Columbia ©nitiem'tp LIBRARY / I >vmx/v ~ / "w^ c/e^ 60 .0^ COMPENDIUM OF THE THEOLOGICAL AND SPIRITUAL WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG: A SYSTEMATIC AND ORDERLY EPITOME OE ALL HIS RELIGIOUS WORKS; SELECTED FROM MORE THAN THIRTY VOLUMES, AND EMBRACING ALL HIS FUNDAMENTAL PRD^CIPLES, WITH COPIOUS ILLUSTRATIONS AND TEACHINGS. WITH AN APPROPRIATE INTRODUCTION. PREFACED BY A FULL LIFE OF THE AUTHOE; WITH A BRIEF VIEW OF ALL HIS WORKS ON SCIENCE, PHILOSOPHY, AND THEOLOGY. SECOND THOUSAND. " There are five classes of those "who read my -writings. The first reject them entirely, because they are in another persuasion, or because they are in no faith. The second receive them as scientifics, or as objects of mere curiosity. The third receive them intellectually, and are in some measure pleased with them, but whenever they require an application to regulate their lives, they remain 'where they were before. The fourth receive them in a persuasive manner, and are thereby led, in a certain degree, to amend their lives and perform uses. The fifth receive them with deUght, and confirm them in theii lives." — SWEDENBOKG. BOSTON: CROSBY AND NICHOLS, AND OTIS CLAPP. ^EW YORK: PARTRIDGE AND BRITTAN ; FOWLERS AND WELLS. PHILADELPHIA: LIPPINCOTT, GRAMBO, AND COMPANY. CINCINNATI : TRUMAN AND SPOFFORD. 185 4. TO THE PUBLIC. The design of this Work is, to exhibit, in a condensed form, the Life and Writings of the most wonderful man that ever lived. The developments of the present age and day make this a most timely production. The great objection to the reading of Swedenborg has hitherto been, that his Writings are too voluminous. Here is the substance of more than Thirty Volumes comprised in one, so far as it could be done even in so large a volume, with the fullest Life of the Author that has ever been published. ■ As a man of Science, and a Philosopher of Natm-e, as a SEER and Theolo- gian, and as a Philosopher of spirit, it is now generally conceded that he has the most liberal demands upon the Reason and Faith of our common Humanity ; and it is certainly a desideratum to have, in one volume, a COMPENDIUM of so vast and wonderful an Author. But read the Tables of Contents, and see the interesting and all-important subjects of which he treats. The following is an explanation of the abbreviated titles of the works referred to in this Compenditjm. A. C. . . Arcana Ccelestia. A. E. ... Apocalypse Explained A. R. . . . Apocalypse Revealed. T. C. K. . . True Christian Religion. H. H. ... Heaven and Hell. D. L. W. . . Divine Love and Wisdom. D. P. ... Divine Providence. C. L. ... Conjugial Love. E. U. ... Earths in the Universe. b. L. ... Divine Love. D. W. . . . Divine Wisdom. S. S Doctrine concerning the Sacred Scriptures. L. . . . Doctrine of the Lord. D. .... {Decalogue) DOCTRINE OF LIFE. C Doctrine of Charity. F. Doctrine of Faith. H. D. . . . Heavenly Doctrine. D. J. . Brief Exposition of the Doctrines Of the New Jerusalem. L. J. . . . Last Judgment. — L. J. contin.. Last Judgment Continued. I. S. B. . Nature of Influx between Soul and Body. W. H. . . . Concerning the White Horse, iier.xix. S. D. ... Spiritual Diary.* * It should be remarked, in respect to the quotations from the " Spiritual Diary," that this work is not considered the same authority as the other writings of Swedenborg, being a posthumous publication, without the author's sanction. It is evidently a record of his private spiritual experience as it occurred from day to day, and appears to be the first brief notes and groundwork, from which he afterwards constructed his more matured and authorized works. If there are errors in it, they are generally sup- posed to be corrected in his authorized publications. See another note respecting the Diary, Compendium, numbers 1139, 1140. U should be well remembered that the whole of the Diary was written before the Last Judgment, which may serve to explain some otherwise obscure passages in it. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1854, By CROSBY & NICHOLS, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. PEEFACE TO THE LIFE. An attempt is here made to present a fuller ac- count than any yet, of the Life and Writings of the most extraordinary man who has ever lived. He was a man who has evidently done as much, to say the least, to benefit humanity, though not yet appreciated because of the hio^h sphere in which he labored, as any of the world's most illus- trious benefactors. We are aware, when we speak thus, that we shall not gain credence m many a mind. Let truth and time, then, speak for themselves, Swedenborg is evidently the most unknown man of the world. There is more to learn, and less learned, of his voluminous and interminable wis- dom, than the superficial, yea, than the scientific and philosophic of this world, are by any measure aware of. And it is a pleasing contemplation at this day, to see a manifestly popular and growing desire to know more of the great Philosopher and Seer of the latter ages, than can be found in Cyclopsedian, Biographical, and Theological Dic- tionaries, most of which bear false witness against him and his doctrines. He is still regarded by many, as an insane visionary, or somnambulic dreamer ; a very learned and good man, but de- ranged on the subject of Theology. Others, and their number is now largely increasing, are be- ginning to regard him as a man of true spiritual enlightenment, of enlarged ideas of God, of Na- ture, and of the Spiritual Spheres, but still far from correct in many of his principles and teach- ings. Still another class, though as yet but small, have a right appreciation of his noble genius and mission. It is perhaps useless, to say in this Preface to a Life and Writings which will speak for them- selves, that he is unquestionably the most tran- scendent human luminary that has ever yet snone upon our dark world. Even in Science and Philos- ophif, he nobly strode a century before his time, and his works evince, not of course without minor errors, an intuitional and decided anticipation of many of the more recent discoveries. He was a man, " take him for all in all," who was the most marvellously girted of any of the sons of earth, both on the sides of nature and of spirit. He combined them both in his God-given grasp, and there can be no question, were it not for his theo- logical character, by which many are yet held from his scientific works, that he would at this day take a foremost rank in some of the most ab- struse departments of natural physics and philoso- Ehy. His discoveries and teachings in Geology, lineralogy, Botany, Natural History, Animal and Human Physiology, Chemistry, Crystallography, Mathematics, Mechanics, Astronomy, and Natural Philosophy, show how deeply the world is indebted to the labors of this "Great Humble Man," in whose works on these interesting subjects can be found the seeds or principles of all that is known of the Essences, Forms, Powers and Uses of Universal Matter; and how far he was in advance of Bacon, Leibnitz, Newton, La Place, Kepler, Herschel, Cuvier, or any other man, as a theorist and author ; and at the same time perfectly free from all jealousies and animosities growing out ol any of them, as to who should be the greatest in the Kingdoms of Nature. It may be said of him, most truly, that " he set one foot of the compass of truth in God, and with the other, swept all oreation, both animate and inanimate." And this is particularly true, when we consider him as the Seer, Theologian, and Philosopher of spirit. In the present work, we have aimed at a fuller presentation of him as a man of Science and Phi- losophy, than can be found in any other Biography ; and this not only for the purpose of showing the perfectly irrational character of those charges against him as a mere visionary, void of a solid un- derstanding, and how the world is mistaken in one of her greatest sons ; but also for the purpose of showing how well prepared he was, in all the natural knowledge which man could then acquire, for that sacred office to which he was at last called, as the illuminated Teacher of the New Church. But from the character of this Work, being more of a compilation than an original composi- tion, we here make one acknowledgment for all, of indebtedness to the various Biographers of Swedenborg, especially to Wilkinson and Rich ; also to various minor publications, such as the " Intellectual Repository," " New Jerusalem Mag- azine," and other works. We would gladly have given the usual credit, passage by passage, for the many extracts we have made ; but as the first part of the work was made up before it was con- templated to publish it as a Prefix to this "Com- pendium " of his writings, it would be very diffi- cult now to refer to the many sources, for the par ticular page of each publication quoted fr;>m. And as the extracts from the Biographies abcve referred to, involve so much that is drawn from a common source and from each other, particularly from the "Documents concerning the Life and Character of Swedenborg," therefore, for all suffi- cient purposes, we have chosen to give this gen- eral credit. But where long extracts occur, which are characterized by the author's peculiar mode of thinking, we have, nevertheless, with the ex- ception of the first part above referred to, given the particular credit as usual. COMPILER. (3) 350419 CONTENTS OF THE LIFE. FABT I. rioE swedenborg, the philosopher of Nature, 5 Travels and first Publications, . . 8 The Principia, 14 Theories of Gravitation, . . .16 The Planetary System, . . .17 Magnetic Spheres, . . . .21 Philosophy of the Infinite, and the Inter- course between Soul and Body, . . 23 Travels, and Remarks on Political and Religious Institutions, . . .25 Economy of the Animal Kingdom, . 26 The Blood and the Spirituous Fluid, . 28 Brains, Heart and Lungs, . . .33 Posthumous Tracts, . . . .33 The Animal Kingdom, . . . .35 Miscellaneous Works. Their Character and Tendency, . . . . .40 Woi-ship and Love of God, . . .42 Swedenborg's Style, . . . .44 Philosophic and Scientific Genius, . . 45 PART n. S"WEDENBORG, THE SeER, THEOLOGIAN, AND Philosopher of Spirit, . 48 Inward Breathings, and other Indications of a Spiritual Constitution, . . 49 Opening of Swedenborg's Spiritual Sight, 51 Swedenborg's Divine Call, . . .56 First Preparations for his new Mission, . 57 The Arcana Coelestia, . . . .58 Executed Criminals, . . . .62 The Last Judgment, . . . .63 Heaven and Hell, ... .65 Earths in the Universe, . . . .67 Doctrine of the New Jerusalem, . . 68 Spiritual Sight. Immanuel Kant, . . 69 Spiritual Intercourse, . . . .70 Spiritual Foresight, . . . .72 Political Principles and Deliberations, . 72 Sight of a Death. Contribution to Sci- ence, ...... 74 Doctrine of the Lord, . . . .74 Divine Love and "Wisdom, . . .75 The Sacred Scripture, . . . .76 Faith, Life, and Providence, . . .78 Spiritual Diary, 78 Apocalypse, . . . . . .79 Meeting with Dr. Beyer, . . .79 Apocalypse Revealed, . . . .80 Travels, Anecdotes, &;c., . . .81 Kant's Inquiries, . . . . .83 Visit from Virgil. Deceased King, . 84 Conjugial Love, . . . . .86 Christ's Power ;ver all Flesh, . .88 Doctrines of the New Church, and Com- mencement of Persecution, . . 88 Intercourse between the Soul and Body, 91 Persecution, and Defence of his Opinions, 92 Spiritual Phenomena. The Insane and Idiotic, ...... 94 Offering to Science. Journey to Amster- dam. An Evening at Copenhagen, . 95 Our Opinions follow us into the next Life, 97 Testimonies to Spiritual Intercourse, . 97 True Christian Religion, . . .98 Mental Peculiarities. Last Sickness, . 99 His Connection with Rev. John Wesley, 100 Close of his Earthly Life, . . . 101 PART m. Personal Testimonies and Anecdotes, . 103 Phenomena of Spiritual Intercourse, . 105 Anecdotes, &;c., 106 Diet, ....... 108 Sleep, .109 Conversation, • . . . . .109 Peculiarities, . . . . .109 Habits and Manners, . . . .110 Editions of the Bible made Use of by Swedenborg, . . . . .-Ill Character, Ill PART IV. Concluding Reflections, .... Qualifications for his sacred Office, Testimony of Oberlin, .... Children's Questions answered. Opening of Religions and Superstitions, . Opening of History and Science, . Harmony or Union, . . . "^ » . The Philosophers are the Mystics,. ' . Swedenborg wanted, . . . < APPENDIX. The Familiar Spirit, . . . .. Octonary Computus, . . . . First public Advertisement of Sweden- borg's Writings, .... First Reception of the Writings of Swe- denborg, ...... Notice of the London Monthly Review, . Extract from the Commencement of Wil- kinson's Biography, . . . . Testimony of Professor Gorres, Extract from the Memoir by Rev. 0. Prescott Hiller, ..... Testimony of the late Rev. John Clowes, A.M., I The New Church, (4) 112 112 113 116 116 118 119 119 120 123 123 124 126 126 126 127 127 128 128 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBOEG. PART I. SWEDENBOEG, THE PHILOSOPHER OF NATURE. 1. Emanuel Swedenbouc was born at Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, January 29, 1688. He was the third child, and the second son, of seven children. His father. Dr. Jesper Swedberg, was for several years chaplain of a regiment of cavalry, but was finally made Bishop of Skara, in \Vest Goth- land, and also superintendent of the Swedish Lutheran churches in London, Eng., and Penn- sylvania, U. S., their location in this country being about the Delaware, and their station in Philad(;l|)hia. He was a man of consider- able learning and abilities, free from bigotry and sectarianism, and bore an excellent pri- vate and public cliaracter. It is said that one of the family came to America and settled in Canada. The bishop mentions in his diary, " that he, his wife, and all his children, except Catharina, were born on a Sunday." * 2. The character of this prelate stood high in Sweden; his voice was heard on great occa- sions, whether to reassure the people under the calamity of battle or pestilence, or to re- buke the vicious manners of the upper classes, or the faults of the king himself; he labored with constant and vigorous patriotism to rouse the public spirit of the country for useful and CJu'istian objects. Swedenborg's parentage and home were, therefore, happy omens of his future life ; he was brought up with strict but kindly care ; was carefully educated by his father in all innocence and scientific learn- ing; and enjoyed the opportunities afforded by tlie sphere and example of family virtues, ac- complishments, and high station, with which he was surrounded. 3. The only record we have of his child- hood is in a letter which he wrote late in life to Dr. Beyer. " With regard to what passed in the earliest part of my life, about which you wish to be informed : from my fourth to ray tenth year, my thoughts were constantly en- grossed by reflecting on God, on salvation, and on the spiritual affections of man. I often revealed things in my discourse which filled my parents with astonishment, and made them declare at times, that certainly the an- gels spoke through my mouth. 4. " From my sixth to my twelfth year, it was my greatest delight to converse with the clergy concerning faith ; to whom I often ob- served, that charity or love is the life of faith, and that this vivifying charity or love is no other than the love of one's neighbor; that God vouchsafes this faith to every one ; but that it is adopted by those only who pi-actise that charity. I knew of no other faith or be- lief at that time, than that God is the Creator and Preserver of nature ; that he endues man with understanding, good inclinations, and other gifts derived from these. I knew noth- ing at that time of the systematic or dogmatic kind of faith, that God the Father imputes the righteousness or merits of his Son to whomsoever, and at whatever times, he wills, even to the impenitent. And had I heard of such a faith, it would have been then, as now, perfectly unintelligible to me." 5. This information from Swedenborg him- self shows at how early a period he was pene- trated with that theological reform which is all in all in his latest writings ; and when to this it is added, that his sayings at the time were so extraordinary that his parents used to declare that " the angels spoke through his mouth," we see how deeply were the prepara- tions laid for that spiritual and mental condi- tion which his mature years were to present. G. In the sequel we shall have to point out some psychological peculiarities that occurred at " his morning and evening prayers " during his tender years ; but at present we only note how free his father had left his mind of Lutheran dogmas, and how much his future course wns indebted to this early respect which the Bishojf paid to his son's independence. Reared as he was under a strict ecclesiastic, it is surpris ing that up to his twelfth year he knew notli- ing of " the plan of salvation," whether it argute his own inability to learn it, or his -father's disbelief in it, or the omission of the latter, from whatever motives, to teach it to his son. Dr. Swedberg, however, was a serious and earnest man, and under date of April, 1729, he thus writes of the subject of our memoir : (5) LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. " Emanuel, my son's name, signifies ' God with us' — a name which should constantly remind him of* the* nearness of God, and of that interior, holy, and mysterious connection, in which, througli faith, we stand with our good and gracious God. And blessed be the Lord's name ! God has to this hour indeed been with him ; and may God be further with him, until he is eternally united with Ilim in his kingdom." 7. It may be mentioned here, aLso, that the father of Swedenborg had an evident natural tendency to a faith in the supernatural charac- ter of many of the occurrences of this life. " Several of Bishop Swedberg's works," saya Sandel, " seem to show a tendency to behold in certain events a species of prophetic indications." The bishop was particularly pleased to inform himself of supernatural ap- pearances, one of which he recorded in his works, and also wrote an account of it to the Bishop of Bristol in 1710, wherein he said, that " its truth was certain," and had been confirmed by the personal inquiries of Field Marshal Count Steinbock. He ended his let- ter to the bishop thus : " I am not inclined myself, and would be far from persuading any one, to credulity and superstition. But may not the all-wise God, in all ages, think it ne- cessary, by extraordinary instances, to fix upon the minds of mankind some signal im- pressions of his overruling power, and of the truth of his holy gospel ? " More may come out on this head, when Bishop Swedberg's Autobiography is published. Here, also, we may see, in part, the prepared foundation for the genius of the son. 8. The subject of this memoir, from his ear- liest childhood, was reraai'kable for his great dil- igence and usefulness ; while every thing in him tended to mature his mind in knowledge. His private character, from youth to man- hood, was altogether irreproachable. At the University of tjpsala, in Sweden, he received such an education as was calculated to form his character to virtue, industry, and sohd learning ; particular attention being given to those branches of science that were to consti- tute his chief occupation ; such as mineralogy, the languages, mathematics, and natural philoso- phy. Thus he began his career, as a practical mechanician and engineer, in the deepest study of the mathematics and general physics. y. In 1709, at the age of twenty-one, he took his degree of Doctor of Philosophy, for which occasion he published an Academical Dissertation, consisting of select sentences from Seneca, and Publius Syrus, the Mimic ; giv- ing parallel aphorisms and passages from Erasmus, Scaliger, and other writei's, and il- lustrating them with his own comments. This work is a ])roof of his acquaintance with the best classical writers, at an early period of life, and of the tendency of his miiiJ to dwell on higher subjects. It was ded.<..ated to his father, in language expressive of the most re spectful and affectionate regard. The work displays superior scholarship, precocious judg- ment, and a style of classic purity, which ob- tained for him great praise, and which was indi- cated, at the time, by the dedication to him of a Greek Poetic Eulogy, in the following words : " To Emanuel Swedenborg, a youth of distinguished genius, and illustrious both by his birth and the glory of his erudition, when he published his ' Dissertation and Comments on the Maxims of Publius Syrus, and others.'" In the same year he published a metrical Version of the Twelfth Chapter of Ecclesias- tes, which is much admired for its spirit, ele- gance, and poetic feeling. This was succeed- ed, in 1710, by his Ludus Ileliconius, &c., a collection of miscellaneous poems in Latin, among which is an excellent ode, in celebra- tion of a great victory, gained, principally, by undisciplined troops, under Steinbock, over their Danish invaders. The following is a translation of it : — " Lulled be the dissonance of war — the crash Of blood-stained arms — and let us listen now To sweetest songs of jubilee. From harp And thrilling lyre, let melodies of joy Ring to the stars, and every sphere of space Glow with th' inspiring soul of harmony. Phoebus applauds, and all the muses swell Our glory on their far-resounding chords. Well may the youthful poet be abashed, Who sings such mighty enterprise, — his theme So great, so insignificant his strain ! — Let Europe boast of Sweden — in the North, South, East, and West, victorious. — Round the Pole The seven Triones dance exultingly. While Jove the Thunderer sanctions his decree, Never to let the hyperborean bear Sink in the all-o'erwhelming ocean stream ; For when in the wave he bathes his giant limbs, 'Tis but to rise more proudly. Even now The fertile Scandia wreathes her brow with flowers, And Victory's trophies glitter over Sweden. The God of battles smiles upon our race, And the fierce Dane sues for our mercy : — Yea, The troops insidious Cimbria sent against us, Lie scattered by a warrior young in arms. Though Swedish Charles, our hero King's afar In Russian battles, his bright valor fills The heart of Steinbock — the victorious one ; — These names of Charles and Steinbock, like a spell. Created armaments, and hurled pale fear Among our foes. — Steinbock ! thy red right hand Hath smitten down the spoiler ; and in thee Another Charles we honor, and rejoice To hail tliee hero of thy grateful country. Bind the triumphal laurel round thy brow ; Such chaplet well becomes tlie invincible : Ascend thy chariot — we will fling the palms Before thee, while the peal of martial music Echoes thy high celebrity around. Hadst thou in olden times of fable lived, I had invoked thee as a demigod. Behold how gbtteringly in northern heaven Thy star exults : the name of Magnus fits LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMxYNUEL SWEDENBORG. Both it and thee, inseparably linked : In thee, the grenius of the Nortii expands, And all the virtue of thy ancestry Illustrates thee. Chief of our gallant chiefs — Too gallant for a song so weak as mine — Oh ! could their names enshrined in monuments Appear, how would the eyes of Sweden kindle To read them ! Coronets of gold for thee Were all too little recompense ; — hereafter, A crown of stars is all tliine own. The foe Lies broken by thy force and heroism : Numerous as Denmark's sands they came — how few Returned — their princes and their soldiery Repulsed with scorn, while shuddering horror hung Upon their flight — Jove's thunderstorms as- sailed Their bands of treachery, daylight was eclipsed In thickest clouds, and the pure cause of God And patriotism triumphed. Ay, the cause Of Sweden's royalty, which Denmark strove — How vainly — to despoil. Our king perceived Their rising hatred ; poets were forbid To sing his praise — his praise beyond compare : For this, in sooth, the land was steeped in blood ; Even for this, the fire and sword laid waste Our native soil. Then let each w;irrior bind Tlie laurel chaplet, and the bard exult O'er slaughtered rebels. For the destiny Of Cliarles shall yet awake the Muse's hymns. Ah, soon return. — Oh, monarch of our love ! Oh! Sun of Sweden, waste not all thy light To illume the crescent of the Ottomans ; Thy absence we bewail, wandering in glooms Of midnight sorrow — save that these bright stars That lead us on to victory, still console Thy people's hearts, and bid them not despair." 10. The poems of Swedenborg (.lis[)1ay fancy, but a controlled imagination. If we may con- vey to the English reader such a notion of Latin verses, they remind one of the Pope school, in which there is generally some theme or moral governing the flights of the muse. Under various forms, they hymn the praises of patriotism, love, friendship, and filial regard, and they love mythological clothing. It is noteworthy that we find so methodical a phi- losopher as Swedenborg making courteous passes with the muse, as though to acknowledge the truth and import of immortal song. Still his effusions were hardly more than a polite recognition of poetry, that sweeter and weaker eex of truth ; for to call Swedenborg himself a great poet, as Count Ilopken has done, is blind and undiscriminating. He did indeed weave great poetry at last, but it was by the order and machinery of a stupendous intelli- gence, and poetry so produced is not proper poetry but reason, — is not female but mascu- line truth. 11. There is not, however, a poem in this collection, more beautiful than the academi- cal dissertation, which assumes the pious and humble form of an epistle to his father. It is not in rhythm indeed, but there is the poetry in it, which is so often vainly sought in measured syllables. As a double proof of the filial respect which attached Swedenborg to his |)arent, and the tender care which that parent had lavished on his education, it possesses an interest which fairly entitles it to a place in our memoir. " To my most beloved parent, Jesper Swedberg, Doctor of Theology, and venerable Bishop of the diocese of Skara, with feelings of the utmost veneration and love : — " As there is nothing more sacred and delight- ful than to follow the steps of our ancestors and parents, and especially those in wliich we may imitate as well as honor their example, I experi- ence no small pleasure and delight in dedicating these first fruits of my studies and labor to that beloved parent, through whose paternal kindness and guidance my mind was first trained in piety, knowledge, and virtue. May I grow up, with in- creasing years, in the imitation of those deeds which have covered the name of iny parent with honor and celebrity ; and resemble Thee, O Father, while I emulate thy literary accomplish- ments ! How much joy did I experience when I beheld thee present to witness my first appearance in public ! and what more suitable opportunity could I desire for thee to witness the nascent, feeble abilities of thy son, humbly endeavoring to imitate the genius and talents which have shone so resplendently in thee ? when thou didst behold, with an eye full of parental love and complacency, the studies to which thou didst so tenderly prompt me and guide me in my childhood and youth, daily brought to greater maturity. Accept, therefore, Avith a propitious smile, these first fruits of my public otfering as a debt of filial gratitude and of love. Accept, O excellent parent, this humble offering, the fruit of thy paternal kindness, which derives whatever it may possess of merit and of usefulness from thy paternal care and solicitude in my behalf. If I were but permitted on tiiis occa- sion to celebrate thy praises, I should consider no labor, no exertion too much in commemorating the merits thou hast deserved of thy family and thy country ; but as I know that thou wouldst rather enjoy the tacit, filial regard and veneration of thy son, than have thy praises proclaimed by the voice of applause, or the trumpet of fame, I will also obey thee in this ; and I will only say that as often as 1 approach the throne of mercy, and bend my knees in the presence of Almighty God, that my heart is penetrated with the most lively emotions, when the prayer is uttered for thy health, welfare, and happiness. To God, therefore, the Greatest and Best, I pour forth my grateful thanks that thy life has been hitherto so mercifully spared ; and as thy age is now advancing with rapid strides, and its venerable signs begin to appear in tliy hoary locks and furrowed brow, I, witii many others, sincerely pray that thy life may be pro- longed, and tliat tliy declinuig years may be blessed with health and peace. Spared to our heartfelt wishes, may thy years be extended beyond those of thy children. To adopt the fervent exclama- tion of the old Romans, — ' Dt nostris annis Tihi Jupiter augeat annos,^ May Heaven lengthen thy days even at the expense of ours. This, dearest Father, is the prayer of thy most dutiful and obedient son, " Emanuel Swedberg." 8 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. Travels and first Publications. 1 12. Swedenborg's collegiate period having thus closed, at the age of twenty-one or twenty- two, according to the usual custom of his day, he commenced his travels, by taking ship to London ; during which excursion, he relates, in a letter to his brother, the following adven- tures that befell him. " On the voyage, my life was in danger four times : first, on some shoals towards which we were driven, until within a quarter of a mile of the raging breakers, and we thought we should perish. Afterwards we were chased by some Danish pirates, sailing under French colors ; and it was with difficulty we escaped them : the next evening, we were fired into by a British vessel, which mistook us for the pirates ; but providential- ly, we did not suffer much damage. Lastly, in London itself, I was exposed to a more serious danger. While we were entering the harbor, some of our countrymen came in a boat to us, and persuaded me to go with them immediately into the city. Now it was known in London, that an epidemic was raging in Sweden, and therefore, all that arrived from there, were forbidden, on pain of death, to leave their ships for six weeks after their arrival : so I, having transgressed this law, came very near being hanged, and was only freed, on condition, that if any Swede attempted the same thing again, he should not escape death." Thus was manifest the watchfulness and pro- tecting care of Providence, to preserve the young man alive, for it was not possible that his stupendous labors could be thus spared from the world. 13. After spending a year in London and Oxford, he says in another letter, — " I went to Holland, and saw its chief cities. At Utrecht I tarried a long time, while Congress was sitting, and Ambassadors were gathering from nearly all tlie Courts of Europe. Thence I went into France, passing through Brussels, &c., to Paris. Here, and at Versailles, I spent a year ; then I went by public coach to Hamburg, and thence to Ponicrania and Greefswalde, where I remained some time, while Charles the Twelfth was coming from Bender to Stralsund. When the siege began, I departed in a small vessel, together with a lady by tiie name of Feif ; and by Divine Providence was restored to my own country, after more than four years' absence." 