 primal production of the oils is being- paral 1 cled in 
 the buried rock-salt beds, but on a smaller sca'e, 
 and more slowly. Ramental particles arc detached 
 by slow attrition, escape and attach themselves to 
 the adjacent bulla? of the ether, both singly and in 
 litt'e volumes, until stores of such loaded bulla?, the 
 hydro-carbons or oils of the mineral kingdom, are 
 formed in the dark caverns and strata of the earth 
 and accumulate in great pockets or wells among the 
 adjacent pervious strata. Bitumen, asphalt, naptha, 
 petroleum, are instances of such forms thus pro- 
 duced. 213 
 
 This accounts for the fact, of so much interest to 
 practical men. that inflammable gas is usually found 
 in connection with beds of rock-salt. In a great sa't 
 mine in China, as well as in salt deposits in Hungary, 
 gas is obtained directly from the beds of rock-salt. 
 (Encyclopaedia Britannica, article on Gas.) 
 
 Moreover the Encyclopaedia Britannica, article on 
 rock-salt, notes that "the frequent association of 
 bitumen and petroleum, with rock-salt and brine, is 
 one of the most notable features in the geology of 
 those substances ; and seems to point to some un- 
 
 213 Chemistry, Chap. XIV. sec. 8. 
 
 Ill 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 known condition of the formation of the two first 
 named." 
 
 Growth of the Earth-Crust. Tims the earth 
 surrounds itself with water, and afterwards with a 
 fertile crust, a crust which in a state of resolution not 
 onlv yields seeds, but unfolds them into different 
 kinds of fruits and plants. 214 Surrounded with 
 water without a shore, a crust was superinduced, 
 and all that we now find in the vegetable and min- 
 eral worlds was enabled to enter the crust. This 
 crust was formed upon the waters by the dissolution 
 of the parts in the water, and the interjections of 
 finites. which emerged to the surface ; and the crust 
 continually increased by the addition of parts one 
 under another. 215 
 
 Protoplasm. At first the earth was as yet not 
 earth, but surrounded by an uncovered wave, in a 
 continual bubbling and effervescence from i*s bottom ; 
 presently the uncovered wave of the sea began to be 
 covered by a coat, delicate and without density ; but 
 it became dense as it was increased by the affluence 
 of particles emerging from beneath, until it was cov- 
 ered with a surface crust of small eggs or vesicular 
 seeds of the future triple kingdom, each to come 
 
 214 Principia, part III. Chap. IX par. i. 
 I15 Principia. part III. Chap. XII. 
 
 I T 2 
 
SALTS. 
 
 forth successively. 216 Everywhere there was as it 
 were something - living in what was not living, or 
 animate in what was not animate, which at length 
 unfolded and opened itself. 217 The first things pro- 
 duced in and from this warm slime of the sea, foamy, 
 pure and tender, were the vegetative life and the 
 complementary forms of the lower animalculate life. 
 For this production only three things were neces- 
 sary : — 
 
 (i.) The finest yet primal oil globules, formed of 
 bubbles of the ether, with the finest ramental angular 
 particles of the earth's first salts, adjoined to them 
 as by a marriage ; the two being related as the soul 
 and its body, or as the active center or internal of 
 the sun, to its superinduced crustal body. 
 
 (2.) Angular particles, salts, acids and alkalies, 
 with their concave sides, to act as conjunctives. 
 
 (3.) Water molecules, greater and less. 
 
 Where these are, with fostering heat from the 
 natural sun. with inflowing determinants from the 
 Sun of life, they may at once be framed into the 
 palpitant jelly-like mass, that vesicular or foam- 
 structure, the protoplasm which is the physiological 
 basis of the embryonic life, vegetable or animal. 
 
 216 Worship and Love of God, 12-15; D. L. W., 311-312 
 217 Worship and Love of God, 24. 
 
 113 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 The life-formative Functions of the Ether. 
 Of these three factors, the soul force is in the glob- 
 ules of the oil forms. For the life-formative, the 
 seminal principle, is in the ether, the third degree of 
 the Divine Proceeding, formed into atmosphere, or 
 Use ; and each globule of the oil has a nuclear vol- 
 ume of this ether. "The first generating or plastic 
 force innate in the seeds of vegetable foetuses may be 
 likened to a soul. Such genitures are from the con- 
 junctive of the active forms constituting ether, with 
 the inert powers of earth." 2 '* That it is the ether of 
 the third order which is the life-formative of the 
 vegetab'e forms, see E. A. K., part II, 355 ; and also 
 of the insect and lower animal life, see Corpuscular 
 Philosophy and the previous references to the Wor- 
 ship and Love of God. But the second aura, or the 
 ether of the second order, is the life-formative of the 
 higher animal forms. 210 . And the first or universal 
 aura gives the human life-formative. 220 That such 
 is the highest office in the universe, the living office 
 of the atmospheres, which are the Proceeding Di- 
 vine, as to Use, sej the work on the Athanasian 
 Creed, n. 26, 191. 
 
 2,s Worship and Love of God, 20. 
 
 21n E. A. K., part II. 338, 339. Corpuscular Philosophy 
 S20 E. A. K., part II. 339. 350. 352. Corpuscular Phil- 
 osophy. 
 
 114 
 
That this function, this power of the atmospheres, 
 is an arcanum hitherto unknown ; and that it is an 
 essential of atmosphere, — not only the spiritual at- 
 mosphere, but the natural, — is noted in the Ath. 
 Creed, n. 26 ; where the birth of insect forms, and the 
 origin of the vegetative form is referred to the 
 natural or terrestrial ether. To the ether as the 
 vegetative soul, the Apocalypse Explained, n.1208, 
 adds its testimonies. From it is the form of plants, 
 and the building powers of coralline forms. 
 
 Even the inert substances adjoined, the earths, the 
 salts, the waters, have the urgency toward their 
 uses, springing from like affections and conjoining 
 with the active forces, to bring forth the mutual off- 
 spring of use or concrete structural forms. 221 For 
 the series of finiting, beginning in the Spiritual Sun, 
 does not cease until in its last term, the quiescent 
 matters of the terraqueous globe, 222 in which its 
 efforts are all gathered up. 22:i Hence in the ulti- 
 mates of active forces, or the ether, and of passive 
 forces, or angular particles, the creative power of 
 the Lord acts in fullness and strength. 224 This is 
 the first sphere of all, the sphere of these inert parti- 
 
 M *A. E. 1210. D. L. W. 310. T. C. R. 470. 
 *«T. C. R. 33- 
 L. W. 310. 
 "*A. E. 1087. 
 
 "5 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 cles, given off by the salt of the sea and married 
 with the ether in the production of the formative 
 substances, or active seminal principles of vegeta- 
 tive life. 225 
 
 As for the third ether itself, the nuclear principle 
 of its own bullae is a volume of the primal or celestial 
 aura, which regards the Sun of Life alone. Tt is the 
 celestial-natural degree of the Proceeding Divine, 
 from which exists the conatus and actuality, in the 
 forming force of vegetable life. 226 
 
 Salt as the Conjunctive of Oil and Water. 
 Angular particles, or salts, act as the intermediates 
 or connectives of the higher oil forms, and the lower 
 water forms. Albumen, blood, milk, are given as 
 instances of this conjunctive action of salts, in fram- 
 ing substances into forms plastically co-active with 
 the productive and operative forces of animal life. 227 
 
 The type of reactive substances of materia aris- 
 ing from the coalescence of oils and "spirits" with 
 water, by means of the first salts, are noted as char- 
 acteristic (if the vegetable as well as of the animal 
 kingdoms in E. A. K., part T, 75. The Corpuscular 
 Philosophy notes that the whole vegetable kingdom 
 
 225 T. C. R. 499- 
 22fi T. C. R. 308. 
 
 227 Chemistry, part Xiy. sec. 4 (4). sec. 8. 
 
 Il6 
 
SALTS. 
 
 is as it were formed of the little bulla? of different 
 kinds, or vesicles less and greater, determined by 
 the enclosed ether, together with the surrounding 
 salts. Revelation itself confirms this great testi- 
 mony as to the conjunctive power of salt, which, it 
 is stated in the Arcana Ccelestia, n. 10300, "conjoins 
 water and oil, which otherwise are not conjoined." 
 In support of such a derivation of the basic bullular 
 or foam-structure of the protoplasmic materia of 
 forms capable of co-acting with life, that is, their 
 derivation from oil, salt, and water, Butschli's 
 famous work has come with triumphant emphasis. 
 The first successful experiments, given in his work 
 on Protoplasm and Microscopic Foams, were made 
 from a bottle of olive oil that had long stood in the 
 sun, and common salt finely ground, and water. 228 
 For the wonderful work done with such foams, the 
 interested reader is referred to the original volume. 
 Here the quotation is adduced as a modern instance 
 of what the Writings say as to the powers of salts 
 to act as a conjunctive between water and oil ; and 
 an experimental confirmation of Swedenborg's state- 
 ment that the structural result of such conjunctive 
 action is the production of vesicles, bulke, or alveoli ; 
 which foam-type is given as characteristic of the 
 
 22K Protoplasm, c'c, pp. 7-17, by O. Butschli, Trans. 1894. 
 Adam and Clias. Black. 
 
 11; 
 
SWEDENBORG S COSMOLOGY. 
 
 structure of the minutest plastic particles, vegeta- 
 tive or otherwise, in which the life-formative im- 
 mediately clothes itself about, and acts. To the con- 
 firmation of this, Andrews' study on the Living 
 Substance gives emphatic testimony, as follows, 
 "The structure of protoplasm, throughout the sub- 
 stance of all living organisms examined, except when 
 secondarily altered, was found to be, as maintained 
 by Butschli, that of a visco-fluid foam." 
 
 For the origin of living functionating units or 
 forms, giving out characteristic spheres, — that is, 
 for the bringing into existence of the reacting foam- 
 structure, jelly-like, plastic, namely, the protoplasm 
 of the simplest outermost forms of vegetative life, 
 and of the animal life which is confined to the vegeta- 
 tive or third ether plane, — nothing is needed but the 
 presence of water and salt particles, and the primi- 
 tive ethereal oils, moving under the determination 
 of the celestial sphere in the ether itself, with its 
 first produced vesicles brooded and warmed by long 
 sunshine, in a moist pressing atmosphere. 
 
