Columbia ®nit)ei^ftp intljeCitpoflfttigork THE LIBRARIES GIVEN BY Otto G. Lindberg LIFE AND WRITINGS OF SWEDENBORG. OLA8G0W: PRINTED BY BELL ANIl liAIN. 41 MITCHELL STKKKT. J Ig) IPH Tr. .o>^ E ID) IB IE !^(0.» BlSItOP OF SKARA. EMANUEL SWEDENBORG HIS LIFE AND WRITINGS. By WILLIAM WHITE " God of okl hath for His people wrought Things as incredible : What hinders now ? " nconh ^bitioiT, 3!l£bis«l). LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, AND COMPANY, stationers' hall court. 1868. Q ■ -r' I :ro/ C £ PREFACE TO FIRST EDITION, 1-867. Swedenborg's name has ofrown familiar in En owlish litera- ture, but with few definite ideas attached to it. The causes are not far to seek. His works are so voluminous as to daunt many readers, nor are there any one or two of his volumes calculated to afford a complete view of his philo- sophy and theology. The little sect, moreover, which assumes his authority to be divine has never commanded the public ear. To the majority, Swedenborg is no more than an eminent Ghost Seer. Professor Masson, in a recent popular work, states this broadly, saying, "From the most moderate Animal Magnetism to the most involved dreams of the Swedenborgians and Spirit Rappers, is simply the idea, that our familiar world or cosmos may not be the total sphere of the phenomenal"* — that is to say, the drift of Swedenborg's teaching is to prove the existence of a Spiritual World — a phenomenal world beyond that which now affects our senses. Mr. Masson means well, but he completely misapprehends Swedenborg's real business. As a Ghost Seer, Swedenborg is not without interest, but it is an interest which is quickly exhausted: to regard him simply as a Ghost Seer is to make a prodigious mistake. The mere wondermonger soon becomes a bore; and as he • Recent British Philosophy (Lectures delivered at the Royal Iiustitution, 1865), p. 285. b VI PREFACE TO 18G7 EDITION. prolongs liis entertainment we have to cry, as Hotspur did under the infliction of Glendower — " He angers me, With telling me of the moldwarj) and the ant, Of the dreamer Mei'liu, and his prophecies; And of a dragon and a finless tish, A clip-wing'd griffin, and a monlten i-aven, A couching lion, and a ramjjing cat, And such a deal of skimble-skamble stuff As jwts me from my faith. I tell you what — He held me, last night, at least nine hours In reckoning up the several devils' names That were his lackeys : I cried hum — and well — go to — But mark'd him not a word. Oh, he 's as tedious As is a tired horse, a railing wife ; Woi'se than a smoky house : — I had leather live With cheese and garlic in a windmill, far, Than feed on cates, and have him talk to me In any summer-house in Christendom." Elsewhere I have shown how Swedenborg's true glory consists in a new definition of the relations between the Creator and the Creature, and that his other- world expe- riences are altogether subsidiary to the illustration of these relations. He demonstrates tlie absolute inutility (for philosophic purposes) of the mere knowledge of an objective Spiritual World. Its phenomena teach just as much and just as little as the phenomena of the Natural World ; for there roam Atheists who prove there is no God, and Sadducees who argue they have never died. All this however has been obscured by his vulgar reputation as Ghost Seer, and his merit as the author of a profound and original philosophy is almost unknown. To try and remove somewhat of this inveterate ignorance concerning Swedenborg seemed not an unworthy task; and a biography in connection with a review of each of his books PREFACE TO 18G7 EDITION. VU appeared to be a good way of effecting my purpose. In short, I resolved to compile a Swedenborg Cyclopaedia, in which no anecdote nor any important principle should be omitted. Swedenborg has as far as possible been left to tell his own story, and to reveal the heart of his own books. The selec- tion of proper material from a territory so extensive has cost far more pains than the same amount of original com- position. In many cases the selected passages have suffered severe abridgment. Swedenborg's thoughts are constantly delivered in bulky solution, and if in getting rid of the superfluous water I have ever strained away some of the essential substance, I have in all cases supplied the reference for my extract, whereby a suspicious reader may test its accuracy. The complaint however which I really dread is, that whilst I was straining I did not strain harder. As a critic of Swedenborg, my difficulties have not been slight. With a few exceptions, he has undergone no criticism. He has been cursed without reserve, and he has been blessed without reserve, but he has been rarely appreciated. I have therefore had to form many judgments which I feel sure would be modified had I enjoyed the discussion of liberal and enlightened minds. Much new matter relating to Swedenborg will be found in these volumes, but I need only specially refer to tlie important discovery of his Diary of iV-i^, printed by Mr. G. E. Klemming, of Stockholm, in 1859. The Diary sheds a flood of light on an obscure and pivotal point in his biography. There are no doubt many facts yet to be brought to light relative to Swedenborg's personal life in Sweden and Eng- land ; and if any one in the course of his reading encounters aught unrecorded in the following pages, I should gladly and gratefully hear from him. viii PREFACE TO 1SG7 EDITION. Lastly, I owe thanks for assistance to many friends: one has to write a book to learn how courteous the world can be : let me name specially, Dr. Kahl, Dean of Lund ; Baron C. Dirckinck Hohnfeld, of Copenhagen; the late Dr. Tafel, of Tubingen ; and Dr. Garth Wilkinson and William Fryer, Esq., of London. 30 Thurlow Road, Hampstead, London, KW., December, 18C6. PREFACE TO PRESENT EDITION, 1868. Handing " the proof" of the preceding Preface to a familiar spirit, as he read, he hiughed. "At what are you hxugh- ing ?" I inquired. " At your simplicity — One has to ivrite a hook to learn hoiv courteous the ivorld can he! You will not say so six months hence, when you have passed through the hands of the critics." More than twelve months have elapsed, and I have no cause to retract; on the contrary, I rej)eat the words with emphasis. The attention I have received has been as un- expected as welcome. Praise has often been excessive, and censure only sometimes undeserved. As anticipated, I have been generally blamed for the size of my volumes — for not " straining harder." The Glasc/oiu Herald says, "A great deal more of the rubbish might have been advantageously riddled out;" and i\\Q Spectator advises, "If Mr. White will in a second edition compress his superfluous matter into one goodly volume, he will have performed a considerable service to that most valuable of all libraries, the Literature of Heres}^" A second edition in one volume I had in prospect, but did not imagine the necessity for it would so soon arrive. Here it is: two volumes condensed into one! With some- thina; of shame I confess the condensation has not been very difficult, whilst the improvement has been great. No detail of any importance has been omitted. Nevertheless I do not reo'ret the issue of the two volumes. It was well X PREFACE TO PRESENT EDITION. for once that various matters should be discussed on a broad scale. Each edition will have its place and use. Somewhat amusing have been sundiy criticisms wherein I have been taken to task for the measure of my faith in Swedenborg. The reJisons for that measure I fancied were made manifest even to iteration, but I either over-estimated my own perspicuity or my readers' perspicacity ; so much so indeed, that the English Independent considers me almost as great a puzzle as Swedenborg himself. The case against me runs thus — " You admit that Swedenborg kept a mistress, went mad, told cock-and-bull stories, and didn't wash his face. Yet you say he was a Divine Messenger! You ought to be ashamed of yourself! How can you pretend to respect such a reprobate ! " With similar logic, on the other side, I am almost frantically assailed by citizens of Hindmarsh's New Jeru- salem — " You wicked creature ! How dare you tell people a Divine Messenger kept a mistress, went mad, told cock- and-bull stories, and didn't wash his face!" My good people, I reply, what warrant have you for your indignation? If you were to judge King David as you do Emanuel Swedenborg, you ought either to dismiss his biography as a string of fables, or never read another of his psalms. Have you forgotten the lives of St. Peter and St. Paul? Have you never read of Paul's controversy with Peter? when, in Paul's own words, " I withstood him to the face, because he was to he blamed." Verily the Bible yields no sanction to your assumption that Divine instruments are impeccable and infallible. You who condemn Swedenborg utterly, and you who uphold him utterly, argue from a common ground of in- PREFACE TO PRESENT EDITION. XI fallible authority vested in Churcli, Bible, or Swedenborg. Authority speaks, and you submit — at least you say so. On the contrary, disowning any knowledge of infallible authority, I believe what I see to be true. In Swedenborg, for example, I find — 1 st, a gi-eat deal that is trivial, and to which I am indifferent ; 2nd, numerous statements perverse and untrue; 3rd, much possibly true; 4th, much prob- ably true ; and 5th, a whole body of doctrine which is to me assuredly true and ineffably precious. '•' But how do you know what is true?" As I know that two and two make four; by the harmony existing between the truth and my consciousness ; and by the test of ex- perience. How else can we know truth? " You talk as if you could know truth certainly, and as if error were impossible." Nay; if our natures were in harmony with the truth, then we might know the truth infallibly. In so far as we are in evil, we have an affinity for error: in so far as we are in good, we have an affinity for truth. " Have you then no respect for Authority ? " Yea, pro- found respect. Nothing which has been held true by many generations can be lightly esteemed. Did I find myself essentially at variance with the catholic faith, I should at once suspect the competence of my judgment. Happily, with Swedenborg's help, I have been led to see more truth in the creeds than many of their confessors suspect — senses deeper, wider, and more liberal. It is often urged b}^ despots, Romanist and Rational- ist, "Why, since a man takes medicine, law, histor}'-, and science on authority, should he not likewise take divinity ? Why should the simple and ignorant presume to private judgment in theology, when a similar claim would be scouted in any other department of knowledge?" I answer — In so far as divinity is a science like other sciences, xii PREFACE TO PRESENT EDITION. private judgment is, as you assert, preposterous ; but whilst divinity is a science wherein a rascal may be as accomplished as a saint, it is much more than a science; else why does every Church attempt its universal propagation ? If divinity were like anatomy, ignorance regarding it might be endured with equal equanimity: but it is infinitely more. The knowledge of God in Jesus Christ is a science with which every soul is called to experimental acquaintance, and in this experimental acquaintance consists living faith, wherein peasant and primate stand on equal ground, and the verdict of one is worth as much as the other. We have to draw a clear line between authoritative and experimental knowledge. I believe a myriad things for which I have no evidence to offer save that I read or heard them on authoiity, good or doubtful. If on few or many points ray belief is proved erroneous, I accept the corrections with pleasure; the transaction is on the superficies of the mind — no blood is drawn. With experimental knowledge of the spiritual sort the case is widely different. Such know- ledge makes one with the heart, and to shake or remove it is to strike at the citadel of life. Not unfrequently in the course of recjeneration, the heart Jias to suffer division from cherished errors of ti'adition and education, and in the bitterness and sickness of the process we discover what a vital matter, in the highest sense, faith is. The end and promise of all religions is acquaintance with God. Man cries for God. Priests answer the cry, saying, Do this and say that, and you shall find Him; but their advice is too often illusor}^; it is as "when a thirsty man dreameth, and, behold, he drinketh; but he aivaheth, and, behold, he is faint, and his soul hath appetite." Is not England at this hour resonant with High Church- men who adjure us that God is properly gracious to those PREFACE TO PRESENT EDITION. Xlll only who have been sprinkled with water by certain officials, and is rightly known to those only who, after sprinkling, receive Hirn in bits of bread and sips of wine from the same official hands ? From every such limitation of our Father, Swedenborg comes as a strong deliverer. God our Father neither dwells in a palace, with priests for doorkeepers, nor is He an ethereal essence to be apprehended by intellectual straining or ascetic sublimation. God is Perfect Man who has shown Himself in Jesus Christ, and so shown Himself that we might never more have any difficulty in finding Him. Wherever there is love and wisdom, there is God ; where- ever there is love, there is Jesus ; wherever there is wisdom, there is Christ; whoever loves goodness loves Jesus; whoever loves wisdom loves Christ. The develop- ment of love and wisdom in mankind since the days of Tiberias Ctesar, has it been aught else than the ever- swelling, ever-brightening advent of Jesus Christ? No mere historical character is Jesus Christ, once here and gone, and henceforth an archaic type of perfection for the exercise of lively imaginations, constructive and de- structive. The true use of the Scriptures is that of an index to the world. They constitute a faithful picture of the Divine Manifestation and its Antagonists; but our business is not to loiter over the picture, but to use it as a guide to present realities; that is, for the discovery of Jesus Christ and His enemies in our heart, home, country, and world. There He is as veritably as ever He was in Jewry. Whoever uses the Scriptures thus will quickly accumulate evidence for their authority, which will at least bring peace to his own heart. There are many who tell us Christianity is exhausted ; that the Historical God, the Ethereal God, yea even the xiv PREFACE TO PRESENT EDITION. Unknown God, have grown obsolete; and that the answer of Culture in the future concerning Deity will be, " We know nothing about Him; neither whether He is, nor whether He is not." I apprehend no such paralysis of human nature, but regard these propliets as signs of the nearness of the day when the Creator will be more abundantly recognized as the life of His Creatures — identified with goodness and wisdom in Humanity, striving, crucified, glorified, world without end. 30 Thurlow Road, Hampstead, London, N.W., February, 1868. ILLUSTRATIONS. jEsrER SvEDBERG, BiSHOP OF SiCARA. — Frontispiece . Copied from a rare engraving in tlie possession of Dr. Garth Williinson. The transla- tion of the stanza in Swedish runs thus, literally — "//^/-c stands Herr Svedberg's imafje. in copper-plate, whose learning, and toisdom and zeal for Christ's flock are u-idely and most favourably knoion in the kingdom of Sweden, and will be in cedar-wood with eternal memory praised:" and tliat in German ih.ws,—^'' Hei-e stands the image {no metal can show the reality) of him who contains nothing but the fear of God and wisdom. Should manyiealk inhis footsteps, O how will then through tliee thy Zion, Sweden, rise.'" Emanuel Swedenborg, Page 57. Copied from the frontispiece of the Opera Philosophica et Mineralia. He was then in his forty-sixth year: in his eightieth, Cuno professed to discern a perfect likeness in this engraving : see p. 5G5. Swedenborg's House and Summer House, . . Page 504. Engraved frgian Bebelius, where he met and enjoyed the company of the learned Sebastian Schmidt. He used to speak in after-days of these two men as his spiritual fathers. Spener, the leader of the Pietists, he wished to visit, but he was ill in bed. At Mannheim he met a Lutheran clergyman who tried his patience sadly with a tedious disquisition concerning the then flagrant controversy as to the propriety of saying Unser Vater, Our Father, according to the German idiom, instead of Vater Unser, Father Our, as Luther had done, following the Latin Pater Noster. At Frankfort he saw Ludolph, the only man he met in all his journey who could talk Swedish. Ludolph had travelled in Sweden, liked the Swedes, but told Svedberg, to " my country's sliame, that there was no such thing as a Swedisli grammar in existence." Down the Rhine he passed into Holland, seeing its cities, and then by sea to Hamburg, where he lived for ten weeks in the house of Edzardius, a learned orientalist, zealous for the conversion of the Jews, and an indefatigable clergyman. He exercised tlie young people of his church every Sunday in the catechism, to Svedbero''s p-reat satisfaction. " It is not to be described," he writes, " how piously and seriously this holy man lived. He laid his hands every day on the heads of his children, and blessed them as Jacob did his sons, and Christ little children. God bless his soul, and give him His eternal rest!" Svedberg asked Edzardius what language we should use in Heaven. The doctor was silent. Then said Svedberg, " I think it will be the language of Angels. As the Angels speak Swedish when conversing with Swedes, German with the Germans, English with the English, and so on, I shall have to talk with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in Swedish, and they will answer in the same ; and when they talk to one another in Hebrew, I shall know what they say, for I understand that tongue." * * Sajs Emanuel Swedenborg, "Every Spirit and Angel, v»'lien convers- ing with a Man, speaks to him in his mother-tongue; thus French with a 6 SVEDBERGS REGIMENT. Svedberg's return to Stockholm was made glad by the sight of a son, born to him in the November of his absence. The year of travel he had enjoyed proved a seed-time in his existence; in it he acquired methods and impulses which through life he turned to fruitful ])ractice. To his regiment, consisting of 1,200 men, he resolv'ed to be a priest indeed, and commenced by exercising them thoroughly in the catechism. " To this," he tells us, " they were quite unused, so that when they saw me coming, as they afterwai'ds told me, they quivered more than they ever did before the enemy ; but when I commenced telling them in a quiet way stories from the Bible, and strengthening them in Christian faith and life, they began to like me so well that they did not care to go away when their time was up and anotlier detachment was coming in, so that between the two I was nearly trampled down. The officers, likewise, sat at the table listening and exchanging with me good and edifying words. At one yearl}' muster of the regiment I told them that next year I should give every man a catechism who could read print. I took down the names of all those who could then read, to the number of 300. Next year I found 600 so qualified, and it cost me 600 copper dollars to redeem my promise. I went immediately to King Charles XI. and told him of the expense I had incurred, and he at once took up his purse and gave me a handful of silver without counting it." The regiment did not occupy all his time, and he officiated as assistant to the court chaplain. His free and honest preaching won the King's heart, and he commanded his services as a regular chaplain. He pleaded hard in his sermons for strict ecclesiastical discipline, a sabbatical observance of Sunday, and other reforms, which, advocated with blunt fervour in the midst of transgressors, earned him much dislike and involved him in many troubles. One day the King told him, " Thou hast many enemies ;" to which Frenchman, English with an Englishman, Greek with a Greek, Arabic with an Arabian, and so f(n-th. With one another Spirits and Angels converse in a universal spiritual language, which every one after death utters spontaneously, without difficulty and without instruction." — Conjugial Love, No. 326. BIRTH OF EMANUEL. 