14. During this journey, he appears to have composed a small volume of Fables and Allegories, in Latin Prose, under the title of *' The Northern Muse," sporlin'j icith the deeds of Heroes and Heroines, aftei' the man- ner of Ovid. They shadow forth the virtues and exploits of certain Scandinavians ; or, as he calls them, " kings and great people." This work was published in 1715, at the age of twenty-seven, and in the same year, his Oration on the return of Charles XII. I'rom Turkey. In this work there is evidence of an acute faculty of observation, of consider- able power of fancy and humor, and especial- ly of a regard to the forms of mythological lore. In the latter respect it suggests the Worship and Love of God, a work of thirty years later date, which we shall have to notice presently. At this time Swedenborg wrote to his brother-in-law, that he was " alternating mathematics with poetry in his studies," an instance of his early flexibility, and which sheds light upon his future deeds. 15. Young Swedenborg was now on the thresh- old of active life ; and, from what his father says, it is evident that his son was at perfect liberty to choose his own profession ; for the good bishop writes — "I have kept my sons to that Profession, to which God has given them inclination. I have not brought up one to the Clerical office ; although many parents do this inconsiderately, and in a manner not justifiable ; by which the Christian Church and the clerical Order, suffer not a little, and are brought into contempt." What a bless- ing to have such a wise and discriminating father ! The profession, to which our Author brought his great talents and integrity, was that of Mining and Smelting, and various mechanical and engineering works : and his letters from abroad show, that few travel more usefully. Mathematics, Astronomy, and Me- chanics, were his favorite Sciences, and in each of them he had already made great pro- ficiency ; but his pui'suit of knowledge was ever united with untiring zeal to benefit his country : hence, whatever inventions, discov- eries, and good books he met with abroad, he was sure to send home, accompanied with models and suggestions of his own. 16. His versatility of talents is seen by his attachment to Mathematical and Philosophical researches, as manifested in the publication of his Essays on these subjects, in a Periodical Work which he edited, 'called — " D.edalus Hyperboreus ; " or, experimental Mathe- matics and Physics ; which was issued from 171 G to 1718, inclusive. In the Preface of his Works, he showed how little he valued what the world calls '* Impossibilities ; " for he even then thought of vessels for navigating the Air, and spoke of them as among the things which the Age required : indeed, he was imbued with the very spirit of our Steam, Railroad, and Telegraphic Era: as we shall perceive in his works hereafter to be exam- ined. 17. In 1716, at the age of twenty-eight, he was invited by Polheim, " the Archimedes of Sweden," and Counsellor of the Chamber of Commerce, and Commander of the order of the Polar Star, to go with him to Lund, and meet Charles XII. (who had just escaped from Stralsund,) and engage in such works as de- manded the exercise of his practical skill; as an instance of which, the fact may be stated, that young Swedenborg contrived to transport, (on rolling machines of his own invention.) over valleys and mountains, two galleys, five large boats, and a sloop, from Stromstadt to LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. Iderfjol, (which divides Sweden from Norway on the south,) a distance of fourteen miles ; by which means, the King was able to carry on liis plans, and, under cover of the galleys and boats, to transport on pontoons, his heavy artillery, to the very walls of Frederickshall. It was under those circumstances, that Charles Decarae acquainted with our Author, and took him under his royal patronage, expressing a ■wish that he should become Polheim's assist- ant, and eventually his successor. Swedenborg, without solicitation, had his clioice of two of- fices ; either a Professorship in the University of Upsala, or Extraordinary Assessor of the Board of Mines, which was a Constitutional Department of the Government, having in- spection over the Mines and Metallic Works, embracing the whole mineral wealth of Sweden : he preferred the latter, and a warrant was made out accordingly, and signed by the King, who also wrote a letter to the College of Mines, ordering, that Swedenborg should have a seat and voice in the Institution, when- ever he could be present, and especially, when any business of a mechanical nature was to be considered. 18. Swedenborg was never married ; which was not owing to any indiflFerence towards the other sex, for he esteemed the company of an intellectual woman, as one of the most agreeable pleasures. Here, however, it may be proper to mention an interesting circum- stance in the life of our Author,«who was not only Polheim's coadjutor, and pupil in Math- ematics and Mechanics, but was a sojourner at his house. Eraerentia, the second daughter of Polheim, was a beautiful and an accom- plished young lady ; and it is not at all strange that Swedenborg should become attached to her ; nor that the King should persuade her father to give him his daughter in marriage : but when Swedenborg perceived that his love was unreciprocated, and that Emerentia was unhappy under her written agreement to marry him at some future day, he freely re- linquished his claims, and left the house with a determination never to enter into the mar- I'iage covenant ; and considering the nature of hrs studie-, and the life of prodigious concen- tration and labor he was thenceforth to lead, demanding the quiet of a single life, and the absence of ordinary impediments to solitary and public energy, we are rationally satisfied "with his self-imposed celiltacy ; thus Providence overruled it for greater good : he could not the7i have entered into a marriage, which would have corresponded to his subsequent state. 19. In 1718, at the age of thirty, he fur- nished additional proofs of his talents and in- dustry, by publishing an " Introduction to Algebra," under the title of " The Art of Rules ; " which was honorably reviewed in the " Literary Transactions of Sweden ; " not only that the Author was tlie only Swede, who wrote on the higher branches of the sub- ject, but for its excellence, clearness, and practicability. It is comprised in Ten Books, and treats on the following subjects : Book one contains the Definitions and Explanations of the Terms employed, and the simple Arith- metical Processes. Book two. The Mechani- cal Powers, the Lever, Pulley, Inclined Plane, &c., with a variety of Problems. Book three, Laws of Proportion ; also numerous Prob- lems. Book four, Geometrical Theorems, Stereometry, and Specific Gravity. Books five and six. The Properties of the Parabola and Hyperbola, with numerous other Problems. Book seven, Theory of Projectiles and Artil- lery, with many Problems. Books eight, nine, and ten. On Adfected Roots and the In- tegral and Differential Calculus. This pro- found Work was followed by his Neto Method of Finding the Longitude of Places by Lunar Observations. 20. Here we may observe, that from cer- tain Letters, written by Swedenborg, it ap- pears that he was far from being satisfied with his position and prospects ; although he enjoyed to its full extent, the King's patronage and friendship ; for he complains, — " That his labors are not appreciated, that his pro- ductions are looked down upon by a number of political blockheads, as mere scholastic ex- ercises, which ought to stand back, while their presumptuous finesse and intrigues step for- ward." And we find that a majority in our day look upon the Arts and Sciences in a similar manner ; which is one great reason why they and Humanity do not progress more rapidly. 21. In 1719, the family of Swedberg was ennobled, by Queen Ulrica Eleonora, from which time our Author bore the name of Swedenborg, (by which his nobility was signified,) and he took his seat with the Nobles op the Equestrian Order, in the Triennial Assemblies of the States : but his new rank conferred no title, beyond the change of his name ; nor was he a Baron, or Count, as some have supposed. In Sweden he was always spoken of as the Assessor Swe- denborg. 22. In 1719, he published four Works, first, A Proposal for fixing the Value of Coins, and determining the Measures of Sweden, so as to sxippress Fractions, and facilitate Calcidations : after which, he was commanded by his Sov- ereign to draw up an Octonary Computus, (a mode of computing by eighths,) which he completed in a few days, with its application to the received divisions of Coins, Weights, and Measures : a disquisition on Cubes and Squares, and a new and easy way of extracting Roots ; all illustrated by appropriate examples. It may here be mentioned that he had the honor of introducing the Differential Calculus into Sweden ; also that he wrote to Norberg, the 10 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. Biographer of Charles XII., tliat this King, in a conversation with him and Polheim, not only proposed, but actually produced in his own handwriting, a Decimal Mode of Numera- tion, founded on ciphers up to G4 : and as he gave this specimen to our Author, he ob- served, " that he who knows nothing of the Science of Mathematics, does not deserve to be considered a rational man : " a sentiment, adds Swedenborg, truly worthy of a king. 2. His next Works were, " A Treatise on the Motion and Position of the Earth and Planets. 3. Arguments derived from tlie vari- ous Appearances in the North of Europe, in favor of the Depth of the Waters and great- er Tides of the Sea, in the Ancient World. 4. On Docks, Sluices and Salt Works." 23. And here again, we hear him lament- ing that his country does not appreciate his labors, nor take any interest in the mechani- cal and mathematical sciences : he further says, truly, " In every age there is an abundance of persons, who follow the beaten track, and remain in the old way ; while there are a few who bring forward inventions, founded on reason and argument. I lind that Pluto and Envy possess the Hyperboreans, (people of the north ;) and that a man will prosper bet- ter among them by acting the idiot, than by remaining a man of understanding." The world around him was in the midnight of the Past ; but he clearly saw, in the distribution of human talent, that there was no just pro- portion kept up between antiquity and genius ; and he labored for the New Era, which is now dawning upon the earth, — the day of the great installation of arts, sciences, philosophy, and religion. His ardent pursuit of geolo- gy, (then a new science), was converting it- self into speculations about the universe ; and all his works, up to this date, display great industry, fertile plans, a belief in the penetra- bility of problems usually given up by tlie learned, — a gradual and experimental faculty, and an absence of immaturity. In regard to general truths, he gave the evidence of a slowly- apprehending, persevering, and, at last, thor- oughly comprehending mind. His filial love was very strong, and his energy and lidelity in business were more useful to him, than family connection, or clever courtiership. His religious belief does not any where appear as yet ; but from his books and letters, it is cer- tain that his mind was not inactive on the greatest of all subjects, and that he was a plain believer in revelations, though probably not without his conjectures as to its meaning and import. Such was Swedenborg in the spring and tlower of his long maniiood, 24. In 1721, at the age of thirty-three, he visited Holland for the second time, with a specific view to professional objects, to examine the mines and smelting works, and to study the natural sciences ; and, besides being a contributor to " The Literary Transactions of Sweden,'' he published the following works at Amsterdam: 1. "Some Specimens of Works on the Principles of Natural Phi- losophy, comprising new Attempts to explain the Phenomena of Chemistry and Physics by Geometry ; " 2. " Observations and Discover- ies respecting Iron and Fire, and particularly respecting the Elemental Nature of Fire, with a new Construction of Stoves ; " 3. " A New Method of finding the Longitude of Places, on Land, or at Sea, by Lunar Observations;" 4. "A New Mechanical Plan of constructing Docks and Dikes ; " 5. " A Mode of Discov- ering the Powers of Vessels, by the applica- cation of Mechanical Principles;" 6. " New Rules for maintaining Heat in Rooms ; " 7. " Remarks on the Primeval Ocean ; " 8. " An Elucidation of a Law of Hydrostatics, demon- strating the Power of the deepest Waters of the Deluge, and their Action on the Rocks, and other Substances, at the Bottom of their Bed ; " 9. " A New Mechanical Plan of con- structing Docks, whereby Vessels may be re- paired in Harbors that are not reached by the Tides;" 10. "A New Construction of Dams, or Moles, for arresting the Course of Rivers, Torrents," &;c. 25. The air-tight stove, which has come into vei-y extensive use in this country, for a few years past, was patented, it is believed, by Dr. Orr, of Washington city. The valid- ity of the patent was tried in one of our courts of justice, in this city, and the case was dismissed, on the ground that the specifications of the patent were not sufficiently explicit. It appears that the principle of this stove was discovered and made known by Swedenborg more than a century ago. 26. From Amsterdam, in 1722, at the age of thirty-four, he went to Leipsic, when he published his '" Miscellaneous Observations about Natural Things, Especially about Min- erals, Iron, and Fire, on the Strata of Moun- tains: and an Essay on Crystallization." This work demonstrated a rare power of col- lecting facts, of applying principles, and of making them useful to mankind. (The ex- penses of this journey were defrayed by the Duke of Brunswick, who made Swedenborg many valuable presents, as tokens of favor, friendship, and benevolence.) In this work, our author began his travels into future ages, and intrepidly attempted to scale the heights of Nature, that he might see its connection with spirits. He approached the fortress of mineral truth, with geometry on one hand, and mechanics on the other; while the laws of pure science were to be the interpreters of the facts of chemistry and physics. " The begin- ning of nature," he says, " is identical with the beginning of geometry : " he therefore at- tempted to traverse chemical essence and combination by the fixed truths of mathemat- ics, and to carry the pure sciences into those which are mixed, — interpreting the latter by LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. 11 the former. The mixture of theory and practice in his works, shows tlie extraordinary activity of his mind, as well as his good sense, and makes every thing interesting and useful ; for it was not only the mi ties that he meant to examine, but all that could iix the attention of a traveller : hence, nothing seemed to es- cape his observation. 27. One of his discoveries at this time was that of the gradual subsidence of the Baltic Sea, which, with his geological observations n the field, led him to conclude that deep waters once covered tlie inhabited ground ; and that the unevenness of the land was owing to the accu- mulation of mud, sand, shells, and stones, at the bottom of the ocean, lie also explained the translation of the huge bowlders which are dropped here and there over the plains, by al- leging the powerful action of the waves — a point in w^hich his mathematical skill has been confirmed by modern science ; in numerous in- stances, he may be said to have anticipated the enlightened speculations of modern geolo- gists ; but it would be inconsistent with our limits to dwell upon particulars of this nature. We will only add that the celebrated Dumas ascribes to Swedenborg the origin of the mod- ern science of crystallography. We quote, here, from the New Jerusalem Magazine, of November, 1830: — " The science of crystallography is of recent origin, and has lately attracted the notice of some very able men. Nearly all simple substances and many of the compounds found in nature have reg- ular tbrrns. These are of almost every variety of shape, but eacli substance has its own ; and this original tigure, as it may be called, often serves to distinguish substances which it would be ditficult otherwise to discriminate. The basis of the science is an analysis of the various figures, so that they may be reduced to a very few simple forms, which, by addition one to the other, may make all the existing varieties. Tliis subject is mentioned in a work on ' Chemical Philosophy,' recently published in Paris, consisting of a course of lectures delivered in the college of Fran^^e, by M. Dumas, a gentleman of much and deserved celebrity. There is a notice of this work in the forty-fifth number of the Foreign Ciuarterly Re- view, published in London. M. Dumas distinctly ascribes to Swedenborg the origin of the modern science of crystallography. He says, ' It is, then, to him we are indebted, fur the first idea of mtiking cubes, tetraedes, pyramids, and the different crys- talline forms, by grouping tiie spheres ; and it is an idea which has since been renewed by several dis- tinguished men, Wollaston in particular.' The reviewer afterwards says, that the systems of Swedenborg and Wollaston dilFer essentially, but l.e does not state wherein the difference consists." 28. We cannot forego, here, a notice of an- other subject, which was the oliject of Sweden- borg's remark at this time. We allude to the theory of the Central Fire of the Earth. " The opinion has been very prevalent," he says, " tliat the nucleus or interior of the eartli is hollow, and filled with a peculiar fire ; and this has been attempted to be proved by the following arguments. 1. The earth appears to have been at first a star, which in process of time was incrust- ed, and formed a planet. 2. The earth is balanced in the solar vortex, which seems to be owing to an internal vacuum, whereby the crust might be bal- anced like a hollow globe of metal. 3. There are many volcanoes in existence at the present day, and formerly they were still more numerous ; fur- thermore, there are thermal springs and boiling waters gushing from the bowels of the earth. 4. Minerals are formed, and metals, and many sub- stances undergo various changes in the bosom of the earth ; moreover flowers spring up. and the earth's crust becomes covered with vegetation. 5. And many mountains have been converted into lime, and seem to have been burned up by fire. All these circumstances appear to prove the existence of a central fire, which, in particular places, bursts through the crust that encloses it. " I admit that it is undeniable that a certain subterranean fire really exists ; that is to say, that in some parts of the earth's crust a degree of heat is perceptible, which causes thermal springs, vol- canic eruptions, and many other phenomena ; but whether this heat proceeds from the earth's cen- tre, and whether there be a cavity full of fire, or an igneous void — this is to the last degree (ques- tionable, and for the following reasons. 1. Be- cause fire cannot live, unless it be enclosed in hard bodies, as in carbonaceous matter already mentioned as shut up with the fire in a furnace. 2. But if the furnace contain no solid fuel, although it be full of flames, no sooner is it closed, than the fire dies out, lasting in fact no longer than the heat remains in the hard bodies. Consequently fire cannot be kept in a cavity unless solid sub- stances be present. If, therefore, there be any heat in the centre (supposing a central vacuum to exist), such heat must come from the substances of the crust, instead of the crustal heat proceed- ing from the centre. 3. Hence we may conclude that heat exists in many parts of the earth's crust, and not in others ; but as for its source, and the manner in which it is kept up, see the observations on Therunl Springs." — Miscellaneous Observa- tions, pp. 100, 101. 29. We quote the following from his re- marks on Thermal Springs. After mention- ing various facts and experiments, he con- tiimes : — " From these examples we may now proceed to consider the subterranean heat which causes the warmth of thermal springs ; and we may argue that it will diffuse itself through a wjiole moun- tain from a very small beginning ; i. e., from some commingling of sulphur, vitriol, iron, and water. These substances would prove quite sufficient for this result, especially in stratified mountains, where the diffusion would - illae of the tongue." — Miscellaneous Observations, p. 75. 35. The following is interesting on Light, Sight, and Sound: — " It Avould appear that the exquisitely minute particles of ether cannot exhibit the phenonaena of light, unless they are struck by particles equal- ly fine and small. If the latter be too large, notliing more than a slow and exceedingly dull undulation will take place in the former ; but the reverse if both sets of particles be of one small- ness. Thus, 1. The ether may be set vibrating by mercury with its very minute particles, espe- cially in a vacuum. 2. In like manner the ether may be made to vibrate, or tlie ray to undulate, by any very subtle exhalations, either whole, or de- composed in the air, for instance, by saline ramenta, by urinous and sulphurous matters, provided their particles be extremely minute. 3. By the most delicate ramenta of salts, when broken, as in the sea. 4. By decayed wood, whilst emitting subtle particles. 5. And by the effluvia of certain ani- mals excited by motion and friction. G. I need hardly say, also by fire, whose particles are so amazingly subtle, and when undulating will cause an undulation in the rays, or a vibration in the ether. 7. So, also, the rays from the sun will undulate through the whole sky. Hence, accord- ing to the buUular hypothesis, it appears, for the reasons already stated, that light may arise in cold substances as well aa in hot, and in the dry and the moist alike. The sensation of sight points in a manner to a similar conclusion. The sensations that we have appear to be nothing more than tiie very subtle motions in the smaller jvarticles : and as the most subtle motion amongst such particles can hardly be other than undulatory and vibratory, so I do not know why those persons should be mistaken, who maintain that sensations arc merely vibrations or very s .b.*J,e motions in the membranes of oui frame. It does not seem possible that the light in our eyes can be, 1. Any quiescent or passive thing. 2. Or any occult quality, for we find in the organ a mechanism for receiving the rays. 3. We see the internal tunics or meninges brought from the interior of the head, and exposed immediately to tlie rays. 4. We see a variety of different tunics and fluids in the eye. 5. In the inner part, where the rays are collected, we observe a reticular lining, so that no ray can escape coming in contact with a considerable portion of the membrane therein. G. We find these membranes conjoined LITE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. 13 with the internal membranes, and the rays received communicated to the meninges of the brain. 7. As, therefore, sensation must consist of some mo- tion, and as the smallest motion is the vibratory and undulatory, I am not aware that there is any impropriety in assuming tliat sight or vision con- sists in the undulation of the rays in the mem- branes of the eye. 8. In the same manner as tound, which we know for certain is produced by (he undulation of the air ; for the ear is mechanic- ally formed for its reception; it is tortuous, fur- nished with membranes, a tympanum, cochlea, various nerves of tlie utmost delicacy, malleus, incus, and all the apparatus necessary for vibra- tion. These subjects, however, will be treated open elsewhere. At present it is sufficient to have pointed out, that light is nothing more than a motion of tiie smallest particles, that is to say, of rays ; and as the vibratory is the most subtle mo- tion, we may perhaps tind fresh proofs of the ex- istence of light in the buUular hypothesis, and the principle of the undulation of rays. But as we are treating of invisibles, and as thought and geome- try are alone at our service in the investigation, so we will submit our views to the criticism of the learned ; and if tliey can bring forward facts to re- fute our notions, we shall receive the information in the most grateful spirit" — Miscellaneous Obser- vations, pp. 104-(3. 36. Our author's remarks on improved Stoves, Fireplaces, and the Cause and Cure of Smoky Chimneys, exhibit the Count Rum- ford and Franklin spirit to a remarkable de- gree ; but we have no room for extracts. 37. In the preface of his Treatise on the Prin- ciples of Chemistry, he observes, that physics and chemistry are essentially geometrical, and that the variety of experiments in both, can be nothing more than variety in position, figure, weight and motion of the particles of bodies ; consequently, that the facts of these sciences must indicate the geometrical forms and mechanical- motions of the elements of substances. As the phenomena of the heavens have at length suggested an astrono- my, founded on mechanical laws, and involv- ing definite forms and movements, so, it was his design to elicit from the phenomena of chemistry, the shapes, motions, and other con- ditions of the atoms, or unities of bodies, and thus to introduce clearness into our conception of chemical combinations and decompositions. He did not doubt, that chemistry, in its inmost bosom, was amenable to the rules of mechan- ics, and that there was nothing necessarily mysterious in it, nothing occult, nothing but a peculiar portion of the ubiquitous clockwork of time and space. His theory is, that round- ness is the form adapted to motion ; that tiie particles of Huids, and specifically of water, are round hollow spherules, with a subtle mat- ter, identical with ether, or caloric, in their interiors and interstices ; that the crust, or crustal portion, of each particle, is formed of lesser particles, and these again of lesser, and so on ; water being, in this way, the sixth dimension, or the result of the sixth grouping of the particles ; that the interstices of the fluids furnish the original moulds of the solids, and the rows of crustal particles, forced oft", one by one, by various agencies, furnish the matter of the same ; that after solid par- ticles are thus cast in their appropriate moulds, their fracture, aggregation, the fillings in of their pores and interstices, by lesser particles, and a number of other and accidental condi- tions, provide the unities of the multiform substances of which the mineral kingdom is composed ; according to which theory, there is but one substance in the worhl, which is the first ; the difference of things is difference of form ; there are no positive, but only relative atoms ; no metaphysical, but only real elements ; moreover, the heights of chemical doctrine can be scaled by rational induction alone, planted on the basis of analysis, synthesis and observation. The Neivton of chemistry has not yet arisen, but when he does appear, Swedenborg will doubtless be recognized as its Copernicus. 38. After his return from Germany to Stockholm, in 1722, he published, anonymous- ly, a work on the Rise and Depreciation of the Swedish Currency. He was decidedly op- posed to a paper currency, unless it repre- sented a specie basis of equal amount ; remark- ing, in his Memorial to the Senate of Sweden, " that an empire which could submit with only a representative currency, would be without a parallel." And we plainly see the folly of such an attempt, in the issuing of the old Continental Paper, by the American Colonies, millions of which were never redeemed. 39. At this time he entered upon the duties of the Assessorship, whose function he had previously been unwilling to exercise, until he had acquired perfect knowledge of Metal- lurgy ; hence, he cannot be ranked with those, who, without capacity, solicit and obtain places of trust and profit, while destitute of the re- quisite knowledge to fill them properly. Dur- ing the next eleven years, he divided his time and labors between the Royal College of the Board of Mines, and his studies illustrating Practice and Theory in Business, and Prac- tice and Theory in Science. 40. In a letter to his brother-in-law, about this time, he makes the following amusing remarks : " It is the fatality of Mathemati- cians to remain chiefly in theory. I have often thought it would be a capital thing, if, to each ten Mathematicians, one good practi- cal man were added, to lead -the rest to mar- ket ; he would be of more use and mark than all the ten." One can now see why he would not accept the Professorship of pure Mathematics that was offered him, but pre- ferred the Assessorship ; for he evidently de- sired to see all truths and principles brought into practice. 41. In 1729, at the age of forty-one, he was 14 lif:: and writings of emanuel swedenborg. elected a member of the Royal Academy of Sciences, at Stockholm ; and was one of its most useful and efficient members, both at home and abroad. Tiie eminence of this In- stitution may be inferred from the fact, that so learned and scientific a man as Swedenborg, was not made one of its members before. The Principia. 42. We now enter upon another era, in this great man's life, wlien his experimenting youth and manhood were past, and he came into possession of a region all his own, and ruled there without a rival, for owing to a ■want of discernment in his contemporaries, he inhabited his intellectual estate, unquestioned, unlimited, uncontradicted, and alone. His wondrous career now commences, in the pub- lication of that masterpiece of human Avork- manship — the Principia. 43. In May 1733, at the age of forty-five, with the permission of Charles XII., king of Sweden, he went abroad for the third time, for the purpose of storing his mind with every kind of knowledge, which was necessary to the success of his undertaking, and to publish his great work, in three folio volumes, of about four or five hundred pages, each, — entitled Philosophical and Mineral Works ; embracing the results of the profoundest researches into the domains of nature, from her primordial elements, to her greatest organic phenomena. Although there are three distinct works, each treating on different subjects, and dedicated to different persons, yet they are all published together, and were always alluded to by Swedenborg, as one work. 44. The first volume is called, " The Prin- cipia, or the First Principles of Natural Things, being a New Attempt towards a Phil- osophical Explanation of the Elementary World." This part may be regarded as a Treatise on Cosmogony, in which the Author attempts to arrive at the cause, or origin of the universe, by modes of inquiry peculiar to himself. He takes the position, that nature, in all her operation, is governed by one and the same general law, and is always consistent with lierself : hence he says, there is necessity in explaining her hidden recesses, to multiply experiments by observation. The means lead- ing to true philosophy, he represents as three- fold. 1. A knowledge of facts, or experi- mental observation, which he calls Experience. 2. The orderly arrangement of those facts, phenomena, or effects, which he calls Geometry, or Rational Philosophy. 