 Rise of Animalculate Life. The first living 
 form to open, to be born in and from this warm 
 slime of the sea, pure, tender, was the simplest, low- 
 est vegetative life, and the complex lower forms of 
 animalculate life, which swim and fly, "foetuses 
 which performed the exercises and offices of their 
 
 118 
 
SALTS. 
 
 life in a state of greater ignorance than other creat- 
 ures," as befits the outmost life-formative, bodied 
 in organs without basis of self-respective reflux. 229 
 
 In the shaded depths of the sea, where the ethar- 
 bubbles, tangled in. did not rise, or did not rise far, 
 their plastic force, as a seminal principle, coacting 
 with homogenous exhalations of particles from be- 
 low, framed the living forms of the deep sea 
 ooze, the Foraminifera, whose little day of life is 
 given to secreting into and about their tender bodies 
 firmer matters, and delicate shells. When their own 
 day of life is over, the fine shells they lived into be- 
 ing, stay. And of the accumulations of myriad gen- 
 erations of such, our basic limestones, even our basic 
 siliceous formations, are posited. 230 Indications 
 remain still of the old source which Swedenborg 
 postulates for the origin of such forms, and the con- 
 ditions of salts, and ramental or carbonacious parti- 
 cles in their life environment. "Limestones often 
 contain so large a proportion of bituminous matter, 
 as to give off a distinct odor of petroleum when 
 struck with a hammer." 281 
 
 Later, the larger creatures, the scarcely living 
 
 229 Worship and Love of God. 18. 25. 
 230 Physical Geology, by S. H. Green. Chap. 4. sec. II. 
 231 Rocks. Rock Weathering, and Soils, by G. P. Mer- 
 rill, page 145. 
 
 119 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 corals, set their tiny rock-bound bodies as steps for 
 successive generations to climb by, to upper levels of 
 island ring and reef. But over all the smooth won- 
 der of the crustal covering of the sea, the living 
 foam, the outputs of the seeking root, and the ting- 
 ing leaf, began to be. Thus the first vegetative pro- 
 toplasm took its rise in and from the purely jelly-like 
 crustings of the primal sea, where the globules of 
 ether-oil, the salts, the tangled mass of finites, the 
 water particles, all. as they outwardly were warmed 
 softly by the sun shining through the mists, were 
 inwardly touched to living action by the celestial 
 aura, imminent in every particle of ether-foam. And 
 to this first source and conditionment of the spon- 
 taneous generation of primal forms of vegetative and 
 animalculate life, the conditions under which the 
 hell-broods of evil insect forms and evil animal- 
 culae came first and do still come to spontaneous 
 generation, give the testimony of their mimicry. 
 For they originated in "stagnant lakes, marshes, 
 rank and fetid bodies." 232 And the plastic force of 
 nature flowing into the ethers, acts to originate 
 forms, everywhere and anywhere, "whenever homo- 
 genous exhalations are present in nature." 233 
 
 232A. E. 1201. 
 
 »»A. E. 1208, 1201. 
 
 120 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE FIRST VEGETATIVE FORMATION, 
 AND ITS LIVIXG SERVICE IN PRE- 
 PARING AN ATMOSPHERE FOR 
 BREATHING CREATURES. 
 
 Tin: Divine ix Ultimates. The floating- ground 
 upon the primeval sea was the first ultimate ground 
 in which the Lord the Creator began to shape large 
 organic forms of use, or integral recipients ; for 
 from the ultimate ground and out of it. the Lord 
 raises up recipient, reactive forms, and quickens 
 bodies of use ; and this He can do because in the 
 soils and ultim'ates of the waters and basic salts of 
 very earth the Divine Proceeding, through the 
 spiritual, exists in termination. And in that termi- 
 nation all its conatus and endeavor is to return and 
 again be conjoined more consciously and more 
 nearly with the Infinite, its Source. 234 
 
 Moreover, this first ultimate and ground, spread 
 evenly upon the surface of the sea, was an especial 
 ground, as it were all seed. For according to Swe- 
 
 234 D. L. W. 171, 310, 314. T. C. R. 470. A. E. 1209, 
 i2io. 1223 
 
 121 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 denborg's laws of forms and their powers, the 
 constitution of oils and formative fluids, the very 
 floating crust of hydro-carbons collecting over the 
 primal sea, presents the first actual union between 
 the volumes of the ether and the finest particles 
 broken from the compressed angular forms of the 
 terraqueous salts. Thus this primal ground was 
 itself everywhere, in its degree, apt for the recep- 
 tion of lit j and beginning of motion; and under the 
 touch of the Divine hand, delicately touching with- 
 in, and the warm sun conspiring without, its fine 
 globules were everywhere able to act the part of a 
 formative substance and very seed of vegetative 
 forms, in their place and degree reactive to life. 
 
 Thus of these primeval ethereal oils and water, 
 with the salts of the sea to serve as conjunctives, 
 the Lord Himself acting through the medium of the 
 ether existent in each oil bubble, framed the first 
 coarser basic corporeal foams ; throbbing, moving ; 
 obeying life ; in which all the typical forms of the 
 creative series, passive as well as active, were 
 simultaneously existent. 
 
 In this manner on the warm sea were brought 
 into existence the first forms of the protoplasmic 
 foams: vegetative, simple, full of potencies. The 
 ether within acted as a soul, a father, and stamped 
 its own foam likeness, and its own recipience and 
 
 122 
 
VEGETATIVE FORMATION. 
 
 obedience to the Divine influx, upon the forms thus 
 builded. The salts of the earth, its basic angular 
 forms, lent mother body and form ; and as passives, 
 bounded active forms, gave them terminus, cor- 
 porated their determinations and excited their ac- 
 tivities in determinate and rhythmic motions.* In 
 each such least pin-point form, composed of such 
 subtle basic protoplastic foams, the gracious mould- 
 ing ether gathered up a million particles of earth, 
 ramental particles and salts and molecules of water 
 a million millions : and all those millions of par- 
 ticle?, in themselves all scattered, sundered, self- 
 helpless for all their evolving conatus within them, 
 the ether swung and arranged into one vegetative 
 form, concrete, integral, after its kind receptive of 
 and coactive with the Infinite Esse. Moreover hav- 
 ing builded those scattered particles into such a 
 form, the same flowing ether, which had been the 
 formative substance, still held them together, 
 
 ""Throughout nature the passive is associated with the 
 active, and this in order that the passive may break and 
 limit the forces of the active body ; otherwise powers 
 would not be bounded and would have no sphere . (A. K. 
 4QT.) The agent does not know its terminus except by its 
 own reagent, by which it is determined into definite mo- 
 tions and thus into alternations of motions. (Diseases 
 of the Fibers, 395.) 
 
 123 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 through all their little day of use. For to create is 
 not only to form, but to hold together afterward as 
 well. 
 
 First Vegetative Forms. . Then first vegetative 
 growths began, soft roots went down. Frail waterv 
 leaf spread out. Millions of successive generations 
 were formed and died. Upon the cumulative soil 
 of the bodies of the past vegetative lives, the spring- 
 ing new generations shaped with firmer fibre and 
 stem and higher growths. As the soil grew deeper, 
 its resources of primitives of concrete angular forms 
 grew more varied and of firmer, more individual cast. 
 For each new generation of the vegetative progeny 
 builded into its very body not alone the primal ele- 
 ments simple and few, of which the first bare vege- 
 tative foams were framed, but all the dejecta mewtr 
 bra of the parent bodies of past years' growth, were 
 taken, inbuilded as new inert particles and forms 
 serviceable to constitute the firmer fibre of ascend- 
 ing and differentiated vegetative forms. Thus the 
 vegetative kingdom itself, as it were, ascended and 
 unfolded from simplest beginnings of vegetative 
 foams reactant and quick to life, to multiplex and 
 widely differentiated forms ; and this quickly and 
 sweepingly in the gracious even heat and nourish- 
 ing moisture of those primal seasons. 
 
 Few and simple were the primitives of inert par- 
 
 124 
 
VEGETATIVE FORMATION. 
 
 tides the primal sea could give for the first organic 
 building; comparatively simple and undifferentiat- 
 ed the vegetative forms possible to be framed from 
 them. But once let these simple vegetative bodies 
 or forms begin to coact to life, and each one becomes 
 as a new world, the matrix and creatrix of new 
 forms ; a new world of working use, to prepare from 
 the old material' new and varied store. Each least 
 vegetative form takes the old salts of the sea, and 
 carves them into new and divided forms. The 
 growths riot hither and thither, in the accidents of 
 their existence. The bodies of vegetation grow 
 firmer and firmer, and death comes to seal their 
 basic use. "Chiefly by the aid of the vegetative 
 kingdom," the Corpuscular Philosophy says, there 
 are formed at last marvelous varieties of new frag- 
 ments, inert, like some new species of angular par- 
 ticles, no two of the infinite number quite alike. 
 Thus there is brought into existence, as it were, a 
 new, a second, earth or soil, brought forth upon the 
 primal earth and from it, by means of the vital 
 energy and happy accidents of the individuals of the 
 primal vegetative kingdom. This use of providing 
 a store of finer and more varied shapes and powers 
 of inert particles is so important to all formation, 
 that, without it, there could never upon the earth be 
 formed bodies of more differentiated and varied 
 
 125 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 receptivity than those of the first foam cells of the 
 warm sea, nor could animal bodies, of higher differ- 
 entiation and life than the amoebic, ever arise ; nor 
 men ever appear. For to the body of their forma- 
 tion is necessary not only the existence of the king- 
 doms proceeding ; but the cumulative result in varied 
 store of concrete angular particles and spheres of 
 diverse substance and form collected during long 
 generations of the life and death of those kingdoms ; 
 so great, so microcosmic a variety, of such ultimate 
 form, is necessary to frame this cunning and uni- 
 versal organic form of the human creature. For 
 the human form must be a microcosmic form, even 
 in respect to those angular particles, if it is to 
 image, coact with, and ultimately receive as an 
 organic foothold the fulness of the outgoing creat- 
 ive and formative life of our Lord, so that it may 
 be the living tabernacle, corporeal, quick, of the 
 Divine Human. Uses, so high in life, so deep to 
 religion, are involved in the ultimates of the earth 
 and the sea. 
 