7 he answered, " The servant of the Lord, your Majesty, is not good for much who has not enemies. Look at the prophets, apostles, and Christ Himself, what foes and detractors had they notl" On another occasion the King said, "Ask what you like and I will give it you." It required a strong head to carry such favour, but Svedberg appears to have been equal to it. "From that day," he tells us, "I became moi'e earnest and wary in all I said atid did. I asked nothing for myself or mine, no not even half a stiver ; but spoke to the King freely concerning men meritorious and men poor, and he alwaj^s attended to my desires. I also pleaded for his favour for schools, colleges, and the circulation of religious books. When he asked me who should be appointed to such and such a living, I named the person I thought, saying he is serious and one of the 'old sort,' and he straightway got the place. Hence many good men came into rich livings, to their happy surprise, and without any idea of who it was that had smgled them out for promotion. As I found every day freer access to his Majesty, I prayed with my whole heart unto God, that I might not become proud nor misuse my opportunities, but that He should apply me to His glory and service; and that I might fulfil my every duty with watchfulness, and never forget that court favour is variable, and that I was girt about with gossips and backbiters. Moreover, I laid down these two rules for myself; first. To meddle in no affairs political or mundane with which I had no business; and second, Never to speak ill of any one, should he even be my worst enemy and persecutor." In this time of royal favour, on the 29th of January, 1688, our hero, Svedberg's second son, was born. He called him Emanuel, a name, he thought, "which should continually remind him of the nearness of God, and of that interior, holy, and mysterious union in which, through faith, we stand to our good and gracious God." In 1690 the King appointed Svedberg to the rural living of Vingaker, but he did not leave Stockholm to occupy it until 1692. He found the wddow and children of his predecessor badly off, so he left them for a year in possession 8 svedberg's flock. of the parsonage, with its fields and meadows, allowed them half the income, and paid all their taxes; and, he says, "I lost nothing thereby ; for I am of the tirm o[)inion that one derives more blessings from the prayers of widows, orphans, and the wretched than from the richest living." His connection with the people at Vingaker was brief; but, he says, "the days I spent among them were the sweetest of my life. They received me as they might have done an Angel. My love for them, and theirs for me, was more than words can express. They pulled down the large, old, worn- out vicarage, and built me a new one, with many handsome rooms, without any cost to me worth mentioning. Scarcely a day passed in which they did not bring us more than was needful for our domestic economy ; a sort of kindness which at first gladdened me much, but afterwards oppressed and frightened me." They were a curious people at Vingaker. Queen Christina appointed Baazius, a young man, to the living. He went down to preach to his flock, and when service was over, asked how they liked him. All were silent. He repeated his question, but received no answer. Again he repeated it ; still there was no response. Then he said, " I can easily see I have not satisfied you; and be it so. I have been sent here by my Queen and Bishop, else I should not have come." Thereupon an old white-haired man stepped out of the crowd and said, "God be praised, you have a beard; you are welcome !" Baazius asked in amaze, "What do you want Avith my beard?" To this the ancient peasant answered " People said you were a child ; this is no parish for infants. God be thanked, you have a beard ; you are welcome. Give our compliments to the Queen, and thank her." S vedberg received offers of other livings, which he declined ; there was strife in one, and his acceptance of another would evoke envy. His sudden rise, his restless, outspoken, and aggressive character inevitably created enemies, and led him into many difficulties; but he conducted himself warily, and held his own successfully. "The more," he tells us, "I had to suffer from hatred and malice, the more I found the grace and love of God to overflow wnthin my heart." PROMOTIONS IN UPSALA. 9 When in Stockholm in the summer of 1G92 removing the last of his furniture to the new house at Vingaker, he was surprised by a letter from the King, appointing him third Professor of Theology at Upsala. He went straight to Charles and pleaded that he might be excused, as he had been quite unused to college work for full ten years. The King insisted on compliance, and Svedberg yielded, saying, " In God's name it cannot be helped. I shall do my best and fly to God for help; but your Majesty must protect my back." — "I will do that/' said the King. Svedberg stretched out his hand, saying, "Will your Majesty give me your hand as an assurance?" which Charles at once cordially did. The King showed him still further favour,* for, ere he had been a month settled in the University, he made him Rector of Upsala ; then his salary as Professor was increased ; the living of Dannmark, where he had officiated when a student, was presented to him; and in 1694 he was made first Pro- fessor of Theology and Dean of Upsala. One of Svedberg's fears about going to Upsala arose from the aversion which the dry scientific theologians who dwelt there had to his hearty religion, which they scoffed at as pietism. They spread a report through the University, that when the pietist Svedberg comes, no student will be allowed to wear a wig or carry a sword. About wigs and swords he did not trouble himself, and the "pietist" proved C[uite a favouiite with the students. Other affairs, greater than students' wigs and swords, disturbed his peace. It had been decided to revise the Swedish Bible and improve the translation, and a committee had been appointed for that purpose in 1686, and on it Svedberg was placed, on the 13th of August, 1691. To put Svedberg on a committee was equivalent to working it at high pressure ; and by the 22nd of June, 1692, the revised Bible was ready. George Burchardt, a German printer settled in Stockholm, was despatched abroad to buy paper, types, and tools for its production; and Svedberg, on the King's guarantee, supplied ready money for the undertaking out of his wife's and a ward's funds. Burchardt returned with one foreman and twelve printers, and a stock of paper shortly followed, which 10 svedberg's psalm book. had been purchased in Germany, Holland, and Basle. Mean- while grave doubts had been cast on the accuracy of the translation, and it was felt impossible to allow it to go to press. Delay followed delay, and the printers stood idle, to Svedberg's intense mortification. The new Bible did not appear until several years afterwards, and then with only a few alterations in orthography. Undeterred by this disappointment, he entered on the preparation of a new Psalm Book with a few associates. The Book was submitted to the Church, passed the ordeal of two committees, and was ordered to be printed. As soon as published trouble began. Shrieks arose that it was dotted thick with pietistic heresy. "Professor Crispin Jernfeldt of Dorpat," says Svedberg, " a quarrelsome, bold, and impudent man, wrote a great many scurrilous observations on the Psalm Book; and his kinsman, the Bishop of Westeras, sided with him, a prelate who had never done anything to advance religion, but spent his years in adding field to field, and bad stored up in his house whole chests of gold and silver." The friends and foes of the Psalm Book fought for some time with varied success. Jernfeldt told the King to his face that if he did not condemn the book, its heresies would cause a religious war; whereon the King seized him by the throat and dashed him against the wall. Jernfeldt was taken ill and in a few days died, and was proclaimed a martyr for orthodoxy. The upshot was, that after consultation with the bishops, the King thought it politic to prohibit the Svedbergian Psalm Book, as it was called. Burchardt, the printer, between the Bible and the Psalm Book, was ruined, and, relates Svedberg, "was never quite right in his head afterwards. I, too, lost much money, but God compensated me with full interest for all I suffered;" which, when we think of Burchardt, seems scarcely fair. It was at this painful juncture that the King made him Dean of Upsala, to his intense delight. " It is incredible and indescribable," he tells us, "what consolation and peace are felt by the servants of the Lord when raised in a high and holy calling; and contrariwise, how down-hearted they must be who experience no such elevation." THE FAMILY REGISTER. 11 Upsala was a pleasant city of some 5,000 inhabitants, set in a wide undulating plain, and made up of low-built houses of wood and stone surrounded with gardens. In the centre of the city stood the grand cathedral where Sweden's kings of old were crowned, and the bones of many rested. Built about this "beautiful house of God," in a spacious square, were the university buildings, two houses in which Svedberg ow-ned as professor and rector. Here our boy Emanuel spent his childhood and found his playground. Besides lecturing as professor, Svedberg was indefatigable as pastor. On all Sundays and holidays and every Friday he preached, and regularly catechized the students and youth of the city. His zeal was infectious. "All came willingly and joyfully; even the parents came unasked and stimulated their children." His house, we may readily imagine, was not a dull one ; for wherever Svedberg might be, he was an unfailing source of stir; and in addition, he had now eight or nine children to chase away any remnant of priestly or learned gloom Avhich might linger within the walls of an old house in Upsala Squai-e. There were boys Albrecht, Emanuel, Eliezer, and Jesper, and Daniel who died in babyhood ; and girls Anna, Hedwig, Catharina and Margaretta. To find room for this large company he pulled down one of his houses, and set about rebuilding it on a more commodious scale. About the names of his children the Bishop gossips so pleasantly that we may listen to him for a little — "Moreover, I kept myself humble, and sought no sponsors of rank for my children, as many do. I shall give the reasons wh}^ I called my sons, Emanuel, Eliezer, and Jesper, and none after their gi-andfathers, or any others of the family. (Albrecht, the eldest, was born during my travels in foreign parts, and his mother named him after her father.) I do not find in the whole Bible a single case in which children received the names of their parents or forefathers. I will only mention the patriarch Jacob and King David. The former had holy, celebrated, glorious ancestors, and he had twelve sons, not one of whom was called Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob. King David had also many sons, not one of whom 12 children's names. he called Jesse or David. Solomon bad also many sons, none of whom he called David, Jesse, or Solomon, and among his numerous descendants there were many kings and princes, and not one was called Solomon or David. This good custom had however given way before the time of Christ, as is evident from the history of John the Baptist, whom at first they wished to name after his father Zacharias, which is a noble and significant name, memorla domini, in order that he might be ever mindful of the Lord. " Hereby I do not presume to censure those who call their children after their own names; yet I hope and expect that nobody will blame my manner, since I have the Bible and the examples of many saints on my side. I have the full conviction that only such names should be given to children as may awaken in them the fear of God, and keep them mindful of propriety and virtue ; and not, as many thought- less parents do, give improper names to their children, forgetting the answer which a bad name enabled the prudent Abigail to uive to Kino; David concerning her husband Nabal (which means folly, in Hebrew). 'Let not my Lord, I pray thee, set his heart against this man of Belial, even Nabal: for as his name is, so is he; Nabal is his name, and folly is with him.' "Eliezer, my son's name, signifies 'God is my help;' and God has been his friend and has graciously helped him. He was a pious child, made good progress, and was called liome by a happy death in the twenty-fifth year of his age. "Jesper, my youngest son, was called after me merely because he was born on the same day and in the same hour as myself, who first saw the light of the world on the 2Sth of August, 1653. " I am a Sunday child, and my wife, the mother of my children, was also a Sunday child, and all my children are Sunday children, except Catharina, who was born at Upsala on the .3rd day of Easter. "I have never had my daughters in Stockholm, where many reside in order to learn fine manners, but where they also learn much that is worldly and hurtful to the soul." Emanuel's theology. 13 Emanuel, writing long afterwards in his old age to Dr. Beyer, describes his thoughts in these Upsala years — '•'With regard to what passed in the earliest part of my life, about which you wish to be informed : from my fourth to my tenth year m}^ thoughts were constantly engrossed in reflecting on God, on Salvation, and on the Spiritual Affec- tions of Man. I often revealed things in my discourse which filled my parents with astonishment, and made them declare at times that certainly the Angels spoke through my mouth. "From my sixth to my twelfth year it was my greatest delight to converse with the Clergy concerning Faith; to whom I often observed that Charity or Love is the Life of Faith, and that this quickening Charity or Love is no other than the Love of one's Neighbour; that God vouchsafes this Faith to every one; but that no one obtains it unless he practises that Charity. "I knew no other belief at that time, than that God is the Creator and Preserver of Nature ; that He gives Men under- standing and good inclinations, and other gifts derived from these. "I knew nothing at that time of the systematic or dog- matic kind of Faith which teaches that God the Father imputes the righteousness or merits of the Son to whomso- ever, and at whatsoever time. He wills, even to the impeni- tent: and had I heard of such a Faith, it would have been then, as now, quite unintelligible to me." Writing about the same time of the Trinity, and opposing the notion of there being three persons or three gods in the Godhead, he remarks — " From my earliest years I could never admit into my mind the idea of more gods than one ; and I have always received, and do still retain, the idea of one God alone." * A precocious child, indeed, and badly instructed for a Pro- testant clergyman's son! some will exclaim. As to the precocity, we must remember that the Bible and theology were the perjietual talk of his father's house; that he, his brothers, and sisters almost lived in the church, and were daily hearing or talking about sermons; that they * True Christian Beligion, No. 16, publisliecl 177 L 1-i DEATH OF Emanuel's mother. were constantly under interrogation as to what they learnt ; and that Emanuel's thoughts were still further stimulated by the admiration which heard the Angels in his utter- ances. Into these memories of his childhood Swedenboi-g inserted the doctrine of his prime. Unquestionably that doctrine was rooted in his young thoughts; but we are not to believe that he delivered it in stiff phrases about "the Spiritual Affections of Man," telling the Clergy that " Charity or Love is the Life of Faith," and that " God vouchsafes this Faith alone to those who love their Neighbours," and so on. When he wrote out these recollections he had forgotten how children talk, and although we may find in them the matter of his young thought, we need not suppose that he reproduced the manner. To childhood the deepest questions of life present them- selves bodily, and we esteem that manhood happy which is able to unravel and understand some members thereof I know a child who is now wondering why God does not kill the Devil. That little boy may live to fourscore, and become learned in all the lore of the universities, but his skill will be thought great if he can demonstrate, in a few cases. Why the Divine Wisdom suffers error, sin, disease, and pain to exist; or, in other words, Why God does not kill the Devil. About Emanuel there was a strange peculiarity in his respiration. He could hold his breath for a long time with- out any sense of suffocation. When on his knees at morn- ing and evening prayers, and when absorbed in thought, the action of his lungs became suspended or tacit, as is the case with one in a trance. This ftict should be noted, as it will re-appear with important consequence. The summer 1G9G was a sad one in the home in Upsala Square. On the 17th of June, Svedberg's wife died, leaving him a widower with eight children, the eldest of whom was not yet twelve. Of her he wrote, "Although she was the daughter of an Assessor and the wife of a Rector in Upsala and of a wealthy family, she never dressed extravagantly. As every woman in those days wore a sinful and trouble- some /ontajif/e or top-knot, she was obliged to do as others SVEDBERG AND CHARLES XI. 15 did : but hearing that a cow in the island of Gothland had, with great labour and pitiable bellowing, brought forth a calf with a top-knot, she took her own and her girls' hoods and threw them all into the fire ; and she made a vow that she and her daughters, as long as they were under her authority, should never more put such things on their heads." Sorrow was not exhausted in the loss of the wife and mother. Ere six weeks had elapsed, Albrecht fell sick and died. As he lay on his death-bed, Svedberg asked him what he should do in Heaven. " I will pray for thee, dear father, and for my brothers and sisters." Svedberg pondered these words of Albrecht in his heart. They confirmed his belief that death effects no division of life, and that intercourse and service are possible between Angels and Men ; and he composed an epitaph on his wife and son, commending himself and his children to their prayers. No sooner was it set up than an outcry was raised, that Professor Svedberg had turned Papist and had taken to the invocation of saints. The tale was carried to the King, and into his presence Svedberg followed it. " Do you not believe," he asked, " that the late Queen, your wife, prays for you and your children in the Kingdom of Heaven?" He desired the King that he might be allowed to illustrate and defend his position in a public discourse, but Charles, knowing the mischievous controversy he would excite, repressed his ardour and hushed up the scandal. Charles died in 1697, leaving a settled and prosperous dominion to his son Charles XII., a boy of fifteen. He is reputed to have been a harsh king, doing justice, with little mercy. To Svedberg he was ever friendly and accessible. Shortly before his death he said to him, " I have ruled in Sweden three and twenty years. When I first became King I trusted everybody, now I trust nobody." To which Svedberg replied, " That is not right. I'o trust everybody is foolish ; for there are many wicked and silly people." — " The world is full of them," interposed Charles. " But to trust nobody," continued Svedberg, " is very bad ; for there are many good, honest, and wise men." — " Ah, it is now too late!" said the King. J (J AN EXTRAORDINARY MARRIAGE. SvEDBERG found he could not get on without a wife. The story of his second courtship he must tell for himself The lady was the daughter of a clergyman, and had been twice a widow before Svedberg fancied her, liaving been married first to a merchant and then to a judge. " On St. Andrew's Day, 1697, I celebrated, in a blessed hour, my wedding with mj'' second most beloved wife, Mrs. Sara Bergia. I was not acquainted with her; I had never seen her, and did not know that she existed. I was unex- pectedly informed of her piety, meekness, and liberality to the poor; that she was well off, good-looking, a thrifty housewife, and without children; in a word, she seemed a woman that would suit me well. I wrote to her, laying bare my thoughts, and she acceded to my request. Two days before the wedding I went to Stockholm, whither she also, by agreement, repaired. I was put into a room where she was sitting alone, but I did not know and never imafrined it was she, for no one had told me. I sat down beside her. We conversed for a long time about sundry matters, I talking to her as a perfect stranger. At length she said, ' What do you think of our bargain, Mr. Professor ?' I replied, 'To what bargain do you refer?'