3. The Faculty of Reasoning : by which is meant, the ability to analyze, compare, and combine these facts, after they have been reduced to order, and they present themselves distinctly to the mind. Among other positions he takes, is this, which is proved by modern science ; '' it is possible, that many things of opposite natures, may exist from the same first cause ; as fire and iruter, and air which absorbs them both." 4"). The above three folio volumes, were beau- tifully printed in Latin, at Leipsic and Dres- den, enriched and adorned with a vast number of copperplate engravings, illustrative of the subjects treated of, and an engraved likeness of the Author ; all done at the expense of the Duke of Brunswick, at whose cost Sweden- borg was always entertained, with distin- guished favor. The Principia is translated into English and published in two large octavo volumes, at the price of seven dollars. Tl)is is truly a magnificent work, and will speak for itself, centuries to come. Indeed, in many respects, but little advance has since been made, beyond the points which our Author reached. It is regarded by many, as far su- perior to the Principia of Newton. 46. One would hardly imagine, that there are such mighty principles to be found, under the modest and simple title of " Philosophical and Mineral Works ;" but there is great meaningin this uncommon blending : for Philosophy is nothing, unless united with a// things ; and in the ascending scale of its alliances, it solicits the aid of the mineral universe before arriving at the higher degrees of elementary forces, the region of Causes, the Human, and the ETERNAL. This Work is rendered more interesting, on account of its containing the germs of the sublime system of Geological Science, which stands forth so prominently at the present day. 47. In his chapter, " On the Means Avhich conduce to True Piiilosophy, and on the True Philosopher," he maintains that no one can acquii-e the former, and not become the latter; also, that no one can become a true philoso- pher, who is not a good man. Previous to the Fall, he says, " when man was in a state of integrity, he had all the essentials of wis- dom and true philosophy inscribed on his heart : he had then but to open his eyes, in order to see the causes of all the phenomena of the universe around him ; but in his present state of sin and nonconformity to Divine Order, he is obliged to investigate truths by a laborious external application of the mind." 48. R. M. Patterson, late Professor in the University of Pennsylvania, says respecting the Principia, — " It is an extraordinary pro- duction of one of the most extraordinary men that has ever lived. The air of mysti- cism, which is generally thought to pervade Swedenborg's Ethical and Theological Writ- ings, has prevented philosophers from paying that attention to his physical productions, of which I now see they are worthy. Many of the experiments and observations on Magnet- ism, presented in this work, are believed to be of much more modern date, and are unjustly ascribed to much more recent authors." LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. 15 49. " Its pervading idea is the recognition of external objects as the product of internal powers, and this not as to form only, but as to their matter and subsistence. In oilier words, it occupies high ground in explaining the generation of the elements, and ultimately of 6olid matter, from the occult forces playing with- in nature, as well as in its attempted explana- tion of those forces themselves, — their origin, and their procedure till they become material- ized ; the great end which its Author already had in view carrying him beyond mere ap- pearances in one of the most material branches of physiology. Two things are virtually as- sumed in all its deductions, namely, the absolute reality of the Infinite and the exist- ence of finite entities ; it has a good founda- tion, therefore, in common sense, and has ne- cessarily a religious tendency. Descending from ' The First Natural Point,' — a term by which pure motion is designated, Svveden- borg defines the phenomena of heat, light, magnetism, and the elementary substances themselves, as so many graduated manifesta- tions of Infinite Activity. In the course of his demonstrations he anticipated many discov- eries which are considered of more recent date, and amongst others the identity of electricity and lightning, and the stellar constitution of the Milky Way, together with a complete theory of tellurian magnetism." It was in June 1752, we believe, that Franklin's cele- brated experiment was performed with the lightning, by which its identity with electricity was established. Yet no less than nineteen years previously, in 1733, Swedenborg's Prin- cipia was pubHshed, in which this same truth is reasoned out as a minor consequent to his philosophy. " Such are the coincidences," remarks a London reviewer, " which have never yet failed in us in any attempted appli- cation of Swedenborg's philosophy, and which might surprise even the sceptic into a belief of the brilliancy and originality of his genius." In respect to tellurian magnetism, " ' the theory of Swedenborg incontestably proves the exist- ence of the magnetic clement ; it establishes, that the particles of this element being spher- ical, the tendency of their motion is either spi- ral, or vortical, or cii'cular ; that as each of these motions requires a centre, whenever the particles meet with a body, which, by the reg- ularity of the pores, and the configuration and position of its parts, is adapted to their motion, they avail themselves of it, and form around it a magnetical vortex ; that if this body pos- sesses an activity [that is, an active sphere] of its own, if its parts are fiexible, and if its motions are similar to tliat of the particles, it will be so much the more disposed to admit them Whence it follows that the magnetism of bodies depends not on their sub- stance but their /or»i.' Some of the results of this theory are confirmed by the brilliant discoveries of Farraday, and it is probably destined to take its place, along with Sweden- borg's general doctrine of spheres, or exhala- tions, as the only hypothesis capable of ex- plaining the phenomena and correlation of forces. 50. " Various hypotheses intended to explain the phenomena of planetary motion had been constructed, from time to time, on the general principle that the jdanets were carried round the sun by its supposed ambient ether, or vortex. The most remarkable of these the- ories were those of Kepler, Descartes, and Leibnitz, who not only preceded Swedenborg, but were already thrown into the shade by the successes of Newton, — who made his calculations on the presumption that the planets moved in a vacuum, — before our phi- losopher published his ' Principia.' Far from dismayed by these circumstances, Swe- denborg boldly attempted to reconcile the laws of gravity with the existence of a vortex, and, though it still remains for the highest authorities to pass judgment on this attempt, it is sufficient evidence of his great genius that the circumstances affecting the periodicity of the comets of En eke and Bella, have left Astronomers no alternative but an accommoda- tion of this nature. Every one may perceive how irrational it would be to suppose an im- mense void between the soul and the body. On the same principle, it is equally contrary to reason to imagine its interposition between the sun as the moving power, and the earth. One of its first consequences is inconsistent with all analogy ; plants and animals invariably grow from a central point, and tracks of sen- sation or vital energy are always laid between that centre and its remotest appurtenances ; this is the one unvarying plan on which all unities are constructed. To look at the Uni- verse as a whole, it is perfectly consistent with this analogy to regard a planet as one mighty limb ; or, more humbly, as a single leaf on the tree of universal life ; and then how unreasonable it becomes to suppose that it was ever endowed with the separate and ' independent forces ascribed to it by the New- tonian hypothesis ! It would be as easy to imagine that the leaf was created by itself, and hung upon the tree, or that all the parts of the body were separately produced, and their independent functions subsequently formed into a system. Swedenborg, therefore, has wisely endeavored to reconcile the demonstra- tions of Newton with the ancient hypothesis of a solar vortex, and to show how the planets, and planetary motion, are derived from the Sun." — Rich's Sketch, ■p'^. 17-20. 51. In short, Swedenborg makes the magnetic element the agency which controls the plan- etary movements. In other words, he resolves the power of gravitation into magnetism, and shows, moreover, that precisely the same laws 16 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. which govern a single particle of matter in its properties of motion, govern also all the heavenly bodies in their orbitual revolutions. " Inasmuch," he says, " as nature maintains the highest similarity to herself, both in her great- est and in her least entities, we may, from what we see and feel, arrive at a knowledge of what we neither see nor foel. Tims has nature designed that we should be instructed througli Xhe medium of the senses : in addition to which is imparted to us a soul, and to the soul a faculty of reasoning and analyzing, a faculty wjiich may extend its operations even to tlie senses ; so that, by help of reasoning and analysis, or of the ratios of the things we sensate, we may arrive at some knowl- edge of those we do not. " The magnet with the play of its forces we both see and we do not see ; hence our wonder at the phenomena it presents. In the magnet and its sphere there is however a type and effigy of the heaven ; a mundane system in miniature presented to our senses and brought within the limits of our comprehension. In the sphere of the magnet are spiral gyrations or vorticles ; in like manner in the sidereal heavens there are spiral gyrations and vortices. In every vorticle round the magnet there is an active centre ; in every vortex in the heaven there is also an active centre. In every vorticle round the magnet the motion is quicker near the centre than it is at a distance from it ; the same is the case in every vortex in the heaven. In every vorticle round the magnet the spiral gyra- tion is of greater curvature in proportion to its nearness to the centre ; the same is the case with every vortex in the heaven. In every vorticle round the magnet there are, in all probability, cor- puscles fluent round the centre and revolving round an axis ; such also is the case with every vortex in the heaven. The vorticles round the magnet mutually colligate themselves by means of their spiral motions,- and, thus colligated, form a larger sphere ; the same is the case in the si- dereal heaven ; — not to mention other points of agreement of which we shall speak in the sequel. All things are similar one to the other ; because in small things as well as in large, nature preserves the greatest similarity to herself; especially as the vorticles round the magnet possess particles and elements of the same nature as the vortices of the great heaven ; and inasmuch as these vortices are similar, as well as their causes, therefore the etfects produced are similar. " Now inasmuch as man is not created prone to the earth like beasts, but is endowed both with an upright mien in order to enable him to look up- ward to the heavens, and with a soul derived from the aura of a purer and better world, in virtue of which lie is allied to heaven ; let us avail ourselves of this privilege to exalt our thoughts to the re- gions above ; and from a vile stone of the earth and its magnetic powers, contejnpUite what is simi- lar on the largest scale, and learn the nature and laws of the material heavens both visible and in- visible." — Principia, vol. ii. pp. 230, 231. 52. What can be more philosophically beau- tiful than the above analogy ? Svvedenborg moreover observes that the axis of our own universe is in the galaxy ; that here conse- quently the magnetic power is the strongest, and hence that here we find the greatest con- densation of solar systems ; that our own sun is not in this axis but a little out of it, and hence the original cause of the ellipticity of the planetary orbits, which he supposes to be attracted in the. direction of the axis of the common sphere. Theories of Gravitation. 53. "We cannot fail here to bestow a passing notice upon some recent attempts, as indeed upon suspicions which have always more or less existed, to account for the motion of the I)lanets by some better theory than mere gravi- ty, or such separate and independent forces as the universe is supposed to be endowed with, by the Newtonian hypothesis. A woi'k, for instance, entitled " Outlines of a System of Mechanical Philosophy, being a research into the Laws of Force, by Samuel Elliott Coues." In this work, the author has taken strong grounds against the Newtonian theory of gravitation, conceiving of a more spiritual theory, and recognizing the Divine Author of creation altogether more present and imma- nent than mere gravitation, or simple attrac- tion of one body by another, can possibly ena- ble us to do. It is to be observed that the author here alluded to does not deny i\ie fact of gravitation, or rather, similar consequences, but not precisely nor all, which gravitation would produce, but simply asserts, and by num- erous facts shows, that such power is not in- nate in the bodies themselves, and therefore, that the theory of mere attraction of one body by another is false, and also insufficient to account for the movements of the Universe. For this attempt at opposing great names, for calling Newton to account, the amiable author has encountered the usual sneers of certain pert tyros in science, who follow hard upon authority, and his book remains quite harmless, though not without the recognition of its truths, by a few discriminating and ap- preciating minds. Thus we go, and thus the spiritual and the divine are ever sure to get the ascendency, and as sure to be scouted at first by the sensual and material. It is suf- ficient to say that our modern author has been impressed with a great truth here, and has not failed triumphantly to show it. But we are only led into this notice, to set forth all the more prominently the grand and sim- ple theory of Svvedenborg. The existence of a vortex, or of planetary spheres, analogous to the sphere of the magnet, and of every particle of matter, so that each planet and sun is but the nucleus, as it were, or centre of an immense body of finer and invisible matter, graduated by different degrees of attenuation, and these all interpenetrating one another, constituting one mighty whole, without a vacuum, and united with and interpenetrated by the spiritual universe, the spiritual centre of which is the Deity Himself, who also in- terpenetrates the whole, — this is the true LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. 17 theory, and here j!:ravitation is simplified, and the spiritual and material meet and touch each other. Of course tiiere must be gravity where all things touch and move together. And there cannot be a gravity which does not, by fine intermediates, involve touch ! Swedenborg regards both gravity and mag- netism as having the same original, and it has since been discovered tliat the magnetic at- tractions and repulsions observe the same law a« gravitation, according to which the intensi- ty of the force is inversely as the square of the distance. The real cause and nature of gravitation, so far as we can conceive of it, is undoubtedly to be found in the similarity of the primary forms of the particles of matter, and more deepljs in the similarity of essences which produce those forms, thus in simple af- finity which like has for like. But it is to be found most deeply, in the spiritual, thence in the invisible material, and thence in the visi- ble material. Hence the profound remark of Swedenborg, that nothing can be truly known of the visible world without a knowledge of the invisible, for the visible world is a world only of effects, while the invisible or spiritual is the world of causes. Repulsion is not a positive principle, like attraction, or gravita- tion, and is only caused by dissimilarity of essences. There is some similarity and some dissimilarity, in all material bodies ; hence, either perceptible or imperceptible, both attrac- tion and repulsion. He who will pursue this course of thought, making due allowance for relative distances, or the nearness or re- moteness of other bodies, will arrive, as far as possible, in the present state of our faculties, at the true theory of gravitation, or of attrac- tion and repulsion. In other words, he will find a kind of chemical affinity on a large scale ! * 54. But our remarks would not be com- plete here, without a further reference to Swedenborg's theological system, although we may subject ourselves to the charge of mix- ing up theological ideas with possibly pliysical errors. But the reader must judge, while wc only wish to say that " Swedenborg maintains, that the constitution of the insible heavens ■never can be understood without Jirst under- standing the constitution of the invisible. That the invisible are far more immense than the visible, of which the Lord is the one only and central sun ; that they consist of distinct ordi- nations of angelic hosts or societies into the human form, according to the apostolic idea of the constitution of a church ; that every dis- tinct society has its distinct place in the uni- versal body ; that united into one it exhibits the splendor of a spiritual star, to which there * " Beyond certain limits of distance, ilie iiiterblending actions of any two bodies, however dissimilar in constitution, is always har- monious — and liciice attractive; within those limits of distance, tbo action is crowding and conflicting', and lunce repellent." — Fishbuagh'a " Jfacroccijir. and J/icroco.-m." ''J'' ii. p. 124. is a corresponding natural sun ; that natural suns are aggregated or grouped according to their correspondences to tlie spiritual ; thus that the natural is the outbirth of the spiritual, the visible of the invisible, the temporal of the eternal, the finite of the infinite ; and that the concentrations and disjjersions of universes is but the outward manifestation of the changes going on in the inward and spiritual heavens, which refer to ever new varieties of state in consequence of ever new progressions from glory to glory." — Introduction to Principia, p. 7'J. The Planetary System. 55. " We now proceed (says the same writer) to a. more direct comparison of Swedenborg's cosmo- gonical theory witFi that of La Place. " After the suggestions of Newton upon this sub- ject, with the existence of which I know not whether La Place was acquainted, it was asserted by the latter that Biilfon was the first writer whom he knew, who, since tne discovery of the true system of the world, had attempted to investigate the origin of the planets and their satellites. Now Swedenborg published his Principia in the year 1734 ; that is to say, ten years before BufFon pub- lished his theory, and Buffbn himself had read Swedenborg's Principia, as may be concluded from the circumstance that a copy of Swedenborg's Principia was not very long since sold by an emi- nent bookseller * in London, containing Buffon's own autograph ; therefore if La Place himself was not acquainted with Swedenborg's treatise, it is reasonable to presume that Butfon was. Ten years, then, before Buffbn published his theory, and about thirty years before La Place offered his own to the public, Swedenborg had pro- pounded his theory in the Pnncipia, in the year 1734 ; and again in his treatise on the Wor- ship and Love of God, in the year 1745, or about twenty years before La Place's theory. In these two works it had been observed by Swedenborg, that the sun is the centre of a vortex ; that it rotates upon its axis ; that the solar matter con- centrated itself into a belt, zone, or ring at the equator, or rather ecliptic ; that by attenuation of the ring it became disrupted; that upon the dis- ruption, part of the matter collected into globes, and part subsided into the sun forming solar spots ; that the globes of solar matter were projected into space ; that consequently they described a spiral orbit ; that in proportion as the igneous matter thus projected receded from the sun, it gradually experienced refrigeration and consequent conden- sation ; that hence followed the formation of tne elements of ether, air, aqueous vapor, &c., uuiil the planets finally reached their present orbit : that during this period the earth experienced u succession of geological chanoes which originated all the varieties in the mineral kingdom, and laid a^ it were the basis of the vegetable and afterward* of the animal kingdoms. This is the general view of Swedenborg's cosmogonical theory, with whicn Buffbn was acquainted, but of which La Place, ac- cording to his own account, was ignorant. " Now the points of difference and agreemcnl between the theory of La Place and that of Swe- denborg are the following. Swedenborg begins at * The lato Mr. Bohn, of Honrietta Street, Covent Garden. u LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. the ".entre, La Place at the circumference. Swe- dei.Dorg traces the process of creation from the centre to the circumference, La Place traces it from the circumference to the centre. According to Swedenborg, the centre created the circum- ference ; according to La Place, the circumference created the centre. On the other hand, both agree that the planets were formed by a condensation of zones, and hence that planetary matter was origi- nally solar. The latest experiments are unfavor- able to the order observed by La Place, and favorable to the ordi^r observed by Swedenborg." — Introduction to Principia, vol. ii. pp. 79-81. 56. What is most remarkable is, that Swe- denborg alleges in his " Worship and Love of God," that there were seven planets created from the sun at the same time. And he has, in his Principia, sevei'al drawings illustrative of the subject, in all of which, seven planets are laid down. And this was more than forty years before the discovery of the seventh planet by Dr. Herschel. 57. We must also observe here, that, con- trary to the testimony of the scientifie world, Swedenborg was the first to designate the pre- ■ cise spot — the actual locality and situation of our solar system amongst the stars of the uni- verse. So truly is this the real state of the case, that, without the slightest exaggeration, he may be represented as affirming, " I have formed a comparison of the magneti'Y. For surely no man has LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBOKG. 23 «i right to hold his knowledge for himself alone, but rather for others, and' for the whole world. Why sliuuld such tilings be grudged to the Pub- lic ? Whatever is worthy to be known, should by all means be brought to the great and general Market of the World. The rights of civilized man convince us of this ; the natural functions of the individual, equally with the laws of the Republic of Letters, attest and enforce it Unless we all contribute to make the arts and sciences flourish more and more, we can neither grow wiser nor happier, with time." 82. Notwitstanding the signal learning and sincere piety displayed throughout the Prin- CiPiA, the work was prohibited by the Pope, in 1739 ; p'robably because the Church of Rome professed to believe that God made all things out of nothing, and could not reconcile such a process of creation as Swedenborg pre- sents, with their literal interpretations of the first chapter of Genesis. Did not the Papists imprison Galileo for proving that our earth turns on it5 axis every day, and goes round the sun once a year? Now, no definition is more common, than that truth is that which IS ; hence, in a corresponding sense, untruth, :rror, or falsehood, is that which is not ; and, of course, that which is the genuine nonentity, is nothing. Upon this ground, to say that God created all things out of nothing, is to attrib- ute the origin of all things to error, and hence, to evil or the devil J Behold tiie result of de- nying the truth and believing a lie ! 83. The second volume of this great work treats of the various methods employed, in different parts of Europe, for smelting iron, and converting it into steel ; of iron ore, and the examination of it ; and also of several experiments and mechanical preparations, made with iron and its vitriol : but neither this, nor the third volume, is rendered into our language ; though the authors of the magnifi- cent French works, called Descriptions of Arts and Manufactures, published at Paris, in 1772, have thought so highly of the second volume, that they have translated a large por- tion of it into French, and inserted it in their collection. 84. The third volume treats of the various methods adopted for smelting copper, of sepa- rating it from silver, and converting it into brass, and other metals ; of lapis calaminaris of zinc ; of copper ore, and the examination (rf it ; and lastly, of several chemical prep- arations and experiments made with copper. In England, this work is esteemed very high- ly ; and in the translation of Cramers, " Ele- ments of the Art of Essaying Metals," given by Dr. Cromwell Mortimer, Secretary of the Koyal Society, in 1764, it is mentioned by the translator in the following terms : " For the sake of such as understand Latin, we must not pass by the magnificent and laborious work of Emanuel Swedenborg, entitled ' Prin accounts, not only of the methods and newest improvements, in metalic works, in all places beyond the seas, but also those in England and our colonies in America, with draughts of the furnaces, and of the instruments to be employed." 85. " In forming our estimate of Sweden- borg's calibre at this time," as we have ob- served elsewhere, " we cannot omit taking notice of his large Treatises on Iron and Cop- per, each occupying a folio volume, and busied with the practical details of mining in various parts of the world. That a mind of such po- tent theoretical tendency should have had strength to undergo the dry labor of these compilations — that one who breathed his na- tive air in a profound region of causes, should come for so long an abiding into the lower places of the earth, to record facts, processes, and machineries, as a self-imposed task in ful- filment of his station as Assessor of Mines — this is one remarkable feature of a case where so much is remarkable, and shows how manly was his will in whatever sphere he exerted himself. The books of such a man are prop- erly AVORKS, not to be confounded for a mo- ment with the many-colored idleness of a large class who are denominated ' thinkers. 86. During the journey, which our author undertook, to facilitate the publication of the above-mentioned works, he improved every opportunity of making himself acquainted with distinguished mathematicians, astrono- mers, mechanists, &c. ; and of examining public libraries and museums, galleries of arts and trades, churches and governments, as well as mines, mineralogy, forests, gardens, climate, and every thing else that was worthy of mem- ojy and attention. 87. In the memorial of his travels, we find traces of the books he read, of the notes he made, and abundant evidence of a growing taste for anatomical and physiological re- searches : whence it is quite obvious, that he was now refiecting a passage, with labori- ous and cautious steps, from the Elementa- ry World, which he had previously examined, towards the well-spring of Life and Motion. He was, indeed, looking through Nature, up to Nature's God. lie applied the whole force of his mind, to penetrate into the most hidden things, to connect together the scattered links of the great chain of universal Being, and to trace up every thing, in an order agreea- ble to its nature, to the Fii-st Great Cause. Philosophy of the Infinite, and the Intercourse between Soul and Body. 88. We now contemplate Swedenborg in another capacity : he has dived so profoundly into nature, always commencing from the sur- face of common sense, that he luis entered a ciples of Natural Things;' in the sfcon(£ and sphere, where identical principles take new third v,)lumes of which he has given the best : forms, where physics become philosophy, and 24 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG where all things lie outspread in one great amity and cooperation within the mighty hori- zon of natural trutli. Matter, nature, geome- try, animation, thought, all suppose each other, and subsist in the region of principles and ends in inseparable union. Humanity cannot dispense with one of them, but resumes them all. Thus, in 1734, in his forty-sixth year, he published his " Thilosuphy of the Infinite, or Outlines of a Philosoi)liical Argument on the Infinite, and the Final Cause of Creation ; and on the Intercourse between the Soul and the Body." This work, published in 1734, in bis forty-sixth year, is an attempt to prove, not the existence of God and the soul, but equitably to take the sulirage of reason and experience respecting it, and to abide, once for all, by its decision ; for the author was too real- ly industrious, to waste his efforts on impenitent scepticism; indeed, no man parleys long with that, who is not more than half a sceptic himself, or else troubled with a sad irresolution of un- derstanding. After duly certifying himself of those great realities, he proceeds at once to inquire how much of their nature may be known, and what is the means to know it. 89. The course of the work is somewhat as follows : First, the existence of an Infinite is extorted from reason, as a necessity of thought ; as presupposed in the whole finite, and es- pecially in the inmost and primordial finites ; next, the same is gained from the contempla- tion of nature, and the final causes extant throughout the human body ; and it is al- leged, that there is a tacit consent of mankind to the existence of an infinite God ; a consent which, like reason, comes both from withiii and from without, from the nature of the soul, and the senses, and circumstances of the body. Having established, for all sane reason, the existence of the Infinite, the question occurs, What is the connection between the Infinite and the finite ? Is creation for the Infinite or finite, as a primary end .'' To which the au- thor replies, that the connection, or nexus must itself be infinite, and the creation, for the Infinite. He then asks, whether, besides reason, there be any other source of informa- tion respecting this connection ; and here Revelation at once occurs, and asserts the same thing, viz., the existence of a nexus in the person of the Only-Begotten Son, and the infinity of the nexus. He concludes the First Part, by showing that the divine and infinite end of creation is attained in finite and fallen man, in the person of a Mediator ; and thus obviates the objection, that if the realization of the divine end depends on the sustained goodness and wisdom of man, that end has failed ; an objection which would otherwise raze to the foundation the doctrine of ends, and, like a central darkness, scatter obscura- tion through all the sciences. 