 Thus the dissolution of plants contributes to the 
 mineral kingdom ; all as it were goes to form a new, 
 more plastic and varied mineral kingdom. For 
 the third "form of use" stored in the treasure house 
 of the mineral kingdom, (what we call inorganic 
 chemistry), "arises from plants fallen to diust, and 
 
 126 
 
VEGETAT I VE I-'OR MATION. 
 
 from the remains of animals, and the continual 
 evaporations and exhalations of them which mix 
 with earths and form the soil." 235 
 
 Thus the life and death of the successive genera- 
 tions of the vegetative forms contribute to the possi- 
 bility of an ascending evolution of successively mure 
 differentiated and complex forms upon the earth; 
 and are absolutely necessary to the bringing into 
 existence the forms of animal nature, with indefi- 
 nitely great range of variety. 230 
 
 But there is something more important still ; two 
 uses of the vegetative kingdom as yet not touched 
 upon. Every unit of organic form, every individ- 
 ual, — beginning with every smallest simplest in- 
 tegral individual of the vegetative kingdom, al- 
 though it be framed of billions of particles of basic 
 salts, inert fragments and watery molecules, — yet is 
 builded and held together by the ether, in an in- 
 tegrity emulous of the Unity of the Divine Esse. 
 Hence it gets its emulous title of individual. While 
 it remains integral or individual, as such it is given 
 in itself an interior circulation, emulous of the re- 
 flexing circle in God Man. As such it is given 
 emulous creative or protoplasmic powers, powers of 
 
 235 D. L. W. 313. 
 
 - 3(i D L. W. 318; Worship and Love of God, 20. 
 
 127 
 
swedenporg's COSMOLOGY. 
 
 forming- a forthgoing volatile sphere or emanation 
 "consubstantiate'' with itself; objectized to itself; 
 and always lending itself aptly to a recreation of 
 such a spiritual form as that of which it was pri- 
 marily part. This latter power is its passive ana- 
 logue and potency complementary to the active 
 power and endeavor of the primitives of the spirit- 
 ual Sun, always to form man, because primarily 
 consubstantiate with God Man, the sole Substance 
 or Esse, and proceeding as an emanation or sphere 
 from| Him. 
 
 The Preparation oe an Atmosphere for 
 Breathing. The endeavor hidden in the outgoing 
 emanations of the latter type, in the vegetative king- 
 dom, — that is an emanation of the fragrant essences 
 and oils, volatile, ethereal saps, spirits, and sweet 
 odors, especially abundant when the vegetative king- 
 dom has risen to the grace and productive dignity 
 of flowers and fruits, — comes to sweet evolution of 
 use, in the impregnated air around. For from the 
 substantial particles of such fragrant odors and es- 
 sences given off from flowers and herbs into the 
 ambient air, the plastic ether first produced insect 
 forms ; thus arose in nature the province of insects, 
 varied in color as the mother petals which sent their 
 sweet bodies odorouslv forth for that ascending use ; 
 breathing thus the longing of the very substance of 
 
 128 
 
VEGETATIVE FORMATION. 
 
 the vegetable body to arise to animate and more self- 
 conscious form in its use and recipiency of life ; 
 and such is the story which the Writings tell of the 
 origin of insect forms, in the intrinsic conatus of the 
 very substance of the vegetable plane towards fuller, 
 more distinct reception of the animations of life. 
 For as there is a continual endeavor of the minerals 
 of the earth towards vegetation,- 37 so everywhere 
 there is an effort of the very substance of the vege- 
 table growths toward vivifTcation. 233 In both cases 
 this ascending use to higher degrees of form and 
 life, these uses by which their very bodies prepare 
 and contribute themselves to become integral part 
 of a higher degree of organic recipiency of life, is 
 by means of their spheres, their emanations.- 39 
 
 This is the sacred use of the flowers and fruits 
 an 1 the perfumes of the vegetable forms ; their Sab- 
 bath day use to the animate kingdom. In this they 
 give forth the sphere of their purifications and their 
 fructifications to the ether around ; and of that 
 sphere the living Lord, acting in that ether, moulds 
 the bodies of the insect world, loving the flowers as 
 their honey-nursing mothers still. 
 
 *«D. L. W. 61-65. 
 2S, D. L. W, 62. 
 
 239 T. C. R. J99. 585, ^70. Trea'ise on Copper, Preface. 
 D. L. W. 310. 
 
 I2Q 
 
swedenbokg's cosmologv. 
 
 But there is an every day use performed through 
 the common green leaves of plants, in which the 
 whole of vegetation daily prepares and provides for 
 the great kingdom of the larger lung-breathing ani- 
 mals, — a use so important that when we know it 
 we understand why the vegetable kingdom had to 
 exist before the world was ready for the animal 
 kingdom of creatures with red blood and opened 
 imperative lung-life. For the same kingdom, which, 
 Swedenborg says, breathes forth daily into the at- 
 mospheres that aerial salt, that atmospheric salt 
 which in the lungs changes the venous blood to 
 arterial, must be that kingdom which first provides 
 the store thereof, in preparation for the advent of the 
 lung-breathing, red-blood forms of life. 
 
 The Aerial Salt. There is a certain "salt," 
 Swedenborg says, consisting of angular particles, 
 which exists dissolved in the interstices between the 
 bulla; of the fourth aura (the aerial elementary), 
 just as the sea-salt exists dissolved in the inter- 
 stices between the round molecules of water. This 
 salt Swedenborg calls the volatile aereal salt. It 
 constitutes the common aliment which the lungs 
 supply to the blood. It is in fact the supply of this 
 salt that changes the venous blood into arterial 
 blood, during its passage through the lungs. This 
 volatile aer?al salt consists of tetrahedral particles, 
 
VEGETATIVE FORMATION. 
 
 and is, therefore, an ''acid salt," according to Swe- 
 denborg's doctrine of forms. It belongs, moreover, 
 to the same family of substance as sulphur. Lacking 
 this salt the globules of the animal spirit cannot 
 combine to compound the red blood. For although 
 some other substance always furnishes the central 
 cubic connective, it is the particles of this tetrahe- 
 dral aereal salt alone which normally infills all the 
 many corner interstices of triangular form, still left 
 after the central cubic grouping. 240 
 
 This volatile aerial salt is exhaled by the vege- 
 table kingdom from the grosser salts and com- 
 pounds upon which the roots feed. The salts or 
 mother stuff with which the current of the sap is 
 impregnated, (that sap or vegetative blood in which 
 the formative fluid of vegetation is present), takes 
 what it wants of those compounds, sundering and 
 recombining ; while the watery vegetative blood 
 climbs the woody fibre to the cells of the leaves ; in 
 these cells, as with the serum of the blood in the 
 lungs, it exhales a dewy breath, carrying with it 
 all the inert particles of the original compound salts 
 which are superfluous to its needs ; the sap current 
 then returns by other fibrous ways to its ultimate 
 cellular buildings. 
 
 240 A. K. 406, 485; E. A. K. part I, 50-100, 506. Post. 
 Tracts, Red Blond, chap. IV and V. 
 
svvedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 These superfluous salts thus sublimated from the 
 basic compounds of the plant food in the current 
 of the vegetative blood, and exhaled along with 
 waten' vapor from the surface of the leaves, are 
 said to be the very volatile aerial salts with which 
 all the lower atmosphere or aura of the earths is 
 impregnated ; the same salt which in the lungs 
 changes the venous blood into arterial. 241 
 
 To sum up: this "salt,"' — volatile, atmospheric, 
 dissolved in impalpable space, as sea salt in solution 
 is dissolved in water: this salt-acid of the sulphur 
 family : this salt which is drawn into the lungs at 
 every inspiration and to which is due the change of 
 venous blood into arterial during its passage through 
 the lungs : this "salt" sublimed from its food stuffs 
 by every vegetative growth and continually exhaled 
 from every leaf into the surrounding space,- along 
 with the transpiring current of water which breaths 
 forth from the leafy lung, when the sunlight opens 
 its exspiratory pores ; — this salt, by all its bond and 
 chain of uses, is the atmospheric gas which we call 
 oxygen. 
 
 Tins Salt is identical with Oxygen. For 
 the gas oxygen is dissolved in the apparent impal- 
 
 24 ] T. C. R. 470, 585; A. E. 1084; D. L. W. 313; Prin- 
 cipia, part III, cliap. IX, 4; Documents, 302, On Odours; 
 A. K. 406, 485; E. A. K. Part I, 596. 
 
 132 
 
VEGETATIVE FORMATION. 
 
 pable space, as salts in solution are dissolved in 
 water. Oxygen belongs to the acid end of the peri- 
 odic system of chemical elements ; it is of the same 
 family or genus as sulphur, — the sixth family of the 
 periodic system being headed by oxygen and sul- 
 phur. The gas Oxygen is the common aliment 
 which the lungs supply to the blood : and to the gas 
 oxygen, which the venous blood imbibes during its 
 passage through the lungs, is due its changes into 
 arterial blood. Moreover, the leaves of the vege- 
 table kingdom, under the touch of sunlight, when 
 their transpiration current is flowing freely, do per- 
 petually exhale oxygen into the air round about, 
 from every little pore. 
 