- — 'That which you have written about,' she said. 'What have I written to you about ? I do not know what you mean.'—' Are we not,' she said, 'to be man and wife to-morrow?' — 'Are you that person!' I exclaimed, and then we jumped up and confii^med our friendship by shaking hands, and with a loving embrace." His new house in Upsala Square was completed towards the end of 1698. Of its erection he wrote, "I was con- stantly watching it, and am sure and can truly affirm that no hewing was done, and no stone set in its place with groans and unwilling minds, but all was carried on with diligence and joy. No noise was heard, no squabbles, no reviling, no curses." His house-warming was characteristic. He invited all that could leave the hospital, and the paupers of Upsala. He feasted them, and he, his wife and children waited at table. "Everything passed off decently, and the , day was wound up with song, prayers, and mutual blessings." ' SVEDBERG AND CHARLES XII. 17 Presuming on the youth of Charles XII., the King of Denmark, Peter the Czar of Russia, and the King of Pohmcl conspired to pkmder Sweden of various out-lying territories. They little imagined the energies hidden in the Boy King, and the terrible disasters their craft would draw upon them. They provoked Charles to war, and in war Charles found the exercise and delight of his nature ; "the whistle of bullets shall henceforth be my music," he said. The wild wars of the young King pinched Sweden sorely. The Clergy contributed one-tenth of their incomes to the State ; but Charles demanded a second tenth. The threatened exaction caused some of them to lay a complaint before the Chapter of Upsala. The Archbishop, a timid creature, advised his brethren to suffer quietly, and not embarrass the King when he was preparing for war. At this speech, up rose Svedberg and replied, that if the Clergy sought unfair relief they ought to be admonished ; but if fair, the Chapter had no other choice than to lay their case before the King. "Well," said the Chapter, "if you are bold enough, j^ou had better go and see the King." — " Bold I am," replied Svedberg, " when duty prompts. Give me authority, and I will go to the King, confiding in God." His offer was at once accepted. He started off to see Charles at Kungsor, where he found all busy preparing for a masquerade on Sunday. "Cannot you preach the masquerade out of the head of the King and his suite?" he asked the astonished clergyman of the place. "Since you cannot, then I will try ;" and he preached a ser- mon with his accustomed plainness and warmth against "the profanation of the Sabbath by such sports." " I fear," said he, " if the masquerade go on, Sweden will never forget the bloody shirts that will come out of this war." To his joy, the masquerade was abandoned ; whereon he i-emarks, " A zealous Samuel or Nathan is a means of welfare to any kingdom, whilst a smooth-tongued Uriah works no end of evil." Svedberg sent his petition to the King, writing under his name, 1 Moses xlvii. 22, " What does that mean ? " said c 18 SVEDBERG MADE BISHOP. Charles. " It will be his cipher," said Count Piper. Some one looked at a Bible and read, " Only the land of the Priests bought Joseph not ; for the Priests had a portion assigned them by Pharaoh, and did eat their portion which Pharaoh gave them : wherefore the}^ sold not their lands." Then said Charles, " Let the Clergy alone, and let them be taxed no more than before." With this decision Svedberg returned in triumph to his brethren. His connection with Upsala came to an end in 1702 ; his 3^ears of service in the city and university he speaks of with much satisfaction : " During the ten years I spent there, God favoured me so much that there was nothing but peace and goodwill among the teachers and student.s, although before Upsala had been a place of strife and bitterness." A few days before he received notice of removal to a higher sphere, his houses were burnt down. A fire swept round the square, and laid the cathedral in ruins. All his furniture and books were saved " by the matchless love and darinsf of the students." He wrote at OTcat leno'th to the Princess Ulrika Eleonora, describing the conflagration and praying for relief for the sufferers. He ascribes the disaster to " the huge sins of the people ; " they are indifferent to the pulpit, therefore " God preaches to them in this horrible fire." His own loss he reckons trifling, " if only the beautiful house of the Lord had been allowed to stand ; a house which was the glory of Sweden." He owns that in time of war it is hard to afford means of help ; "but the money squandered on play-actors in Stockholm might well be put to better purposes." He ends in asking the throne " to take pity on a shepherd of a miserable flock wailing in ashes," and sub- scribes himself, " Jesper Svedberg, a very greatl}'' afflicted curer of souls." The woes of Upsala were ministered to, though happil}^ not at the cost of the players. He was appointed Bishop of Skara by Charles XII., in a letter dated from Pracja, near Warsaw. Writing; of his elevation, he says, " It was wholly unexpected. I can say with a clear conscience before God, who knows all, that I never asked for it, or opened my mouth about it, or took a HARDSHIPS OF CLERGY. 19 step to get it; and still less paid one farthing; for I have always been an enemy to runners and buyers." As soon as he was settled at Brunsbo, the seat of the bishops of Skara, he set out on a visit to every priest in his diocese, and repeated the circuit yearly, making his hand felt in the remotest corners. He set up a printing office for his sermons, books, and tracts. He shi])ped large numbers of his condemned Psalm Book to America, where it was freely used by the Swedish colonists. Missions to the heathen he longed to set on foot, but was met with little but apathy. He succeeded in sending a few clergymen to the American Indians; and for his efforts and goodwill the English Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts elected him one of their members. The bishopric of Skara did not render him a whit more courtly. The mad exploits of Charles drained Sweden cruelly of men and mone}^ He issued a decree that every rector of a parish should fit out a dragoon, and every curate a foot soldier. This Svedberg thought a merciless infliction; and he says, " I took courage unto myself, and, seeking the help of God, sat down and wrote to Charles XH., then in Poland, a mightily serious and powerful letter, dated 21st Dec, 1705." He told the King that the Clergy were as willing as any of his people to help him to their utmost in his wars, and they only desired to be dealt with equitably; but the equipment of dragoons and soldiers was intolerable. " If the least thing is wanting in their accoutrements, a clergyman has to hear and swallow hard words, scoffs and snubbing at the mustering table, whilst peasants and others stand by grinning and showing their white teeth. Hence the priesthood is brought into contempt, the Holy Ghost is angered, and pastors lose control over their flocks." He then describes how the men-servants of parsons are carried off for soldiers, so that parsons have to gather sticks in the woods, ]ilough, thresh corn, clean out stables, and perform other menial services. " I have myself seen grey-headed servants of the Lord driving oxen at the plough until the}'^ dropped down with fiitigue, and remained lying on the ground. The Clergy are forced to think more of guns, swords, and 20 SVEDBERG AN EXORCIST carbines, than of the Word of God, and have to waste their time in galloping about to musterings and reviews. Poor curates cannot buy the books their duties require; they have no decent broadcloth coats and cloaks, but go about in plain home-spun ; and some have had to borrow money at usury, and even to sell their Bibles, in order to rig out a soldier. Such recruits can bring no luck in battle." This letter he read to the Chapter of Skara and asked them to sign it ; but they demurred, fearing to give offence to the King. "What have we to fear?" he pleaded; "we can be no worse than snubbed, and that will be the end of it." After much persuasion the whole Chapter signed the letter. Charles wrote home to afford the Clergy whatever relief was possible; but as there were few consummate grumblers like Svedberg, nothing was taken from their burdens. He had two dragoons saddled on him, although by order of the King he was exempt, being a sufferer by the Upsala fire. " But," says he, " I paid and said nothing, for charity boareth all things, and seeketh not her own." There is an anecdote told of Svedberg's supernatural credulity. Praying alone one evening in a church, a young man called to him from aloft, " Svedberg, to-morrow thou shalt die." He heard the voice as that of an Angel, and went home and solemnly made preparation for death. He himself gives several accounts of exorcism and cures he effected. " There was brought to me a maid-servant named Ker.stin, possessed with Devils in mind and body. I caused her to kneel down with me and pray, and then I read over her, and she arose well and hearty, and quite delivered. Three years after, Kerstin entered my service- One day .she quarrelled with a fellow-servant, and went out threatening to commit suicide by suffocation in a kiln. I was writing in my study, and felt restless and anxious, and thoughts of Kerstin without cause kept flashing across my mind. At last 1 could bear it no longer and I went into the kitchen and asked, 'Where is Kerstin?' — ' O,' said her neighbour, ' she has not been here for some time ; she went out, saying she would go to the kiln and choke herself I ran to the kiln and found Kerstin lying in the smoke AND WORKER OF MIRACLES. 21 senseless. She was carried into the house, and pnt in a bed like a piece of wood. Then after awhile I called to her in a loud voice, ' Wake up, and arise in the name of Jesus Christ ! ' Immediately she recovered, got up, and com- menced to talk. Then I strengthened her with the Word of God, and gave her a good deal of Ehenish wine ; after which she went about her duties as usual." Again he tells, " There was a rumour spread about me in Holland, England, and elsewhere, that I had driven out the Devil through a little hole in the window, who had come to me in the shape of an officer, and argued with me about the state of Sweden, and how the war would end. Perhaps it grew out of this true occurrence — There was at Skara a woman who, for her terrible crimes, was to be executed. She would not confess, and, after a chaplain had laboured with her long and without effect, she was brought to me under guard. I took her into my study, and there spoke to her the Word of God in the most moving manner, and at last brouofht her to confess all, and more than she was accused of, and to repent sincerely. I assured her, by virtue of my office, that she was pardoned, and on the following day she bravely met her fate. Glory to God alone ! " One of my servants had a dreadful pain in her elbow. It was much swollen, and nothing we applied did it any good, and for days and nights she went about moaning with- out rest or sleep. At midnight she came to tlie room where I was lying asleep with my beloved wife, and prayed that I would for the sake of Christ take away her pain, or she must go and kill herself I rose, touched her arm, and commanded the pain in the name of Jesus Christ to depart, and in a moment the one arm was well as the other. Glory to God alone ! " Svedberg was less a theologian than a zealous spiritual man of business. Merely speculative theology he abhorred as "Devil Faith," and thought "a man might hold any quantity of it, and yet it could not keep him from sinking into hell." Preaching and catechising, writing and printing were his passion, and he kept stirring up his clergy to similar labours. Repose he knew not. " Never," he writes, " was 22 ADMINISTRATION OF PATRONAGE. miser more covetous of money than I have been of time. I have never willingly wasted an hour, and when others have done so for me, great has been my indignation and pain." Again, he says, "A bishop has far more to do than sit in his Chapter and be bowed to, and consecrate priests, preach funeral sermons for big fees, travel from house to house in pleasant weather, and look out fat places for his own children and grandchildren." We can well believe him when he tells us, " My greatest difficulty as bishop has been to fill vacan- cies with able and faithful clergymen. In Sweden it has come to be thought that any young man who has gone through the regular university course is tit to minister for God, and that no bishop dare refuse him. I have suffered much because I would not promote to livings at the desire of noblemen and ladies. To such an extent has this been the case, that scarcely a vacancy in my diocese has been filled up without drawing upon me the enmity of some lady or gentleman, count or countess, general or colonel, and I do not know of whom besides, because I would not do them a good turn by providing some minion with a place." When he felt the claims of candidates so equally balanced that he could not decide, he drew lots. In illustration of the scrupulous way in which he exer- cised his episcopal patronage, and at the same time of his tact, take this anecdote : One day at court the Princess Ulrika Eleonora kindly inquired concerning the welfare of his wife and children. " I have a daughter here," he said, " and also her husband, Jonas Unge. Will you graciously permit them to come into your presence ? "• — " Yes, willingly, by all means," she replied. "What living has he?" she asked. "He is my assistant." — " Assistant, do you say ?" — " Yes, your Highness, he has the misfortune to be my son-in- law ; otherwise he should have had a living long ago, for he is a learned, travelled, and able man." She then asked if no suitable living in her gift was vacant, and Wanga was named. " Let him first preach before your Highness, and try his quality," interposed Svedberg. This she allowed, and he got the living of Wanga and the promise of a better as soon as a better became vacant. MISCELLANEOUS ACTIVITIES. 23 His tithes he never exacted. What was brouo-ht he took thankfully, but would not go to law with defaulters. Yet he condemned none of his brother prelates who saw fit to act differently ; though he sometimes dryly remarked, that he had abundantly seen the truth of an old saying, " There is no end to the love of God and the greed of priests." "I have never refused or denied any one his right. I have willingly taken up the cause of the poor and oppressed. No one, however humble, has stood waiting at my door, but has been called in at once to my presence and got an answer, and his case discussed at the next Chapter. For these purposes the Most High has made us bishops, not to strut in. our dignity, and have people bowing and curtseying to us; but to hear and assist every one to the full extent of our power." The care of the poor occupied much of his thought, and he strove hard to put down begging, by regular and discriminating charity. He wished to reduce the number of saints' days, which he denounced as mere excuses for idle- ness and drinking, and instead to keep Sundays as Sabbaths. Public penance in church on the cutty-stool he " abhorred— for it makes culprits shameless and hardened, instead of tender and truly repentant." The purity of the Swedish language was another of his concerns. It was, he thought, in a state of rapid corruption from the crude absorption of French words, against which practice he firmly set his face, and published a work on the subject, entitled Shibboleth, which provoked much contradic- tion. In 1722 he produced a Swedish grammar, the first ever printed, and left in manuscript, A complete Stuedish Dictionary, every SivedisJt luorcl in which is extruded from the Holy Stvedish Bible and books contemporaneous with it, and interpreted in Latin, and elaborated with great care. Next to churches, schools held a prominent place in his heart. To open new ones and extend and improve old ones was his constant effort. The common methods of teaching he thought very bad, and as a step towards better ones he published, A Book of Sentences for Grammar Schools, in wJtich, in a light and jovial manner, Latin, Greek, and some Hebrew may be learnt. The merciless use of the rod, which 24 EMANUEL SAILS FOR ENGLAND. was worked like a flail in many of the schools, he tried to supersede by prizes. Writing to the King for money to pur- chase prizes, having himself given all he could spare, he says, " And now a higher hand is wanted ; not such a hand as I had to feel in my youth, when everything I learnt was driven in posteriorly : " he seems never to have forgotten his own early school-days under Ill-Peter's stick. CHAPTER II. FATHER AND SON. Emanuel was educated at Upsala, Nothing is known of his career at the university. He printed in 1709 a selection of sentences from Seneca and Publius Syrius Mimus, used as texts for comments of his own on friendship, filial love, and other virtues. At the same time he published, in a work of his father's, a Latin version of the twelfth chapter of Ecclesiastes. It was resolved that he should go abroad for a few years, and in a journal he gives this account of his first voyage — "In 1710 I set out for Gottenburg, that I might be con- veyed by a ship thence to London. On the voyage my life was in danger four times : first on some shoals towards which we were driven by a storm until we were within a quarter of a mile from the raging breakers, and we thought we should all perish. Afterwards we narrowly escaped some Danish pirates under French colours ; and the next evening we were fired into from a British ship which mis- took us for the same pirates, but without much damage. Lastly, in London itself I was exposed to a more serious danger. While we were enterintr the harbour some of our countrymen came to us in a boat, and persuaded me to go with them into the city. Now, it was known in London that an epidemic was raging in Sweden ; therefore all who arrived from Sweden were forbidden to leave their ships for six weeks or forty days ; so I, having transgressed this law, MEN AND SIGHTS IN LONDON. 