90. The Second Part is, On the Mechanism of the Intercourse between the Soul and Body. The title indicates the scope of its contents. Is the soul finite, or infinite ? As certainly as it is not God, so certainly it is finite. Is it amenable to laws ? Surely ; for apart from laws, the finite is not finite — is not at all. But the laws of the finite sphere are ultimate- ly presented by geometry and mechanics, and presuppose extension, or some analogue of ex- tension : hence, the soul is, in an eminent sense, a real body, and amenable to finite, i. e., geometrical and mechanical laws, which latter come from the Infinite, and admit of superlative perfection, as well as any other laws. He then deduces the immortality of the soul in a manifold i, argument: from the connection of man with God by acknowledgment and love ; from the fact, that those who truly believe in the exist- ence of God, ever believe in immortality ; also because the soul's sphere is so inward, that there is nothing in creation, which can touch or harm it ; but it can conform to all the impressions of its own sphere, without ceding its essence ; also, from love of offspring, in which the soul declares its own immortality, by imparting a yearning for perpetual life to the mortal body itself; whence parental love increases in order as it descends to our chil- dren's children ; also from the love of fame, or natural immortality ; and from the desire of good men for the deathless condition of the soul ; and again, from the connection of the Infinite with the soul, as of the soul with the body. And here the author declares his aim, to " demonstrate immortality to the very senses ; " for he remarks, " we are better led to a(*knowledge the Infinite by effects and the^ senses, than by the reasons of the soul : " and again, " the end of the senses is, to lead us sensually to an acknowledgment of God." 91. But the connection between the soul and the body is next to be considered ; a con- nection which is rendered intelligible, the mo- ment we apprehend with clearness, that there is no absolute, but only a relative distinction betweeen the two terms — that both are finite, both real forms, — that difference of form, in finite things, is real difference of essence : therefore, that the soul may, and must be, contiguous to the body, and conterminous to the bodily series ; that the soul itself has its passive side, or surface. Our author here joins issue with Materialism on its own ground, by admitting all that it urges, on the score of organization, agreeing to call the means of in- course between the Soul and Body a Mechan- ism ; and having established a certain consent between the principles of Faith and Scepti- cism, he rests his case on the fundamental tenets of the Principia, which are admitted in evidence of what Mechanism and Matter it- self really consist. We can but admire the sagacity here manifested, and its approach, even at this early stage of his development, to that true spiritual seeing wfiich afterwards de- monstrated the human soul a substantial form LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. 25 and organism in the heavens. On all these subjects, this Part of the Outlines is at once; plain and {jrofound, and brilliantly sug:;^estive ; especially on the doctrine of" physical limits, or ends, and their corresjjondence to ends properly so called, its instructions are wortli taking ; also on the correspondence of the body with the mundane system, of the element- al contiguum with the human contif/uiim, for the "corporeal space of man," pleiiitudo of limits or ends, is a complete respondent to the universal space of nature, and the membranes are exactly and geometrically formed for the reception of the motions of the elements. 92. To pursue further this vex'y inviting book, is impossible ; sullice it to say, that it displays a noble liberty of thinking, and claims the right to philosophize on the deepest sub- jects ; and itself plants positive conceptions in some of the dimmest regions of inquiry, dis- carding metaphysics as a mere simulation of method and knowledge, and leaning on the sciences, as the needful step between common sense and Universal Philosopliy. Like all the rest of Swedenborg's works, it insists, or implies, that the human mind has no innate ideas, but that man begins from total igno- rance, and has every thing to learn ; and that all knowledge may properly be questioned, which is not capable of being carried on by stages and series, from less to more, and in- volving greater multiplicity of details, as well as increased unity of principles : thus those intui- tions, which are supposed to arrive at once at completeness, may safely be thrown into the retort of the receiver, to be distilled into other and more tractable forms ; for progress is a law at once most general and particular.* 93. The publication of the " Principia and the Philosophy of the Infinite and Finite," gave Swedenborg a European reputation, as a scien- tific man, and a Christian Philosopher, and his correspondence was eagerly sought by such learned men as Wolff, Flamstead, Delaliire, Va- rignon, Lavater, &;c., &c., and in December of 173-4, the Imperial Academy of Sciences, at Petersburg, appointed him a corresponding member. At this time, he was a diligent stu- dent of Wolff's philosophy ; and whoever com- pares the works of those two men. will find that those ofour Author's are immeasurably superior. Travels, and Remarks on Political and Religious Institutions. 94. From 1734 to 173G, at the ages of forty- six and forty-eight, he remained at home ; , during which time he conceived the project of his great Physiological Works : and in July 1736, he again obtained from the King leave of absence in order to execute his plans, which involved a tour of three or four years' dura- tion. Impelled by the same law of knowledge * This work is translated into Englisli, and sells in London for $1.50 ; but it has been stereotyped in Bostnn, and printed in excellent style, on tine paper, and sells for 25 cents, single, and $1-2 per hundred copies. and sympathy with humanity, he passed through Denmark, Hanover, and Holland, and an'ived at Rotterdam during the Fair. Here he pauses a while in admiration of its Repub- lican Institutions, in which he says, he "dis- covers the surest guaranty of civil and reli- gious liberty, and a form of government better pleasing in the sight of God, than an absolute Monarchy. In a Re])ubli('," he continues, " no ven(iratii)n or worship is paid to any man ; but the highest and lowest think them- selves equal to kings and emperors : the only Being they venerate is God ; and when lie alone is worshipped, and men are not adored in His place, it is most acceptable to Him. None are slaves, but all are lords and masters, under the govenmient of the Most High God ; and the consequence is, that they do not lower themselves, under the influence of shame and fear, but always preserve a firm and sound mind, in a sound body ; and with a free spirit and an erect, countenance, commit themselves and their conceims to God, who alone ought to govern all tilings and beings. It is not so in Absolute Monarchies, where men are edu- cated to simulation and dissimulation ; where they learn lo have one thing concealed in the breast, and bring forth another on the tongue ; and where the minds of men, by long custom, become so false and counterfeit, that even in Divine worship, they say one thing and think another, and then palm off upon God their adulation and hypocrisy." Are not those great thoughts, to come from a man whom the people have been taught by sectarians, to calumniate and despise ? The ardent love of freedom, that breathes in every word, was the result of no short-lived impulse ; for years afterwards the same ideas are presented in his Memorials to the assembled Nobles of Sweden, of which notice will be taken in the proper place. 95. In his journey from Antwerp to Brus- sels, he seems to have paid great attention to the condition and oi'dinances of tlie Popish church, and deeply felt the destitutions of those times. He could not help observing how fat, lazy, and sensual a large portion of the priests were, giving nothing to the poor but fine words and blessings ; while they rapaciously helped themselves to all the good things of this life. He says — •' The monks are fat and corpulent, and do nothing ; an army of such fellows might be banished without loss to the State." And did not the Revolution that took place half a century afterwards, furnish ample evi- dence of the deplorable influence of that whole religious institution ? Thus Swedenborg was unconsciously prejjaring himself, in 1738, to comprehend tiie spiritual conditions of Chris- tendom in 174.3, and the subsequent years. 90. In 1738, at the age of fifty, he arrived in Paris, where he spent more than a year. Of this city he >ays, — "That pleasure, or more properly speaking, sensuality, appeal's 26 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. to be carried to its highest possible summit. It is found," he continues, " that the tax, which they terra the tenths, yields one hundred and fifty millions of dollars ; and that the Parisi- ans spend two thirds of this amount over their own city. In the remote Provinces, the tax is not in general fairly paid, because the peo- -ple make false returns. One fifth of the whole possessions of the French kingdom, is in the hands of the ecclesiastical order ; and if this condition of things lasts long, the ruin of the empire will be speedy." Who will not think of the most terrible page of modern history, as he reads these quiet and sagacious words of Swedenborg ? When it is remem- bered that we are writing of one, whose deep thoughts live in the hearts of thousands, and soon' will of millions, whose life marks an epoch, and whose character was formed under Providence, to qualify him for his great mis- sion, no circumstances should be regarded as unimportant : for they make us better ac- quainted with the man and the author, and, to know that he visited every place that usually attracts a stranger in a great city, — to follow him to the CathoHc Churches and Monasteries, the Hotels, Palaces, Public Gardens, Galleries, and even the Theatres of Paris, is to be satis- fied that he was an experienced observer of human life, that he was not a secluded vis- ionary, moralizing on thiiigs of which he had no knowledge, but was qualified to speak from what he had heard and seen in our world. At- tention is called to these facts, because it has been objected, that Swedenborg was wanting in that eminent sanctity and retirement, which it is supposed, should distinguish an apostolic mind ; an objection which has been made by those who admit at the same time, the probity and innocence of his character, from the beginning to the end of his long and eventful life. As the objection implies, that the " gifts of the spirit" can be imparted only to those who possess an ascetic contempt for society and its duties, it really pays an involuntary tribute to his honesty, and recommends his case on the grounds of common sense and intelligence. Indeed, his whole life answers the purport of the Savior's prayer, that his Disciples might not be taken out of the world, but that they might be kept from the evil. 97. As characteristic of our author's genius, we find the following item in his note book, made during his sojourn in Paris. After re- cording a visit to the Tuileries gardens, he adds, " My walk was exceedingly pleasant to- , day ; I was meditating on the forms of the pai tides in the atmospheres." 98. Leaving Paris in 1739. our author di- rected his steps towards Italy, crossed the Alps, and passed through Turin, Venice, Verona, Mantua, Milan, Genoa, Florence and Pisa, and entered Rome in the fall of the year. Of the worki of Art which he saw, he could not find words to express his admiration ; and his Journal breaks off abruptly in Genoa, and leaves him admiring the Portrait of Christo- pher Columbus, the discoverer of a New World. His visit to Rome is remarkable for bringing the church of the Past, and that of the Future, the dead and the living, into a singu- lar connection with each other. Rome, in the still atmosphere and fading light of Autumn, with all its trophies of Roman and Christian Art, and its hoary traditions ; and Sweden- borg, the predestined Seer of the Last Ages, whose eye was just kindling with the light of Insi)iration. >Saddlet, Bishop of Corpentras, once said, " I know not how nature has created me, but I cannot hate a person because he does not agree with me in opinions ; " and Swedenborg, ardently as he loved Progress and Liberty, could not hate Rome for its dis- sent on these momentous subjects. It was no more possible, so deeply was he impressed with a passion for the Beautiful, and a love of Antiquity, to detect a pestilence in the air of Italy, and crime in its regal sumptuousness, as Luther had done, than to have followed the earlier examples of this Reformer, and fallen on his knees, in adoration of its sanctity. At this period, Swedenborg does not seem to have had any more than an ordinary consciousness of spiritual things, and perhaps no one had less personal feeling, or troubled his head less about points of faith and doctrine, than he did. He was only one of the favored sons of Learning, whose highest ambition was to per- fect a philosophy of the soul : while inwardly, and deeper than his own consciousness, God was maturing him to evangelize the Church. And whoever would comprehend our author, must begin by understanding how necessary it was, before the New Ages could be an- nounced, to Christianize Science and Philoso- phy, at least in the mind of one man, before they could become universally, the stepping stones to Heaven. Economy of the Animal Elingdom. 99. Swedenborg nowhere informs us what the work was he went abroad to publish : at one time, we find him meditating a Treatise, to prove that " The Soul of Wisdom has in it the knoivledge and acknowledgment of the Deity : " It is reported that while at Rome, he published, " Two Dissertations on the Ner- vous Fibre and the Nervous Fluid;" and another " On Intermittent Fever:" and one on " Thoughts on the Origin of tlijs Soul, and Hereditary Evil." During his stay at Venice, he says in his Diary, that he " had completed his work : " which is supposed to be his " Economy of the Animal Kingdom," pub- lished at Amsterdam, in 1740 and 1741. 100. At the outset of these studies, he in- forms us that he had come to the " determination to penetrate from the very cradle to the ma- LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. 27 turity of Nature ; " from tlic atoms of Chemis- istry to the atoms of Astronomy ; from the smallest group to the largest ; from the molec- ular to the universal: and this determination. which had impelled along the varied line of Physics, now took wings, and, combining with a higher nature, carried him into the realms of Organization. lie had touched upon this region many times, in the course of his previous efforts, but quietly and modestly, as it were, with pausing footsteps. In his Miscellaneous Observations^ he had admii-ed the easy and graceful circulation of the blood in the Capillaries, or hair-like vessels ; in a man- uscript work of about the same date, he went into a discussion of the doctrines of the Mem- branes, and followed the same track as Dr. Hartley afterwards, in his famous scheme of - vibrations. In the Prinripia, he had laid down the law, that the Human Frame is an organism respondent to the vibrations and powers of all the earthly elements ; that there is a mem- brane and a fluid in the body, beating time and keeping time, with the airs, and auras of the Universe ; and that Jlan and Nature are coordinate in the anatomical sphere ; that the body is one vast instinct, acting according to the circumstances of the external worlds. In ^his Philosophy of the Injinite, this Corre- spondence is reasserted in a masterly style, and the human body is opened, as a machine, whose wisdom harmonizes with God alone, and leads rightly-disposed minds to Him : but in all these works, the author's deductions are close to facts, comparatively timid, and limited to the service of the particular argument in liand. Yet it is easy to see, from all, that he was laboriously wending his way from the first, to the temple of the body, at whose altar he expected to find the Soul, as the priest of the Most High God. 101. His studies, for compassing this grand object, were of no common intensity : he made himself acquainted with the works of the best anatomists of his time, (and there were giants in those days,) and formed from them a manu- script Cyclopaedia for his own use : it is said, that he attended the instructions of the great Boerhaave, at the same time as the elder Munroe ; and he informs us that he had prac- tised in the dissecting room, though he de- rived his principal knowledge from Plates and Books. Evidently, his vocation lay in the interpretation of facts, rather than in their per- sonal collection ; he received the raw materials, and wrought them into the beautiful fabrics of wisdom. 102. And now, after full preparatipn — after having considered the indefinitely small sphere and the indefinitely great, and laid down a flooring of intelligible doctrine in the vague- ness of both, after having sailed in observa- tion around the known shores of the external world, we next find Swedenborg, face to face with the TKMrr.E oi'^ our body ; the most really finite of the pieces of ])hysics, because it contains the gathered ends of all things. Here humanity i« no longer perplexed by laws and forces, apjiarcntly alien to itself, but final causes, and the principle of the sufficient rea- son, begin to bear absolute rule : accordingly, in his fifty-second and fifty-third years, the Economy of the Animal Kingdom is pub- lished ; and though the range of thought is loftier than heretofore, yet it comes more home to our business and bosoms ; it presents us with more of sensation, and of understanding, and penetrates with a more rightful directness to our sympathies .as men. In this most pre- cise finite, we feel that the Infinite is nearer than in the world, separated only by that thin- nest wall and membrane, which, in constitut- ing our first ends or limits, also forms the ground of our peculiar life. 103. Man as an individual body — as a denizen of the universe — man, therefore, as interpreted by anatomy, by tlie circle of the physical sciences, by trite obsei'vation, and the whole breadth of common sense — man as indi- cated to himself by private and public history, and human speech and action, (for always " the substantial form coincides with the .form of action,") — this is the man, and this the; body, which our author undertook to investi- gate: In such an inquiry, so defined, it is obvious, that metaphysics is at once refunded into physics and the experimental and histori- cal sciences, and disappears from the scene it has obscured, never to return. AVithout deny- ing credit to other writers, or pretending that SwedenHorg knew all our modern facts, or has in any way exhausted even his own method antl subjects, still, we are bound in honesty to declare, that we know of no works like these, for giving the whole mind satisfaction on the doctrine of the body. And if there is one obligation which we owe to them, deeper than another, it is, that by filling the understand- ing with accurate and cardinal instances of the Divine Wisdom and Love, in his living crea- tion, they leave no {)lace for metaphysics ; and thus, without a frown or a blow, they achieve an intellectual redemption from that great pestilence, which has oppressed the world for more than two millenniums — that miasm of an inhuman theology, which nothing but a pletnus of respirable truth could shut out of our orb : and they give us more order, law and life in the subjects of the lower sciences, than the philosophers have been able to find or show, in the whole of " consciousness " hitherto, and thereby fairly planted the foot of even those lower sciences, upon the haughty neck of metaphysics ; in sliort, they comply with the conditions of the Baconian logic, pro- ducing " not arguments but arts, not what agrees with principles, but principles themselves." lOi. The Economy of the Animal Kingdom 28 LITE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. considered Anatomically, Phijsiologically, and Philosophically, consists of" Three Parts, the First oil the Blood, Blood Vessels and Heart, with an introduction to Rational Psycholojry ; the Second, on the Animation of the Brain synchronous with the Res|)iration of the Lungs; on the Cortical Substance of the Brain, and on the Human Soul ; the Third treats princi- pally of the Human Fibres, and expounds the various manner, in which the beams and timbers of the body are laid ; especially the construction of the Frame, somewhat as the Principia unfolds the elementary construction of the Universe. It also considers the dif- ferent kinds of fibres ; the form of their fluxion, and the Doctrine of Forms generally ; and lastly, in a most masterly style, and with a power of observation and analysis new in medicine, the Diseases of the Fibres. In the weightiness of its truths, in sustained order of exposition, in felicity of phrase, and in finish and completeness, it is not surpassed by any scientilic work that the«author published: and it contains so much that is peculiar, as to form an indispensable addition to his other volumes. 105. We here introduce a notice of some dis- coveries, in this work, which were afterwards attributed to others. The coincidences were noticed and published by Mr. C. A. Tulk, of Loudon, a gentleman who has paid much at- tention to Swedenborg's philosophical words. In a work entitled, "The Institutions of Physiology," by Bluinenbach, treating of the brain, he says, " that after birth it undergoes a constant and gentle motion correspondent with respiration ; so that when the lungs shrink in expiration, the brain rises, a little, but when the chest expands, it again subsides." In the note he adds, that Daniel Schlichting first accurately described this phenomenon in 1744. Now it does so happen that Swe'den- borg had fully demonstrated, and accurately described, this correspondent action, in that chapter of the OCconomia Regni Animalis, which treats of the coincidence of motion be- tween the brain and lungs. In another part of the same " Institutions of Physiology," when speaking of the causes for the motion of tho blood, Blumenbach has the following re- mark : •' When the blood is expelled from the contracted cavities, a vacuum takes place, into which, according to the common laws of deri- vation, the neighboring blood must rush, being prevented, by means of the valves, from re- eurgitating." In the notes, this discovery is attributed to Dr. Wilson, the author of An Inquiry into the Moving Powers employed in the Circulation of the Blood. But it appears that the same principle was known long before to Swedenborg ; and is applied by him to ac- count for the motion of the blood, in the CEconomia Regni Animalis. For in the sec- tion on the circulation of blood in the foetus, and on the foramen ovale, he says, " Let us now revert to the mode by which the cerebrum attracts its blood, or, according to the theorem, subtracts that quantity which the ratio of ita state requires. If now these arteries, veins, and sinus are dilated by reason of the anima- tion of the cerebrum, it follows, that there must necessarily flow into them thus expanded, a portion of fresh blood, and that indeed by continuity from the carotid artery, and its tor- tuous duct in the cavernous receptacles, and into this by continuity from the antecedent expanded and circumflexed cavities of the same artery ; consequently from the external (or common) carotid, and thence from the aorta and the heart ; nearly similar to a blad- der or syphon full of water, one end of which is immersed in the fluid ; if its sides be dilated, or its surface stretched out, and more especial- ly if its length be shortened, an entirely fresh portion of the fluid flows into the space thus emptied by the enlargement ; and this experi- ence can demonstrate to ocular satisfaction. Now this is the beneficial result of a natural equation, by which nature, in order to avoid a vacuum, in which state she would perish, or be annihilated, is in the constant tendency towards an equilibrium, according to laws purely physical. This mode of action of the brains, and their arterial impletion, may justly be called physical attraction ; not that it is at- traction in the proper signification of the terra, but that it is a filling of the vessels from a dilation or shortening of the coats, or a species oi suction such as exist in pumps and syringes. A like mode of physical attraction obtains in every part of the body ; as in the muscles, which having forcibly expelled their blood, instantly require a reimpletion of their vessels." In another part, 458, he says, " There exists a great similitude between the vessels of the heart, and the vessels of the brains, so much so, that the latter cannot be more appropriately compared with any other. 4. The vessels of the cerebrum perform their diastole, when the cerebrum is in its constric- tion, and vice versa ; so also the vessels of the heart. 5. In the vessels of the cerebrum there is a species of physical attraction or suction, such as that of water in a syringe ; and this too is the case with the vessels of the heart, for in these, by being expanded and at the same time shortened, the blood neces- sarily flows, and that into the space thus en- larged." Swedenborg says also, " that it is this constant endeavor to establish a general equilibrium throughout the body, which deter- mines its various fluids to every part, whether viscus or member, and which being produced by exhaustion, the ettect is such a determina- tion of the blood, or other fluid, as the pecu- liar state of the part requires." The Blood and the Spirituous Fluid. 106. As we wish to present the reader with LIFE AND WHITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENIJOTIG. 29 ns full a view as possible, consistently with our .imits, of the way in which Swedenborg wended .lis way through matter to the soul, and of the profundity of his genius wiiile laboring among ihe occult powers and substaiices of the human mechanism, we introduce here another extract from " Rich's Sketch " concerning his doctrine of the blood and the spirituous iluid. It will oe interesting at least to certain scientific men and half-way materialists, or to those treading on the borders of the spirit world, but still lingering amid a subtle materialism ; and it is liighly interesting as showing the near ap- proach, by gradual steps, of Swedenborg to ids grand discovery. 107. "All the separate elements of this doc- trine had been extant, some for years, and some for ages, before Swedenborg's time. The fact of a spirituous or nervous fluid, for exam- ple, had always been entertained in the ortho- dox creed of physiology ; its eminent subtilty, and active force being also, of necessity, re- cognized at the same time. Some mode of reciprocation or mutual exchange of offices in rlie Animal Economy, between this fluid and the red blood, had likewise been divined. To v.hich may be added, the functions of the cor- rical glands first observed by Malpighi, under the microscope, who remarked that the animal spirit was carried from them into the medulla ol)longata through little channels proceeding from every separate gland. The globule of red blood and its composition of minute pel- lucid spherules, again, were subjects of recent observation ; and similar remarks apply to the volatile and fixed salts ; and also to the nature of the serum. These things were subjects either of general or particular experience, but there were no philosophical doctrines which bound them all together into a perfect system ; and much less which proposed to make them the basis of a Rational Psychology. The materials were ready ; the edifice was to be built. 108. " In the following summary it will be easy to discover the points where the applica- tion of Swedenborg's new doctrine has fairly entitled him to the rank of a master builder in this branch of science. It must be admitted that the doctrine of degrees, which is tlie bond or cement of the whole, had been anticipated by Christian Wolff, and applied by him to the auras of the universe ; but the history of the " Principia " affords sufficient proof that Swedenborg's discovery of its important laws was an independent one. 109. " Commencing in the highest degree, we find that a certain fluid, transcending all others in purity, which is interiorly conceived m the cortical substance of the brain, the medulla oblongata, and medulla spinalis, and is thence emitted into all the medullary fibres or origins of the nerves, runs through tlie most diminutive and attenuate vessels, stamina and (ibrules, and traverses and supplies with moist- ure every living point and corner of the body. The circulation of this fluid establishes a communication between the fibres and the ves- sels, by means of wlwcli it enters into the blood as its vital essence. Its principal stream, likewise, descending through ap])ro[)riate chan- nels from the I)rain, is poured into the subcla- vian vein, and is there associated with the chyle of the Thoracic duct, and conveyed to the heart, wliere it concurs in the formation of the blood. 110. " In the second degree, proceeding ge- netically, certain aromal, ethereal, or exceeding- ly volatile substances, are associated with this pure fluid and constitute a middle kind of blood. The third degree arises from the fur- ther accession of various salts, oils, etc., af- fording the means by which the second or purer blood coalesces with the body, and is enabled to discharge the functions of the soul in the animal kingdom. The red globule is also surrounded by a serum, which is the at- mosphere, so to speak, in which the blood flows, and from which it derives its elements, namely, tlie spirits, oils, and salts of every kind already alluded to, which are perpetually conveyed to the serum through the medium of the chyle, and in water as a vehicle. Similar substances are also conveyed into the serum by means of the air in which they are fluent, and by the instrumentality of the lungs ; the open mouths or little li|)s of the veins suck- ing in the atmospherical salts which agree with them and which are drawn towards them by every inspiration. 111. "The blood therefore, is the storehouse and seminary, the parent and nourisher, of all the parts of the body, solid, soft, and fluid, in its own kingdom : for nothing can enter into the texture of the general system, except by pass- ing fhrough the sanguineous passages. It is obvious, also, that all the contingents of animal life, are dependent on the constitution, deter- mination, continuity, and quantity of the blood : and that in it we may reasonably look for the exciting causes which determine the quality and variation of state attributable to the life of the body. 112. " From an attentive consideration of all the elements which enter into the composi- tion of the blood, and especially of the im- ponderable elements, the ether, etc., it is do monstrable that the spirituous fluid constituti-s the essence of the life and activity propei- to the blood; and that from this fluid, and by tlie medium of a copious volatile substance de- rived from the ether, there exists a pellucid or middle blood. Lastly, through the medium of various salts employed in tempering the in- tense activity of the spirituous fluid, in pro- moting the unity or consistence of the whole, in the local determination of form, and in vari- ous ministrations to animal life, there emerges the red and heavy blood. Into these origi- nal principles the latter suffers itself to be 30 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. divided according to degrees, during its pro- gress through corresponding vessels, namely, those of a like order with itself, the capillary tubes, and the fibres. 