 In this derivation of the gas oxygen. ( Sweden - 
 borg's volatile aerial salt), — by sublimation from 
 the salts of the earth and water, through the in- 
 strumentality of the vegetable kingdom, the vola- 
 tile aereal salt being formed by the divided salts in 
 the plant food, superfluous to its uses, — there are 
 three essential things new to our knowledge. First, 
 the uses it subserves to the blood of a higher king- 
 dom while composing itself into an entity or blood 
 of a more ultimate degree. This use is new. in- 
 deed, to our knowledge. For it is Swedenborg 
 alone who is able to tell us how a lower degree of 
 substance can be compounded out of a higher; just 
 
 133 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 what factors are needed ; and where they come- 
 from. Something of the great doctrine of inter- 
 mediates is involved here, and the Benjamin laws 
 of composition. But of such things experimental 
 science cannot teach us ; only the laws of forms, 
 and the constitution of degrees can teach us. 
 Second, The derivation of this superfluous volatile 
 salt thus exhaled, chiefly from the grosser non- 
 compounded food-salts imbided by the roots, by a 
 process of division and sublimation. Third, The 
 surety under the law that the series of existence and 
 continuance is always the same as that of formation 
 and beginning, — that if the activity of the vegetable 
 kingdom perpetually performs this use to the at- 
 mosphere, it performed it in the first place. And 
 therefore that all our stock of atmospheric oxygen, 
 without which red-blooded breathing creatures can- 
 not exist, was first prepared for the world by the 
 activity of that same kingdom. This is the great 
 common service or use performed by the vegetable 
 kingdom to creation, preparatory for the existence 
 of breathing creatures. 
 
 An interior view of the first point is given by 
 Swedenborg only. F>ut to the second and third 
 points of this new knowledge, experimental data 
 have, within a lifetime, afforded happiest illustra- 
 tions. Phipson's series of experimjents with grow- 
 
 134 
 
VEGETATIVE FORMATION. 
 
 ing plants are decisive upon the subject. Accord- 
 ing to the result of those experiments, when plants 
 are grown under a bell glass in an atmosphere of 
 pure nitrogen, (or pure hydrogen), the root being 
 supplied with earth, carbonic acid, and water, the 
 plants thrive ; they absorb water and carbon com- 
 pounds from the roots, and secrete oxygen from 
 the leaves, until the atmosphere under the bell glass 
 is rendered by this means alone richer in oxygen 
 than the surrounding outside air. The carbonic 
 acid (CG 2 ) is not directly decomposed into carbon 
 and oxygen. From the C0 2 plus water (H,0) are 
 formed various sugars, starches, cellulose, fatty 
 acids, and the like; and the superfluous oxygen thus 
 liberated is exhaled through the leaves into the 
 air. 242 
 
 Moreover, from conclusions reached on the basis 
 of experiments with microscopic plants abounding 
 in rain water and other water exposed to the action 
 of sunlight, it would seem that plants of the sim- 
 plest order evolve oxygen more copiously, weight 
 for weight, than plants of the higher orders ; and 
 
 =* 2 Articles by Dr. T. L. Phipson. F. C. S., "Chemical 
 News," 1893, March, June, August. November ; 1894, No- 
 vember; Principia, part 111, chap. IX, 4; T. C. R. 470; 
 Corpuscular Philosophy; Documents. 302. On Odours, 
 sec. I. 
 
 I3S 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 the deduction is made from these experiments that 
 the primitive atmosphere of the earth did not con- 
 tain oxygen gas, and that the vegetable kingdom 
 was certainly the means, and the sufficient means, 
 whereby oxygen gas was placed in the atmospheric 
 volume ; with the manifest further conclusion that 
 therefore vegetable life must have preceded animal 
 life upon the earth ; and that a main office of the 
 growing plants of that primal vegetable kingdom 
 was this gradual excretion of oxygen gas (the vola- 
 tile aerial salt of Swedenborg's), into the atmo- 
 spheric volume . preparatory for the advent of 
 breathing animal life. 
 
 136 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 A CHAPTER IN GEOLOGY. 
 
 Risk of the Floating Vegetative Land. Tho 
 primordial sea bubbling from its depth was the 
 mother of primal chemical elements and combina- 
 tions ; the crystalline liquor of all rocks, the chyme of 
 all organisms. 2 " In its deeps above the primal 
 rock salt layer, the newly dissolving salt gave the 
 ramental particles for the first hydro-carbons of the 
 world formation ; which, as a very chyle and milk 
 of vegetative births ascended continually through 
 the sea to its surface in bubbling, organizing, oily 
 foams. All along its ascending path, if anywhere 
 detained, there began to shape the new born masses 
 and filaments of vegetative formation, close to the 
 borders of the inorganic. 244 On the surface of the' 
 sea the collecting layer of the oily ether foams, 
 under the heat of the brooding sun, panted and pal- 
 
 24-i Chemistry. chap, on Primeval Ocean, par. 5. (6) 
 par. 8; chap. X. sec. 2. (5) 4. (4) ; chap. XI. sec. 5. par. 
 2. (2) : chap. XIII. sec. 12; chap. XIV. sec. 8. 5. (2). 
 
 - 44 Worship and Love of God. chap. I. 14. 15 ; Prin- 
 cipia. part III. chap. XII; Preface to Treatise on Copper. 
 Par. 5- "■ 
 
 137 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 pitated in all its bubbles to the rhythms of light and 
 heat; and at each expansion the Living Infinite 
 within and around, acted with enlarged scope, 245 
 to touch, order, and hold together the microscopic 
 bubbles of the floating foams into forms of simplest 
 vegetative use. Thus the first low vegetative or- 
 ganisms took form, ramified, matted together ; and 
 from this beginning grew the vast floating islands, 
 continent wide, of interknit vegetable growths. For 
 age after age, so long as the continually dissolving 
 salt of the crystalline bed of the ocean fed them with 
 streams of fresh carbonaceous aliment from below, 
 they would continue to grow, until, Swedenborg 
 says, a floating vegetative land, a mile in thickness, 
 covered over the surface of the breeding sea, like a 
 great crust ; then, grown almost too heavy to sus- 
 
 243 The animatory motion of heat, in these microscopic 
 foams, and its necessary and conjunctive action, with the 
 Living Infinite in the production of vitally organized forms, 
 in and from the foam structure, is paralleled by the neces- 
 sary operation of the brooding heat upon the egg. It is 
 said by Swedenborg that the living point of the seed can- 
 not actuate the substance of the egg to ordinate it into 
 organic form until warmth has already excited "a certain 
 species of activity" in its molecules or parlicles; for only 
 as they are in such a state of excited activity, are they 
 "prepared and obeisant to the living activity." E. A. K. 
 part. I. 308. 
 
 138 
 
GEOLOGY. 
 
 tain itself longer, it settled, submerging, breaking to- 
 ward collapse and subsidence to the ocean bed. 246 
 Thus, on the surface of the sea, in that early epoch, 
 the immense vegetative growth of the carbonifer- 
 ous layers of geological record, began to exist, were 
 nourished from below, and at length submerged, 
 and, thus were preserved for the use of after ages. 
 
 First appearance of the Nitrogen Family or 
 the Ammonias and the Phosphates originat- 
 ing in the Primordial Sea. The bubbling streams 
 of displaced ether, encompassed and coated by ra- 
 mental fragments from the newly dissolving salt in 
 the depths of the ocean bed, presents the generation 
 and actual making of the first hydrocarbons for the 
 use of the nascent world and almost its whole future 
 store of carbon. In addition, along with those as- 
 cending streams of hydro-carbons there would seem 
 necessarily to have been intermingled also the first 
 nitrogen compounds, probably in the form of am- 
 monium compounds, and also the first forms of 
 phosphorus ; thus the primal ocean would itself sup- 
 ply the first members of the nitrogen-phosphorus 
 family of the periodic system. For, according to 
 
 246 Worship and Love of God. 20. 21 ; Preface to the 
 Treatise On Copper, par. 5. 7. Chemistry. Chapters on 
 formation of rock salt strata, in situ, in the bottom of the 
 sea ; and on the constitution and origin of oils. 
 
 139 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 Swedenborg, the inner constitution of the nitrogen 
 compounds closely pattern that of the hydro-carbons 
 or oils. It also presents a volume of ether enclosed 
 and crusted around with angular particles derived 
 from dissolving salts. Only, in the case of the nitro- 
 gens, such particles are not ramental, or scale-like 
 fragments, but are of the finest triangular form. 247 
 Such finest trigons would result abundantly in the 
 depths of the primal ocean, both by the comminu- 
 tion of the large triangular acid particles through 
 the action of vegetation or otherwise ; as also by a 
 breaking off of the sharp triangular corners of the 
 ramental particles. Thus the simple nitrogen 
 compounds, (probably of ammonium), would 
 certainly seem to have had their primal generation 
 and start in the depths of the sea, for certain am- 
 monium compounds are classed with the mineral 
 oils in the chapter on the constitutional form of oils 
 and spirits. 248 And the motion of the waves of the 
 sea emitting phosphoric light from the breaking up 
 of the finest invisible particles of salt in solution, 
 
 247 Chemistry. XIII. sec. i. sec. 2. (1). Worship and 
 Love of God. chap. I. note 22. 
 
 24S Chemistry. chap. XIV. sec. 2. sec. 8. 2. Among the 
 mixtures of salt and water with the primal mineral oils 
 originating in the deep sea Sal Ammoniac is directly men- 
 tioned. 
 
 140 
 
GEOLOGY. 
 
 would seem to indicate the sea as the primal source 
 also of the primitives of phosphorus. 
 
 The simple nitrogen compounds thus arising 
 would furnish the supply of nitrogen necessary as 
 the mother stuff, to compound the flesh and sub- 
 stance of forms of animate life all through the sea ; 
 and tin" ascending current would, together with the 
 carbons, year after year, continue to supply streams 
 of fresh nutriment, like streams of new blood, to 
 the roots of the floating vegetative world above it. 
 All such particles not actually detained and used by 
 the growing vegetation, would finally arise higher, 
 into the elementary realm above the vegetative crust, 
 and by the breaking of the carrier bubbles, vapor 
 like, be dispersed into the interstices of the bulhe 
 of the surrounding ether volume, — there to add 
 their quota to the collecting store of the atmo- 
 spheric nitrogen, slowly accumulating through the 
 ages from sundry sources. For the sources of 
 origin of nitrogen are more than one, the two chief 
 sources being, first, the stores of the primal sea, 
 and second, the play of lightning, tearing the ether 
 bulla? with its darts, and casting down the disrupted 
 envelopes, as a loose contexture of fourth finites. 249 
 
 24n Principia, part III. chap. VIII. 15. Compare spec- 
 trum of Lightning identified hy Landaur as presenting the 
 characteristic line of nitrogen. 
 