25 was very near being hanged, and was only freed under the condition, that if any one attempted the same thing again, he shoukl not escape the gallows." In London and Oxford he spent more than a year, seeing every sight and man of note he could. London was then a city of half-a-million inhabitants, about equal to the Man- chester or Glasgow of to-day. St. Paul's Cathedral was completed, after being thirty-five years in building ; and we can fancy Emanuel wandering in its aisles and catching a glimpse of Wren. Addison and Steele were busy with their Spectator, and he may have taken lessons in English out of its pages damp from the press. Swift was writing his weekly Examiner, serving his new friends the Tories against his old ones the Whigs. Defoe was also busy with politics, arguing for the Hanoverian succession and getting shut up in his prison for his pains. Pope was amazing the town with his Pastorals, his Essay on Criticism, and his Rajpe of the Lock. Dr. Isaac Watts was preaching to large congregations in Mark Lane. Sacheverell's sermons were burnt by the hang- man in front of the Exchange, whilst the London m_ob testi- fied admiration for church and champion in riot, drink, and bonfires. Another sight, curious and memorable, he may have witnessed. Anne was Queen ; and from Lichfield to London, a weary journey of one hundred and nineteen miles, came Mrs. Johnson with her son Samuel, a heavy child, thirty months old, sorely afflicted with the king's evil, to be touched by Anne for his cure. Years after the Doctor used to say, he " had a confused but somewhat solemn recollec- tion of the Queen as a lady in diamonds and long black hood." Literature had not for Emanuel the same charm as science. Mathematics, astronomy, and mechanics were his chosen studies, and he eagerly sought the acquaintance of those who were masters in them. He visited John Flamsteed at the Greenwich Observatory. The Royal Society in 1710 moved from Gresham College to a house in Crane Court, oflT Fleet Street, in the middle of the town and out of noise ; and there he would see Sir Isaac Newton sitting president in his seventieth year, with Sir Hans Sloane as secretary, 26 SVEDBERG AGAIN BURNT OUT. and surrounded by tlie savans of the time. In his visit to Oxford he met Edmund Halley, a man second only to New- ton, who was striving to discover a method of finding the longitude by the moon: a problem Emanuel himself will strugcjle with from time to time far into his old aofe. He sailed for Holland in 1711. He was at Utrecht while the Congress of Ambassadors from all the European Courts assembled to consunnnate that peace which gave Spain to the Bourbons and nullified Marlborough's victories. Through Brussels he went to Paris, and in Paris and Versailles lived a year. There he would see Louis XIV. taking to piety in the last years of his long life, " with his Missal and his Main- tenon, looking back with just horror on Europe, four times set ablaze for the sake of one poor mortal in big periwig, to no purpose." In Paris he made the acquaintance of Pierre Varignon, a laborious student and mathematician, and at his house met the pleasant Fontenelle, the man of taste and wide information. From Paris he went by coach to Hamburg, and thence to Pomerania, a German Province on the Baltic, subject to Sweden, a conquest of Gustavus Adolphus. There, in the little sea-side university town of Griefsvalde, he took up his abode, waiting until his father should find for him some work at home; "alternating mathematics with poetry in my studies," as he states in one of his letters. Meanwhile his father was in great distress. His house at Bransbo in 1712 met the fate of his house at Upsala in 1702, and all his furniture perished in the flames. In a letter to the Princess Ulrika Eleonora, he deplores his "sins which have moved God to such wrath," but thanks Him inasmuch as " He maintains my courage." He continues, "The fire broke out in my study, which was all ablaze when we got to it with my library and manuscripts ; but, strange to say, the Garden of Paradise by John Arndt, and my own Catechism were found in the ashes with only their covers singed. From this I conclude that God does not disown my trifling labours, and I am encouraged to persevere in the use of those powers which He has given me. Would that He had only allowed me to keep my little hand Bible APPEALS FOR ASSISTANCE. 27 which I had carried for forty-four years, and which I valued more than a hundred other volumes!" !N^ot onl}^ liis Catechism and Arndt's Garden of Paradise escaped, but in the prefoce to the Catechism he says, "There was also found among the ashes my portrait on a copper- plate uninjured, though somewhat darkened by smoke; yet in a room close by, a copper kettle full of water was melted. Special subscriptions were commanded for the rebuilding of Brunsbo, but all was not done that Svedberg required. He therefore addressed the following letter to the Govern- ment in the name of Charles XII., who was then an exile in Turkey — Eanaker, llth March, 1712. " Most Mighty King, Most Gracious Lord — My disposition, thank God, has ever been far from selfish, and for this cause He has most richly blessed me. By His help I have been able to spend lai'ge suras in printing expensive books for the service of His Church and the edification of many souls. Were I to continue this expenditure when misfortune and miseiy cry aloud, I should yield my people to wretchedness, and were I to keep resolute silence, I should be lost in despair. I am thei-efore forced to complain, and bring my necessities before those who are bound by their position under God to succour them who are in distress, and who cannot therefore allow me or mine to go to ruin. " Your Royal Highness gives proof of your sovereign grace and tenderness in ordering special subscriptions to be made for the complete restoration of the episcopal palace ; but I, my wife and children, oh! most gracious King, are going about little short of naked; neither have I a single book which my office demands. "When the house is ready, there will be furniture to be thought of: chests, cupboards, tables, table-cloths, beds, bed- linen, bed-curtains, dishes, plates, and various other things, required in such an establishment. " I have, O King, two 3'oung sons who have been brought up for your Majesty's service. One of twenty -four years of 28 SVEDBERG IMPORTUNATE. age is now in England pursuing his studies, another of seventeen is in Pomerania with the army, I must not see them want. "Jesper Svedberg." Ahout the origin of the fire he told a queer story — "One summer day when coming out of Asaka church, I saw a crowd in the corner of the church-yard. When we got home I asked my servant what was the matter. ' O,' said he, ' it was a man possessed with the Devil, and when he saw you coming out of church he cried, " You grey-headed old fellow with the short hair, you took a steak out of me, but I'll serve you out yet ! " ' I discovered afterwards that he had kept company with the female sinner whom I brought to repentance before her execution, and that he came along with her on that occasion, but was unable to approach any nearer my house than the gate. When she came out from me he had no more power over her, and from that hour he cursed and hated me. His revenge was probably gratified in God granting him power, as in the case of Job, to destro}'- Brunsbo, with all my property. The fire broke out at mid- night in my study, in the very place where the woman was converted; but he did not gain much thereby. God granted unto me, as unto Job, twice as much as before, and a far handsomer and more convenient mansion." As time went on, he beo:an to sjrow anxious concerninof Emanuel's settlement in life, and again applied to the King. " Brunsbo, 21st October, 1714. " Most Mighty King, Most Gracious Lord — I have a son Emanuel who has been for four years pursuing his studies in England, Holland, and France, and is now staying, I believe, at Rostock or Griefsvalde. In mathematics and mechanics he may, with God's help, be useful to your Majesty either at the Academy or elsewhere. "Jesper Svedberg." Apparently no answer was given to this, for within five weeks he repeats his request. EMANUEL'S NOTIONS. 29 " Brunsbo, 25th November, 1714. " Most Mighty and Gracious King — In my last humble memorial I mentioned, that I have a son Emannel who has been for four years abroad in England, Holland, and France, and is now living at Griefsvalde. He has made good use of his time, is master of the requisite languages, and is expert in mathematics and mechanics. If your Royal Majesty has need of such a one, I assure you he will give you satisfaction. "Jesper Svedberg." Of Emanuel at Griefsvalde we learn some things from a letter, undated, addressed by him to Eric Benzelius, who had married his eldest sister, Anna. "Honoured and dear Brother — I am very glad I have come to a place where I have leisure to arrange my works and ideas, which until now have been scattered here and ther-e on scraps of paper. I have produced the following mechan- ical contrivances — ■ " I. A sort of ship in which a man can go below the surface of the sea and do great damage to the fleet of an enemy. " II. A new form of syphon whereby a large quantit}^ of water may be raised from a river to a lofty situation in a short time. " III. Weights lifted by w^ater by this syphon with great ease. " IV. Sluices where there is no fall of water, by means of which large ships with their cargoes may be raised to any height within an hour or two. " V. A machine driven by fire for pumping water and lift- ing at forges where the water has no fall. " VI. A bridge which can be opened and shut. "VII. New machines for condensing and exhausting air by means of water. Also a new pump acting by water and mercury without any syphon, and which has many advan- tages over the common kind. "VIII. A new construction of air-guns by which a thousand balls may be discharged through one tube in a moment. " IX. A universal musical instrument whereon the most 30 EMANUEL S LOYALTY. inexperienced musician can execute all the modulations of notation. " X. A method of delineating houses on any surface by fire. " XI. An aquatic clock in which water replaces the index, and by its course shows the motion of the planets and pro- duces other curious effects. " XII. A chariot containing all kinds of tools set in action by the movement of the horses. Likewise a chariot for floating and moving through the air. " XIII. A method of discovering the desires and affections of the mind by analysis. "XIV. New methods of making chords and their properties. " I have furnished the whole of them with algebraic and numeral calculations, whence I have deduced the proportions, motion, times, and all the properties which they ought to possess. Moreover, I have some papers on the analytical sciences and astronomy, which require their own place and time. O, how greatly I desire, my dearest brother, to sub- mit all these matters to your inspection ; but as I cannot show you the actual machines, I will at least send you the draw- ings of them on which I am occupied daily." In another letter to Benzelius enclosing "a plan for an air pump worked b}'' water," he observes, "I am relieving these mathematical studies with poetry. I have published one or two pieces, and I have in the press some fables, like those of Ovid, under which the deeds of some kings and great people ai'e hidden." He published the fables in Latin prose at Griefsvalde in 1715, under the title of, Camena Borea cum heroum et heroiduTYi factis ludens : sive Fabellce Ovidianis similes ; and at the same time an Oration, fervid with patriotism, on the return of Charles XII. from Turkey, under these circum- stances — Charles invaded Russia, and at Pultowa was utterly routed by Peter. He fled into Turkey, and the Sultan assigned him a residence at Bender, and a pension. For five years he fretted in exile. His army was annihilated; his continental provinces were annexed by his adversaries; and his wiser Emanuel's return home. 31 Swedish subjects, worn out and disgusted, were not unwilling to see his face no more. But Charles " ended this obstinate torpor at last ; broke out of Turkish Bender, or Demotica. With a groom or two, through desolate steppes and mountain wildernesses, through crowded dangerous cities, he rode without pause, forward, ever forward in darkest incognito, the indeffitigable man — and finally, on Old Hallowmas Eve (November, 1714), far in the night, a horseman, with two others still following him, travel-splashed, and white with snow, drew bridle at the gate of Stralsund, and, to the surprise of the Swedish sentinel there, demanded instant admission to the Governor. The Governor, at first a little surly of humour, saw gradually liow it was, sprang out of bed, and embraced the knees of the snowy man ; Stralsund in general sprang out of bed, and illuminated itself that same Hallow-Eve — and, in brief, Charles XII., after five years of eclipse, has re-appeared upon the stage of things ; and menaces the world, in his old fashion, from that City." * Stralsund was the only place in Pomerania left to the Swedes. Well fortified, almost surrounded by lake and sea, it was supposed inaccessible. Here Charles was quickly environed by numerous foes. Griefsvalde was only fifteen miles from Stralsund, and as the country grew hot with armies, young Svedberg deemed it prudent to be oft'; he therefore, in the spring of 1715, got on board a small vessel, crossed the Baltic, and reached home safely. The Bishop Avas glad to see his son again, but was troubled that he should now be twenty-seven, with nothing to do. King Charles had a world in arms against him, yet he might spare a thought for " my son Emanuel." He thinks there can be no harm in trying, and to Lord Lieutenant Pfifl^, who is with Charles in his German fortress, he addresses a letter wherein occurs this passage — " Brunsbo, 1 '2th July, 1715. " May it please your Excellency — My sou Emanuel, after five years' foreign travel, has at length returned home. I * Carlyle's Frederick the Oreat, vol. i., page 426. 32 SVEDBERG PRAYS FOR NOBILITY. hope lie may be found available for some Academy. He is accomplished in Oriental languages as well as European, but especially he is an adept in poetry and mathematics. He intends to build himself an Observatory where he will try to discover a method for ascertaining the longitude at sea. If there should be any academical opening, will your Excellency be so kind as advance him to fill it? With God's help, he will honour his place. " Jesper Svedberg." Some months before, he had preferred another request — that the King would ennoble his sons and sons-in-law. Here is the petition — " Brunsbo, ^th February, 1715. " Most Mighty King, Most Gracious Lord — It has pleased God to allot me seven children, for whose well-being I am bound to care. Three are sons. The eldest [Emanuel] seeks by study to render himself perfectly accomplished for the service of your Majesty and our fatherland; the second [Eliezer] does so likewise in mining; and the third [Jesper] by service for two years in your Majesty's army in Pomerania, and now, by a voyage to the far Indies. The daughters are all married to honourable men ; two are wedded to clergy- men — one [Anna] to Eric Benzelius,* and the other [Catherina] to Jonas Unge ; of the remaining two, one [Margaretta] is married to Lundstedt, the Master of the Horse in your Majesty's Life Guards, and the other [Hedwig] to Lars Benzelstierna, the Master of the Mines in East and West Bergslagen. "For these I make bold in all humility to solicit, that it may please your royal Majesty to promote to the rank and place of nobles my afore-naraed sons and my two last-named sons-in-law, tlie Master of the Horse, Lundstedt, and the Master of the Mines, Benzelstierna. It will encourage them to be still more worthy of the grace of your royal Majesty ; and to me, your majesty's loyal subject, your favour will be peculiarly agreeable. "Jesper Svedberg." * Subsequently Archbishop of Upsala. LATIN POEMS. 33 Nothing at the time came of these petitions, but the applicant was not a man to be daunted, as we shall see. " I have kept my sons," he wrote, "to the profession for which God gave them inclination and liking. 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 priesthood suffer not a little, and are brought into contempt." Emanuel meanwhile collected the poems he had written during his travels, and published them at Skara under the title, Liidus Heliconius sive Garmina Miscellanea, quce variis in locis cecinit. Like most Latin verses written by moderns, little more can be said of them than that they are proofs of their author's facile command of a dead language. The poems are chiefly praises of love, sometimes erotic, of friendship and of patriotism. One of the poems, the chief of the collection, has been translated by Mr. Francis Barham. It commemorates a victor}' gained by peasants, led on by Steinbock, over a Danish army which had made a descent on the Swedish coast during the absence of Charles in Turkey. He thus addresses the King — " Ah, soon return, oil monarch of our love! Oh Sun of Sweden, waste not all thy light To illume the crescent of the Ottomans : Thine absence we bewail, wandering in glooms Of midnight sorrow, save that these bi'ight stars. That lead us on to victory, still console Thy people's hearts and bid them not despair." And thus Steinbock — " Steinbock ! thy red right hand Hath smitten down the spoiler ; and in thee Another Charles we honour, and rejoice To hail thee, hero of thy grateful country. " Chief of our gallant chiefs — Too gallant for a so:ig 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 recompence ; hereafter, A crown of stars is all thine own. The foe Lies broken by thy force and heroism ; D 34 MERCANTILE PROJECTS. Numerous as Denmark's sands they came — how few Eeturnecl! — their princes and their soldiery Repulsed with scorn, while shuddering horror hung Upon their flight." And SO forth. He never writes nonsense, nor rises above commonplace. His choice friend and correspondent was his brother-in- law Eric Benzelius. With him he discussed the scientific projects with which his mind was teeming. The English Parliament in 1704 had offered £10,000, £15,000 and £20,000 respectively, for a ready method by which the longitude could be determined within sixty, forty, and thirty miles, and he longed to secure the prize. He strove hard to initiate the manufacture of salt, as he thought " it would be of more importance to the country than the whole of its iron trade, and that the money sent out of Sweden would be kept at home." In Westergyllen he spied some white clay, which, he wrote to Benzelius, " I suspect is the same as is used in Hollaifd and England for making tobacco pipes and crockery," and wished him to discover " what kind of clay the English and Dutch use, and how they bake tobacco pipes in the sun and oven. If the clay I have found is of the right sort it will be worth many thousand rix dollai's: but silence about it." He started in 1716 a periodical written in Swedish, and named Dcedalus Hyperhoreus, a record of the new flights of mechanical and mathematical genius in Sweden. It did not pay; it appeared irregularly, and ceased altogether in 1718, having reached only a sixth number. Yet it was useful to its editor, for it advertised his powers, and introduced him to men of kindred tastes, and especially to Christopher Polhem, a famous engineer who has been called the Scan- dinavian Archimedes. Once more his father addressed the Crown, ])leading that his family might be ennobled. " Wennesborg, 23n/ April, 1716. " Most Mighty King, Most Gracious Lord — I am desirous to help my children forward as far as I can in your royal CHARLES XII. AND EMANUEL. 