113. "If therefore we would lay open the nature of the globule, we must conceive that the spirituous fluid constitutes the first order or degree ; the pellucid blood cousisting of piano-oval spherules, the second order ; and the red blood, which thus enjoys, as it were, a triple maternity, the third. The latter is pre- sumed to consist, for the most part, of six piano-oval spherules, (the blood of the second degree,) fitted into so many hollow sides of a single particle of fixed salt, and hence arises the spherical figure of the whole, as clearly discerned by Leuwenhoek, and confirmed by the most recent observations. Thus, given the external structure of the blood globule, we find it resolvable into what may be called its internal structure ; and Swedenborg has clear- ly demonstrated that the latter is the causal form or latent order of the former. It is equally remarkable that the fluxion itself indi- cated by the globule resolves into that indi- cated by the parts of the globule ; for, ' the first principle of the spherical form is the per- petually spherical or cubico-spiral, in which substances, while in their state of utmost ac- tivity, describe an ellipsis distinguished by its poles and greater and lesser circles, according to the irrefragable laws of geometry ; ' [Econ- omy^ 101.) This ellipsis is exactly repre- sented by the piano-oval spherules observed by Leuwenhoek, and designated the middle, or purer blood, or blood of the second degree, by our Author. 114. " Passing from the nature and compo- sition of the blood itself to the circulation, we enter the science of Angiology, or the doctrine of the arteries and veins, which Swedenborg has extended — in view of his great unitary prin- ciples — so as to include the doctrine of the fibres, or Neurology, that of the glands, and of the muscles. The arteries and veins themselves are regarded as determinations or mechanisms of the blood ; and as the latter is of a threefold origin, degree, nature, compo- sition and name, so are the former. In other words, the vessels are always accommodated to the fluid circulating in them. One simple membrane encloses and conveys the spirituous fluid ; a reticulated membrane whicli may be considered as woven of the former answers in degree to the pellucid blood ; and a strong muscular tunic forms what is commonly under- stood by the blood vessel. In conformity with these various degrees of vessels, and of the fluid which they convey, the circulation itself, — though it forms one universal system or cir- cle of life, from the spirituous fluid to the gross blood, — is subtriplicate, or divisible into three. The red blood, passing into vessels of t!ie second degree, separates the saline, urinous, or sulphurous atoms at the phice of in rress. and thus enters them in its pellucid state ; and the pellucid blood, entering in its turn the nervous canals and vessels of the third degree, separates the ethereal elements, and enters them in its naked spirituous state. These separations being effected by glands and vesi- cles of several kinds, is the reason of these organs, — so little understood by physiologists even of the present day, — being compre- hended by Swedenborg in his general doctrine of the circulation. After reaching the fibres, the blood continues its passage through them, returns into the vessels of the second and third orders, and becomes again compounded by passing through degrees similar to those by which it had become divided. It is in this returning circulation that the genial spirit of the nervous fibre infuses itself into the ves- sels, and constitutes itself the vital essence of the blood, in every point of the body, as ob- served at the commencement of this abstract. 115. "It would be extending our sketch to limits wholly incompatible with its design, were we to transcribe, however briefly, the application of the Author's new doctrines to Miology, or the more purely mechanical part of the circulation. Enough has been said to convince the reader that Swedenborg alone has taken up this great discovery at the point where it was left by the illustrious Harvey, and harmonized it with the rest of the animal economy. It remains, however, to show in what measure the realization of the Author's great object, — the knowledge of the human soul, — was promoted by this course of phi- losophy. IIG. "It was obvious to Swedenborg from the moment he had conceived the doctrine which we have contemplated in some of its I'esults, that animal life and animal functions were impossible without such degrees. If ex- terior structures and laws were not in corre- spondence with a certain interior economy, whence could the sysiem derive its animation and instincts, but from external impulses ? And, as a necessary consequence, wiiat other laws could be admitted in explanation of its powers, but those of hydraulics and mechan- ics ? Tiie same, in fact, which are supposed to account for the flowing of the streams and the waving of the grass. And what philoso- pher, short of the stark materialist, would presume to account in this way, even for tlie lowest forms of intelligence and feeling r On the other hand, those who admit the fact of an internal economy, and are willing to regard it as the immediate cause ol' the exter- nal, can have no means of reali/..!ig their own thoughts separate from the doctrine of degrees, either expressed or understood ; for the nearest cause is always a degree above the ett'ect, and can never be ascertamed to the satisfaction of Inductive Philosopliy, except by the resolution ot the latter, and that by a process fairly de- monstrable to reason. LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. 31 117. "Now such a resolution of tlic blood globule had led Swedenborg, both experiment- ally and reflectively, to its inner structure, or causal form, namely, the spherules of the pel- lucid blood ; but he was by no means willing to pause here in contemplation of the soul, ex- cept indeed to observe the method by which she proceeded to coalesce more closely with the body. The next step, therefore, was to resolve the pellucid blood, and obtain its causal form. In this attempt he was aware that direct experience would fail him, on account of the exceedingly volatile nature of the ani- mal spirit, which, according to tradition, and all the reason of the case, was exactly what he sought. It was possible, however, to ob- tain a good deal of indirect evidence, chiefly from observations on the brain, and the forma- tion of the chicken in the egg, and on the foetal stage of human existence ; hence a large' portion of the Economy is devoted to an examination of the phenomena presented by these subjects. On the reflective side of this problem, again, it was necessary to resolve the forces of the pellucid blood, and to accomplish this, we have already seen that our philoso- pher proposed to extend the limits of pure mathematics. We shall hereafter see that his continuous and profound thought on this problem was coincident with his earliest inti- mations from the world of spirits. 118. " Thus, the deepest anatomical experi- ence, and the most profound evolution it could undergo in the rational mind, ended in expos- ing this subtile fluid, just hovering on the bor- ders of the unknown, yet just within the bound- ary of intuition. The question was whether this was the soul. ' If we grant,' Sweden- borg observes, ' that the soul, as ours, is to be sought in ourselves, anatomical experience presents this fluid, as the highest and most in- ward, to the mind of the anatomist ; and then hands it over to the philosopher to be dis- cussed, and for him to settle whether what he knows from his own axioms, and from the rules of analytic order, should be attributed to the soul, be predicable of this fluid. For the anatomist proceeds no further than the above step, unless he at the same time assume the character of a philosopher. Something of this kind seems to be taken as the fixed bound- ary of their ideas by Aristotle and his fol- lowers ; the former of whom treated system- atically of the parts of the soul, and the latter of its physical influx. Wherefore if the animal fluid and the soul agree in their predicates, no sound reason will reject the fluid as disagreeing ; if otherwise, no sound reason will embrace it.' (Economy, 224.) Nothing can surpass this statement ot his position, in honesty and clearness. It conceals nothing ; and it assumes nothing but what shall be granted as a fair deduction from experience and reason. But we have yet to see the con- clusion to.w!.:;-h it Ic'l Mm. 119. " The spirituous fluid, then, makes its appearance as the substantia prima, or first substance of the body ; but Swedenborg has a doctrine of Series which always accompanies that of Degrees, and according to which the first in a given system, or number of phenom- ena, may be the last or any other denomina- tion in another system. In this manner, the spirituous fluid, which is regarded as the form of forms in the body, and as the formative substance, which draws the thread from the first living point, and continues it afterwards to the last point of life, is \XiQ\'i formed or pas- sive, when viewed in relation to the whole universe ; and consequently derives its being from a still higher substance. On this uni- versal substance, according to Swedenborg, the principles of natural things are impressed by the Deity, and in it are involved the most perfect forces of nature : hence it may be regarded as coincident with what Aristotle de- nominates pure reason, or the entelecheia of substances, and with the Platonic heaven of ideal forms. The substantia prima, however, according to Swedenborg, does not itself live, and consequently, the spirituous fluid of the body, which is derived from it, cannot be said to live, much less to feel, perceive, and under stand, or regard ends. ' Life,' he remarks, in treating of this subject, 'corresponds as a principal cause to nature as an instrumental cause. For what is motion in nature is action in a living subject; what is modification in nature is sensation in a living subject ; what is effort in nature is will in a living subject ; what is light in nature is life in a living sub- ject ; what is distinction of light in nature is intellect of life in a living subject ; what is cause and effect in nature is end in a living subject, etc' (Economy, 235.) Life and in- telligence, therefore, are regarded as flowing into nature from their First Esse, or Infinite Source. 120. " Now, (following the Author,) it is by the continual influx of this life and intelligence that the Deity impresses the ideal forms or principles of natural things on the primordial fluid of the universe, and by a similar influx into the spirituous fluid, that men acquire in- telligence and active power. ' But,' to quote Swedenborg's own words, ' to know the man- ner in which this life and wisdom flow in, is infinitely above the sphere of the human mind : there is no analysis and no abstraction that can reach so high: for whatever is in God, and what- ever law God acts by, is God. The only representation we can have of it, is in the way of comparison with light. For as the sun is the fountain of light and the distinctions there- of in its universe, so the Deity is the sun of life and of all wisdom. As the sun of the world flows in one only manner, and without unition, into the subjects and objects of its universe, so also does the sun of life and oi 'vij.lor.i. .\- ;";v> i^un of I'lC world To'-vs v\ 82 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. by mediating auras, so the sun of life and of wisdom tiows in by the mediation of his spirit. But as the sun of (he world flows into subjects and objects according to the modified charac- ter of each, so also does the sun of life and of wisdom. . . . The one is physical, the other is purely moral : and the one falls under the philosophy of the mind, while the other lies withdrawn among the sacred mysteries of Theology.' 251. Thus two distinct principles are supposed to concur in forming the human soul, namely, the spirituous fluid, formed and determined by the substantia prima of the universe, and a continual influx of life and in- telligence from God, the one natural, the other spirituaL 121. "After establishing these principles, Swedenborg does not hesitate to call the spir- ituous fluid itself, or, strictly speaking, its opera- tion, the soul, and to speak of it as having intelli- gence, and all the attributes, in fact, which consti- tute man ; although before explaining its recep- tion of an influx from God — and consequently, when describing it as an organic substance or body of the soul — he had spoken of it as in- capable of feeling and perception. The in- ference is that a man's real individuality — bis interior man — consists in a state of con- scious being occasioned by the influx of God's universal spirit into the subtile fluid which runs through the nervous channels of the body — and which has since been called, in the vocabulary of animal magnetism, the nerve spirit. Beyond this spirit or pneumatic vehicle, as it was termed by the ancients, there is no identity or individuality provided for man in the Economy of the Animal Kingdom ; and accordingly it becomes an important ques- tion whether the spirituous fluid -is to be called material or immaterial. This question Swedenborg has answered for himself. 122. " ' We hiive often said,' he observes, * that in regard to substance the soul is a fluid, nay a fluid most absolute ; produced by the aura of the universe ; enclosed in the fibres ; the matter by which, from which, and for which the body exists ; — the superemi- nent organ. We have also said that the influx- ion of its operations is to be examined accord- ing to the nexus of organic substances, and according to the form determined by the fibres: also that its nature, or operations collectively, regard this fluid as their subject; and that these operations, in so far as they are natural, cannot be separated [from the fluid] except in thought; so that nothing here occurs but ap- pears to be fairly comprehended under the term matter. But, pray, what is matter ? If it be defined as extension endued with inertia, then the soul is not material ; for inertia, the source of gravity, enters the posterior sphere simply by composition, and by the addition of a number of things tliat through changes in the state of active entities have become inert and gravitating ; for instance, all the meie elements of the earth, as salts, minerals, etc. The first aura of the world is not matter in tliis sense; for neither gravity nor levity can be predicated of it ; but on the contrary, active force, the origin of gravity, and levity in terres- trial bodies, which do not of themselves regard any common centre, unless there be an acting, causing, and directing force. Hence neither gravity nor levity can be predicated of this fluid, made up as it is of this force or aura. When, according to the rules of the doctrine of order, I have shown what matter is, what form is, what extension is, and what a fluid i?^ we shall confess that the controversy is about the signification of terms, or about the man- ner in which something that we are ignorant of is to be denominated, — we shall confess that we are fighting with a shadow, without knowing what body it belongs to : however, this slight garment alone is prepared, before we have the measure, or have seen the form of the body ; and in order to make it fit, we figure to ourselves an idea of the body, which idea may be immaterial. But tell me whether the ideas of the animus are material or not ? Perhaps they are, inasmuch as images, and even the very eyes are material. But, as it is the office of the soul to feel, to see, and to imagine, equally as to understand and think ; yet the ideas of the latter faculties are called immaterial, because intellectual ; perhaps be- cause the substances that are their subjects are not comprehended by sense ; and still ma- terial ideas not only agree but communicate with immaterial ; are they then any ideas at all before they partake of the life of the soul? Apart from this, are they not modifications ? If they are modifications, or analogous to modifications, then I do not understand in what way an immaterial modification is distinguished from a material modification, unless by de- grees, in that the immaterial is higher, more universal, more perfect, and more impercepti- ble. Is not every created thing in tlie world and nature a subject of extension ? and may not every thing as extended be called material ? In fact, the first substance itself in this sense is the materia prima of all other substances, and every controversy, even our present one, is a matter of dispute. But let us trifle no longer. According to sound reason, what- ever is substantial and flows from a substantial in the created universe of nature, is matter : therefore modification itself is matter, as it does not extend one iota beyond the limit of substances. (Part II., n. 293.) But as for the more noble essence or life of the soul, it is not raised to any that is more perfect, be- cause it is one only essence ; but the soul is an organism formed by the spirituous fluid, in which respect greater and lesser exaltation may be predicated of it. This essence and life is not created, and therefore it is not proper to call it material : so for the same reason we cannot call the soul material in respect to its LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. 33 reception of this life; nor therefore the mind; nor therefore the animus, nor the sight, nor the hearing, nor even the body itself, so far as it lives. For all these live the life of their soul, and the soul lives the life of the spirit of God, who is not matter, but essence ; whose esse is life ; whose life is wisdom ; and whose wisdom consists in beholding and em- bracing the ends to be promoted by the deter- minations of matter and the forms of nature. Thus both materiality and immateriality are predicable of the soul ; and the materialist and the immaterialist may each abide in his own opinion.' — n. .311. 123. "This was the point then which Swe- denborg reached by his first effort to obtain a knowledge of the soul analyticaUy, or by rigid induction ; and every one must admit how advanced his perceptions were, and how ad- mirably he preserved the idea of man's entire dependence upon the Infinite source of life and wisdom, though, as yet he was far from the solution of the great problem with which he had set out. It is the innocence of his wisdom with which we are delighted even more than with the wisdom itself. The more cogent or logical his reasons, the more clearly we dJ6cern God in them, and man's utter im- potence and nothingness ; the more glowing and ornate his style, the deeper is the rever- ence and awe which he breathes into it, so that self-intellio;ence is constrained to hang its head, where it would otherwise glory in its gifts and apparent attributes. Granting Materialism the utmost demand it could sus- tain by any show of argument, Swedenborg proves that, even so, its machinery is utterly helpless without the perpetual influx of the breath of God ; and here we may remark that the establishment of this theological tenet was the first step towards the preparation of science for the Church. The genius of religion, therefore, only imitated, in her humble sphere, the Descent and Incarnation of the Divine Being, when she came to the salvation of phi- losophy in its own frailties ; and it is praise enough for Swedenborg that he was her chosen and faithful apostle." Brains, Heart and Lungs. 124. " Before closing the Economy we must not omit to record the Author's discovery of the animation of the brains, and of its coincidence during formation with the systole and diastole of the heart, and after birth with the respira- tion of the lungs. Connected with this is another great discovery which can hardly be said to have transpired beyond the circle who are ac- quainted with his works, even to tlie present moment. We allude to the universal motion generated by the lungs and distributed to the whole animal machine. ' It would seem at first sigiit, as if the effect of respiration did not extend far beyond the thorax ; but if we contemplate the several varieties of respira- tion, and reduce them to one common or gen- eral result, we shall perceive, that if the respiration does not always actually extend beyond the thorax, still it is in the effort to do so, or to be in action every where.' (367.) This action is shown to extend even to the smallest blood vessels, and to the nerves, in which it promotes the circulation of the fluids by an external action, which coincides with the internal action of the cerebellum through the same fibres. This law, indeed, is a part of the general concordance between the anima- tion of the brains and respiration,r and is a beautiful provision for insuring muscular action. . For, ' if the circle of the red blood were performed in the arteries at the same intervals as the circle of the nervous fluid in the nerves, I scarcely know,' Swedenborg ob- serves, ' whether any muscle in the body, with the exception of that of the heart and arteries (which are stimulated to action solely by the in- fluent blood), would suffer itself to be excited to act ; for in pro[)ortion as the nerve acted, the blood would react, when nevertheless, in order to produce any alternate motion, action and re- action must be so ordei-ed that one may alter- nately overcome the other.' (P. II., c. i. § 9.) To sum up the whole, the leading principles es- tablished by Swedenborg on this curious and important subject are these. 1. The anima- tion of tlie brains is the universal motion of the whole body, and of all the nervous fibres, which, during animation are provided with their spirit or fluid. 2. The intercostal nerve and the par vagum are kept in this animatory or universal motion, and the latter reduces the subaltern motions of the body to it. 3. The lungs, as already observed, are in the same motion. 4. By means of the lungs, and through the mediation of the pericardium, the heart is also associated in this regimen, so that it never loses its vital spirit on the one hand, or its state of perfect liberty on the other. (551-2). We close the work here, not because we have alluded to all its dis- closures in physiology, but because it is im- possible to do so within the limits to which we have confined ourselves ; and we have dwelt upon it at sufficient length to establish its claims to respectful and earnest atten- tion." * Posthiunous Tracts. 125. Connected with the same period of our author's life as the Economy, are the Posthu- mous Tracts, which are, for the most part, condensed statements of the subjects and ar- guments of the larger works, to the study of which they furnish good introductions. They are on the following subjects: 1. The Way to a Knoivledge of the Soul ; 2. the Red Blood ; 3. the Animal Spirit ; 4. Sensation, or PaS' sion of the Body ; 5. the Origin and Propa- gation of the Sold; 6. Action; 7. Fragment * The price of this Work is now $7.50. LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. on the Harmony Subsisting between the Soul and the Body ; 8. Faith and Good Works. The first one again proclaims the absence of meta- physical modes and investigations from the mind of the author ; for he says, psychology is to be pursued by gaining a j)revious knowl- edge of the whole of the sciences, including the experience of the mental, or of the bodily senses ; and proximately by anatomy ; because " it is impossible to know the inner action of the mind, without examining the face of the mind ; i. e., without investigating its brains and marrows ; and the soul is nowhere to be found but in her own kingdom." Then, on the basis of the science, by a higlicr and high- er generalization, must be reared our unitary science, a Mathematical Doctrine of Univer- sal, which science is the philosophy of the soul. Other roads, which do not pass through acquired knowledge on either side, — knowl- edge referable, whether immediately or ulti- mately, to ert'ects and the senses, — lead only to increased ignorance of the subject ; espe- cially so, the pretended investigation of con- sciousness ; a thing which Swedenborg quite left out, as a means of edification : for what is man's intellect, other than the understanding of Nature's Revelation, and Society ? When he understands these, or in proportion as he understands them, his own faculty will be worth being conscious of — worth investigat- ing as a distinct object ; but originally, there is nothing in it, either to digest, classify, or account for. Vacancy, i. e., raetaphysic con- sciousness, involves no series, and wants no theory : it is puerile, nay cruel, publicly to invite analytic attention. 126. In the work above alluded to, on the Red Blood, there is a mention made of the vitality of the blood, which again shows ho\v far in advance of the times our author stood in this respect. '• It is said in the Bible, ' But the flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat.' (Gen. ix. 4). And the opinion that the blood was a living substance has existed from the remotest an- tiquity. Harvey, the celebrated discoverer of the circulation of the blood, held this opinion very strongly, and it has been adopt- ed by some other learned men at different times, US may be seen in the works of Good, Carpenter, Elliotson, and others on Medicine or Physiology. But it was never, — at least in modern times, — generally received, and was held by all who maintained it, only hypo- thetically, and as a supposition of greater or less probability- From this we must, however, except Swedenborg. In his ])hilosophical works, written more than one hundred years ago, he distinctly asserts the vitality of the blood, not only as a truth, but as a fundament- al truth of all sound ph}siology. The Swe- denborg Society of London have just published a thin volume of his ' Opuscula,' or little works, in the orignal Latin, from his manu- scripts in the library of the Royal Academy of Stockholm. One of these little works is ' De Sanguine Rubro' — 'Of the Red Blood.' We do not propose to give an account of his views on this subject ; for they are so exceed- ly condensed in this small treatise, that a fur- ther abridgment would be unintelligible. It is enough to say, that he declares the blood to be more than merely living matter ; it stands, as it were, half way between spirit and mat- ter, partaking of the , qualities of both ; it is as if the point of contact between the soul and the body ; and from it, or rather through it, the body derives its life. Thus the head- ing of the eleventh chapter of this treatise is, • That the globule of the red blood contains in itself purer blood and the animal spirit, and that the purest essence and soul of the body is here ; so that the red blood is a spirituous and animated humor ' (humor spirituosus et animatus). The heading of the next chapter is, ' That the red blood partakes almost equal- ly of soul and body, and that it may be called as well spiritual as material.' 127. "Now it is an interesting circumstance, that while this long-neglected work was pass- ing tlirongh the press, science has at last, and by accident, discovered the vitality of the blood, and placed this fact upon a firm basis. The number of Silliman's Journal, just pub- lished, contains, on page 108, under the head of ' Researches on blood,' some expevimenta of the celebrated chemist, M. Dumas, pub- lished by him in June last. After some ac- count of his experiments and their results, the statement goes on thus : in attempting to over- come this difficulty, ' M. Dumas discovered the remarkable property of the blood globules, that as long as they were in contact with the air or aerated water, in short, as long as they were in the arterial condition, the saline solu- tion containing them passed colorless through the filter, and left them upon it: on the con- trary, as soon as the globules have assumed the violet tint of venous blood, the liquid passes colored.' After detailing certain experi- ments then tried by Dumas in consequence of this discovery, the following statement is made : — ^TIius the globules of the blood seem to possess vitality, as they can resist the solvent action of sidphate of soda as long as their life continues, but yield to this action readily when, they have fallen into asphyxia from pri vation of air.' " — Hew Jerusalem Magazine, Feb., 1847. 128. The Fragment on the Soul is mainly a criticism on the Preestablished Harmony of Leibnitz ; on principles, however, which fausft it to apply to the whole of modern philosophy. The author arraigns Leibnitz, and, by impli- cation, the Philosophers, for aiming to convert common, into systematic ignorance, or to make emptiness the grand organ of the spiritual: for philosophy takes a number of dates, by no means peculiar to itself, but which it draws from common experience, such as the fact, that things, sensations, imaginations, perceptions, and the like, exist; p.nd, v,-ithout inanirir.g ^I'hat thcv LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. 35 are, and tliereaftci*, wlial tlicir causes arc, it revolves incessantly round the already plain fact of" their bare existence, castinj; it into a new jargon, looking idly at its unii'orm surface on every side, and ending, for the most part, not by realizing any thing, but by (juestioning the reality of" even that mean object of" thought. Such philosophy, therefore, consists of a few of the poorest generalities of common sense, spoiled by interpolation with various formulas of ignorance. Now Swedenborg first brushes away the irresolvable terms of the current philosophies, and leaves behind the small nu- cleus to its rightful place under common sense, or the sciences, from which it was stolen at the beginning, only to be modified for the worse. Of the bare existence of thitigs, the clown is be Her aware than the metaphysician, because he has not made it his business to question them : to him, therefore, the true philosopher would rather apjjcal on gross questions of fact, than to the other. " He knows what's what ; and that's as high As metaphysic wit can fly." But on the question of Cause and Reason, there is no light to be gained from either ; nor is there any difference between the two, save the difference between ignorance, culpable and innocent, conscious and unconscious, personal and accidental. The upshot hitherto has been, that what is true in philosophy is not new ; but existed as well, and better, before philosophy was born ; also exists better at this moment in the common world, where philoso- phy is unknown. And the conclusion is, that in regard to the affections, metaphv'sics, after a two thousand years' opportunity given, has done nothing more, than obstruct and regurgi- tate the current of the lifeblood of humanity ; and in regard to the underslanding, nothing more than deepen our initial ignorance of all things, by actuating it into pernicious falsity. 129. A Hieroglypliical Key to Natural and Spiritual Mysteries, by way of Representatives and Correspondences — is a small work, which belongs to the same series as the Economy ; it is mentioned in the Third Part of that work as the Part on Correspondences. This Tract is an attempt to eliminate a natural doctrine of correspondences, and to show its application by examples ; and although it may appear little successful, in comparison with the plenitude of bodily truth on the same subject, in the author's theological works, yet, it should be observed, that the aim in the two cases is somewhat difi'erent, and that the truth of one series does not exclude tliat of the other ; analogies of nature to nature, being perfectly compatible with the more vital or concrete analogies between the spiritual world and the natural. The Animal Kingdom. 