 141 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 Thus not only was the primal ocean a great cosmic 
 source of nitrogen ; hut each flash of lightning in 
 the sky actually begets a new volume of it into the 
 air. Indeed the soil itself is now nourished by such 
 new heaven-born particles caught on vapor bulke 
 and descending to the earth in showers, 250 as, pri- 
 mally. at the epoch of greatest vegetative growth, 
 it was nourished from the depths of the ocean, 
 upon the bosom of which it was afloat. 
 
 Silicon and Carbon, twin substances, of one 
 family, type, and origin. The first carbon created 
 iu the nascent world made its appearance not as pure 
 separate elemental carbon, but in the form of a com- 
 pound, — the mineral hydro-carbons originating in 
 the deep sea, — their constitution presenting to Swe- 
 denborg the structure-type characterizing "oils and 
 spirits," namely, bullae or bubbles consisting in- 
 teriorly of a minute volume of ether, enveloped and 
 enclosed by ramental or curving wing-like frag- 
 ments broken from the edges of the primordial 
 crystalline "salts," — like ramental fragments en- 
 veloping bulla? of water vapor apparently forming 
 carbonic acid. 251 Now there exists strong ground 
 to class silicon directly with carbon as possessing a 
 
 2r '°Chemistry, chap. XIII. sec. 2. a posteriori (2) ; E. 
 A. K. part. I. nos. 75. 76. 
 
 2 5 'Chemistry, chap. XIV. sec. 2. 3. 
 
 142 
 
GEOLOGY. 
 
 like structure-type ; their place and time of origin 
 being one, and the production of both taking place 
 by means of the ramental particles of the newly 
 dissolving salts ; silicon as well as carbon being first 
 evolved in the nascent world not as a pure element, 
 but in the form of a compound — the colloidal hy- 
 drate of silicon. The chief distinction between the 
 primal carbon and the silicon compounds would be 
 that the ramental fragments appropriated to the 
 hydrate of silicon were broken off from the heavier 
 thicker side of the original curving wing-like ra- 
 menta. the more delicate lighter edges being appro- 
 priated to the constitution of the hydro-carbon 
 bulla?. 232 
 
 Silicon is one of the most abundant chemical ele- 
 ments in the earth's crust, being largelv constitutive 
 of all rocks produced by aqueo-thermal metamor- 
 phosis of the silicious oozes and sediments originally 
 posited on the deep sea bottom. — such as our gran- 
 
 252 In Swedenborg's system the chemical elements per se 
 were not first generated, and then compounded. On the 
 contrary, all the chemical elements appear on the creative 
 scene first, in the shape of compounds. Their separation 
 and more complex compounding belong to other agencies, 
 — mostly organic, — and other ages. For instance, oxygen 
 and hydrogen were first brought into existence in their 
 compound, — water. Sodium and chlorine first appeared in 
 the world in the form of their compound, salt, etc. 
 
 143 
 
swedenkorg's cosmology. 
 
 itcs and flints. Silicon is, indeed, a characteristic 
 constituent both of the greater portion of the min- 
 erals of sea origin, and of all the vegetative forms 
 which live and grow in the sea, from least to great- 
 est. The glass sponges are a lovely instance of the 
 latter, common to all our museums. In itself, as a 
 chemical substance, silicon has been found to stand 
 in the nearest possible relation to carbon in the peri- 
 odic system ; carbon and silicon being the first two 
 members of the fourth periodic family, silicon car- 
 rying the greater atomic weight. Their closeness 
 of constitutive factor and pattern is marked not 
 alone in likeness of chemical reactions and affinities 
 apparent in laboratory experiment, but in obvious 
 physical states and properties ; and in a phvsiologi- 
 cal interchangeability in sundry simple forms of 
 vegetative use and life. Like carbon, silicon is easily 
 capable of existing in a colloidal or vitreous state, — 
 gelatine like, plastic and mutable. The colloidal 
 constitution is characteristic of all the plastic ele- 
 ments of organized bodies. Hydrate of silica, as 
 the geysers bring it up from the depths of the earth, 
 is first deposited as an oozy gelatinous substance, 
 like a soft jelly-glass, hardening by time. More- 
 over mineral forms of silicic acid, such as flint, are 
 known to have passed during the geologic ages of 
 their existence from the vitreous or colloidal into the 
 
 144 
 
GEOLOGY. 
 
 crystalline condition. In addition, carbon is directly 
 replaceable bv silicon in tbc case of certain fungi, 
 which grow as well when nourished by fresh col- 
 loidal silicon as by carbon. 253 Moreover, spiral 
 fibre masses, Sarcina-like bodies, and fungi, will 
 develop dc novo in colloidal silica, prepared under 
 conditions which preclude the existence or the en- 
 trance of particles of living matter — "germs"- — to 
 initiate their growth. 254 Such a thing implies that 
 the very type of molecular aggregation marking the 
 vitreous or colloidal stat.\ such as characterizes 
 both hydrate of silicon and the carbo-hydrates, must 
 itself per se be physically an aggregation of least 
 "matrices,"' or a mass of molecular bullae, or bubble 
 cells. The envelopes of such bubble-cells like most 
 impalpable shells close around and include small 
 volumes of the ever present active ether, so as to 
 form flexible closed bubbles, capable of reacting 
 plastically and serviceably to the motions and im- 
 pulsions of the life communicating 255 ever ordinat- 
 
 8S8 Bastian's Beginnings of Life. X ; Quarterly Journal 
 Micro. Science, 1868, pp. 105-108. 
 
 "■•Beginnings of Life. Bastian. X. Quarterly Journal 
 Microscopical Science. 1868. p. 105-108. 
 
 255 S\vedenborg's definition of life is unique. He defines 
 life as a mode of motion, of vibration or tremulation, 
 which can be set up and be maintained only by the living 
 Infinite God, and be imparted to created organic forms 
 
 145 
 
SWEDENBORG S COSMOLOGY. 
 
 ing ether which presents the Divine in Use or 
 Operation. That all substances in the colloidal or 
 vitreous state do actually possess such an interior 
 molecular arrangement and massing into grosser, 
 bullular forms, corresponding to those of the fine 
 bullular ether, (which ether, indeed, probably forms 
 the whole nuclear center of the grosser bullae), can 
 be directly affirmed. We deduce this from Swe- 
 denborg's statement that the state of vitrification 
 itself consists in a transposition of the particles of 
 the substance into bullae or bubbles, and the con- 
 junction of the same. 2 r ' 6 
 
 Such a bullular or foam-like and plastic interior 
 constitution is characteristic of the oils, both of the 
 mineral oils and the organic oils, the animal spirits 
 and spirituous fluids, (the life-formative fluids) 
 which are as higher oils. Its general type is illus- 
 trated in chapter XIV of the Chemistry, and further 
 defined in E. A. K. part I. no. 75, and it is char- 
 acteristic of all protoplasms. 
 
 Tn the Chemistry, as we have noted, this form is 
 given as first originating in the deep sea, and pro- 
 duced by means of the ramental or wing-like frag- 
 ments broken from the edges of the fresh dissolv- 
 
 every moment by and in and through the medium of the 
 foam-like ethers or auras. 
 • :56 Miscel. Obser. part. II. on Vitrification. 
 
 I46 
 
GEOLOGY. 
 
 ing salt. The form of these ramental fragments is 
 slightly curving, a sickle-shaped particle : the concave 
 edge heing thin and keen, and the convex edge be- 
 ing markedly thicker. Swedenborg notes that the 
 original ramental fragments have lines of easy fract- 
 ure : and that by concussion of friction the thinner, 
 lighter portion of the ramental scales is readily sep- 
 arable from the heavier; and that thus arise stores 
 of ramental fragments of differing size and weight. 
 
 Now on comparing carbon with silicon as to prop- 
 erties, uses, and localities of most abundant store, 
 the indications would seem to be that the ramental 
 fragments of lighter weight, enveloping about the 
 volumes of displaced ether, or of water vapor, con- 
 stituted the lighter bullular foams composing the 
 mineral hydro-carbons and carbonic acid, the bub- 
 bles of which, being light, ascended easily from the 
 profound depths of the sea to its very surface, along 
 with the ammonia compounds, there to lend their 
 foam mass, palpitant in the warm sun's heat to form 
 the body of the endlessly springing vegetable forms, 
 the vast preserved store of which constitutes the car- 
 boniferous strata, the store houses of the primal 
 superabundance of carbon for use of future ages. 
 The heavier ramental fragments derived from the 
 same original ramenta. but by reason of weight not 
 so apt to rise lightly to the surface of the sea, form- 
 
 147 
 
SVVEDENBORG S COSMOLOGY. 
 
 cd with displaced ether bubbles bulla; of like type 
 as the hydro-carbons. All such bullae, loaded with 
 weightier ramental fragments, probably never were 
 able to rise far out of the zone of their original 
 creation, but there in those sea depths came to 
 analogous uses as the colloidal carbons. For what 
 we term silicon, as has been said, stands in the near- 
 est relation to carbon of any known substance. Its 
 chemical affinities, relations, values, parallel those 
 of carbon, only it is of greater atomic weight. Like 
 carbon it is distinguished in its aptitude, its ten- 
 dency, to form colloidal or jelly-like solutions and 
 combinations. It is interchangeable with carbon in 
 the growth of certain fungi, and sub-vital organized 
 growths spring dc novo in its fresh solutions. 
 Moreover, it is present almost as universally and 
 characteristically in submarine vegetation and 
 microscopic and low forms of life as carbon alone 
 is with relation to sub-aerial vegetation. It is in- 
 deed so abundant in many rock strata, known to 
 have been primarily posited as sediments on the 
 deep ocean bed, that Le Conte speaks of whole vast 
 classes of minerals as for the most part existing in 
 a sort of magma of the simple fused alkaline sili- 
 cates. This would be what would naturally follow 
 if the original ramental fragments abundant in the 
 primal sea were rebroken into a lighter and heavier 
 
 148 
 
GEOLOGY. 
 
 portion, and the lighter fragments formed bnlke 
 able easily to rise to the surface and found stored 
 for the most part in the carbonaceous remains of 
 vegetative life known to be of sub-aerial growth. 
 But the bulla? formed from the heavier ramental 
 particles remained beneath the surface of the water, 
 and are found stored in the vegetative and other 
 forms of sub-aqueous life. Moreover, silica would 
 be almost invariably characteristic of strata known 
 to have been originally posited in the bed of the sea. 
 