35 Majesty's service. My son Emanuel is of Polhem's mind, and has travelled in foreign parts for four years, and has given proofs of his powers in print see [Dcedalus Hyper- horeus.'] My next Eliezer" — reciting as before the family register. " These, I beseech most humbly, that your royal Majesty may, of your grace, be pleased to exalt to the rank and privilege of Nobles, whereby they will be greatly encouraged in your Majesty's service. "Jesper Svedberg." At the end of 1715 Stralsund had been captured. Charles escaped in a small bark amidst the fire of guns which killed two men by his side. Picked up by a Swedish vessel, he was landed in his own country, and began to make fresh efforts for the prosecution of war. Towards the close of 1716, Polhera invited Emanuel to accompany him to Lund and visit the King. Charles received the young man kindly, perceived his abilities, and gave him the choice of three places: that of Assessor in the College of Mines was selected. Their intercourse grew intimate, and the Assessor happily preserved the following account of it — * " When Polhem received the King's orders to repair to Lund, he engaged me to go with him. Having been ])resented to his Majesty, he often did us the honour of conversing on the different branches of mathematics, and particularly on mechanics, the mode of calculating forces and other problems in mixed mathematics. He seemed to take great pleasure in these conversations, and often put ques- tions as if he wished some easy information, but we soon found he knew more than we thought, which put us on our guard lest when advancing a doubtful opinion he should detect its fallacy. The conversation at one time turning on analytic and algebraic calculations and the regula falsi, he desired us to give him a few examples, which we did, proposing such as made it necessary, in order to proceed agreeably to rule, to use signs or symbols as well as equations; but the * Communicated by Swedenborg to Nordberg as "worthy of transmission to posterity," and printed by him in his HiHory of Charles XII. 36 CHARLES XII. AS ARITHMETICIAN. King did not require them, and after a few minutes reflec- tion, he told us, without any other aid than his own superior genius, in what way our examples might be solved, Avhieh we always found to agree perfectly with our calcula- tions. I confess I have never been able to understand how, by mere reasoning and without the aid of algebra, he was able to solve problems of this kind. It seemed, indeed, that the King was not sorry to display before a competent judge like Polhem a penetration and a power of reasoning equal to the ablest mathematicians. " I will now relate to you, as I am peculiarly able to do, what arose from this learned amusement. Conversing one clay about arithmetic, his Majesty observed that the denary arithmetic in universal use was most probably derived from counting on the fingers by illiterate people of old, who, when they had run through the lingers of both hands, repeated the process over and over again, keeping a tally of tens, and when figures were invented, this mode of numera- tion by tens was preserved and brought down to the present day. The King was of opinion that, had such not been the origin of our mode of counting, a much better method might have been devised; the number 10 being a very incon- venient one, as it can be divided by no numbers except 5 and 2 without breaking into fractions; besides, as it contains neither the square, nor the cube, nor the fourth power of any number, it interposes perpetual difficulties in the way of easy calculation: whereas, had the periodic number been 8 or 16, great facilities would have resulted, the first being a cube number, of which the root or prime is 2, and the second a biquadrate number, of which the root or prime is also 2; consequently, either of these numbers as a basal number would prove highly useful in calculating money or measures, as by them the complexity of fractions would be in a gi'eat measure avoided. Having represented to him that this could not be done unless we invented new figures (to which also new names must be given, as otherwise great confusion would arise), he desired us to produce an example. " We chose the number 8, which is of the cube 2. We CHARLES XII. AS ARITHMETICIAN. 37 also invented new figures to which we gave new names, and worked out the method, applying it to weights and measures and cubic calculations. We presented our essay to the King, who was pleased with it; but he evidently desired some- thing more extended and less easy, so that he might display his great penetration. For this purpose he made choice of 64 We objected, that it was far too high a number, and consequently very inconvenient ; that if we were obHged to reckon up to 64 [inventing new single figures from 10 to 63 inclusive], before recommencing [representing 64 by tlie figures 10], and upon reaching 64 times 64 or 4096, only three figures would have to be used [4096 being represented by the figures 100], the difliculties would be such that the scheme would be little short of impossible. However, the more we urged these and other difliculties, the more was he deter- mined to work out tliis idea, and to prove to us how easily and quickly it might be done, he said he would do it himself To our amazement he sent us next morning the method fully developed. He had invented 64 new figures, divided into 8 classes, and each class with its own style of symbol. Upon a closer inspection I found that these symbols were composed of the initial and final letters of his own name in a manner at once so clear and exact, that when the first 8 numbers were known, all the rest up to 64 were learnt with ease; for the first 8 were so simple and well contrived that they served as a key to the remaining sevens, to which they stood as heads. " It was to me that the King committed this plan in his own handwriting (which I still preserve) that I might frame from it a table showing the differences between it and the common mode of reckoning both as to names and figures. " The King had also added to his plan an example in multiplication and an example in division: two operations in which I had contemplated much difficulty. As it was my place to perfect the method, I examined it thoroughly and tried to make it yet more convenient and easy of application. My attempts however were in vain, and I question whether the greatest mathematicians would have succeeded. " What I chiefly admired was the King's ingenuity, shown o8 EMANUEL AND EMERENTIA. in the invention of the figures and the names, and the ease with which the signs could be varied ad infinitum. I was also greatly struck with his example in multiplication ; and when I consider the short time in which he M^-ovight out the scheme, I cannot but regard him as endowed with faculties much above those of other men. " From this cause I have been led to believe, that in all his other actions he was guided by a deeper wisdom than ap- parently belonged to him. Certain it is, that he thought it beneath him to assume the air of a learned man by atfecting an imposing exterior. " He said to me one day, that ' He who has made no pro- gress in mathematics does not deserve to be considered a rational man :' a sentiment truly worthy of a King. Accord- ingly, he especially patronized mathematicians, and had it pleased Providence to allow him to rule Sweden in peace, he would have raised literature and science to higher per- fection than they have ever attained, or perhaps ever will attain in Sweden. His example would have stimulated his people, who would have striven with noble emulation to win the praise of an accom])lished prince, alwaj^s ready to bestow on merit its due reward." As to the M^orks Charles set him to do, he writes — "At the same time several projects of great utility were laid before the King, and he directed me to assist Polhem in their execution. Amongst them was the dock at Carlscrona, which we blasted out of granite, for laying down the keels of ships ; and as there is no ebb and flow in the Baltic it is one of the mo.st important works in Euro])e: also, the making of sluices between Lake Wener and Gottenburg, in the midst of the rapids and cataracts near Trolhiilta, a work which would have been the admiration of the world if it had been completed: to say nothing of many other equally useful projects." Charles was so pleased with his engineers that to seal their partnership, he advised Polhem to give Emanuel one of his daughters in marriage. This Polhem was very willing to do, and Emanuel very willing to have done; for living in Polhem's house, he had become enamoured of his second BISHOP SYEDBERG AND CHARLES. 39 daughter, Emerentia, a giii of fourteen; but she did not care for Emanuel and would not allow herself to be betrothed. Her father however caused a written agreement to be drawn up, promising her to him at some future day. The document, as an obedient child, Emerentia signed; but her heart being elsewhere, she took to sighs and sadness. Her brother, moved by her misery, stole the agreement from Emanuel's desk, who soon missing it, as he was used to read it often, besought Polhem to replace it with a new one; but discovering the state of Emerentia's affections, he at once relinquished her hand and left her father's house. The Bishop went likewise to Lund to see the King. " Well, Bishop," said Charles, " you are not changed since I saw you last, only you have grown very gray." He was invited to dinner, and observed " that the King ate very quickly, and gulped down water upon everything, though it were ever so fat." Svedberg's health was drunk in tumblers of wine; whereon his Majesty grew still more gracious, and the Bishop more audacious. On Sunday he preached one of his plain sermons on the desecration of Fast Days, and prayed, that his Majesty might be delivered from Reho- boam's advisers. " In the evening," he writes, " I was taken into the King's own chamber, and there Prince Fred- erick pleaded, that I might retain a coachman; but the King answered not a word. Then spoke I boldly of the cruel grievances of the Clergy, and how a Bishop, who may walk abreast of a Governor, is not allowed a coachman, whilst a Governor drives to Church with a coachman and two tall footmen behind ; whilst I, a Bishop, have to travel, and make visitations without any one to drive or serve : but to this also the King answered not a word." He stopped the torrent of complaint by speaking of the Swedish language, and praising Svedberg's efforts to restore and preserve its purity. " Do they speak Swedish in France?" asked the King. "No," said Svedberg. " Then, why should we speak French?" he rejoined. He inquired if there were any foreign words in the Swedish Bible, and Svedberg said there were a few, and took out his pocket Bible to show them, telling the King that he never entered the pulpit without that Bible, and always 40 DEATH OF CHARLES XII. carried it about when on duty, even as a soldier did his sword, and " whoever finds me without it may knock me down." Charles some days afterwards met him and said " Show me your Bible." — "I have not got it," said he. "Then I will knock you down." — " But," said Svedberg, " I am not now on duty." He found a pamphlet on the King's table, written against his Skihholetli, ridiculing his enthusiasm for pure Swedish, which worried him much, and he would ftiin have had it suppressed. After his escape from Stralsund, Charles left his German provinces to their ffite and made war on Norway. He laid siege to Frederickshall, and called Emanuel's engineering- skill to his aid. He contrived carriages on whicli " two galleys, five large boats and a sloop," were conveyed four- teen miles overland; and under cover of these vessels heavy artillery Avas brought to bear on the walls of the fortress. Charles would have liked to keep Emanuel by him, but he was able to exclaim in a letter to Benzelius, " God be thanked! 1 have escaped the campaign in Norway and that very narrowly; nor should I have been so fortunate, had I not used some little management." War in company with Charles was no pastime. In hard- ship and danger he was foremost, and expected his staff to follow him. In this siege the soldiers were nearly frozen to death, but the King shamed discontent into silence. He slept in the open air on a plank or a truss of straw, and fasted, and worked day and night as if his body existed outside the ordinary laws of Nature. His last day had however come. On the night of the 11th December, 1718, he went out to inspect the progress of the trenches. Not finding the parallels so far advanced as he expected, he was much displeased. Megret, a French engineer who conducted the siege, assured him that the place would be taken in eight days. " We shall see," he said, and proceeded in his survey. Stopping at an angle of the entrenchments, he kneeled down, rested his elbow on the parapet, and there, with his body exposed to the fire of the besieged, he remained watching his men working in the trenches by star-light. In this position he was struck on SVEDBERG CHANGED TO SWEDEN BORG. 41 the forehead by a cannon-ball, bis hand clutched his sword, and with a deep sigb he fell dead on the parapet. His attendants rushed forward, lifted his body, and Megret exclaimed, "There, the play is over; let us begone." CHAPTER III. SCIENCE AND SPECULATION. TJlrika Eleonora, sister to Charles XII., succeeded to the throne, but soon resigned the crown to her husband, Frederick, Landgrave of Hesse Cassel. Shortly after her accession, in 1719 she complied with Svedberg's pertinacious prayer and ennobled his sons. On this occasion Emanuel's surname was altered from Svedberg to Swedenboro;. The Swedish Diet consisted of four houses: the nobles, the clergy, the burghers, and the peasants or landholders who were not nobles. The house of nobles was composed of upwards of two thousand members, and it was into this crowd that Emanuel was introduced, but was thereby created neither Count nor Baron, as some persist in calling him. Sweden had suffered so severely from the despotism of Charles XII., that the Diet resolved to put some check on the kingly power. To this Bishop Svedberg was warmly opposed. He thought that absolute power belonged to the King by Divine right, and he saw many administrative advantages in the King's will being supreme: one had only to gain access to the King and hear his Yea or Nay, instead of running from office to office and enduring delay after delay when the least matter required attention or execution ; he therefore vehemently denounced any change, saying in the Diet, that " No King was read of in Scripture with the limited power you would give the Queen, and I abhor the ambition of men who aspire to be Kings of Kings." His opposition was construed into selfishness; Kings and Queens had proved very beneficial to him, and it was no more than 42 SVEDBERG AND ROYALTY. natural that he should ftivour their extreme power. More virulent insinuations were made, in reply to which he closed one of his speeches before the Diet with these words, " I have gathered my gray hairs in honour, and in honour I shall carry them to the grave. As long as the 17th aad 27th Psalms are in the Psalter, no one, however mighty he may fancy himself, can harm a hair of my head. This campaign against me did not commence yesterday or the day before, but thirty years ago, and spite of all enmity, I have risen to where I now sit. I know that my Angel will receive command from God to prepare a crown for me when the hour of my departure for the Kingdom of Heaven comes. Meantime, here I sit in my place of honour, fearless, and full of joy and praise." The royal power was circumscribed. Although Bishop Svedberg enjoyed much court favour, he had no high opinion of Ulrika Eleonora, whom he thought "a great hypocrite," and her consort Frederick "good for little." With both he used much freedom. To King Frederick he said one day, " Your Majesty must not take it ungraciously, if I tell you what people say about you." — " Not at all. What do they say ? " — " That your Majesty gives away too much mone}^" — "That maybe true," said the King; "but they should remember that if I give away one Swedish ducat, I receive fourteen thousand ducats a year from m}^ own Hesse-Cassel — But what more do they say ? "■ — " They say 3^our Majesty very seldom visits your council." — "Ah, that is true, and not to be wondered at; for there I find I have sixteen tutors, every one more impatient than another to instruct and govern me." Sometimes he ventured too far in his freedom, and once provoked the Queen to write him sharply, threatening him with displeasure if he sent " any more of his indecent and uncivil epistles, in disregard of that reverence which was due from a subject." King and Queen spent some days with him at Brunsbo in 1722, tilling his palace with their I'etinue. "At their departure," he writes, "They gave me one hundred ducats, a coronation medal of pure gold weighing thirty-nine SCIENTIFIC PAMPHLETEERING. 43 ducats, and my wife a silver salver and ewer weighing about forty-five ounces, and ten ducats for gilding." The wife here mentioned was his third. His second, Sara Bergia, died at Skara on the 3d of March, 1720, and before the year was out, on Christraas-day, he married Christina Arhusia, the daughter of John Arhusius, Dean of Fahlun. Concerning this third marriage in his sixty- seventh year he records — "My dear wife, Sara Svedberg, died in the year 1720, to my great grief and loss. My circumstances and my exten- sive household required a faithful companion, whom God gave me in Christina Arhusia. May God bless us both in the name of Jesus. Amen ! " In 1718 Emanuel issued three pamphlets written in Swedish. 1. Attempts to find the Longitude by means of the Moon. In a letter to Benzelius he proposes translating this "into Latin for foreign circulation, and dedicating it to Edmund Halley, at Oxford, who has likewise done something in the same way." 2. The Art of Rules, in ten imrts. An introduction to Algebra : a continuation of the treatise containing the first account given in Sweden of the differen- tial and integral calculus, was handed about in manuscipt, but never printed. 3. On the Motion and Position of the Earth and the Planets: in which are some conclusive proofs that the Earth's couo'se decreases in rapidity, being noto slower than heretofore, making winter nights and summer days longer than they used to he. In 1719 he published other three. 1. On the Level of the Sea and the great Tides of the Ancient World, from Proofs in Sweden. 2. About Docks, Sluices, and Salt Works. 3. A Proposal for the Division of Money and Measures, so as to facilitate Calculation and avoid Fractions. Benzelius advised him to relinquish the scheme for a new 44 SOLAR SPECULATIOX. system of money and measures as impracticable. He replied — " It is a little discouraging to be dissuaded thus. For myself, I desire all possible novelties, ay, a novelty for every day in the year, provided the world will be pleased with them. In every age there is an abundance of persons who follow the beaten track, and remain in the old way ; but perhaps there are only from six to ten in a century who brino; forward new thino;s founded in arejument and reason." In another letter he answered Benzelius, who had ad- vanced the notion that the Sun is the abode of the damned — "Stockholm, 2Gth November, 1719. " I think exactly the opposite. It ought rather to be the abode of the blessed. The following are my reasons — " 1. The Sun is the centre of our planetary system, and the motion and subsistence of everything in the solar vortex has its source from the Sun. — 2. The firmament and heaven of the Planets are towards the Sun — upwards in the solar vortex is towards the Sun, downwards is away from the Sun, towards the end of the solar vortex, or the Tartarian regions. — 3. Light and splendour are in the Sun, and dark- ness and its horrors are where the Sun is far off and dim. — 4. But the main reason appears to be, that the most exceed- ingly subtile aura and the minimal element exist in the Sun. The nearer the Sun, the finer are the elements. In the Sun itself their fineness is probably so great that the particles are almost devoid of composition and put off the name of Matter, as well as form, weight and many other qualities whicli com- pound particles possess ; it would therefore seem likely, that in the Sun, the finest sphere, would be the finest being — a God, an Angel, a something which as it is not material must be most eminent. Like seeks like, and the finer does not unite with grosser. For these reasons, I rather incline to believe (though I willingly leave the point to your judgment) that God has His seat in the Sun as the Bible says. " It would be absurd to imagine, that the Sun's heat is used to torment the bodies of the damned. In the nature of things, there is no pain without destruction. When fire MELANCHOLY HUMOURS. 