130. In 1744 and 1745, at the ages of 56 and 57, he pubUshed another work — "The Animal Kincdom, considered Anatomically, P/tysioluf/ic(dly, iuu\ P/iilosop/tiratly :" that is, at first in its dead truths; secondly, in its relations with the physical universe, which sways it with motion, as the herald of vitality ; and thii'dly, as possessing our common sense, in the lowest degree : the first volume treats of the Viscera of the Abdomen ; the second, of the Viscera of the Thorax, or Chest ; and the third, of the Organs of Sense ; whrch has not yet been translated. The first and second make two large octavo volumes, which sell at $7.50. The new doctrines and the general method of the Economy of the Animal King- dom, are pursued in this work ; but they are pressed to results far exceeding those of the former. The author says in his Preface, — " Not very long since I published the Economy of the Animal Kingdom, and before traversing the whole field in detail, I made a rapid passage to the Soul, and put forth a prodromus respect- ing it: but, on considering the matter more deeply, I found that I had directed my course thither both too hastily and too fast : after ex- ploring the blood only, and its particular organs, I took the step, impelled by an ardent desire for knowledge. But as the Soul acts in the supreme and innermost things, and does not come forth, until all her swathings have been successfully unfolded, I am therefore deter- mined to allow myself no respite until I have run through the whole field, to the very goal, until I have traversed the universal animal kingdom, to the Soul. Thus, I hope, that by bending my course inwards, continually, I shall open all the doors that lead to her, and at length, by the Divine permission, contem- plate the Soul Herself" 131. The plan of this great undertaking is thus alluded to in the Prologue : — " I intend to examine," he says, " physically and philosophically, the whole Anatomy of the body ; of all its Viscera, Abdominal and Thoracic ; of the Genital Members of both sexes; nin] of the Organs of the five senses. Likewisi% "The Anatomy of all parts of tlie Cerebrum, Cerebellum, Medulla Oblongata, and Medulla Spi- nalis. " Afterwards, the cortical substance of the two brains, and their medullary fibre ; also the ner\'- ous fibre of the body, and the muscular fibre ; and the causes of the forces and motion of tiie whole organism ; Diseases, moreover ; those of the head particularly, or which proceed by defiuxion from the Cerebrum. " I propose afterwards to give an introduction to Rational Psychology, consisting of certain new doc- trines, through the assistance of which we may be conducted, from the natural organism of the Body to a knowledge of the Soul, which is Immaterial : these are, the Doctrine of Forms: the Doctrine of Order and Degrees : also, the Doctrine of Series and Society : the Doctrine of Influx : tiie Doctrine of Correpondence and Representation : lastly, the Doctrine of Modification. " From these Doctrines I come to the Rational Psychology itself; wiiich will comprise the sub- jects of action ; of external and internal sense ; of 36 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. imagination and memory : also of the affections of the animus. Of the intellect, that is, of tIiou(];ht and of the will ; and of tlie affections of the ration- al mind : also, of instinct. " Lastly, of the Soul ; and of its state in the Body, its intercourse, affection, and immortality ; and of its state when the body dies. The work to conclude with a Concordance of Systems." 132. This design, be it observed, was not laid out in nuhibus and built up there like the magnificent 2>hilosopliy of Coleridge, but, for the most part, was actually realized in the course of a few years. The first part of the work, treating of the Abdominal Viscera ; the second part, treating of the Thoracic Viscera ; and the third part, treating of the skin, the senses of touch and taste, and organic forms generally, — by way of introduction to the su- perior region, — were published in 1744 and 1745. Many of the remaining subjects were also prepared for the press, and, the manu- scripts having been carefully preserved, are now in the course of publication. The cir- cumstance which occasioned the author to abandon these labors, was the opening of his spiritual sight, of which we shall speak in the next chapter. 133. From the above summary of the plan of Swedenborg's labors, it is easy to see the goal towards which the great philosopher was tending. " When my task is accomplished," he says, " I am then admitted by common consent to the soul, who sitting like a queen in her throne of state, the body, dispenses laws, and governs all things by her good pleasure, but yet by order and by truth. This will be the crown of my toils, when I shall have completed my course in this most spacious .arena. But in olden time, before any racer could merit the crown, he was commanded to run seven times round the goal, which also I have deter- : mined here to do." 134. Those who are skilled in anatomy and have read his (Economia Regni Animcdis, state, that Swedenborg was familiar with many truths in anatomy, which were unknown to other learned men of his day. A passage of communication between the right and left, or two lateral ventricles of the cerebrum, was thought to have been first discovered by a celebrated anatomist of Edinburgh. But this is a mistake. The first discovery and description of this passage was claimed by the celebrated anato- mist, Dr. Alexander Monro, of Edinburgh, and has since been conceded to him by succeeding anatomists : hence it goes by the denomination of the Foramen of Monro. Dr. Monro read a paper before the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, on this subject, December 13th, 1764; but in his work entitled, ' Observations on the Structure and Functions of the Nervous System,' he says that he demonstrated this Fo- ramen to his pupils so early as the year 1753. He allows that a communication was known «.nd asserted to exist between those ventricles and the third, long prior to his time ; but he shows that it was never delineated after such a manner, nor in any way that could conveys a precise idea respecting it ; much less was im- plied the existence of the Foramen he describes. The channel of communication seemed to be referred, chiefly, to the posterior part of the lateral ventricles, whilst the Foramen of Monro, is situated at their anterior part. Now in the Regnum Animale, p. 207, note (r) the following striking observation occurs : •' The communicating Foramina in the Cere- brum are called Anus and Vulva, besides the passage or emissary canal of the lymph ; by these the lateral ventricles communicate with each other, and with the third ventricle." This work was printed in the year 1714—15 ; but written, as we have reason to think, two or three years before its publication : hence X\\Q foramen here spoken of must have been described by Swedenborg from ten to twelve years prior to the earliest notice taken of it by Dr. Monro. 135. We confess, however, to the justice of a remark by Wilkinson on this subject. '• Swedenborg is not to be resorted to as an authority for anatomical facts. It is said, in- deed, that he has made various discoveries in anatomy, and the canal named the ' foramen of Monro ' is instanced among these. Sup- posing that it were so, it would be dishonoring Swedenborg to lay any stress upon a circum- stance so trivial. Whoever discovered this fo- ramen was most probably led to it by the lucky slip of a pi-obe. But other claims are made for our author by liis injudicious friends. It is said that he anticipated some of the most valuable novelties of more recent date, such as the phrenological doctrine of the great Gall, and the newly-practised art of animal mag- netism. This is not quite fair : let every benefactor to mankind have his own honora- ble wreath, nor let one leaf be stolen from it for the already laurelled bi'ow of Swedenborg. True it is that all these things, and many more, lie in ovo in the universal principles made known to him, but they were not devel- oped by him in that order which constitutes all their novelty, and in fact their distinct existence." 136. Swedenborg's object was not to aston- ish the world by discoveries in natural science ; hence no pains were taken to give circulation to his discoveries. He affirms with the most characteristic innocence, that " he knows he shall have the reader's ear, if the latter be only pei'suaded that his end is God's glory and the public good, and not his own gain or praise." 137. Again, at the close of the Principia^ he says : — " In writing the present work, I have had no aim at the applause of the learned world, nor at the acquisition of a name or popularity. To me it is a matter of indifference whether I win the favor- able opinion of every one or of no one, whether I LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. 37 gain much or no coirimendutioii ; such things are not objects of regard to one whosi^ mind is bent on truth and true pliilosophy ; siiould I, therefore, gain the assent or approbation of others, I sliall receive it only as a contirination of my having pur- sued the truth. I have no wish to persuade any one to lay aside the principles of those illustrious and talented authors wlio have adorned the world, and in place of their principles to adopt mine : for this reason it is that I have not made mention of so much as of one of them, or even hinted at his name, lest I should injure his feelings, or seem to impugn his sentiments, or to derogate from the praise which others bcs'tow upon him. If the principles I have advanced have more of truth in tliem than those which are advocated by others ; if they are truly philosophical and accordant with the phenomena of nature, the assent of the public will follow in due time of its own accord ; and in this case, should I fail to gain the assent of those whose minds, being prepossessed by other princi- ples, can no longer exercise an impartial judgment, still I shall have those with me who are able to distinguish the true from the untrue, if not in the present, at least in some future age. Truth is unique, and will speak for itself." , 138. Again, he observes in the Economy: " Of what consequence is it to nie that I should persuade any one to embrace my opinions ? Let his own reason persuade him. I do not undertake this work for the sake of honor or emolument ; both of which I shun rather than seek, because they disquiet the mind, and be- cause I am content with ray lot : but for the sake of the truth, which alone is immortal, and has its portion in the most perfect order of nature ; hence in the series of the ends of the universe from the first to the last, or to the glory of God ; which ends he promotes : thus I surely know who it is that must reward me." Of his sincerity in these declarations, the repose which pervades his books, and the hearty pursuit of his subject at all times, bear incontestable witness. 139. The absence of his laurels never troubled him, he was not afraid of pillage or plagiarism, there was none of the fire of com- petition in him, he was never soured by neg- lect, or disheartened by want of sympathy. It is, however, remarkable how entirely the foregoing works were unknown even to those who knew him best personally. His intimate friend Count Hopken says, that " he made surprising discoveries in anatomy, which are recorded somewhere in certain literary transac- tions," evidently in complete ignorance of the great works that he had published, and more- over ill informed upon the subject of the " Transactions." And yet Swedenborg was not mistaken in his estimate of his own powers, or in the belief that posterity had work and interest in store in writings that, at the time, were utterly neglected. The his- tory of literature is eloquent upon the fate of those who were before their age, and that fate was never more decisive for any man, or more cheerfully acquiesced in by any, than Swedenborg. 140. With this admirable spirit, and with talents only efjualled by their modesty and un- selfishness, our author produced, in his fifty- fifth and fift}-seventh years, the " Animal Kingdom." There is in it, the clearness of the faultless logician ; the utmost severity of the inductive reasoner ; the order of the consum- mate philosophical architect ; the beauty, fi-ee- dom, and universal cordiality of the" mighty poet ; the strength of a giant, and the playful- ness of a child. Never was the path of science so aspiring, or strewn with such lovely and legitimate fiowers, as in these two as- tounding volumes. But praise is a neediest tribute of their goodness; they point only to applications and works, and beseech us, not to stand long in the stupefaction of amazement, but to gather up our energies, and summon our understanding, for whatever the arts and sciences have yet to contribute to the true ad- vancement of our race. Those only follow their spirit, who are actively endeavoring to extend their principles in new fields, unex- plored even by the renowned author himself. 141. The doctrines made use of by Swe- denborg in the " Animal Kingdom," are the Doctrines of Forms, of Order and Degrees, of Series and Society, of Influx, of Corre- spondence and Representation, and of Modifi- cation. These doctrines themselves are truths arrived at by analysis, proceeding on the basis of general experience ; in short, they are so many formulas resulting from the evolution of the sciences. They are perpetually illus- trated and elucidated throughout the " Animal Kingdom," but never stated by Swedenborg in the form of pure science, perhaps because it would have been contrary to the analytic method to have so stated them, before the reader had been carried up through the legiti- mate stages, beginning from experience, or the lowest sphere. Each effect is put through all these doctrines, in order that it may dis- close the causes that enter it in succession, that it may refer itself to its roots and be raised to its powers, and be seen in connection, contiguity, continuity, and analogy with all other things in the same universe.* 142. One of the most important discoveries in the •■' Animal Kingdom," is that the lungs sujiply the body and all its parts with motion. This is a discovery, not less wonderful in its consequences, than in its simplicity and obvi- ous truth. If the reader can once succeed in apprehending it, there will be no danger of his letting it go again even among the peril- ous quicksands of modern experience. It is one of those truths that rest upon facts within the range of the most ordinary observation, and require but little anatomical investigation to confirm and demonstrate them. It is visible in its ultimate efi'ects during every action that we perform and at every moment of our lives. * By a universe, Swedeubor" series as referable tu \xs uiiilies. appears to mean any complete 38 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANtTEL SWEDENBORG. Perhaps there is nothing in the history of physical science that is more illustrative of the native ignorance of the mind, or that bet- ter shows how far we have cle[)arted from the simplicity of nature, than the manner in which this grand office of the lungs has been over- looked ; particularly when coupled with the fact, tliat it should have required a great and peculiarly instructed genius, by an elaborate process, to place it once again under our men- tal vision. But nature is simple and easy ; it is man that is difficult and perplexed. Not only in the lungs, but in the whole body, the primary office is disregai'ded, and the second- ary substituted for it. It has" been supposed that the lungs inspire simply to communicate certain elements of the air to the blood ; and expire for no other end than to throw out by means of the returning air certain impurities from the blood. Under this view, their mo- tion is only of use for other things, or instru- mentally, and not as a thing in itself, or prin- cipally. And yet it is not confined to the sphere in which these secondary offices of the lungs are performed, but pervades the abdo- men as sensibly as the chest, and according to the showing of the experimentalists, extends also to the lieart, the spinal marrow, and the head. It was therefore incumbent on the physiologist to show what its function was in all the regions where it was present, and to declare its action as a universal cause, as well as its action as a particular cause. Now the motion itself which the lungs originate is their grand product to the system ; the inspiration and expiration of the air are but one part of its necessary accompaniments, being performed in the chest alone. Granting that the inspi- ration and expiration of the air are the partic- ular use of this motion in the chest, what then is the use of the rising and falling which the lungs communicate to the abdomen, the heart, the spinal marrow, and the brain ? What office, analogous to respiration, does the motion of these parts communicate to the organs ? It manifestly causes them all to respire, or to attract the various materials of their uses, as the kings attract the air. For respiration is predicable of the whole system as well as nu- trition : otherwise the head \\'ould not be the head of the chest, nor the abdomen the abdo- men of the chest ; but the human body would be as disconnected, and as easily dissipated, as the systems that have been formed respect- ing it. The universal use, therefore, of tlie respiratory motion to tlie body, is, to rouse every organ to the performance of its func- tions by an external tractive force exerted upon its common membranes ; and by causing the gentle expansion of the whole mass, to enable the organ, according to its particular fabric, situation, and connection, to respire or attract such blood or iluid, and in such quan- tity, as its uses and wants require, and only such. Each organ, however, expands or con- tracts differently, according to the predicates just mentioned ; the intestines, for instance, from articulation to articulation, to and fro ; the kidneys, from their circumference to their sinuosity or hilus, and vice versa, the neigh- borhood of tlieir pelvis being their most quiet station and centre of motion : and so forth. In a word, the expansion as a force assumes the whole form of the structure of each organ. In all cases the motion is synchronous in times and moments with the respiration of the lungs. The fluids in the organs follow the path of the expansion and contraction, and tend to the centre of motion, from which these motions begin, to which they return, and in which they terminate. The lungs, however, only supply the external moving life of the body ; but were it not for them, the whole organism would simply exist in potency, or more properly speaking, would cease to be ; or were it permeated by the blood of the heart, — a condition which can by no means be granted, — the latter would rule uncon- trolled in all the members, subjugate their in- dividualities, and not excite them to exercise any of the peculiar forces of which they are the forms. In a word, the whole man would be permanently in the fetal state, forever in- choate and inelFective. 143. There is no part of Swedenborg's sys- tem which is better worthy of attention than the doctrine of the skin. As the skin is the continent and ultimate of the whole system, so all the forms, forces and uses of the interi- or parts coexist witliin it. ^loreover as it is the extreme of tlie body, and the contact of extremes, or circulation, is a perpetual law of nature, so from tlni ^^kin a return is made to the other extreme, namely, to the cortical substances of tlie brain. Henc^ the first function of the skin is, " to serve as a new source of fibres." For the fibres of one ex- treme, to wit, the brain, also called by Swe- denborg the fibres of the soul, could not of themselves complete the formation of the body, but could only supply its active grounds ; and therefore these fibres proceed outwards to the skin, which is the most general sensorial ex- panse of the brain, and there generate the papillie ; and again emerging from the papilla), and convoluted into a minute canal or pore, they take a new nature and name from their new beginning, and become the corporeal fibres, or the fibres of the body, which proceed from without inwards to the bi-ain, and unite them- selves to its cortical substances. These are the passives of which the nervous fibres ai*e the actives ; the veins or female forces of which the nervous fibres are the arteries or males ; and " they suck in the purer element- al food from the air and etlier, convey it to their terminations, and expend it upon the uses of life." 144. Besides this, tlie skin has a series of other functions which there is not space to LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. 39 dwell upon at present. Inasmuch as it is the moot general covering of the body, therefore it conununieates by a wonderful continuity with all the particular coverings of the viscera and organs, and of their parts, and parts of jjarts. And as it communicates with all by continuity of structure, so it also communi- oites by continuity of function ; the whole body being therefore one grand sensoriura of die sense of touch. In short, the animal spirit is the most universal and singular essence of the l)ody and all its parts ; the skin, the most general and particular form corresponding to lliat essence. • 145. The professional reader of the "Animal Kingdom " will not fail to discover that the ;uUhor has fallen into various anatomical errors of minor importance, and that there are occa- ifionally marks of haste in his performance. This may be conceded without in any degree about 30 volumes, octavo. 151. The treatise on Generation, above al- ludedlo, has receiitlr been translated into Eng- lish, by J. J. G. Wilkinson. It beai's the fol- lowing title : — •• The Generative Organs, con- sidered Anatomicallv, Physically, and Philo- sophically." It is in two Parts. Part L treats of The Male Generative Organs ; Part II. treats of The Female Genjerative Organs. ..._— -^ i«u~j!iJn the Advertisement to this Work, the Ti-anslator says : — " The work, as it stands, is a worthy integrant part of that extraordi- nary series of works, which, more than a cen- tury ago, appeared in Latin, and which, with- in the last ten years, has been coming forth in the English tongue. What its precise merits may be, we will not prejudge; that is a question which belongs to the future. We see in it great intuitions of order, with a most ingenious application to details : much that is as new to the human mind now, as when the manuscript was written. We see in it also a constant amalgam of physics and meta- physics, like what there is in the hmnan body itself; but which we do not know where to find in any author but Swedenborg. And moreover we recognize in it, an aflSnity to Man, an addiction to central truths and prin- ciples, which is too absent from the corre spending works of this age. Yet we own thaS it is worth but little as a handbook for the kind of information now sought in the medi- cal schools. In truth, the work is non-medi- cal : it is one of those productions, which must exist more and more in all departments, and which are designed to promote a non- professional, public, or univei"sal view of the matters in hand. Science, in its universals, is no tradesman, and works not for the improve- ment of arv culling; but solely btoause truth LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. 41 is good. Such science for the human body has been cultivated by the non-mcdicul Swe- deaborg."i5^ 4.5?:^.'^'^- • • • • ■Ji,^J For the rest, the present treatise shines for us with the clear, mild genius of our Author. With our last literary accents we would fuin claim the attention of the new men of this age, to what there is in Swedenborg's scien- tilic works, accordant with their own necessities and discoveries. In particular we suppose that there is no writer before or since who has treated as he has done, of the continuity of the body on the one hand ; or of the per- meation and penetration of vibrations and living influences through it, on the other. Let us take a common example. A man catches cold ; straightway he feels stiffness and pains in every joint of his body ; his whole head is sore ; his nose runs with serous ^defluxioji, &C., &€. Now, strange as it may appear, the present science does not j)resent any physiological knowledge of what these pathological states may be. What is the con- dition of his periosteum, of the sheaths of all his stiff muscles, and of his creaking joints ? How does it all happen ? Neither science nor imagination knows. The feelings of the patient have no commerce with the skill of Llie doctor. This demonstrates at any rate that the science which lies at the basis of pathology is not yet opened. Pains, aches, swellings, and symptoms generally, glide along the body by terribly broad bridges of struc- ture of which the anatomist wots not. Well then, there is wanted somebody besides this prim anatomist, to unfold the case. Our Swe- denborg. Licentiate of No College, is one of the men in whose works we have found a be- ginning of instruction on this subject. He has wonderfully indicated to us many of the great bridges and highways of vibrations and influences, and in so doing has thronged with living states and forms parts which were pre- viously dispersed, lying in sand heaps of cell germs. To the new pathology, which chroni- cles the passage of states through Man, he is as yet the most important contributor from the physiological side. 153. It gives us pleasure to end these brief lines by recording publicly that the Royal Acad- emy of Sciences of Stockholm, the body of which Linnajus and Berzelius were ahunni, has lately paid a fitting tribute to the memory of Swedenborg. We excerpt the following from the official account of their last annual festival. " 1852. The Academy has this year caused the annual medal to be struck to the memory ! of the celebrated Swedenborg. It represents i Swedenborg's image on the obverse : over it his name: under it Nut. 1688, Ben. 1772. On the reverse : a man in a dress reaching to the feet, with eyes unbandaged, standing be-, fore the temple of Isis, at whose base the goddess is seen. Above it : Tantoque ex- I 6 SULTAT ALUMNO ; beneath : Miuo naturje INVESTIGATOUI SOCIO QUOND. Tt^STIMATISS. ACAD. RKG. SCIENT. SVEC. MDCCCLII." The eulogium on Swedenborg was delivered l)y the Pr^ident of the Academy, General Akrell. 15-1. All these works, covering the whole field of Materiality, are so many undying proofs of Swedenborg's universal learning, and of his ability to grasp subjects requiring the deepest reflection, and the most profound knowledge. Nor did he wish to shine in borrowed ])lumes, passing off the labors of others as his own, dressed up in a new form, and decorated with some new turns of expres- sion. Indeed, as was before observed, he rarely took up the ideas of others, except when he was collecting facts, but always followed his own ; and he makes numerous remarks and applications which are nowhere else to be found. Nor was he content with merely skimming over the surface of things : but applied the whole force of his mind to pene- trate the most hidden things, to collect to- gether the scattered links of the great chain of universal being, and to trace up every thing, in the most perfect order, to the Great First Cause. Neither did he, as certain other natural philosophers have done, who, dazzled by the light they have been in search of and found, would, if it were possible, eclipse or extinguish to the eyes of the world, the Only Living and True Light. He de- lighted, with love and adoration, to look through Nature, to Nature's God: and he found the ladder that leads from earth to heavep. Sf^' " No man," he says, " can be a com- plete and truly learned philosopher, without the utmost devotion to the Supreme Being. True philosophy and contempt of the Deity, are two opposites." Accordingly, Sweden- borg took full advantage of the religion of his time, and the belief in a personal God was with him the fountain of sciences, which alone allowed a finite man to discover in na- ture the wisdom that an infinite man had planted there. Nothing is more plain than that only in so far as man is the image of God, and can think like God, can he give the rea- son of any thing that God has made. Not to admit then a personal God is to deny the grounds of natural knowledge, to make it what the philosophers call subjective, that is to say, true for you, but not God's truth or true in itself^ 156. It becomes now a question of peculiar interest — Did Swedenborg, in the course he marked out, find that to which all his labors were directed ? Did he find the soul ? No : but he found what was much better, on a higher stage of observation, as will be seen hereafter. By the course thus far pursued, he came to the inner parts of the living body, but not to the soul. It was an achievement to dissect the body alive without injuring it. 42 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. nay with its own concurrence ; to disintegrate brain, lungs, heart, and vitals, and to see them as individuals, as partial men ; so to endow them with tlie whole frame, that they could subsist to the mind as human creatures ; and this Swedenborg has done to a considerable extent : but to see the soul, or the spiritual body, was not accorded to him at this stage. The doctrine of correspondence might have shown it ; but then before correspondence works there must be two experimental terms, two visible things ; the soul must be already seen, after which, correspondence will show its fitness with the body, and illustrate each by each. In a word, sight or experience is tlie basis of knowledge ; the invisible is the unknown, and no doctrines can realize it, or honestly bring it near to our thoughts. It rests upon Swedenborg's confession, not less than upon his quitting the before-mentioned track, that his principles so far did not and could not lead him to an acquaintance with the soul. But if, whilst engaged upon an impossible quest, he lost himself amon^ nervous and spirituous fluids and the like entities, which are most real, only not the soul, still he shed surprising light upon the plan and life of the human body. His method was eminently good for this. The doctrines he worked with, the preliminaries he believed in, are the common sense of all plans and organizations. Worship and Love of God. 157. We are now brought to a notice of the last of our author's natural works, published in 1745, the very year in which iiis spiritu- al SIGHT WAS OPENED, and the o7th of his age. It is a series of Philosophical Essays ON THE Worship and Love of God : Part First, treating of the origin of the Earth, on the state of Paradise in the Vegetable and Animal Kingdoms, and on the Birth, Infancy, and Love of Adam, or the First-horn Man: Part 2d, on the Marriage of the First born; and on the Soul, the Intellectual Mind, the state of Integrity, and the Image of God. This work may be regarded as an attempted bridge from philosophy to theology ; an arch thrown over from the side of nature, towards the un- seen shore of the land of life. As it is a kind of link, so it has some of the ambiguity which attaches to transitional things, and by those who judge of it from either side, may be mis- understood. Those who study matter and spirit in connection, see in its exuberant lines, no want of clear truth, but simply the joy and recreation of one goal attained ; the Harvest Home of a scientific cycle ; the euthanasia of a noble intellect, peacefully sinking back into its own spiritual country ; the Pentecost thence of new tongues as of fire, in which every man is addressed in his own language, not of words, but of things. For here has science become art, and is identified with nature in the very middle and thicket of her beauty : here, the forgotten lore of antiquity begins to be re- stored, and principle ratified into truths, takes a body in mythological narrative, the first cre- ation of the kind since the dawn of the scien- tific ages : here the doctrine of Correspond- ences commences to reassert its sublime pre- rogative, of bearing to man the teeming spirit of heaven in the cups of nature. All this ac- counts for the singularity of the work ; for its standing, in a manner by itself, among the author's writings. It is an offering up of both science and philosophy on the altar of Religion. Whatever of admiration one has felt for Swe- denborg's former efforts, only increases as we enter tlie interior of this august natural tem- ple. A new wealth of principles, a radiant, even power, such as peace alone can commu- nicate, a discourse of order, persuasively con- vincing, an affecting and substantial beauty more deep than poetry, a luxuriance of orna- ment, instinct with the life of the subject ; in- tellect, imagination, fancy, unitedly awake in a lonely vision of primeval times ; wisdom, too, making all things human : such is an im- perfect enumeration of the qualities which enter into this ripe fruit of the native genius of Swedenborg. Whether in fulness or lofti ness, we know of nothing similar to it — of nothing but what is second to it — in mere human literature. 