 Now we know from Swedenborg that the first 
 evolution of carbon on the earth must have been in 
 the compound form of the mineral hydro-carbons, 
 — and perhaps carbonic acid also — arising from the 
 salt beds in the deeps of the primeval sea. There 
 certainly seems presumptive evidence also, from a 
 connection of Swedenborg's principles with the vari- 
 ous facts cited relative to silicon, to conclude that 
 the known evolution of carbon gives us a clue also 
 to the evolution of silicon, its nearest chemical rela- 
 tive. Silicon would seem, therefore, to have been 
 first evolved on earth in its hydrate compound, in 
 the depths of the sea . at the same time that primal 
 carbon compounds were in formation. The heavier 
 edges of the ramental fragments broken from the 
 primal salts bear the same relation in their constitu- 
 tion to the primal silicon compounds, that the lighter 
 
 149 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 ramental fragments do in the constitution of the 
 allied carbon compounds ; and the place of their 
 greatest abundance and use is, naturally, in the 
 water near the place of their origination, as be- 
 fitted their heavy inaptitude to rise ; while the lighter 
 weighted carbon-compound rose to a place of uses 
 where sea and air joined. 
 
 Evolution of the Halogens and the Alka- 
 line and Earthy Metals. Swedenborg's inter- 
 pretation OE THE SUCCESSION OF EARLY GEOLOGI- 
 CAL Strata. The evolution of the halogens and of 
 the alkaline metals has already been given in the his- 
 tory of the formation of the rock salts constituting 
 the compressed crystalline floor of the primal sea. 
 Chlorine, Bromine, Iodine, all the halogen family, 
 made their advent among the few substances of the 
 nascent world, united in compounds with the alkaline 
 and allied metals, in that great basic formation of the 
 salt layers of the depths of the sweet water sea. As 
 the salt dissolved in the water above, and the sea 
 grew salt, the halogens and alkaline metals were dis- 
 sociated, and the metals, potassium, sodium, calcium, 
 set free, to furnish necessary material not only for 
 the sub-vital growths of corals, but for the shells of 
 lowest, most minute forms of life, such as exist to- 
 day in the deep sea ooze ; and, in the very early ages 
 of geologic record, these accumulated on the floor 
 
 50 
 
GEOLOGY. 
 
 of the ocean in such abundance that they prepared 
 material for the present strata of chalk, sometimes a 
 thousand feet thick ; while the silicious ooze has left 
 remains in layers of rock, even more abundant. 
 
 So far as the history has gone, we have followed 
 the making of the primal unsalted sea. and the 
 sequent evolution of the halogens and the alkaline 
 metals, in the form of their compounds or salts, 
 framed in the depths of the sea from the spherical 
 water particles. In this formation the metallic 
 hydrogen of the water particle was compressed and 
 cast from the spherical into the cubic form, char- 
 acterizing the alkaline metals, as sodium, potas- 
 sium, etc., and the spherical oxygen crust of the 
 water particles was pressed and cast into the mould 
 of the triangular particles of the acid halogens ; and 
 both, (by aid of the uncrushed particles of the 
 water of crystallization present), were fitted to- 
 gether on the crystalline model. Of such units the 
 great crystalline layer of rock salt was framed as 
 the floor of the sea. 
 
 The second epoch, according to Swedenborg's 
 system of substance and world making, was usher- 
 ed in with the beginning of the solution of the rock 
 salt layer in the sea. In the process of this solu- 
 tion, the units of the alkaline metals and of the 
 halogens which compounded the salt, were dis- 
 
 151 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 sociated and set free for new combinations and ser- 
 vices. The fresh ramental fragments, — thin wing- 
 like, curving scales — were broken from the edges 
 of the angular forms built into the crystalline salt, 
 and, later, were themselves broken. The third 
 ether, displaced from the interstices of the round 
 water particles by the particles of the dissolving 
 salt, ascended through the sea ; and around it as it 
 arose, the ramental particles were attracted, gather- 
 ed and grouped. The lighter ramental particles 
 were lightly borne by the streams of ascending 
 ether to the upper air, together with the lighter tri- 
 angular fragments broken off ; and through all this 
 age we may imagine that the sea bubbled from its 
 very depths with the rising bulla? of the mineral 
 hydro-carbons and carbonic acid intermingled with 
 the simplest ammonical compounds. On the warm 
 surface of the sea this rising material served life as 
 a mother or matrix stuff ; and of this first union of 
 the ether and the inert particles shaped in the sea, 
 the first vegetative protoplasms took form as the 
 beginnings of a floating land, and stores of carbon. 
 The heavier ramental particles left behind, clinging 
 to and gathering around the like ether bubbles, 
 weighted and detained them in the volume of the 
 sea ; and there they also came to their use, as coadju- 
 tors of the carbons, in serving the Infinite Life for a 
 
 152 
 
GEOLOGY. 
 
 mother matrix and body of simple forms of vegeta- 
 tive and obscure life; and there in the sea depths 
 the remains of such life were chiefly stored, to frame 
 the strata of our rock-bound coasts. 
 
 This epoch was long. Its accumulations were on 
 an immense scale. Swedenborg says the floating 
 continents framed of pure vegetation, formed on the 
 surface of the primal sea. attained to the thickness 
 of a mile and formed an immense crust of vegeta- 
 tion and the debris of vegetative growth almost 
 compassing the circuit of the world-enveloping 
 sea. 237 The marine vegetation below the floating 
 crust, and the deposits of silicious and calcareous 
 ooze accumulating from the remains of the minutest 
 vegetative and animate creatures toward the bottom 
 of the sea, must have been of commensurate thick- 
 ness ; to say nothing of the s ediment silting down 
 from the upper floating lands. 
 
 One thing in Swedenborg*s system of chemical 
 and geological evolution is of especial note just 
 here. He reads the succession of early geological 
 strata not as implying successive ages of formation, 
 but an implying layers of coincident formation or 
 preparation, at different depths in the ocean ; that 
 is, he reads the geological record in leaves, from 
 the bottom of the ocean up. Thus according to his 
 
 :z ~ Preface to the Treatise on Copper, par. 7. 
 
 153 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 theory, the growth of the great floating islands of 
 vegetation of the carboniferous age, would be go- 
 ing on at the top of the sea, coincidently with the 
 formation of the submarine vegetation lower down 
 and the deposition of the strata of sediment and the 
 calcareous and silicious oozes in the depths of the 
 sea. Thus, according to him, one and the same age 
 would cover the formation and simultaneous ex- 
 istence of all these layers. And the vegetative crust 
 over the sea, the submarine vegetative world, the 
 lower zones of the deep sediments and calcareous 
 oozes, collecting just above the basic dissolving thin- 
 ning sheet of rock salt, flooring the sea, would, all, 
 be the offspring of one epoch. 
 
 The Sub-saline layer, and its connection 
 with the upheaval of mountains, the action 
 of volcanoes, and the formation of magnetic 
 ores. Hitherto we have treated of the formation of 
 the several strata of organizing life, and the evolu- 
 tion of new substances taking place above the basic 
 rock salt layer. Of the primal formation of that 
 layer we treated somewhat fully in a previous 
 chapter. 
 
 But there is one stratum, one layer, which we 
 have not yet mentioned, although it is of the great- 
 est importance. It figures as one of the two agen- 
 cies which combine in the upheaval of mountain 
 
 154 
 
GEOLOGY. 
 
 chains, in the elevation of lands and of islands. Its 
 substance forms the core of mountain chains. It 
 furnishes part of the inner baking heat which meta- 
 morphoses the plastic sediment of the ocean bed, 
 when elevated into mountain cones, — into the stuff 
 of our more refractory rocks. In it is the spring of 
 all volcanic rise and overflow ; and among condi- 
 tions existent in it alone, the magnetic ores take 
 their original shaping. 
 
 All these several and great uses it enters into, and 
 is an indispensable part and party to. Yet it con- 
 stitutes probably a layer of no great thickness rela- 
 tively to the deep rock salt stratum as originally 
 formed above it. It is the sub-saline layer, lying as 
 an intermediate layer in unstable equilibrium, semi- 
 liquid, held between the firm crystalline strata which 
 are vaulting above it on the one hand, and on the 
 other the inner rigid, round core of the globe itself 
 which is the most dense solid substance created, 
 wound of ordered lines of fourth finites : cold and 
 dark and firm forever. 
 
 The formation of this sub-saline layer was co- 
 eval with the formation of the rock salt layer itself. 
 In fact, the lowermost portions of the rock salt 
 stratum pass into it by imperceptible graduations ; as 
 the pressure becomes so great the delicate crystalline 
 units themselves are disintegrated or imperfectly 
 
 155 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 formed. But although it was brought into exist- 
 tence so early in the series of world evolution, the 
 potencies of this intermediate stratum waited to^ 
 come to their realization and unlocking in use, until 
 that far later world-time arrived when the enorm- 
 ous islands of floating vegetation had become from 
 the accumulation of ages so dense that their mile- 
 deep crust was grown too thick and heavy to sustain 
 itself longer afloat upon the surface of the sea ; and 
 vast areas of that vegetative crust, continent wide, 
 broke off here and there, and settled down ; at first 
 little by little and slowly, and then swiftly and with 
 heavy vacuum rush, to the floor of the sea. Then 
 the immense body of ocean water displaced, swirled 
 upward, in vast wave, and poured itself in powerful 
 cataract current over the submerging land, till 
 equilibrium was restored and a peaceful sea. And 
 the old story began again, until some new collapse 
 and catastrophe occurred unlocking mighty agencies. 
 