45 burns our flesh, it dissolves and destroys the flesh ; and Mdth its destruction ends the possibility of sensation, and therefore of pain. " I hope no evil sense may be put upon these reasonings of mine. The Word of God is the only foundation for philosophy." At this time he was neither happy in his home, nor satisfied with his work, nor prospects in life. To Benzelius he wrote — " Among all my relations I know of no one who has wished me, and still wishes me, so well as yourself If I can in any way show my gratitude, it shall not be wanting. Brother [in-law] Unge likes nobody; at least, he has estranged my dear father and mother's affections from me now for four years. However, it will not benefit him." He feels he is not appreciated — "Stockholm, 1st December, 1710. " Should I be able to collect the necessary means, I have made up my mind to go abroad and seek my fortune in mining. He must indeed be a fool who is loose and irre- solute, who sees his place abroad, yet remains in obscurity and wretchedness at home, where the furies, Envy and Pluto, have taken up their abode and dispose of all rewards, and where all the trouble I have taken is met with such shabbiness. " I onl}^ desire quietness before my departure, and perhaps I may find a corner of retreat in Starbo or Skinsburg. All will depend on a respite of four or five years ; yet I clearly see that long plans are like long roofs, apt to tumble in; for man proposes but God disposes. I have however always thought, that a man should know what he is aiming: at, and ever have a clear design for life and business before him." Again — " I have taken a little leisure this summer to put a few things on paper, which / think will be my last 'productions ; for speculations and inventions like mine find no patronage nor bread in Sweden, and are considered by a number of political blockheads as a sort of schoolboy exercise, which 46 SCIENTIFIC PAMPHLETEERING. ought to stand in the background, while their finesse and intrigues step forward." These melancholy humours were dissipated by a tour of fifteen months on the Continent, commencing in the spring of 1721. He had with him as companion, John Hessel, a jihysician, and a large bundle of manuscript, which he put to press at Amsterdam. In May he addressed a letter to Jacob a Melle, a savant of Lubeck, describing some marine deposits in Sweden, and the retreat of the Baltic, whereby towns were left high and dry which once stood on the sea shor-e. Some tracts of land formed of sand, pebbles and shells, he concludes, were once the bed of the ocean. Hills and valleys, he thinks, were formed by the strong currents of the ancient seas. The enormous water-worn boulders scattered over the soil of many Swedish provinces, he takes to be evidences of the immense force of the currents in that sea. Modern geologists, granting the water, maintain that its currents were unequal to the carriage of these erratic boulders, and that they must have been floated from cliff's and hill-sides attached to ice- bergs, and dropped irregularly as the ice dissolved. He concludes — "It is most pleasant to search out the causes of things, and to listen to those who have the genius to penetrate the secrets of Nature, and the industry to evolve the Ancient from the Modern World." Towards the end of 1721, he published at Amsterdam five pamphlets in Latin — 1. Spechnens of a Work on the Principles of Natural Philosophy, comprising Neiv Attempts to explain the Phenomena of Chemistry and Physics by Geo- metry. 2. New Observations and Discoveries respecting Iron and Fire, and particularly respecting the Elemental Nature of Fire: together with a New Con- st}- action of Stoves. 8. A Neiv Method of Finding the Longitudes of Places on Land or at Sea by Lunar Observations. 4. A Neiv Plan of Constructing Docks and Dykes. GEOMETRICAL CHEMISTRY. 47 5. A Mode of Discoverimg the Poivers of Vessels by the Application of Mechanical Principles. Of these, the most interesting is the first. It consists of chapters taken from a complete work extant in manuscript. A schoohnaster was once asked, " Why are cream and sugar put into tea?" and he answered, "To render the acute angles of the tea more obtuse." His reply involves and illustrates Swedenborg's theory of Chemistry. His doctrine was, that the invisible atoms with which the chemist deals are geometrical forms, and that chemical ])henomena are to be explained by geometrical laws. " For," he asks, " what are Physics and Chemistry ? What is their nature, if not a peculiar mechanism? W^hat is there in Nature, which is not geometrical? What is the variety of experiments in Chemistry, but a variety of position, figure, weight and motion in particles? " He continues, " The reader will be equally astonished with myself, that the knowledge of invisibles has remained hidden from the learned world up to the present time, when so many experiments respecting them are on record. If we look to Physics we shall find, that it abounds in experi- ments and discoveries. More light has been shed upon Physics in the way of experiment during the last century, than in any previous age: indeed, so far as facts are con- cerned, Physics have reached a meridian degree of bright- ness. If we consider Chemistry, with what experiments is it not enriched! So greatly has it exercised the industry of the learned, that we possess thousands of guides towards penetrating its secrets. If Geometry, to what a height has it not been carried by the men of science of our time! It seems indeed to have scaled the sacred hill, and, for all human purposes, to have attained the utmost perfection. " Since then we have several thousand experiments indi- cating the nature of the various metals, salts, and elements, and since these bodies consist of groups of particles, varying in their shapes and positions in a certain geometrical arrangement, therefore we have every reason to conclude that the law of their structure may now be demonstrated." In illustration of his theory he adduces many experiments 48 MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS. from Boyle, Bocrhaave, and others, and some original, and by a free use of diagrams makes himself clearly understood. The experiments in these times would be thought crude and imperfect; but the pith and merit of the Specimens lie in the theory of the geometrical forms of atoms: and the century of research which has followed Swedenborg, has done much to justify his speculation. From Amsterdam, he set out for Leipsic through Liege, Aix-la-Chapelle, and Cologne, visiting the mines and smelt- ing works which lay in his route. From Liege he sent home a paper. New Rules for Maintaining Heat in Rooms, which was printed in the Acta Literaria Svecioe. In it he maintained that wooden houses are warmer than stone ones, and brick than stone. At Leipsic in 1722 he published in three parts Miscel- laneous Observations, and in the same year at Schiffbeck, near Hamburg, a fourth part, all copiously illustrated with engravings. The Observations are gossip on a few out of the many scientific ])lans and fancies seething in his brain. We find remarks on the marine origin of some Swedish mountains — on proofs from fossils found at Aix-la-Chapelle, that what is now dry laml was once sea bottom — on the world being at one time a vast globe of water — on the origin, tempera- ture and saline components of hot springs — on vitrification or the change of particles into glass — on the decomposition of stones by air and moisture — on the entrance and egress of liquids, " as for example water and fire," into and from hard bodies — on stoves, fire-places, and wind and draught fur- naces — on the cure of smoky chimneys — on an air-pump worked by mercury — on cheap methods of salt-making — on a new mode of weighing metals — on the glass of Archi- medes — on an instrument for discovering the proportions of mixed metals mechanically without any calculation — on the impossibility of transmuting metals, especially into gold — on the reasons why the blood circulates through the capil- laries more easily than through the arteries — on the sup- posed fire in the centre of the earth — on the minerals and stalactites in Baumann's Caverns — and on sundry other matters. MATHEMATICAL INUTILITY. 49 On his return home in 1722 he published an anonj^inous treatise at Stockhohn O^i the Depreciation and Rise of the Swedish Currency, which terminated his desultory pamph- leteering. For twelve years, from 1722 to 173-i, he appears to have printed nothing. Looking over the packet of pamphlets and of letters pre- served for us, we discern a man eager to know and quick to apprehend; not one who absorbs knowledge im])licitly and sits down satisfied, bat who tests and questions it; who would fain carry out every truth to new issues, and be an enlarger of science. Though speculative, his speculations have all an end towards practice; with many adventurous notions, he is yet so shrewd and prosaic that you would never call him romantic. His tastes and pursuits are various, but all open into the mechanical plane. Religion is no more in his thouHits. He has left the Angels of his childhood, not in contempt, but forgetfulness, having other business on hand. Of reverence he has plainly little, of self-satisfaction, much. It would seem that in 1722 he came for the first time into the full pay and exercise of his Assessorship. We must now picture Swedenborg during twelve years to come, from his thirty-fourth to his forty-sixth year, as an industrious official through the day, and giving his leisure hours to study and the composition of three great folios: one, a laborious description of the mode in which matter was created, and two on the processes by which iron and copper were led out of ore into human service. Of this long; stretch in his life we have little more to say. As to who were his companions and what were his enjoyments, there is no record known; quite likely none ever kept. In 1724 he was offered the Pcofessorship of Mathematics in the University of Upsala, which he declined. We may learn his reason perhaps in this scrap from a letter to Benzelius — " I wonder at Messieurs the mathematicians having lost all heart and spirit to realize that fine design of yours for an observatory. It is the fatality of mathematicians to abide in theory. I have often thought it would be a capital thing. :")() PERSECUTION OF PIETISM. if to each ten mathematicians one good practical man were added to lead them to market: he would be of more use and mark tlian all the ten," Bishop Svedberg was meanwhile busy as ever. The Swedish Church was then, as now, dead in formalism. A few earnest Pietists, chiefly among the laity, sought to diffuse the Divine influence by meetings for prayer and preaching in their own houses. As Methodism in England aroused the jealous}^ and opposition of the Clergy, so did Pietism in Sweden. The offices of religion were held b}'' Swedish and English Priests to be exclusively their business; and it was sacrileo-e for vulgar hands to meddle therewith. Svedberg had a kindly feeling towards Pietism. When a young man abroad, his heart yearned towards the German. Pietists, and throughout life he had been charged with Pietistic sympathies. The conduct of the Swedish Pietists was warmly discussed in the Diet. It chanced on one occasion, that Svedberg had spread before him on a table in the Diet some sheets of a Swedish translation of Scriver's Treasure for Souls. These sheets were seen by one Dr. Edzborg, and rising in his place lie charged Svedberg with complicity in Pietistic heresy; for, said he, "Is he not preparing to circulate a book which is steeped in the very spirit of Pietism? "Yet," writes Svedberg, "this same good Doctor daily attested his ortho- doxy by getting drunk ; and pleaded as an excuse, that aching teeth required free libations of aqua vitce." That he might speak from experience, Svedberg attended a conventicle of Pietists, and testified in the Diet — "There has been a great deal spoken here in derision and aversion concerning these assemblies of Pietists. I am now the onl}'- clerg3rman present, and therefore must speak. I have to-day been to a meeting of Pietists, and I only wish that every master in Sweden held such meetings under his roof" Against the opinion of the Pietists, that an unconverted Priest was unfit to minister in sacred things, he protested — " It was a very dangerous doctrine. An anxious man A FATHERLY EPISTLE. 51 sends for a clergyman, and is b}' him absolved from his sins, but afterwards he falls into doubt as to whether his absolu- tion is worth anything, since, he fancies, the minister is unconvei'ted; but as a ducat loses nothing of its value though tendered by an unclean hand, so absolution is not affected by the character of the administrator." Whilst defending the Pietists, he would not be ranked with them — " I have never taken to reading Pietist books, for which I had no taste, nor have I had anything to do with Pietists, but a very great deal too much with numerous Impietists. Would to God we were all true Pietists after the pattern of St. Paul and St. Peter!" To Sweden's misfortune the Clergy triumphed. The Pietists were condemned, and the Diet passed a law forbid- ding all attempts at public worship outside the established Church. This done, the Priesthood at once relapsed into sleep with security. Jesper Swedenborg, the Bishop's youngest son, had turned sailor, and after an absence of several year's, returned to Stockholm in 1724. His father, troubled that he should have reached thirty without any fixed purpose in life, wrote to him thus — "Brunsbo, mth April, 1724. "I forgot to mention my dear wife's will. [His second wife, his son's stepmother.] She had resolved, that at her death Emanuel should inherit her property at Starbo. When I saw her dying, I reminded her of this. She then repeated her resolve, whereon I prayed her not to exclude my other children. She answered, " They may have equal shares, but Emanuel shall be sole owner of Starbo provided he buys the others out." Of this I have given him an assurance for your sakes. " You may thank God that you will have a good round sum. Had I so chosen, none of you, but I alone, according to law, should have inherited her property; but I wished you well, and what is more, I paid claims to the amount of 6,000 52 PERSUASIVE TO WEDLOCK. dalers on the estate, and Avill pay any more that may come due, as Emanuel can tell you. "This you, and not I, ought to have done; hut I am father, and you children, and I am ever thinking of your welfare. Let me now see you agree as brothers, and may I never hear of want of unity among you, that my overflowing kindness may not come to sorrow. " See that you find some occupation where you are. It is no use being in Sweden to fritter away your best days in idleness. You write well, you reckon well, and thank God you are not onarried. See that you get a good vnfe and something with her. Pray God to lead you in His holy way. " Your kind father, "Jesper Svedberg." Jesper married in 1728, and through his family the name of Swedenborg is perpetuated to this day. Whether his wife had as much "with her," besides goodness, as his father enjoined, we do not know. Albrecht, it will be remembered, died in boyhood — Eliezer married in 1710 and died in 1711 without issue — and Emanuel lived to the end, a bachelor. Swedenborg did not live a bachelor without remonstrance. When in his forty -second year, his brother-in-law, the Reverend Jonas Unge, addressed to him these words of warning and encouragement— "Wang A, I8th Hay, 1729. "Now finally I shall give you something to think about. Why do you allow all good opportunities of marrying to slip past you? Major Otter is betrothed to Thamen^s elder daughter; but after all his younger daughter is by far the better a,nd prettier of the two. Now, my beloved brother, will you not take measures accordingly? I have no doubt Thamcn will approve of you. The money with each, I believe, will be considerable; so my brother could not possibly have a better partner in all Sweden. In God's name, make np a good resolution and trust the issue to His TOUR IN GERMANY. 53 gracious providence. Time does not permit long delibera- tions, and there is danger in delay. " I am, my dear brother, j^our obedient servant, "Jonas Unge." What was Swedenborg's reply is hidden from us; neither do we know his reasons for his confirmed celibacy. After the custom of unmarried men in the upper ranks of life in Sweden, and especially Stockholm, he kept a Mistress ;* and she, assisted by his absorption in business and study, may have conspired to hold him unwedded. Fire pursued Bishop Svedberg to the end of his life; again in 1730 his palace was burnt down; and being an old man of 77, his nerves were so shaken that he could no more write with a steady hand, and his health, which had always been excellent, began to decline and his memory to grow feeble. Swedenborg having completed his great work, set out for Leipsic on the 10th of May, 1733, to have it printed. First he made a short German tour in company with Count Frederick Gyllenborg and a few other friends. They landed at Stralsund and surveyed the traces of the siege of 1715. After visiting Griefsvalde, they went on to Berlin, where they spent a few days. Berlin was beo-inning to rise into high rank among Euro- pean capitals under the eccentric power of Frederick William, the father of Frederick the Great. The city charmed Swe- denborg. " The royal palace," he wrote, " is very magnificent, in size and height surpassing the palaces of many kings. The houses of the citizens are numerous, and built like those of Italy and Paris. Outside old Berlin a new town is springing up, under the direction of the King. You would imagine its best street consisted of the houses of nobles, whereas artizans dwell in them, who elsewhere would inhabit cottages and huts. The eye is delighted, the mind ex- hilarated by the wonderful uniformity and contiguity of all * iVew Jerusalem Magazine, vol. i., page 263. London, 1790. 54 SWEDENBORG MEETS WOLF. the houses. It may be said, many thousands of men live in one house under one roof." Frederick William's tall soldiers did not pass unnoticed. " If they could fight to the same perfection as they go through their drill, Prussia might conquer Europe; but . Their dress is admirable and magnificent, it allows full free- dom of motion and makes a fine show; yet beneath all this military splendour, the parsimony of the King is evident." In the royal library he found a large number of books, but chiefly old ones not much in request, a collection made on the principle of getting great bulk for little money. From Berlin he passed to Dresden, where, on the 21st of June, he "went to the chapel of the Duke of Saxony to see the sacred service according to the rites of the Roman Catholic Church. Everything was employed that could captivate and delight the senses; there were all kinds of musical instruments, and also eunuchs whose voice imitated that of virgins; the fi-agrance from the incense carried about by boys was most grateful ; and our eyes were charmed with pictures hung round the building, and with the magnificent dresses of the priests who not unlike harlequins went ges- ticulating about. All things appear to breathe solemnity and sanctity, and at the least sound of a bell all fall on their knees. The whole service is performed in Latin, which strikes with awe the common people. The worship of the Roman Catholic Church seems contrived to blandish and intoxicate the senses." In Dresden he laid hands on the Cosmologlani Generalem of John Christian Wolf, " who," he wrote, " has endeavoured to establish the nature of elements from merely metaphysical principles, based upon a very sound foundation." The meet- ing with Wolf's work had in it much pleasantness. He discovered that their thoughts had been running in the same channels: and to generous thinkers, unconsumed by the lust of originality, such coincidence is rich with satis- faction. " Illustrious Wolf was. recognized, at that time, as the THEIR HAPPY UNANIMITY. 