158. The first portion of the work, and for the scientific philosopher probably its finest portion, represents the origin and progression of this universe from the sun, and specifically, the origin of our own planet, with the reign of the general spring, and the consequent de- velopment of the first mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms one from another in succes- sion ; for nature, at the beginning, was big with the principles of all things,. and the earth was near to its parent sun, with as yet no at- mosphere, but the serene supernal ether. And, as before observed, the author here as- serts, as illustrated in the Principia, that there were seven planets created at the same time. Next, we are led to the human body, wrought by the infinite in the ovum, furnished by tho Tree of Life, in the innermost focus of the spring, and the paradise of Paradise ; crea- tion rising tluis, in a glorious pile, centre above centre. Thereafter, we have the infancy and growth of the mind of the first born, in a state of integrity and innocency ; with its elevation into the three new kingdoms. Then there is the birth of Eve, and the manner of it, and her education by ministering spirits, and her betrothal and marriage to Adam. And the author concludes — " this was the sixth scene on the world's stage." The Seventh was YET to come. 159. This work constitutes the end of Swe- -denborg's scientific course ; and a beautiful I termination it is too ; uniting Science, Natural I and Mental Philosophy, Poetry, Love and LIFE AND WHITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. 43 TTisdom, Earth and Heaven. He began from God, as the Fountain of the Sciences ; the wisdom of creation was the desire and wisdom of his labors ; and liere he ended with his be- ginning, carrying God's ll^irvest to God liim- self. With a little pains to put this P^ssay into measure, it would be recognized as a beautiful Poem. IGO. For the mere jjurpose of giving the reader an example of his style, in the more poetic and concluding parts of this work, but by no means to attempt to give an idea of the embodied beauty of the whole, we here quote the following passages : — " But this order, [the divine order of the human form,] viewed in substance and effigy, that is, in the face, is called beauty and handsomeness, the perfection of which results from the agreement of all essentials, from inmost principles to outer- most, viz. from the correspondence of life with its spiritual heat or fire, and of the brightness thence arising with its coloring tincture, by which the tlaming principle itself becomes pellucid, and last- ly, of this flower, with the designation of lines by fibres according to the laws of the harmonies of nature ; all whicli things ultimately must present themselves visible in a plane handsomely winding. But the agreement of all these things cannot pos- sibly exist without a spiritual principle of union, or love in the veriest rays of life; from that principle ilone beauty derives its harmony, its florid and genuine complexion and life, its daydawn and vernal freshness; wherefore love itself shining forth from elegance of form, from its hidden and innate virtue, elicits mutual love, and as an index reveals the vein of beauty. " Whilst the damsel snatched at these words with a greedy ear, and, as it were, sucked them in, with her whole mind, she retired a little into herself, to take a view of herself for she began to consider of some ideas which were newly conceived ; and whilst she in some degree re- strained her respiration, lest it should interrupt the thoughts of her mind by too deep recipro- cations, she again, with a soul, as it were, set at liberty, gently accosted her celestial companion in these words: I will discover to you the idea which has newly insinuated itself into my mind, in conse- (juence of what you have been saying, viz. that the beauty of the face, arising from that order of the Supreme, is only a perfection of the body, but I see clearly, that a perfection still more illustrious and more excellent flows from the same order, to wit, perfection of the life itself, whicii properly or principally involves the state of that integrity, con- cerning which you so kindly promised to instruct ine ; I entreat you therefore to add one favor to another, by instructing me, what and of v^at quali- ty is perfection of life "} To this question the celes- tial intelligence replied as follows: I perceive, says she, that our ideas, thine and mine, like con- sociate sisters, tend to the same point ; for my dis- course of itself already slides into the subject of thine inquiry, since one perfection involves another, inasiimch as another and another is born from the same order. The perfection of the body is the perfection of form in its substance, from which, as from its subject, sprouts forth the perfection of forc(;s and of life ; f^)r nothing predicable exists which does not take its actuality from this circum- stance, that it subsists, that is, from its substance ; from what is not sometliing it is impossible that any thing can result ; the forces themselves and changes of life, inasmuch as they flow from a sub- stance, become efficient. Wherefore a similar order has place in thy forces and modes of forces, as in thy fibres, regarded as substances. Hence it follows, that perfection of life presents itself visible in perfection of tlie body ;is in its effigy. And whereas perfection of body, especially beauty, is an object of sense, but perfection of life, like a mist, shuns human ken, unless it be viewed from a sublime principle, therefore I was desirous of pre- senting a mirror of the latter in the former, for the sake of gratifying thy wish. " But thou, my daughter, art the only one, together with him who is the only one with thee in this orb, who lives this order, and bears its im- age. That only one is not far off from thee, ho stands in the centre of thy grove, and looks at thee with a look of satisfaction ; we observe him, but he is ignorant of it ; do not turn thy face in that direction, but let him come to thee, and court thee with humble entreaty ; thou art to be the partner of his life, and the partner of his bed ; he is assigned to thee by heaven ; this also is the day appointed for your marriage, and the hour is at hand in which you are to be united. Instantly tiie con- nubial celestials tied up into a regular knot her hair, which covered her neck in ringlets, and in- sorted it in a golden circlet : and at the same time they fastened with their fingers a crown of dia- monds set on her head ; thus they adorned her as a bride for the coming of her husband, adding ornaments to her native neatness and simplicity, and to the natural perfection of her beauty. The damsel, still ignorant of her destination, and of what was meant by marriage, and by partnership of the bed, whilst the celestials were thus em- ployed, and possibly whilst, by turning her eyes in that direction, she at the same time got a glimpse of him, had such a suffusion on her cheeks, that life sparkled from the inmost principles of her face into the flame of a kind of love, and this flame assumed a purple hue, which beautifully tinged her, like a rose ; thus she was changed, as it were, into the image of a naked celestial grace. " Whilst the first begotten led a solitary para- disiacal life, and fed his mind at ease with the de- lights of the visible world, he recollected a thou- sand times that most beautiful nymph, who, during his sleep, was seen by hiui in this grove ; where- fore a thousand times he retraced his steps thither, but always in vain ; the idea of her, which was in consequence excited, kindled such a fire as to in- flame the inmost principles of his life, and thus to turn its trampiillity into care and anxiety. This ardor increased even to this day, in which it was appointed, by the Divine Providence, that his wound, which then lurked in his inmost veins, should be healed by enjoyment; wherefore whilst he now again meditated on the sanie path, he came even to the entrance of this grove, wliich was the only entrance, without mistaking his way ; rejoicing intensely at this circumstance, he hastened instantly to the midst of it, to the very tree, undei which he had once so deliciously rested ; and see ing the couch there, the idea of sleep so revived, that he spied, as with his eyes, her very face And whilst he was wholly intent on her image, and extended his sight a little farther, lo ! he saw and acknowledged the nymph herself, in the midst of the choir of intelligences ; at this sight he was in such emotion, ;ind so filled witii love, that he doubted a lonir time whether his sight did not 44 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. deceive hiih ; but presently, wlien the crowd of his thoughts was a little dispersed, it occurred to his mind, that he was brought hither of the Divine Providence, and that this was the event, of which previous notice was given him in sleep ; and that she it was whom heaven had marked out for him as a bride and a conjiigial partner. I see clearly, said he, that she is mine, for she is from my own bosom, and from my own lite. But we must pro- ceed according to order, that what is divine may be in wliat is honorable, and wluit is lionorable in its form, or in decorum ; she must therefore be en- treated and courted with supplication. Whilst he was intent on these and several other purposes, the celestial intelligence beckoned to him with a nod to make his approach ; and whilst he was lead- ing the bride in his hand, this scene was ended, which was tlie sixtli in the theatre of the orb." — Worship and Love of God, 100, 101, 109, 110. 161. " Thi-ee celebrated meii in Sweden," observes a native author, " have distinguished themselves by writing sublimely and beauti- fully on the beautiful ; Swedenborg, to whom Love was every thing, as well as the relation established by love between the True and the Good ; Thorild, to whom nature was every thing, as well as the relation established by nature between power and harmony ; and Ehrensvard, to whom art was every^ tbing, as well as the relation established by art between Genius and the Ideal ; " * But of all Swe- denborg's works he esteems the treatise on the " Worship and Love of God " the most beau- tiful, and the most conspicuous for its " bril- liant and harmonious latinit}\" The same writer says, (and it should be remembered that he was not a follower of Swedenborg) that " it is written with so much poetic life and inspii'ation, that if divided amongst a dozen poets, it would be suthcient to tix every one of them on the heaven of poesy as stars of the first magnitude." 162. It does not appear, however, that our author was in the least aware that his literary life was now closed ; but he stood amid the sheaves, contemplating the tillage of future y^ears, in the old domain of Science and Philosophy, although trembling, nevertheless, in the pres- ence of an undisclosed Event. Great, Humble Man ! How beautiful are his steps upon the Eternal Hills ! while the unclouded Sun of Heaven is shining on his venerable head. But let' us not anticipate. Swedenborg's Style. 163. It is interesting now, after having fol- lowed Swedenborg to the end of his scientific career, to pass a brief notice upon his style. We lind increased life in this respect as w^e proceed with his works. The style of The Principia is clear, felicitous, though some- what repetitious, and occasionally breaks forth into a beautiful but formal eloquence. The ancient mythology lends frequent figures to the scientitic process, and the author's treat- ment would seem to imply his belief that in * Extract from the Mimer in the Documents. the generations of the gods, there was imbed- ded a hint of the origin of the world. Occa- sionally subjects of unpromising look are in- vested with sublime proportions, as when he likens the mathematical or natural point to a " two-faced Janus, which looks on either side toward either universe, both into infinite and into finite immensity." The manner of the Outlines on the Infinite is not dissimilar to that of The Principia, only less elaborate, and somewhat more round and liberal. The style of The Economy, however, displays the fuU courtliness of a mastei', — free, confident, con- fiding ; self-complacent, but ahvays aspiring ; at home in his thoughts, though voyaging through untravelled natures ; then most swift in motion onwards when most at rest in some great attainment ; not visibly subject to second thoughts, or to the devil's palsy of self-appro- bation ; flying over great sheets of reason with easy stretches of power ; contradicting his predecessors point blank, without the pos- sibility of offending their honored manes: in these and other respects the style of The Economy occupies new ground of excellence. The latter portion of the work particulax'ly, " On the Human Soul," is a sustained expres- sion of the loftiest order, and in this respect won the commendations of Coleridge, who was no bad judge of style. Tlie Animal Kingdom, however, is riper, rounder, and more free than even the last-mentioned work ; more intimate- ly methodical, and at the same time better constructed. The treatises on the organs, themselves correspondently organic, are like stately songs of science dying into poetry j it is surprising how so didactic a mind carved out the freedom and beauty of these epic chapters. It is the same with The Worship and Love of God, the ornament in which is rich and flamboyant, but upborne on the colonnades of a living forest of doctrines. We observe then, upon the whole, this pecu- liarity, that Sweden boi'g's address became more intense and ornamental from the begin- ning to tiie end of these works ; a somewhat rare phenomenon in literature, for the imagi- nation commonly burns out in proportion as what is termed sober reason advances, where- as with this author his imagination was kin- dled at the torch of his reason, and never flamed forth freely until the soberness of his maturity had set it on fire from the wonderful love that couches in all things. 164. But as if to body forth a stupendous truth in the mystery of mere rhetoric, we find him, after the opening of his spiritual sight, putting ofi" all the imaginative, all the flowers and garniture of speech, and descend- ing (if descent it can be called) again to the soberest matter of fact expression, which has eax'ned for him among those Mho do not appreciate him, the reputation of '' the driest of all mortal wn-iters ! " The truth is, how- ever, it is a want of sympathy and under- LITE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. 45 standing of the subjects treated of, which makes the style pall so heavily upon many. Yet still there is this remarkable transition which we speak of. Whence was it? What shall we make of it? Did the eternal truths of God and heaven, for which he claims not the authorship, but only the humble instrument of their promulgation, disdain the help of all human accomplishment ? And is true, highest poetry, still to be seen in these unaffected, wondrous revelations ? Such is undoubtedly the solution of the problem. At all events, here is an unprecedented piienomena in the matter of mere style, shadowing forth, as its history plainly does, a mighty mystery of truth. As if, after the highest flights of hu- man science and i)hilosophy, enriched by the beauty of a heavenly imagination, had been reached by mortal, then, to make way for still higher truths which no mortal could dis- cover, the ordering of heaven was to lay aside all the ornament of earth, and let the beauties of Truth itself, which is " beauty unadorned," be displayed to all who could appreciate them. And to those who could not, let not the truths of so high a nature be lightly or superficially acquiesced in, from the mere beauty of an out- ward and earthly envelope which could not at- tract to their inmost riches. Here again is Providence, taking care of its own, and con- founding alike the art and wisdom of the world. IGo. It ought to be said, however, that the style of Svvedenbarg, at the time here alluded to, is wonderfully clear and simple, not by any means destitute of real beauty, abounding in many exquisite passages, and admirably adapted to the truths conveyed. But we must not go before our subject. Philosophic and Scientific Genius. 166. Before closing our notice of Sweden- borg as a man of science, it is proper to ob- serve that he was not so much a collector of facts, as a systematizer of facts, and a dis- coverer of their hidden causes. For instance, he says, in reference to his knowledge of anatomy, which he professes to have obtained principally from the writings and experiments of others, although he added some experiments of his own: — "'I thought it better to use the facts supplied by others ; for there are some persons who seem born for experimental observations ; who see moie acutely than others, as if they derived a greater share of acumen from nature. Such were Eustachius, Leuwenhock, lluysch, Lancisius, &;c. There are others who enjoy a natural faculty for eliciting, by the contemplation of established facts, their hidden causes. Both are pecu- liar gifts, and are seldom united in the same person.' This is doubtless true as it relates to establishing experimental observations in the first place ; but when he who is capable of eliciting, by established facts, their hidden causes, shall have accomplished his end, he will be better enabled tlian the simply experi- mental or scientific man, by retracing his steps, to enlarge u|)on those very same facts and experiments which served as a basis for his advancement. For from the eminence at which he has ari-ived, he can sec from the light of causes, almost infinite things in effects, of which they from beneath are ignorant. The ladder which leads from the earth to the heaven of the mind, is for the angels — for light and truth — to descend, as well as to ascend. It is from this view of the subject that we are to account for the fact of Svveden- borg's having obtained a more perfect knowl- edge of the anatomy of the human system than any other man." — Hoharfs Life, p. 49. 167. But it is to be remarked, in reference to this important feature of Swedenborg's mind, that although, as he modestly confesses, he was less gifted in observation than in the penetra- tion of causes, yet he has shown a most ad- mirable wisdom in the kind of facts he did make use of, and a philosophy which puts to shame that sturdy adherence to mere outward phenomena which was so characteristic of the philosophy of his age. It is interesting to hear him express himself on this point. " Many," says he, " stubbornly refuse to stir a single step beyond visible phenomena for the sake of the truth ; and others prefer to drown their ideas in the occult at the very outset. To thes*. two classes, our demonstration may not be acceptable. For, in regard to the former, it asserts that the truth IS to be sought for beyond the range of the eye ; and in regard to the latter, that in all the na- ture of things tlierc is no such thing as an occult quality ; there is nothing but is either already the subject of demonstration, or capable of becoming so." — Economy of the Animal Kingdom, Vol. II. p. aio. 1 68. S wedenborg was of too vast and interior a genius, to ignore the invisible, and yet he had too much common sense to disparage the right kind and necessary number of facts. Hear him again on this subject. " We do not," says he, " need such innumerable facts, as some suppose, for a knowledge of natural things ; but only those of leading importance, and which issue directly and proximately, or at any rate not very obliquely or remotely, from our mechanical world and the powers thereof". For by means of these we may be led to principles ; first to compound, and so far as we are concerned, general principles ; next from tliese, by geometr\', (availing ourselves again of the leading facts ex- isting in this middle region,) to particular princi- ples ; and so in succession to still more simple principles ; and at last to the very simplest — to the fountain itself, from which all principles, how- ever modified, ultimately issue. The remaining facts, bulky as they are, which are too remote from the source, and estranged from the simple mechanism of the world, — which are present lat- erally, but do not directly respect the source, — are not so necessary ; indeed they are likelier to guide us wrong, than to keep the mind in the highway of the subject. The reason is, that there may be an infinite number of phenomena which are immensoly distant from the source, and from 4G LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. which it is impossible to arrive at it save by mnl- tipliod and circuitous routes. Nature, so vastly modified and ramified in the world, may be likened to the arteries and veins in the animal body, which in their beginning, as they issue from their foun- tain, the heart, are wide comparatively ; but grad- ually become smaller, and subdivide again and again, until they grow as minute as hairs or invisi- ble threads. Were one perfectly ignorant of the fountain and beginning oi' the blood which is flowing through these arteries and veins, yet de- sirous to explore its situation experimentally, it would not be well to spend any time over the cap- illary branches, or to make repeated dissections, \vith a view of finding the way from one such branch to another. Any labor of the kind would probably lead us into other veins and arteries, and again comuiit us to circuitous wanderings before we could reach the grand and royal aorta ; and not improbably we should fall from veins into arte- ries, when intending the contrary, so as to be go- ing away from the fountain instead of approaching it. . . . As to those who cannot obtain a suf- ficient knowledge of mundane things to enable them to reason-from principles and causes, it is no wonder they arc importunate for more facts, and complain that tlie experience of thousands of years leaves them still poor and inadequately provided ; at the same time it is fiiir to doubt whether any en- dowment of facts or liberality of information would give them spirit for this high walk of knowledge." — Introduction to Principia, pp. 39, 40. 169. Nothing, certainly, could show the wisdom of our author more conspicuously than this. Swedenborg loved to see truth as well as any man, and to be i/i /as senses at all times : " not for the purpose of degrading the mind, but of allowing it to descend (as the soul descends) by degrees (per gradus) into matter, that matter might be raised to the sphere of intelligence, and there reconciled with spirit ; so that from these two, reason might be born."' 170. But behold a beautiful Providence. Who has produced more facts — been a greater observer, than Swedenborg? His grand mis- sion was to unfold and exhibit the laws and facts of the spiritual world. " llis education was somewhat as follows. By ample instruc- tion and personal remark he learned the chief facts of the natural world, and perceived in them a philosophy reaching almost to the heavens, but strictly ' terminated in matter ' at. the lower end. After this, his spiritual senses were opened, and again by ample in- struction and personal remark he learned the general facts of the spiritual world, and the Word of God was unfolded to him as thus prepared. By all which we are lawfully con- firmed in Bacon's doctrine of the necessity of experience ; for until experience was given, the spiritual world was unknown ; and until an adequate intellect was sent, and added to such experience, its quality was unknown. The experience without the reason had existed in the prophets of the Old Testament, and in the Book of Revelation ; nay, from time imme- morial iu dre.iijis a...i oU^,,.T;i.iIu!'ul iiiaa'.rcsta- tions of proved authenticity : the reason with- out the experience is what philosophers have attempted since the date of history. But nothing came, or could come, of either, until the two were adequately combined in one or- ganization ; i. e., in Swedenborg. And that in him they were combined will survive and defy contradiction. The question of fact is the first in all scientific or philosophical pro- cesses, where human thought is to work ; and so it is the first in Swedenborg's case, and determines that of possibility : afterwards reasons may be discussed in matters proffer- ing themselves to reason, and the facts will acquire their rational value when their princi- ciples are found out." — Introductory Remarks to Economy of Animal Kingdom, pp. 60, 61. 171. And to complete this sketch of our author's genius, " it is not therefore unaccount- able, though certainly without parallel, that one who had solved the problems of centuries, and pushed the knowledge of causes into re- gions whose existence no other philosopher suspected, should at length abandon the field of science, without afterwards alluding so much as once to the mighty task he had sur- mounted. This was in accordance with his mind even in his scientific days : the presence of truth was what pleased him ; its absence was what pained him ; and he ahvays joyfully exchanged his light for a greater and purer, even though cherished thoughts had to die daily, as the condition of ' passing into the higher illumination. And it was his happy lot, not to fight temporal battles for Protes- tantism, or to be the prop of an old religion, whose very victories often precluded its com- munion with the Prince of Peace ; but to be the means of averting destruction from the whole race of man, and of securing to all a hold on Christianity which can never fail : and in the course of this instrumentality, to walk undismayed in that other world which has been lost to knowledge for thousands of years, or preserved only in the unwritten parts of imagination, the misunderstood depth of ancient fable, or the narrations of the earlier poets. Hence he is the first of the moderns to penetrate the secrets of nature, the first also to be admitted to the hidden things of the spiritual world : the two spheres of knowledge being realized at once ; where- fore henceforth he is our earnest, that since we are now on the right track, and the works of God are become our heritage, the progres- sion in both may be practical and unending. — Ibid. pp. 89, 90. 172. " We may now state that Sweden- borg's philosophy attains its summit in the marriage of the scholasticism and common sense, wuth the sciences, of his age ; in the consummation of which marriage his especial genius was exerted and exhausted. In him the oldest and the newest spirit, met in one ; reverence and i;inovalion wl':;'. even!}' min- LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. 47 gled ; nothing ancient was superseded, though pressed into the current service of the cen- tury, lie was one of the links that connect by-gone ages with to-day, breatliing for us among the lost truths of the past, and per- petuating tiiem in unnoticed forms along the stream of the future, lie lived however thoroughly in his own age, and was far before his contem{)oraries, only because others did not, or could not, use the entire powers of its sphere. We regard him therefore as an honest representative of the eighteenth cen- tury. He in his line, gives us the best esti- mate of the all which any man could do in Europe at that period. But who can exceed his age, although not one in a generation comes up to it ? It is not for mortals to live, excepting in, and for, the present ; the next year's growth of thought is as unattainable for us to-day, as the crops of the next summer. Still the future may and does exist in prophe- cies and shadows. These, among other things, are great scientilic systems, the children of single powerful minds, the Platos, Aristotles and Swedenborgs ; yet which are but outlines that will one day have contents that their au- thors knew not, modifications that their par- ents could not have borne, supercessions that hurt no one, only because their sensitive par- tisans have given place to other judges. It is humanity alone that realizes what its happi- est sons propose and think they carry ; most things require to be done for ages after their authors have done them, that so the doing may be full ; and above all, the race is the covert individual who writes the philosophies of the world. Add, that whatever system is safe always follows practice. 173. " It will be borne in mind that we here speak of his system, particularly witli refer- ence to its generative power, and which sys- tem, we pi'esume, has been exceeded and sur- passed : with reference, however, to his phys- ical principles, such as the doctrine of respira- tion above mentioned, these are sempiternal pieces of nature, and rank not with the re- sults, but among the springs of systems. The world will therefore taste them afresh from age to age, long after discarding the beauti- ful rind which enclosed them in the pages of their first discoverer." — Wilkinson's Biogra- phy of Swedenborg, pp. 67, 68. 174. Finally, " Swedenborg was not so much a scientific man, as a man thoroughly master of the sciences. In Anatomy and Physiology he deserves the appellation of a Raphael or a Stoddart. Every tiling he knew ministered to his sublime AiiT. It might be said of him that he had been carried out, like Ezekiel, in the spirit of the Lord, and set down in the midst of the valley full of dry bones, and that he had been commanded to prophesy and say unto theuj, ' Behold, 1 will cause breath to en- ter into you, and ye shall live ! ' lie seems to have instinctively felt, what a French Au- thor remarks, — that the Church, which at first contained all the elements of social lii'e, had gradually become unpeopled, — that every century had seen a multitude leave the sanc- tuary under some particular banner ; and that every schism was summed up in that greatest and hitherto most irreconcilable of all, — the schism and defection of science. For he now began to observe that those who never accept- ed any thing but what they could really un- derstand, were all gone astray, and were hour- ly sinking deeper in the terrible negation of spiritual things." — RicJis Biographical Sketchy p. 49. 