 The grounds of our certainty as to the existence 
 of a sub-saline stratum, pasty and unstable, lying 
 between the crystalline floor of the sea and the 
 central rigid ball of the globe, are very simple. 
 The condition of the formation of crystalline or rock 
 salt is. that not all the water particles shall be 
 crushed into the new angular forms, but only a cer- 
 tain proportion of them. The uninjured water 
 
 156 
 
GEOLOGY. 
 
 molecules of a certain amount of water of crystali- 
 zation are necessary for crystalline formation. In 
 fact, they were necessary for the shaping of the 
 very angular particles of the salt, since those angular 
 particles were moulded to the interstices of the water 
 particles. 
 
 Now this implies a nice adjustment of the press- 
 ure to the work to be done. With too little press- 
 ure, salt would not be produced at all. With too 
 much pressure its delicate crystalline shapes would 
 equally fail to be produced. In the latter case there 
 would ensue — not the new form of delicate an- 
 gular masses, finer than any microscope can hope 
 to see, — beautiful and without break or crushing, 
 modelled into the interstices of the uninjured round 
 molecules of the water of crystalization, by which 
 everywhere they were at once moulded into and sus- 
 tained in their new shape, — but there would ensue a 
 crushing disintegration of all the water particles, 
 and by consequence the angular forms of the salts 
 would fail to be formed : and the result would be 
 only a pasty, more or less inchoate mass of the 
 various grades of simple component unites. Thus 
 the rock-salt layer with its perfect crystallization 
 could come to birth only in that particular lower 
 zone of the ocean depths where there existed an 
 equilibrium between the pressures and the conserva- 
 
 57 
 
swedenborg's COSMOLOGY. 
 
 tion of the percentage of intermingled water mole- 
 cules necessary as moulds for the new and angular 
 forms. Now. in the lowermost ocean deeps, when 
 the universal sea rested immediately upon the rigid 
 planetary core of the grosser metallic finites, at a 
 depth so great that the bullae of the interfluent third 
 ether 258 were no longer present. 259 but the second 
 or magnetic aura, and the primal aura, alone could 
 be present and ordinative, then, Swedenborg says, 
 the very water particles and the forms as yet created 
 were crushed down and disintegrated even to the 
 point of a disintegration of the larger component 
 finites — or corpuscles — into their own finer con- 
 stituents ; 2G0 from which would result a layer pre- 
 senting a sort of pasty mass of intermingled finite.-*, 
 crushed from the materia of the superincumbent 
 sea, just around the original rigid, resistant core of 
 the planet. 
 
 Such a result evidently is consequent on a degree 
 of pressure greater than that which gives rise to the 
 crystalline layer of salt formed at the bottom of the 
 primal shoreless sea, the solution of which in the 
 water above, gives rise to the ascending bubbles of 
 
 258 Principia. part. III. chap. IX. (2). (3). (4). 
 259 Chemistry. chap. X. sec. 1. 2. 
 :60 Chemistry. chap. X. sec. 2. 4. 
 
 158 
 
GEOLOGY. 
 
 displaced ether as described." 0 ' 1 Its site is therefore 
 lower or nearer to the earth's center than the layer 
 of rock salt. Indeed the crystalline layer of the 
 original salt bed, flooring the sea, where it abuts on 
 the rigid earth core, may be assumed to lose its per- 
 fect firm crystalline type and gradually merge into 
 the postulated inchoate semifluent mass of pure 
 finites ; and is only kept from passing out of its 
 pasty relatively cold state, and fusing and flowing 
 and running into the fiery incandescent state, by 
 reason of the strict limits into which it is coerced 
 by the pressure above it, and the resistance below. 
 
 Thus under the solid floor of the primal ocean 
 with its great rock salt layer, and its weight of 
 heaping sediments and swarming life — between that 
 solid floor and the rigid metallic core of the globe, 
 itself compressed from the homogeneous planetary 
 mass into a solidly wound ball of threads of fourth 
 finites alone, — we may assume an intermediate 
 pasty or semifluid layer consisting of heterogene- 
 ous finites of various degrees, originally compressed 
 from the lowermost layers of the water of the sea 
 and from the salt itself. Between the core of the 
 earth, which is a rigid solid globe, and the floor 
 
 '■'"Chemistry, chap. XI. sec. 5. par. 2. (2). Worship 
 and Love of God. chap. I. no. 14 
 
 iS9 
 
SWEDE NBORG S COSMOLOGY. 
 
 of the ocean with its strata of crystalline salt and 
 the sedimentary strata of the ages, there existed 
 from the first and exists now, a fluent or semifluent 
 inchoate layer of great instability, held down and 
 together by the pressures and the resistances on 
 either side : — but on the least relief of pressure 
 liable to instant fusion, and the rise of temperature 
 to incandescence. 
 
 This layer is the source of the energy of seismic 
 disturbance ; it is the spring of volcanic overflow ; 
 and its liability to fusion with rise of temperature 
 on the least relief or variation of the coercing press- 
 ures was and is one of the two agencies concerned in 
 all upheavals of land or ocean bottom, the eleva- 
 tion of mountain chains, and the sudden appearance, 
 temporary or permanent, of islands in the sea. 
 
 The first mountain upheaval of all, the very first 
 lift of the floor of the sea with all its strata upon it 
 into great cone-like ridges, took place in swift 
 sequence upon the subsidence of the first great area 
 of the upper floating vegetative crust to the floor of 
 the sea. Then the weight of that crust was local- 
 ized upon the portion of sea floor upon which it 
 rested ; and coincidently the water mass it dis- 
 placed seeking place and sucked upward by the 
 vacuum the falling mass created, flowed in great 
 upward currents, rising all about the edges of the 
 
 1 60 
 
GEOLOGV. 
 
 fallen continent, — relatively lessening the pressure 
 there — while the weight of the subsided mass in- 
 creased the pressure on the sea floor over the area 
 upon which it rested. The sea floor yielded and bent 
 down under the weight of the broad stratum of the 
 fallen upper crust, and at the same moment all 
 around the borders of the depressed area, it lifted 
 and waved upward. To this relative fluctuation of 
 pressure above it, the potencies of the semifluent 
 layer lying between the salt bed and the rigid core 
 of the globe instantly responded, and where the 
 pressure was momentarily lessened, there it fused, 
 flowed, glowed, and upheaved the ocean bed with 
 all its strata on it, into a vast rim borderng the 
 submerged area, and rising higher and higher until 
 a new equilibrium of pressure was reached. This 
 was the formation of the first mountain chain, and 
 this is why mountain ranges border continents, for 
 continents generally consist of interior basins with 
 coast chain rims. 
 
 After a new equilibrium of pressure and forces 
 had ceased, the fused mass of the pasty subsaline 
 layer, although it had no more spring and freedom 
 to rise higher, was able to hold its first rise, and 
 cooled, solidified, crystallized as it stood, the original 
 mass being partly sublimed, partly fused, in its up- 
 heaval, as the gaseous and glassy inclusions show. 
 
 161 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 This cooled mass is the igneous granite of which 
 the cores of all mountain ranges consist. 
 
 The fiery heat of that great release and fusion 
 acted upon the partially plastic strata of the ocean 
 bed upheaved with the rise of the subsaline layer 
 and lying around and about it, as the heat of the 
 brick kiln acts on the vault of piled brick within 
 which it glows. The nearest layers are fused; all 
 according to their relative distance, are hardened, 
 altered, baked. Thus also the sedimentary strata 
 nearest the igneous rock were literally fused, the 
 silicious into the metamorphic granite, with their 
 evidence of sedimentary origin and crystallization 
 from an aqueous-thermal state, as their liquid in- 
 clusions of carbonic acid testify, 262 while the chalks 
 changed into marble. Moreover, all through the 
 metamorphic strata, carboniferous remains and the 
 mineral oils detained still in the deep sea sediment, 
 tended, as the mass reached fusion heats, to be sub- 
 limated and precipitated, as veins of pure graphite, 
 characteristic of such rock. 
 
 Again, the highly metamorphic rocks, and the 
 
 202 Le Conte Principles of Geology, p. 233. The meta- 
 morphic granites the last term of metamorphosis of highly 
 silicious sediments reduced to aqueo-igneous pastyness. 
 Svvedenborg. Mies. Obs. p. 14. Granite, from sedimen- 
 tary strata, originating at the bottom of the diluvian ocean. 
 
 162 
 
GEOLOGW 
 
 igneous rock masses of the mountain cores, as welt 
 as in a more marked degree the output of volcanoes, 
 are characterized by the presence of the magnetic 
 ores. For only under such conditions and in such 
 localities as preclude the presence of the third or 
 electric ether, while admitting the free entrance of 
 the second or magnetic aura alone, 263 can the mag- 
 netic ores or mineral be formed and brought into 
 existence, as in the only matrix appropriate to the 
 production of their peculiar molecular constitution. 
 For the substance of all hard bodies is textured of 
 little bodies, — molecules or least units, — ''diversely 
 configurated, as also diversely perforated" with 
 pores large or pores small according to the nature 
 of the composition. Only such little bodies or forms- 
 are magnetic, as, however configurated, are furn - sh- 
 ed with pores or meatuses so subtle as to be per- 
 meable by the magnetic elementary or the second 
 aura, but not by the ether, so that the second aura 
 alone is able to pass through their little fixed pores 
 and openings as blood through a vein. With that 
 flow established, the fine tide of the second aura is 
 able to return outside and perfect a true vortex. 
 Such are the least forms of molecules of all mag- 
 
 263 The primal or celestial aura is of course present every- 
 where, and livingly contains, orders and shapes all things- 
 that are. 
 