55 second greater Leibnitz and head philosopher of Nature, who by 'mathematical method' had as it were taken Nature in the fact and illuminated everything, so that whosoever ran might read; which all manner of people then tried to do, but have now quite ceased trying by the Wolf method."* From Dresden, Swedenborof went to Pracjue and made a tour among the mines of Bohemia. To Leipsic he came in September and devoted himself to the final preparation of his manuscript for the press. His itinerary ends with this entry — " oth October. — The printing of the Princijna is begun, and six sheets this week are printed. The gods bless it! The Leipsic fair this day commenced." The supervision of the printing of the Opera Philosophic t et Mineralia, and the execution of its numerous engraved illustrations occupied the last months of 1733 and the first of 1734. At the same time, stimulated by the confirmation of his mechanical philosophy in the writings of Wolf, he composed a treatise on The Infinite. At the beginning of 173-4 both works were published at Leipsic and Dresden. He now turned homewards through Hesse-Cassel, insj^ect- ing mines on the way. The chief attraction in Hesse-Cassel was Philosopher Wolf. Wolf had been driven from his pro- fessorship in Halle by the terrors of Frederick William, and had found refuge with the Landgrave of Hesse-Cassel, who appointed him professor of mathematics and philosophy at Marburg. Here Swedenborg made acquaintance with the great man and chatted, and settled and re-settled the origin of the universe by " mathematical method " to perfect satisfaction. Persecuted by King Frederick William, it was some con- solation to Wolf to find an ardent admirer in his son Prince Frederick. Frederick had Wolf's Latin writings translated, that he might study them ; and writing to Voltair© he recommended Wolf to his notice as " the most celebrated Philosopher of our days, who, for having carried light into • Carlyie's ^'Frederick the Great,'''' vol i., page 622. 56 VOLTAIRE ON WOLF. the darkest places of metaphysics, is cruelly accused of irreligion and atheism. Such is the destiny of our great men; their superior genius exposes them to the poisoned arrows of calumny and envy." Voltaire's answer to this is worth quoting — " CiEEY, 26th Aiujust, 173G. " I cannot sufficiently thank your Royal Highness for the gift of that little book about Monsieur Wolf I respect metaphysical ideas, rays of lightning they are, in the midst of deep night. More, I think, is not to be hoped from Me- taphysics. It does not seem likely that the First Principles of things will ever be known. The mice that nestle in some little holes of an immense building, know not whether it is eternal, or who the Architect, or why he built it. Such mice are we;* and the Divine Architect who built the Universe has never, that I know of, told his secret to one of us. If anybody could pretend to guess correctly, it is M. Wolf." Wolf derived his philosophy from Descartes and Leibnitz, whose successor he may be considered. Swedenborg had developed his philosophy before his acquaintance with Wolf, but in the last paragraph of his Principia he confesses im- portant obligations to him, adding, that whoever will take the pains to compare his writings with Wolf's, will see that their principles almost exactly coincide. From Cassel Swedenborg went to Gotha, and thence to Brunswick, on a visit to Duke Rudolph, who munificently defrayed the cost of printing his Opeva Philosophica et Mineralia. To him the great work was inscribed, offered as incense to a god, in one of those absurd dedications * The analogy does not hold. Men do wonder concerning the Universe and its Maker, and their questions concerning both are satisfied more and more as they follow right methods of inquiry. Mice neither wonder nor desire to understand anything of the building in which they nestle ; if they did, doubtless they would have been eudowed with intellects by which they might apprehend the Architect. Our Maker created in us the desire to know Him; and that desire He did not create for perpetual hunger aud tor- ment, but for gratification. / cy ^ G^W^^V//y/ O^/z/y/yrU/^y^ G/^^^/VV/'X>'^/7''4 METALLURGICAL WORKS. 57 which were the fashion of the age. The Duke died in the following year, and in him Swedenborg lost a liberal friend. Swedenborg returned to Stockholm in July, 1734. CHAPTER IV. PHILOSOPHICAL AND METALLUEGICAL WOPJvS.' These works are contained in three handsome folios copi- ously illustrated with engravings. A portrait of the author forms a graceful frontispiece to the first, a fair copy whereof is presented on another page. The second and third of these volumes may be disposed of at once. They are practical and technical, giving an account of iron and copper mining and smelting processes. To metallurgists they must ever have an abiding interest as a broad landmark in the history of their art. His publication of trade secrets was not approved by the naiTow-minded; of such he observes — " There are some who love to hold knowledge for them- selves alone, and to be reputed possessors and guardians of secrets. People of this kind grudge the public everything, and if any discovery by which Art and Science will be bene- fited comes to light, they regard it askance with scowling visages, and probably denounce the discoverer as a babbler who lets out mysteries. Why should secrets be grudged to * Tom. I. — Principia Pertim NatKraUum sive Novoruni l^entaminum Phenomena Mundi Elementaris Philosophice Explicandi. Tom. II. — Regnum Suhterraneum sive Minei-ale de Ferro deque Modis Liquationiiin Ferri per Europam passim in usum receptis: deque conver- sione ferri crudi in chalybem: de vena ferri et prohatione ejus: pariter de ehymicis x)i'(ppnritis et cum ferro et victriolo ejus factis expe.rimentis. Tom. III. — Regnum Suhterraneum sive Minerale de Cupro et Orichalco modis liquationum cupri per Eurvjiam p)assim in usum receptis: de secre- tione ejus ah argenio: de conversione in Orichalcum: inque Metalla diversi generis: de Lapide Calaminari: de Zinco: de Vena Cupri et prohatione ejus: pariter de ehymicis prceparatis, et cum cupro factis experimentis, (be, d:c. Cum figuris ceneis. Dresdse et Lipsise, 1734. 58 THE PRINCIPIA. the public? why withheld from this enlightened Age? Whatever is worth knowing should by all means be brought into the common Market of the World. Unless this be done, we can neither grow wiser nor happier with time. " These are right liberal words, having the savour of a spirit often claimed as peculiar to " this enlightened Age." Our intei'est lies in the first volume, entitled, Princlpia, or the First Principles of Natural Things, being New Attempts towards a Philosophical Explanation of the Ele- mentary World. It is an attempt to show how atoms are created ; and, as Earths are congregations of atoms, how Earths were created. Picking up a grain of sand, Swedenborg would show us how it proceeded out of nothingness into being. By what means did he hope to steal from Nature the secret of her Genesis? We shall better answer that question after hearing what he has to say concerning the means to a true philosoph}^. Reason operates on Experience hy Geometry. These means, he says, are three — Experience, Reason, Geometry. Experience is the only way to Wisdom. It is impossible to derive knowledge from the Soul. Knowledge is solely acquired through the Senses: but we must not confound Knowledge (another word for Experience) with Reason. Experience supplies the materials wherewith Reason builds: Reason could have no active life without Ex- perience. Reason is that line faculty of the Soul whereby Experience is ruled, analysed, classified, and reduced to laws and analogies. Moreover, Reason, from facts or things known, elicits a second, a third, or a fourth truth hitherto unknown. Reason is the mark of the true philosopher; and Reason, to attain her ends, must invoke the aid of all the Sciences, but chiefly Geometry. The Vast Realm of Geometry. All the things of the Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, and Elemental Kino-doms are mechanical. The whole World is THE PRINCIPIA, 0\) a system of mechanism. The Animal Kingdom is mechanical as to its bodily organization. Hence by Geometry all are to be investigated and imdeistood. The World being mechanical, it follows that the smallest things and the largest are governed by similar mechanical laws; and, though the particles of the Elemental Kingdom are invisible and in a great measure elude the observation of the Senses, yet, as they are fluent and bounded, they must be geometrical, and flow and exist in a mechanical manner. The Method of Nature is everywhere the same; what is true of the least is true of the greatest; the force that shapes a dew-drop forms a world; the mechanism of the trunk of an elephant and of a fly is the same : the philo- sopher must not be deluded by size and suppose difference. This truth is of inestimable value, because by analogies drawn from the seen we can advance to the unseen, and speak of the unseen as if it lay under the eye. Many things are not Mechanical. Though the World is constituted in a mechanical manner, and is explained by Geometry, it does not follow that all things whatsoever are to be thus explained. There are innumerable things not mechanical. There is the Infinite, altogether without and above the sphere of Geometrj^. From the Infinite the Finite is derived, and from the Infinite the Finite instantly lives. There is also that intelligent principle which exists in Animals, called the Soul. What is the nature of this intelli- gence. Geometry has hitherto been unable to discover, and we are yet ignorant whether the laws to which the Soul is subject are similar to those of Mechanics : yet it cannot be denied, that the laws of the Soul are as fixed and orderly as those of Mechanics, and that they act through mechanical principles in the body. The same may be said of the Love or Life of Man, which is not to be explained by Geometry: yet his Love, by and through the body, operates mechanically. There is likewise a Providence respecting all things, which is Infinite in the Infinite, and which is quite in- 60 THE PRINCIPIA. appreciable by Geoinetiy. There are probably infinite other things of which we are ignorant, which owe no obedience to the known laws of Mechanics. The Pliilosopher's Hope. The true philosopher seeks earnestly for the causes of things, for knowing the causes he becomes the easy master of effects and details. The mechanical World of Nature is not unlike a spider's web, and the philosopher may be compared to the spider herself The spider in the centre of her web, by circles and polygons radiating around, knows in an instant what takes place in the circumference. The philosopher who discovers the central law of Nature, will be in Nature as the spider in her web. From the centre he will view Nature's infinite peripheries and comprehend the whole mundane system at a glance. God and Nature. " Nature is only a word which expresses the motive forces proceeding from the Infinite. Nature is nothing apart from the World, but the Infinite is independent of the World, whilst on the other hand no conception can be formed of the World independently of the Infinite. They therefore are mere children, and have not reached the first threshold of true philosophy, who ascribe to Nature the origin of all things and exclude the Infinite, or who confound Nature and the Infinite together, when yet the World or Nature is only an effect or tiling caused, the Infinite being its efficient or cause." Such is a curt abstract of his preliminary observations. His purpose is to bring to light the constitution and laws of the Elemental World; to reveal those subtile, invisible and inner forces which are the Soul of Nature, by which Nature's gross body of Earth is permeated and vivified, and from which by condensation Earth was created. He has told us that we can know nothing save by Experience, that no Knowledge can be derived directly from the Soul, but solely through the Senses; yet he THE PRINCIPIA. 61 opens the Princlpia with an assertion which he never gathered from Experience. The Miraculous Point. He wishes to prove how the Elemental World began, and he begs the whole question by assuming that it must have commenced in a Point. Nature, he conceives, originated in a Point, which he defines as the simplest existence, the geometrical Point, the Point of Zeno. This Point is the beginning of the World, for it is the beginning of Geometry; and Geometry is the law of every substance in the World. The Point is produced immediately from the Infinite. It is the medium between the Infinite and the Finite, and partakes of the nature of both ; hence it may be compared to Janus with two faces, which look both ways at once. The Point is pure and total motion; it is the commence- ment and the potency of all motion and production. The Point cannot be conceived of according to any laws of Geo- metry, and no attribute can be assigned to it except by analogy. Geometrically considered the Point is nothinr/, or a subject of mere imagination. Motion, as derived from the Point, ever flows from a centre to a circumference, and around the circumference back to the centre, and is thus an everlasting spiral. In speaking in this fashion, he speaks of the Point as manifested in Nature. As from the Point all the motion, force and beinof of Nature are derived, so every atom, and consequently every aggregation of atoms, carries in its heart a perpetual tendency to vortical motion. The Order and Process of Creation. In a congress and coacervation of Points the First Finite is produced. This First Finite is a geometrical figure with the fewest of boundaries, the most perfect of figures, the first limitation of substance, and the first occupant of space. In it there are two poles formed by the spiral motion of the Points, and an equator. From its inherent motion it is 62 THE PRINX'IPIA. impelled to a revolution on its axis. The First Finite thus perfectly resembles the World, altliough it is so small that in comparison with things compounded it is almost nothing. As by the aggregation and coacervation of gyrating Points the First Finite is formed, so by motion, aggregation and mutual pressure among First Finites a grosser order of Second Finites is produced. What the Point is to the First Finite, the First Finite is to the Second. Second Finites are said to compose the First Element, forming the vsolar vortex, and filling the whole space of the starry heavens. From Second Finites are produced Third Finites, in the same manner as First Finites are from Points, and Second Finites from First. Third Finites form the Second, or Magnetic Element. From Third Finites, in the same way by condensation and coacervation, are produced Fourth Finites. Fourth Finites form the Third Element, or Ether. From Fourth Finites are produced Fifth Finites in the same way. Fifth Finites compose the Fourth Element or Air, and in a state of still closer compression, Water. Water having no elasticit}^ cannot however be regarded as belonging to the Elemental Kingdom. It is the first purely material Finite. In a globule of Water is contained all previous existences from the Point downwards, like box within box. It will thus be readily seen that one Finite stands to its second as its cause, and in this sense is called its Active. Actives are the heart of their Finite ; and the Point within all is the heart of hearts. Derived from the Point is a cease- less motion by which the whole Elemental World is main- tained in a constant vortical whirl. Such is the derivation and procession of the Elements. Action and Re- Action everywhere. It will be observed that in this procession we have a series of Actives and Passives, or rather Re-actives. The Point is an Active to the First Finite, and the First Finite a Re-active to the Point; and the Elements of Magnetism and Ether stand THE PRINCIPIA. 63 to one another in the same relation. I'hroughout Nature there is Action and Re-action, and absolute inertia nowhere ; the gross moves more slowly than the rare, but the rare finds a fulcrum for action in the gross; without Re-action there can be no Action, for, without a passive continent, action would be dissipated like steam without a boiler. Every Active in its turn serves as a Passive to a higher Active ; as, for example, the boiler of a steam engine is Passive to steam, steam to heat, heat to electricity, and electricity to some force more subtile still, and the highest finite force of all to the Infinite. A boiler is a tangible Passive; but Swedenborg would say that steam, and heat, and electricity are not a whit less mechanical, although their mechanism eludes our Senses. For the illustration and confirmation of this theory he turned to Maonetism; Magnetism he held to be the Second Element, and composed of Third Finites. Peter Van Musschenbroek, Professor of Philosophy and Mathematics in the University of Utrecht, published in 1729 a work, Physlcce Expevmientales et GeoinetriccB Disser- tationes, abounding in magnetic experiments and observa- tions. These Swedenborg freely transferred to his pages, and used to prove his doctrine of vortical motion. Mussch- enbroek considered that magnetic attractions and repulsions observed no certain law; but here Swedenborg left him, maintaining: that nowhere was order more demonstrable. Creation of our Solar System. This done, and having described the Elemental World in its leasts, in single Points and Finites, he turns to its descrip- tion in mass, in Suns and Space and Earths. In doing so he repeats what he has written before, for as he tells us, " Nature is similar to herself in Suns and Planets as in Par- ticles, size makes no difference." The Point was described as containing or receiving the potency of all motion and production from the Infinite. Suns are the sires of S3^stenls, and therefore Suns consist of Points. From these Points are produced First Finites, and 64 THE PRINCIPIA. from First Finites the First Element, and from Second Finites the Magnetic Element. These First and Second Elements form the Solar Vortex. Each particle and the whole mass of the Magnetic Element wheeling in ceaseless gyration, " in perpetual motion, local or translatory, undula- tory or modificatory and ancillary," closed and thickened in the Third Element or Ether. The Sun in his Vortex was surrounded by this crust of Ether. Subtile and rare though Ether be, yet to the inner Elements it is coarse ; and, revolving in a continual gyratory motion round the Sun, it gradually retreated until widening and widening it became so attenuated, that it broke and collapsed, and was fashioned by the soft but powerful action of the Magnetic Element into a Planet, and led into its orbit by continuing magnetic bands. The Planet of Ether by further condensation became Air ; and from Air by still further compression was produced Water. From Water was formed the Mineral Kingdom. Around globules of Water grew crusts, just as Ether crusted round the Sun. These crusts gathered themselves between the interstices of the Water-globules, and hence originated Salt. Salt was the first of the solid formations, the beginning of the terrestrial series. From Salt, Swedenborg conceived, " by distillation, sublimation, rectification, circulation, filtra- tion, commixion, digestion, precipitation or crystallization might be educed any substance;" and indeed was educed the Mineral Kingdom. The Mineral Kingdom thus accounted for, the foundation of the Earth was laid; and by countless subsequent develop- ments, a ground for vegetables, and then for animals, and at last a Pai-adise were prepared, into which Man, the king and crown of creation, stepped forth: and all these wonders were effected through gyrating Points, or the Sun whose inmost consists of an infinite concourse of such Points. Such is Swedenborg's theory of the origin and order of the mechanical Universe. It would be difficult to give an idea of the laborious minuteness, running into iteration and diffuseness, with which he reasons out its details. AVhat is to be said about it? THE PRINCIPIA. 