175. On the whole, we can only wonder what Swedenborg would have accomplished, had he lived in our day, and drank its spirit. How manfully would he have handled the terrible problems of the time ! How would he have compacted the social and political in the narrow breast of the physical thought, and in that compression and condensation of life, have given breath and stroke to the dead- est laws ! How would he have exulted in that free humanity which sees that the truths and weal of the millions are the ground from which future genius must spring : that the next unity is not of thought with itself or na- ture, but of practice and thought with happi- ness ! In the mean time his scientific works are and will be helpful ; and we regard it a» a misfortune that, through whatever cause, the rijjest minds have not the same acquaintance with these books as with the other philoso- phies ; for Swedenborg belongs to our own age as a transition ; and it will be found that, at least in time, he is the first available school- master of the nations. Well did he conceive the problem of universal education, which lies not merely in teaching all men, but first in teaching them a new kind of knowledge, catholic and delightful enough for those who cannot learn class sciences, but only truths like dawn and sunset, as self-evident and im- memorial as the ways of nature from cf old. 176. Let it not, however, be supposed that Swedenborg thought he had completed the method of the sciences, or even inaugurated the new day that his genius foresaw. On the conti'ary, he looked for this from the hands of his successors, and his humility covered the whole ground of his mind, although it did not discourage him from the most energetic labors. Fully conscious of his own limits, he called upon the age to supply a stronger intelligence and a more winning explorer. " It now remains for us," says he, "to close with Nature where she lies hidden in her invisible and purer, world, and no longer barely to celebrate her mystic rites, but to invite her in person to our chamber, to lay aside the few draperies that remain, and give all her beauty to our gaze. . . . She now demands of the present century some man of genius — his mind developed and corrected bv experience, prepared by 48 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. scientific and other culture, and possessing in an eminent degree tlie faculty of investigating causes, of reasoning connectedly, and of con- cluding definitely on the principles of series ; — and when such a one comes, to him, I doubt not, she will betroth herself; and in favor of him will yield to the arrows of love, will own his alliance and partake his bed. O ! that it were my happy lot, to fling nuts to the crowd and head the torch bearers on her marriage day ! " 177. In closing our remarks upon Sweden- borg as a man of Science, we quote a short notice from the Literary Remains of the cele- brated Coleridge, (page 424,) on the doctrine of Forms. The doctrine here treated of is found in the work entitled " The Worship and Love of God," before noticed, and the notice of Coleridge is recommended both by its brevity, and its reference to a work published by Swedenborg at the vei-y moment of his transition to spiritual subjects. " This," he observes, " would of itself serve to mai'k Swe- denborg as a man of philosophic genius, radi- cative and evolvent. Much of what is most valuable in the philosophic works of Schelling, Schubart, and Eschermeyer, is to be found an- ticipated in this supposed Madman ; thrice happy should we be, if the learned and the teachers of the present age, were gifted with a similar madness, — a madness, indeed, celes- tial and flowing from a divine mind." 178. We have now contemplated the sub- ject of our memoir as a man of letters and a philosopher of the highest order, — distin- guished by " the happy union of a strong memory, a quick conception, and a sound judgment ; " — as the advocate of popular rights, and the friend of progress ; though a royalist by birth, and not less so by his taste- ful appreciation of princely magnificence, or the poetry of art as well as nature. It may help to i)repare the reader for his more spirit- ual vocation if we add that he was, withal, a religiom man. The following rules which he had prescribed for his conduct were found amongst his manuscripts : 1. Often to read and meditate on the Word of God : 2. To sub- mit every thing to the will of Divine Provi- dence : 3. To observe in every thing a pro- priety of behavior, and always to keep the conscience clear : 4. To discharge with fideli- ty the functions of his employments and the duty of his office, and to render himself in all things useful to society. PART II. SWEDENBORG, THE SEER, THEOLOGIAN, AND PHILOSOPHER OF SPIRIT. 179. Previous to this new period in Sweden- borg's life, he had published no Theological work and yet from infancy his mind must have been directed to religious subjects, as ap- pears from the Rules of Life before quoted, from his letter to Dr. Beyer concerninghis child- hood, and from the whole spirit of his scien- tific works. 180. We have seen that Swedenborg's object in his later philosophical studies, was to obtain the means of reacliing a knowledge of the soul, of its connections, and its operations. And in all his writings on these subjects, every thing tends to the worship and love of God, as is especially seen in the work which bears that title. 181. vSwedenborg's extraordinary acquaint- ance with the fact^ laws, and principles of nature, as well as his practical experience, were essential to his success in learning and making known the truths of the spiritual world, both as means of illustration, and of expanded capacity. But the fact that he had published no work on Theology, would seem surprising, if we did not see in it the Providence which was preparing him for his subsequent duties. For his mind was thus kept free and open to receive the truths which were revealed to hira ; without the embarrassment of being previous- ly confirmed in any human system of religion. The same Providence may be seen in the fol- lowing facts related in another letter to Dr. Beyer : — " I was prohibited reading dogmatic and systematic theology before heaven was open to me, by reason that unfounded opinions and inventions might thereby easily have insinuated themselves, which with difficulty could after- wards have been extirpated ; wherefore vvhen heaven was opened to me it was necessary first to learn the Hebrew language, as well as the correspondences of which the whole Bible is composed, which led me to read the Word of God over many times ; and inasmuch as the Word of God is the source whence all theology must be derived, I was thereby en- abled to receive instructions from the Lord, wliQ is the Word." Those who are acquainted with Swedenborg's explanation of the Bible may readily conceive the difficulties which would have prevented his arriving at the state to which he was elevated, had his mind been previously shackled by the commentaries and biblical criticisms in common use. 182. All the works which he published after the commencement of his illumination, were of a theological or moral character, and were writ- ten, as he says, with the authority of living experience, or of direct instruction from heaven. Thus they differed entirely in their authority from those which he had written previously, and for which he never claimed any unusual authori- ty. Indeed the grounds upon which he wrote his philosophical works, were so totally different from and inferior to those upon which his Theological works were written, that in the latter he scarcely ever even alludes to the former. They are liowevpr rp^nrred to, three LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUFL SWKDF.XROKG. 49 or four times, in some mar.uscripts which he left unpuhlished. \H3. We may trace the gradual openinf;; of Swedenborg's spiritual senses sometime before he was made aware of his distinct and heavenly calling. For examples, in liis posthumous Adcersaria on Genesis and Exodus, he speaks of the signification of visible flames, which appeared to him while writing. " By flames," he says, " is represented confirmation, as has, by the Divine Mercy of God Messiah, ap- peared to me many times, with variety of magnitude, color, and brilliancy ; so many in- deed that during some months, while 1 was writing a certain small work, scarcely a day passed in which there did not appear a flame {IS vivid as the flame of fire, which was then a sign of approbation. This was before the time when spirits began to speak with me by M-ord of mouth." 184. These visible signs of approbation seem to give indications of the manner in which Swe- denborg was being prepared for the holy office he was soon to receive. We see that he was pursuing his studies under heavenly guidance and approbation, and also that the clouds of tJie natural world had begun to draw asunder and to reveal the workings of the spiritual world within. In the following extract from a manuscript called Swedenborg's spiritual diary, which was commenced some two years after the Adversaria, and consists of almost daily memoranda of his experience in the spiritual world, will be seen more of these in- dications, and also Swedenborg's total uncon- sciousness of their sequel. " How difficult it is for man to be persuad^^d that he is nded hy means of spirits. "Before my mind was opened so that I could speak with spirits, and thus be persuaded by living experience, such evidences were presented to me during many previous years, that now I wonder that I did not then become convinced of the Lord's ruling by means of spirits. "These evidences were not only dreams for some years informing me concerning those things which I was writing, but also changes of state while I was writing, and a certain extraordinary light on what was written. Afterwards I had also many visions while my eyes were closed : a light was miraculously given ; and many times spirits were sensibly perceived, as manifestly to the sense, as bodily sensations : afterwards also I had infes- tations by various ways from evil spirits, in temp- tations, whilst I was writing such things as evil spirits were averse to, so that 1 was beset almost to horror: fiery lights were seen: talking was heard in the morning time ; besides many other things ; until at last when a certain spirit addressed me in a few words, I Avondered greatly that lie should perceive my tboughts, and afterwards won- dered exceedingly when the way was opened so that I could converse with spirits, and then the spirits wondered that I should be so surprised. From these things it may be concluded how diffi- cult it is for man to be led to believe that he is ruled by the Lord through spirits, and with what diflSculty he recedes from the opinion that he lives his own life from himscK without spirits. (Written on) Aujj. VJ7. 171S. I have at one time perceived, some months after beginning to speak with spirits, that if I should be let back into my farmer state, I nnght lapse into the opinion that these things were fantasies." 185. A manuscript volume describingseveral dreams from the year 1730 to 1740, was left by Swedenborg among his papers, but it was retained in his family and is now probably lost. Had it been preserved, it might have thrown much light on this very interesting period of Swedenborg's life. Inward Breathings, and other Indications of a spiritual Constitution. 186. In the diary occur also the following pas- sages showing another form of Swedenborg's preparation. " Furthermore I spoke with them concerning the state of their speech, and in order that this might be perceived, it was shown to me what was the quality of their breathing, and I was instructed that the breathing of the lungs is varied succes- sively according to the state of their faith. This was before unknown to me, but yet I can perceive and believe it, because my breathing has been so formed by the Lord, that I could breathe inwardly for a considerable time witliout the aid of the ex- ternal air, and still the external senses, and also actions, continued in their vigor : this cannot be given to any but those who are so formed by the Lord, and not, it is said, unless miraculously. I was instructed also that my breathing is so directed without my knowledge, that I may be with spirits and speak with them." 187. Speaking of a manner of breathing which is externally imperceptible he says, — " In this way I was accustomed to breathe first in childhood when praying morning and evening prayers, also sometimes afterwards when I was ex- ploring the concordance of the lungs and the heart, especially when I was writing from my mind those things which have been published, for many years, I observed constantly that there was a tacit breathing hardly sensible concerning which it was afterwards given me to think, tlicn to write, so through many years I was introduced from infancy into such breatliings, chiefly through intense spec- ulations, in which the respiration was quiescent, in no other way is there given an intense specu- lation of truth : then afterwards when heaven has been opened so that I might speak with spirits, so entirely was this the case, that I scarcely inhaled at all for more than an hour, only just enough air to eniible me to think ; and thus I was introduced by the Lord into interior respirations." 188. And again, speaking of the connection between the breathing and the senses, he says, " Moreover it has been given me to know these same things previously from a good deal of ex- perience, before that I spoke with spirits, — that breathing corresponded with the thoughts, as when 1 held my breath in ciiildhood on purpose, during morning and evening prayers, and when I tried to make the changes of breathing agree with those of the heart, until the understanding would almost vanish; also afterwards when I was writing from 50 LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. imagination, and I observed that I held my breath as if it were silent." 189. Respecting this {leculiarity of breiith- ing, it is truly remarked by Wilkinson, that "As we breathe, so we are. Inward thoughts have inward breaths, and purer si)iritual thoughts have spiritual breaths hardly mixed with material. Death is breathlessness. Fully to breathe the external atmosphere, is equiva- lent ccBleris paribus, to living in plenary en- joyment of the senses and the muscular pow- ers. On the other hand, the condition of trance or death-life, is the persistence of the inner breath of thought, or the soul's sensation, while the breath of the body is annulled. It is only those in wiiom this can have place, that may still live in this world, and yet be consciously associated with the persons and events in the other. Hybernation and other phenomena come in support of these remarks. Thus we have common experience on our side, in asserting that the capacities of the inward life, whether thought, meditation, contempla- tion, or trance, depend upon those of the respi- ration, 190. " Some analogous power over the breath — a power to live and think without respiring, for it is the bodily respiration that draws down the mind at the same time that it draws up the air, and thus causes mankind to be com- pound, or spiritual and material beings — some analogous power to the above, we say, has lain at the basis of the gifts of many other seers besides Swedenborg. It is quite ap- parent that the Hindoo Yogi were capable of a similar state, and in our own day the phe- nomena of hypnotism have taught us much in a scientiiic manner of these ancient con- ditions and sempiternal laws. Take away or suspend that which draws you to this world, and the spirit, by its own lightness, floats u[)- wards into the other. There is however a difference between Swedenborg's state, as lie reports it, and the modern instances, inasmuch as the latter are artiticial, and induced by ex- ternal effort, whereas Swedenborg's was natu- ral also and we may say congenital, was the combined regime of his as[)irations and respira- tions, did not engender sleep, but was accompa- nied by full waking and open eyes, and was not courted in the first instance for the trances or visions that it brought. Other cases more- over are occasional, whereas Swedenborg's appears to have been uninterrupted, or nearly so, for twenty-seven years. 191. "We have now therefore accounted in some measure for one part of Swedenborg's preparation, and what we have said comports with experience, which shows that those am- phibious conditions with which we are more familiar, hinge upon certain peculiarities of bodily structure or endowment ; and we have thereby prepared the reader to admit, that if living below the air or under water, requires a peculiar habit or organism, so also does living above the air — above the natural ani- mus (uiefiog) of the race, require answerable but peculiar endowments. The diver and the seer are inverse correspondences. 192- "To show how intelligent Swedenborg was of these deep things, we have only to ex- amine his anatomical works and manuscripts, which present a regular progress of ideas on the subject of respiration. ' If we carefully attend to profound thoughts,' say she, ' we shall find that lu/ten we draw breath, a host of ideas rush from beneath as through an opened door into the sphere of thought; whereas when we hold the breath, and slowly let it out, we deeply keep the while in the tenor of our thought, and communicate as it were with the higher faculty of the soul ; as I have observed in my own person times out of numbei*. Re- taining or holding back the breath is equiva- lent to having intercourse with the soul : at- tracting or drawing it amounts to intercourse with the body.' 193. " This indeed is a fact so common that we never think about it : so near to natural life, that its axioms are almost too substantial for knowledge. Not to go so profound as to the intellectual sphere, we may remark that all fineness of bodily work — all that in art which comes out of the infinite delicacy of manhood as contrasted with animality — re- quires a corresponding breathlessness and ex- piring. To listen attentively to the finest and least obtrusive sounds, as with the stethoscope to the murmurs in the breast, or with mouth and ear to distant music, needs a hush that breathing disturbs ; the common ear has to die, and be born again, to exercise these deli- cate attentions. To take an aim at a rapid- flying or minute object, requires in like man- ner a breathless time and a steady act : the very ]ndse must receive from the stopped lungs a pressure of calm. To adjust the exquisite machinery of watches, or other instruments, compels in the manipulater a motionless hover of his own central springs. Even to see and observe with an eye like the mind itself, ne- cessitates a radiant pause. Again, for the negative proof, we see that the first actions and attempts of children are unsuccessful, being too quick, and full moreover of confusing breaths : the life has not fixed aerial space to play the game, but the scene itself flaps and flutters with alien wishes and thoughts. In short, the whole reverence of remark and deed depends upon the above conditions, and we lay it down as a general truth, that everi/ man requires to educate his breath for his business. Bodily strength, mental strength, even wisdom, all lean upon our respirations ; and Swedenborg's case is but a striking in- ' stance raising to a very visible size a fact which like the air is felt and wanted, but for the most part not perceived. 19'4. " We have dwelt upon the physical part of inspiration and aspiration, because with the LIFE A^'l) WKITIXGS OF EMANUEL SWEDEXBOKG. 51 subject of this memoir, body was always con- nected with, and lundamcMital to, spirit ; and therefore it is biograpiiically true to him, to support hisseership by its physical counterpart. ■Mpreover it is important for all men to know how much lies in calm, and to counsel them {^whether by biography, or science, it matters J^ot,) to look to the balance of their life-breath, rfend to let it sometimes incline, as it ought, 'towards the immortal and expiring sideZ-^/ 195. "liut if Swedenborg was expressly constructed and prepared for spirit-seeing, the end developed itself in a measure side by side with the means, which is also a law of things. "We have seen that in his boyhood his parents used to declare that angels spoke through his mouth, which again calls to mind the en- tranced breaths of prayer that he commemo- rates at this period. Much later on, but before his theological mission commenced, we find him intellectually aware that heaven might be entered by the sons of earth, and, as he then thought, by the analytic method of science, which having arrived on some of the peaks of truth, would introduce us to those who are at home in that region, and enable us to revert with a kind of spiritual sight to the world from which we had ascended. lie says on this head, that ' knowledge unless derived from first principles is but a beggarly and palliative science, sensual in its nature, not derived from the world of causes, but animal, and without reason ; that to explore causes, we must ascend into infinity, and then and thence we may descend to , effects, when we iiave first ascended from effects by the analyt- ic way. P^urthermore, that by this means we may become rational beings, men, angels, and may be among the latter, when we shall have explored truths, and when we are in them : tJiat this is the way to heaven, to tlie primeval state of man, to perfection.' This is doubtless a bold interpretation of induction and deduc- tion, but no one knew better than Swedenborg in his day, whither real methods would con- duct us. It only concerns us however now to show, that he was conscious of a possible en- trance for the undei'standing into the atmos- pheres of the higher world, and that he con- ceived it to lie in true ladders of doctrine framed by good men out of true sciences. 196. " Some of the phenomena connected with this period of Swedenborg's life, which go further to show his previous and gradual prep- aration for his high mission, we find thus at- tested by him at the very time they were happening. The Fourth Part of the Animal Kingdom (a MS. written, lor the most part, as it would appear, during 1744) aifords the Ibllowing proofs. At p. S'2 of this work he has the following Observandum : ' According to admonition heard, I must refer to my philo- sophical Principia . . . and it has been tok' me that by that means I shall be enabled to airect my flight whithersoever I will.' Twice also in the same work he notifies that he is commanded to write what he is penning. At p. 194 he mentions that he saw a representation of a certain golden key that he was to carry, to open the door to spiritual things. At p. 202 he remarks at the end of a paragraph, that ' on account of what is there written there ha[)pened to him wonderful things on the night between the first and second of July ; ' and he adds in the margin, that the matter set down was ' foretold to him in a wonderful manner on that occasion.' Still farther on (p. 215) he again refers to his ex- ti'aordinary dream of the above date. 197. "Lastly, there is one doctrine that Swedenborg held, and which constitutes an im- mediate link between intellect and reality, possession with which would contribute to pre- dispose to spiritual experience ; we mean the doctrine of Universal Correspondency. To this great intellectual subjec-t we shall have to recur in the sequel, but for the present it suffices to observe, that it imports that bodies are the generation and expression of souls ; ■ that the frame of the natural world works, moves and rests obediently to the living spir- itual world, as a man's face to the mind or spirit within. Now this plainly makes all things into signs as well as powers ; the events of nature and the world become divine, angel- ic, or demoniac messages, and the smallest things, as well as the greatest, are omens, in- structions, warnings, or hopes." — Wilkinson's Biography, pp. 77-86. 198. We have now mentioned all that we know of the most remarkable {)resages of Swe- denborg's illumination. Though this knowl- edge is not very extensive, yet it is sufficient to indicate a very long and gradual course of preparation, from infancy to full maturity, for the great privileges and important duties which were to devolve upon him. 199. Of the circumstances attending the an- nouncement to him of his heavenly mission, we have no account in the works which he himself published. In these indeed, he alludes to himself as seldom as possible. Opening of Swedenborg's spiritual Sight. 200. We are now prepared to contemplate the full transition of this remarkable man. from the greatest of philosophers to the sublime height of spiritual vision which he ultimately attained. Throughout his life, as we havi' hitherto detailed it, we have seen a continual tendency from the natural to the spiritual, and it is by no means the least interesting part of his experience, to see how gradually and sys tematically he was prepared by Divine Provi dence for his wonderful work. There would seem to be, in the very ascent itself, stej) by step, up the high ladder of Trutn, with its foot resting on the solid foundations of material nature, and those too in the deep mines and rudiments of the Mineral Kingdom, passing 52 LIFE AND WHITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. gradually upwards through the mysteries of organic nature, to the human soul itself; — there would seem to be, in such an ascent, a testimony of that God who formed, fitted and called him, to his truthful and glorious mission. 201. "Although, however, this opening of the spiritual was Swedenborg's tendency from the first, yet plainly he never anticipated either the manner or the extent of it. It would seem that he expected the kingdom of God to come upon him in the shape of clear principles deduced from all human knowledge ; a scientific religion resting upon nature and revelation, interpreted by analysis and synthe- sis, from the ground of a pure habit and a holy life. His expectations were fulfilled, not simply, but marvellously. He was himself astonished at his condition, and often ex- pressed as much. ' I never thouglit,' said he, ' I should have come into the spiritual state in which I am, but the Lord had prepared me for it, in order to reveal the spiritual sense of the Word, which He had promised in the Prophets and the Revelations.' What he thenceforth claimed to have received and to be in possession of, was spiritual sight, spiritu- al illumination, and spiritual powers of reason. And certainly in turning from his foregone life to that which now occupies us, we seem to be treating of another person, — of one on whom the great change has passed, who has tasted the blessings of death, and disburdened his spiritual part, of mundane cares, sciences and philosophies. The spring of his lofty flights in nature sleeps in the dust beneath his feet. The liberal charm of his rhetoric is put off, never to be resumed. His splendid but unfinished organon is never to be used again, but its wheel and essence are transferred for other applications. It is a clear instance of disembodiment — of emancipation from a worldly lifetime ; and we have now to con- template Swedenborg, still a mortal, as he rose into the other world. From that elevation he as little recurred to his scientific life, though he had its spirit with him, as a freed soul to the body in the tomb: he only possessed it in a certain high memory, which offered its re- sult to his new pursuits." — Wilkinson^s Biog- raphy, pp. 73, 74. 202. We give the particulars which now follow, precisely as we find them, leaving to the reader perfect freedom to interpret them by their own evidence. The simple statement which our author made to his friend Hartley respecting his new and " holy office," is the one which he was accustomed to make through life. 203. " I have been called," says he, in a letter to Dr. Hartley, dated 1769, "to a holy office by tlie Lord himself, who has most gra- ciously manifested himself in person to me, his servant, in the year 1743 ; when He opened my sight to the view of the spiritual world, and granted me the privilege of con- versing with spirits and angels, which I enjoy to this day. . . . The only reason of my later journeys to foreign countries, has been the desire of being useful, by making known the secrets intrusted to me." 204. Another account of the same event has been related by M. Robsahm, who inquired of Swedenborg where and how his revelations began. " I was in London," said Swedenborg, " and dined late at my usual quarters, where I had engaged a room, in which at pleasure to prosecute my studies in natural philosophy. I was hungry, and ate with great appetite. Towards the end of the meal I remarked that a kind of mist spread before my eyes, and I saw the floor of my room covered with hideous reptiles, such as serpents, toads and the like. I was astonished, having all my wits about me, and being perfectly conscious. The dark- ness attained its height and then passed away. I now saw a man sitting in a corner of the chamber. As I had thought myself entirely alone, I was greatly frightened when he said to me, ' Eat not so much ! ' My sight again became dim, but when I recovered it I found myself alone in my room. The unexpected alarm hastened my return home. I did not suffer my landlord to perceive that any thing had happened ; but thought it over attentively, and was not able to attribute it to chance, or any physical cause. I went home, but the following night the same man appeared to me again. I was this time not at all alarmed. - Tiie man said : ' I am God, the Lord, the Creator and Redeemer of the world. I have chosen thee to unfold to men the spiritual sense of the Holy Scriptuie. I will myself dictate to thee wiiat thou slialt Avrite.' The same night the world of spirit;^, hell and heav- en, were convincingly opened to me, where I found many persons of my acquaintance of all conditions. From that day forth I gave up all worldly learning, and labored only in spir- itual things, according to what the Lord com- manded me to write. Thereafter the Lord daily opened the eyes of my spirit, to see in perfect wakefulness what was going on in the other world, and to converse, broad awake, with angels and spirits." 205. Dr. Beyer gives a third narrative of the transaction. "The report," says he, "of the Lord's personally appearing before the Assessor, who saw Him sitting in purple and in majestic splendor near his bed, whilst He gave him commission what to do, I have heard from his own mouth, wliilst dining with him at the house of Dr. Rosen, where I saw, for tlie first time, the venerable old man. I re- member to have asked him how long this ap- pearance continued. He replied that it lasted about a quarter of an hour. I also asked him whether the vivid splendor did not pain his eyes? which he denied. . . . In respect to the extraordinary case of the Lord appearing to him, and opening, in a wonderful marner, the internal and spiritual sight of His servant, LIFE AND WRITINGS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG. 53 so as to enable him to see into the otlier world, I must observe that this opening did not occur at once, but by degrees." 2)6. In the Diary, vhe same event appears to be related as follows : — ^ji Vision by Day, concerning those wlio are de- voted to the i^able, and who thus indulge the Flesh. In the middle of the day, at dinner, an angel who was with nie conversed, saying, that I should not indulge the belly too much at table. Whilst he was with me, there clearly appeared to me, as it were, a vapor, exuding from the pores of the body, lil