 163 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 netic minerals and of iron. Moreover, masses of 
 such bodies as are magnetic are surrounded by a 
 cloud or molecular sphere of free corpuscles of pre- 
 cisely the same nature, each one the center of a 
 least magnetic vortex, the flow of which passes di- 
 rectly through the channels of its minute interior per- 
 forations ; the latter were indeed formed and kept 
 open by the flux and reflux of that same element, 
 when its constitutive molecular system was laid for 
 it in the deep womb of the earth. 204 To these mole- 
 cular vortices and their mutual colligation are due 
 the lines of physical force existing around a mag- 
 net, and constituting its magnetic force. 
 
 Thus it is sufficiently obvious that the purely 
 magnetic ores can originate, and have their distinct- 
 ive molecular constitution formed only under cir- 
 cumstances and in a situation where the presence of 
 the third ether is precluded; and the delicate intra- 
 molecular system of pores characterizing the metal 
 is originally ordinated in the presence and under the 
 action alone of the immensely more fine and high 
 magnetic or second aura. 
 
 Another thing is of interest here. The original 
 cone-like upheavals of the ocean floor lose their 
 
 2C4 Principia. part. II, chap. I. n. 10. 15; part. III. chap. 
 
 V. nos. 4. 16. 21. 
 
 164 
 
GEOLOGV. 
 
 pristine height ; and that not necessarily by sub- 
 sidence of their igneo-fluent core, nor by exterior 
 erosive or disintegrative agencies, aqueous or sub- 
 aerial, although the latter may add themselves, and, 
 in time, finish up and perfect what the main agency 
 does with comparative rapidity and at once. The 
 sedimentary strata of the ocean floor — at the time 
 of their first upheaval, and especially in the primal 
 period of the first upheavals that ever occur, — al- 
 though compacted, are themselves plastic to a very 
 considerable extent. They cannot be otherwise. 
 Such strata if thrust up from below into a great 
 peak-like cone by an agent extraneous to them- 
 selves, will begin, as it were, to slowly slide down 
 hill, and subside and settle down on themselves ; 
 each stratum thus widening and spreading out, at 
 the expense of the height of the cone. This process 
 will continue, until arrested by the hardening and 
 metamorphic alteration of substance produced by 
 hill, and subside and settle down on themselves; 
 by this lateral slip, — combined with the heat con- 
 veyed into them from the igneous core. 205 This at 
 once accounts for the fact that strata composing 
 mountains are always thicker than the same strata 
 as they lie out over the plain of the general conti- 
 
 265 Le Conte. Geology, pp. 231-232. 
 
 165 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 nent. 2G0 and obviates any necessity of presuming the 
 endless geologic ages, necessary to account by known 
 sub-aerial agencies for the present denudation or 
 wearing of peaks, as high as strata of such original 
 thickness would imply. It also accounts for the fact 
 that the younger or later mountains are the higher 
 and still rising; while earlier mountains as rep- 
 resenting upheavals of the original more plastic bed 
 of the sea, are the lower and apparently the most 
 lowered and denuded ; since the more plastic the 
 state of the ocean floor at its uplifting, the greater 
 and the faster would be its native slip and subsi- 
 dence ; thus the greater the spreading out and thick- 
 ening of strata thus produced at the expense of their 
 first height, the greater the crumbling of the strata, 
 and the greater the heat evolved by the sideways 
 slip and sideways crushing of the mass, with con- 
 sequent metamorphic result. All these points 
 characterize the strata of the so-called Archaean 
 Era. 
 
 Diluvial cause of what is miscalled Glacial 
 Action and Glacial Drift. When any portion of 
 the mile-thick floating crust of the primal sea settled 
 to the sea floor, and the series of events we have oiit- 
 
 26fi This difference is sometimes from 40,000 in a moun- 
 tain range to 4,000 over the levels of the adjacent conti- 
 nent. 
 
 166 
 
GEOLOGV. 
 
 outlined followed, (t c, an uprush of the displaced 
 water with a coincident upheaval of the ocean bed all 
 around the border of the subsiding continent), wc 
 have tremendous agencies set afloat, in the mere 
 action of the water. 
 
 In the first place, the waves of gravity initiated 
 at any fluctuant drop and lift of the ocean floor, are 
 great enough to drag bottom even in deep sea, and 
 travel with a known velocity of from 370 to 450 
 miles per hour.'- 07 That waves of such type would 
 occur, with every such incident in cosmic history, is 
 apparent. There is also to be reckoned the enorm- 
 ous speeding swirl of the ocean currents, swinging 
 in over the swiftly submerging lands. And with 
 both agencies we can figure on the law that the 
 weight of the fragments a current can carry varies 
 as the sixth power of the velocity. 263 
 
 Thus we can estimate the enormous waves and 
 currents of the sea. set up at every greater subsi- 
 dence of portions of the floating upper crust ; their 
 violence, their power to tear off even mountains and 
 slide them along over the passing bed of their 
 irresistible flow, boring and graving the strata be- 
 neath in correspondent channels and flirtings as if 
 
 2r,7 Le Conte. Geology, p. 130-132. 
 268 Le Conte. Geology, p. 20. 
 
 167 
 
SWEDEN BORG'S COSMOLOGY. 
 
 they carried graving tools ; while lesser rocks, borne 
 from their far native place, as sediments and finest 
 pebbles are borne by quieter, slower streams, were 
 posited in heaps and drifts, along their flow. The 
 piles of such remains of successive diluvial disturb- 
 ances, appear as the scattered rock drift of our 
 lands to-day. 269 
 
 Metals and Metallic Ores, produced through 
 the impregnation or infilling of forms already 
 created, by free metallic finites. relation 
 of this to the appearance of metallic prop- 
 erties in the heavier members of all fami- 
 lies of the periodic system of chemical ele- 
 MENTS. In addition to the creation of the lighter 
 alkaline metals in the salt of the sea, and the 
 formation of the heavier magnetic metals, chiefly 
 in and around mountains where the third ether is 
 barred out and the igneous and metamorphic traits 
 are most marked, there occurred a later, very wide- 
 
 2G0 Preface to Treatise on Copper, par. 5 to 7. Chem- 
 istry, chap. I. On Primeval Ocean. Misc. Obs. part. I. 
 pages 5 to 9 inclusive, p. 10. sec. I. p. 156. Appendix. — On 
 the waters of the Deluge and their action. Compare with 
 the above Howorth's work "The Glacial Nightmare," in 
 which Swedenborg is credited as the first man who taught 
 the diluvial origin of drift ; a teaching which Howorth 
 competently endorses. 
 
 168 
 
GEOLOGV. 
 
 spread infiltration and interpenetration of free 
 metallic particles or primitives into the very cor- 
 puscles of forms already created. Thus three 
 geometrical types of forms \( rendered as it were 
 metallized, more inert, and heavier), resulted from 
 this action in the course of time. 
 
 If by an accession of free third finites, the fifth 
 finites composing the envelope of the water par- 
 ticle were entered., and as it were infilled and fixed, 
 then would result a globular metallic form, called the 
 mercurial globule, 270 and also the metallic oil glob- 
 ule. 
 
 A comparison with Principia, part III. chap. 
 VIII, (where it is noted that the third finites, free 
 and active, cannot be in the same space as fifth 
 finites, without disturbing their motion and so inter- 
 penetrating them as to cause them to become non- 
 active ; nor the second finite, free and active, with 
 the fourth), suggests the condition of the fifth 
 finites composing the envelope of the water parti- 
 cles, when interpenetrated and infilled by an acces- 
 sion of third Unites free and active. In such an im- 
 pregnation and infilling of the fifth finites as pro- 
 duces the round metallic particle called the mer- 
 curial globule, it is evident that the water particle 
 becomes transformed, and the fifth finites heavier 
 
 "oChemistry. chap. XXV. 133-138. 
 
 169 
 
swedenborg's cosmology. 
 
 and more inert. A like infiltration or impregnation 
 of the angular salt particles takes place, — fifth 
 finites of salt particle being infilled by free third 
 finites, and the fourth finites being infilled by second 
 finites. 271 In the case of the cubic particle, — the 
 alkaline metal, — of the salt, this apparently produces 
 the heavier members of the alkaline and earthy metal 
 family ; all more inert, of greater atomic weight, and 
 of physical characteristics more obviously those we 
 associate with the term metal. 
 
 In the case of the triangular or acid particles of 
 the salt this metallic impregnation of the original 
 form seems to result in the constitution of the heav- 
 ier, more inert later members of the various peri- 
 odic families concerned, and probably accounts for 
 the fact that even those periodic families which in 
 their first most active and lightest members show no 
 slightest trace of metallic characteristic, do show 
 such characteristics markedly in their later mem- 
 bers all of which possess also greater chemical in- 
 ertia and greater atomic weight. 
 
 The constitution of lead, Swedenborg says, is 
 framed both of such metallic round particles or 
 globules, and of the infilled metallic cubes. That 
 being so. the presumption would be that compara- 
 tively quiet and undisturbed sedimentary strata 
 
 271 Chemistry, chap. XXV. no. 5. 
 
 170 
 
GEOLOGV. 
 
 would be most likely to afford the necessary matrix 
 of perfect cubes, and perfect round water particles, 
 in the orderly juxtaposition. This, perhaps, is the 
 cause of the fact that while the ore deposits of other 
 metals are formed chiefly in the vicinage of moun- 
 tains characterized by metamorphic features, lead 
 is an exception to the general rule, being associated 
 largely with quiet sedimentary strata ; its formation 
 probably belonging to rather later eras. 
 
 Such, according to Swedenborg's system, is an 
 outline of the cosmic causes and effects of the suc- 
 cessive diluvial catastrophes ; and such their gracious 
 use in the Divine Providence "that all that was 
 hidden in the bowels of the earth and all that the 
 planet had gained by successive series of changes 
 and multiplied events, in this manner should be made 
 available to the use of mortals, which it seems could 
 not have been the case had not the terraqueous 
 globe been forced to submit to disruption, and to 
 the oppression of the deluge. ... In this way 
 matrices and ores were carried to the coldest regions 
 of the earth ; which results would probably have 
 been impossible unless the planet had been violently 
 treated in the way above described , and made patu- 
 lous in various places, and so had received through- 
 out its surface an insemination of fit materials." 27 ' 
 
 272 Preface to work On Copper. 
 
 I 7 I