65 It is a mnthematician's ambitious dream. The very beginning of his theory lay in nothingness. The Point by his own definition was geometrical]}^ nothing, a mere fig- ment of the fancy, and his ratiocination over it makes the head swim. He felt his difficulty, and candidly expresses his desire to evade it — " Since the Point is of such a nature that it must neces- saiily be contemplated as ])roceeding from the Infinite (and yet existing before any Finite, and so must be considered as non-geometrical), I could wish that some other person capable of the task would favour us with a better view of the subject. For my own part, I would willingly give up the further consideration of this first e7is, to which something of Infinity adheres, and proceed to the Finites." This was hard; his Point he was bound to make clear, yet after much ado he ends in taking it for granted. The bland and unconscious way in which the makers of precepts abandon them in practice is amusingly illustrated by Swedenborg in his Princiina. He tells us, that all Knowledge is derived through the Senses, and nothing directly from the Soul; and this assertion stands as the preface to a theory spun out in all its elaboration from his own fancy. It is true he allows, that he is only trying to evolve the Unseen from the Seen; and we may follow him when he says, that as visible Matter is Geometrical as to figure and Mechanical as to motion, invisible Matter must be so likewise, for size makes no ditierence ; but when he proceeds to invent Elements, we listen to him, if we can command the interest, as we would to a tale of Utopia or the Fairies. For the existence of Points and the pro- cession of Finites into the Elements, he has no evidence or experience to adduce whatever. Why Magnetism itself is not composed of Points " derived innuediately from the Infinite," and why there are not ninety-two, or twenty-five, or ten layers of Finites between the Infinite and the Ether - — these and scores of similar questions might be idly asked, for his only answer could be, I have assumed whatever I thought requisite for the complete symmetry of my (i6 THE PRIN'CIPIA. theory. This, every open-eyed reader of the Pi-'mcipia ])erceives. The Principia has not wanted admirers who have found in it anticipations of many subsequent discoveries. It would be surprising indeed if a theory of such range and elaboration did not strike out some hints which Science might justify and subsequent speculators repeat. From our abstract it will be seen, that something akin to the Nebular Hypothesis is set forth in the assertion that Earths are produced from the condensed effusions of Suns. Laplace, who is commonly credited with the Nebular Hypothesis, owns that Buffon first suggested to him the idea of the derivation of Planets and their Moons from Suns. Buffon possessed Swedenborg's Princqna, and it may be presumed read it: a copy with his autograph, Bujfon, 1736, on the title-page, now lies before me. Even for the Point there are people to say something; some of our scientific men think, " that Matter is resolvable, in the last analysis, not into definite atoms occupying space, but into Points of dynamic force." This Mr. Faraday con- siders demonstrable, and substantially it is Swedenborg's notion: the Point is by him defined as "pure and total motion, an everlasting force," and the seed of all things. That heat and electricity are latent in all Matter is now universally admitted. Swedeuborg held that heat, light, and electricity were but modifications of the Magnetic Element. It is plain that Magnetism, according to his theory, is latent in all Matter, for it is but one of its gradations. Perhaps the most fruitful doctrine of the Principia is the doctrine of similarity — that Nature is everywhere the same in great as in little — that size makes no difference. This truth Swedenborg laid fast hold of, and never forgot ; he used it unsparingly as a truth of universal application in things spiritual as well as natural, and few of his pages can be read without meeting it, expressed or implied. Hence his Cosmogony is only a repetition of his theory of the Point and its Finites; the Sun becomes a centre of Points breeding the Elements which condense into Earths. The existence of vortices throughout all Creation is main- THE PRINCIPIA. 67 tained in the Prlncipia ; a spiral or vortical motion, lie says, is derived from the Point and pervades every Finite, and therefore all aggregates of Finites whether Elemental or Material. The theory of vortices was advocated by Kepler, Descartes, and Leibnitz, but it was regarded as exploded by Sir Isaac Newton's doctrine of attraction. There is a great difference however between the theory of vortices as taught by Swedenborg and by his prede- cessors. They supposed atoms and Avorlds to be inert masses, and that Earths were wheeled in their orbits by some extraneous force; Swedenborg on the other hand looked on each atom, and therefore on each Earth of atoms as carrying in its heart the force of the Point, and as being internally impelled thereby to perpetual vortical motion. Moreover the spaces between Suns and Earths are not voids, but are filled with the Magnetic Element, which swathes the Earths in soft bands, and guides them onward in their spiral waj's. By a Magnet and its sphere Swedenborg would interpret the Universe. What indeed is the Universe but a great Magnet ? Stars cluster, and Suns and Earths and Moons move under mafrnetic laws. CHAPTER V. THE INFINITE AND THE FINAL CAUSE OF CREATION, AND THE MECHANISM OF THE INTEECOURSE BETWEEN THE SOUL AND THE BODY.* Swedenborg inscribed this treatise to his brotlier-in-law Benzelius, at that time Bishop of East Gothland, a step in his ascent to the primacy of the Swedish Church. The Infinite, he premises, is the Difiiculty of Philosophy. * Prodro?nus Phllosophice Ratiocinantis de Infinito et Causa Finali Creationis: deque Mechanismo Operationis Anhnce et Corporis. Dresdaa et Lipsiae, 1734. 68 THE INFINITE. " As the mind in the course of philosophizing peers into and courses over finite Nature, it cannot but at last arrive at the utterly unknown and inexplicable, that is, at the Infinite; and as the Infinite is identical with the Non-finite, the mind there stops; there finds an insurmountable and impenetrable difiiculty, a Gordian Knot. "The Philosopher then by a thousand curious efforts labours to know, what the Infinite can be, what the Infinite God is like, what can be the nature of an Essence without end or boundary, and what that something is of the qualities of which Philosophy is doomed to perpetual ignorance; whether the Infinite is identical with the Divine, whether there be aught in Nature which can be said to be Infinite, whether the Infinite is beyond Nature, and whether the qualities of the Infinite are to be discovered by means of Nature. " The Philosopher impatient to solve the difiiculty whets his mind, consults all the oracles of Reason, and collects a thousand arguments from his Memory." Yet it will be observed, that the Philosopher, his Reason, his Memory, and all the powers and knowledge he can command are Finite, and being Finite, can make no approach to the Infinite. He may come indeed to the conclusion that Nature and God are one; but that is to deny the Infinite, for Nature is Finite. " I will admit," he continues, " that by no comparison with things finite, and by no similitude, and by no force or faculty of the understanding can we penetrate into the Divine Infinity. I will also go further and grant, that not even Angels (if the reader believe in Angels) can penetrate to the Infinity of God. To narrow the discussion, he asks his reader to accept the conclusion, " that in Nature the Infinite is impossible. Nature is composed of Finites ; and Finites though multi- plied indefinitely can never become Infinite." Admitting then that the Universe, Nature, or Creation is finite, he next inquires, By whom was the Universe created, caused, or finited? If it be answered, that Nature created or originated itself, a reply is made which is fiatly repugnant THE INFINITE. 69 to Reason; for that is saying that it existed before it did exist; that it created itself If it be said that God created Nature, and God be thought of as finite, the question is not answered, but evaded or deferred; for, if God be finite, we renew our inquiry, and ask, By whom was God finited, created, or caused? We have here the child's question, following his instruction that God made him — Then, who made God? Thus driven inwards from Finite to Finite, from Cause to Cause, we are at last compelled to stop and own a first and original Cause, un-caused and un-finite, and therefore Infinite. By this process our Author extorts the confession of the Infinite as the Cause and Creator of the finite Universe. Having confessed the Infinite, his next lesson is, that we can never know ivliat the Infinite is: that we can do no more than say the Infinite -^'s. "Poor foolish Reason" has long striven hopelessly to conceive the Infinite by the Finite, although the mere terms of the case ought to have taught a wholesome despair. " Let us now proceed onwards and see whether we can by Reason attain a still more distinct acknowledgment, that there is an Infinite God the producer of Nature. Reasoning a priori we have found, that this Unknown Being exists, or, that there is an Infinite. We will now inquire experi- mentally whether the same conclusion does not become irresistible when reasoning a posteriori." With this end he adduces a variet}^ of reflections on the immensity and the order of the Universe, as seen in the heavens and the structure of the human body, and infers therefrom the necessary existence of an Infinite Creator and Designer. He had evidently (1733-4) begun to grow familiar witli anatomy. In conclusion, he enters into some perplexed reasoning about a nexus, or medium of connection between the Infinite and the Finite, between Creator and Creation. The Infinite is the cause of the Finite, but the Finite is perfectly distinct from the Infinite: Creation is frorfi God, but nothinsf of God is in Creation. Creation moreover is not a work 70 THE INFINITE. (lone and abandoned, but a work in constant progress and renewal; maintained in every item of its existence by a perpetual efflux from the Infinite. How then is the chasm between the Infinite and the Finite bridged over? How is Nature adjoined to God? " Without a nexus the Finite could neither exist nor subsist. Unless the First Finites were related to the Infinite by a nexus of some kind they would be at once annihilated and the Universe dissipated outright." In the Pr'mcipia he selected Points for this office of mediation between the Infinite and the Finite: "like Janus looking both ways." Now he is less positive and in perplexity, directing his attention "at one time to the Infinite and at another to the First Finite, hoping to dis- cover the nexus from the latter, though not from the former, and standing hardly knowing which road to take between some light and more darkness." This conclusion is at last attained — " The nexus is affirmed, but it is not known ; we declare its certain existence, but pretend to no knowledge of its qualities. The nexus is Infinite, and equally unknown as the Infinite itself" This was discouraging. Evidently his next duty was to evolve from his Reason a nexus between the unknown Infinite nexus and the Finite. Strangely enough he elects Jesus Christ to the office of the nexus between the Infinite and the First Finites ! His idea was, that — " Where Reason is perplexed in her apprehensions recourse must be had to Revelation; and when Revelation gives us no answer we must fly to the oracle of Reason. In this way. Natural Theology must proffer her hand to Revealed when the meaning of Revelation seems doubtful; and Revealed Theology must lend her aid in turn to Rational Theology when Reason is in straits." His Reason being in straits about the nexus, he therefore flies to Revelation, and this is his deliverance — " Let us now see whether God Himself has not been pleased to reveal to us this very thing. He tells us that He had from Eternity an only begotten Son; that this only SOUL AND BODY. 71 begotten Son is Infinite, and is God; that the connection between the Finite and the Infinite is eft'ccted by this Infinite Son and God; and that the Father and Son con- curred in the work of Creation. " Here we have something like what Reason had dictated, to wit, a nexus between the Finite and the Infinite ; also, the declaration that the final cause belongs to the Infinite, but through the nexus of the Son ; and that the connection between the Infinite and the Finite is through the Son and through nothing else. Tims we have a concurrence of Revelation and Reason in the matter of the nexus. " For the present then let us rest content in the certaint}', that First Finites are connected with God through His only begotten Son." The title of the second part of the treatise, The Mechanism, of the Intercourse hetiveen the Soul and the Body, indicates a piece of thorough Materialism. He first decides, that the Soul is not Infinite inasmuch as it is not God, but created by God; and not being Infinite, it must be Finite, and being Finite, it must be included somewhere in that Universe which commencincr in Points ends in Earth. The Soul being Finite must have extension, " for the Finite is not conceivable apart from extension. I do not care how small a Finite may be, it must occupy space." Having caught the Soul in the net of the Finite and the Material, he discourses over it geometrically and me- chanically— "The Soul is in Nature enclosed within the Body. It is clear from experience, altogether apart from reasoning, that the Soul is a constituent of the Body, limited to it, and one of the Body's natural parts: its last and subtilest part. "The Soul dwells in no particular gland or membrane, nor is it diffused over the Body. Its dwelling-place is where the membranes pass into their highest attenuations and reach their finest subtility. The seat of the Rational Soul is in the Brain, and does not extend beyond it. The Soul resides particularly in the cortical substance of the 72 SOUL AND BODY. cerebrum, and partly also in the medullary, where ex- quisitely fine membranes run from particle to particle, and above, around and within each particle. It is ulnquitous in all parts of the Brain." Between his Soul and his flesh, blood and bones, Man comprises all the Elements which exist between the Sun and the Earth: l)y his Soul he is kin to the Sun, by his Body to the Earth. By vibi-ations from without through the Senses communications are made to the Soul. "Such vibratory or tremulous motion is the cause of all sensation." By vibrations from within, the Soul in turn issues her mandates to tlie Body. Such was Swedenborg's theory of the intercourse betM^een the Soul and the Body. He had too much good sense not to feel its defects; but one of the vices of his mind was an impatience of uncertainty, and to attain a fully rounded doctrine he was far too ready to invent the unknown. To discover the Soul had become his consuming desire — "The Sciences are diving continually deeper and dee])er into the mysteries of Nature, and continually detecting correspondences between the grosser and finer substances of the World. Why should we not press inwards to a knowledge of the Soul? and so forestal posterity and prevent them laughing at us, as we now laugh at some of the old philosophers." Tiiat he had his doubts about his theory is evident from several expressions. He naturally felt, that — "If the Soul be mechanical and geometrical it may be difficult to explain many of its faculties; as Imagination, Perception, Keason, Memory, Ideas, etc." Difficult indeed! He meets his doubt in this suggestion — • "Why may not mechanical laws exist in a superlative perfection adequate to these offices?" and promises, "that in a work to which this essay is only preliminary, we shall demonstrate that the Soul is perfectly mechanical, and that it is immortal and cannot perish unless the Universe itself be annihilated." In the Introduction to the Principia, published in the preceding year (1733), he had written — SOUL AND BODY. 73 "In respect to the Soul and its various faculties, I do not conceive it possible that they can be explained or com- prehended by any of the known laws of motion. Such indeed is our present state of ignorance, that we do not know whether the motions by which the Soul operates on the organs of the Body are reducible under any law or rule, either similar or dissimilar to those of Mechanism." Now (in 1734) he has come to another conclusion — "The Soul is subject to mechanical and geometrical laws. As it is impossible to conceive any finite existence without extension, so I am utterly at a loss to know how it can be shown, that there are other rules or laws of Nature beyond those that are geometrical and mechanical." Yet he did not close the lid of the geometrical box upon the Soul without misgivings — "If any one can point out to me — I will not insist upon demonstration — but if any one can point out how any other than geometrical and mechanical laws are possible in our finite Creation, I will cede the whole argument. To me it is inconceivable liow the Soul can exist save as a subject of Geometry and Mechanics. He who denies exten- sion to the Soul, denies that it is finite." Deeper in the mud-holes of Materialism he could scarcely go. The year he had spent in Germany, reading and com- muning with Wolf and his set, had hurried him into positions from which his own good sense had saved him when writing the Prlncipla at home in Stockholm. Now he thinks everything which is not God, everything created b}'' the Infinite, inasmuch as it is Finite, must needs be material, possess length, breadth and thickness, and exist under the rule of Geometiy and Mechanics. Afflicted with an itch for simplicity, he gains his end by reducing the Universe to one common stuff called Matter, thin at the centre in Suns and Souls, and thick at the outside in Earths and Metals. We may smile at these attempts to conjure the secrets of Creation out of Reason; but Swedenborg tried to do no more than whole regiments of Philosophers ancient, modern, and contemporary. 74- SOUL AND BODY. Swedenborg speaks of the present treatise as " an essay merely preliminary to a work in which I will prove, that the Soul is perfectly mechanical, and that it is immortal;" and in several places he repeats the promise, saying in one instance, that he " designs to speak more at length of the Soul in the Body in special dissertations, the purpose of whicli will be to demonstrate the immortality of the Soul to the very Senses." To discover then the Soul in the Body he betook himself with all his vigour to the study of Anatomy and Physiology : with what results we shall presently see. In 1745, ten years after this, he printed a work in London on the WoriiJii'p and Love of God. It is mentioned now, because from internal evidence it appears to have been written about this time; and because, when speaking of Christ as the nexus between God and Nature in the book before us, he observes, " We shall have more to say on this head when, in pursuance of our present plan, we come to speak of Divine Worship." CHAPTER VI. AT HOME AND ABROAD. Right glad was the old Bishop to receive his son back from Germany, a recognized Philosopher. His memory had grown treacherous, his nerves tremulous, but his eyes never needed spectacles, and he beheld with a proud joy the hand- some volumes of the Opera Pliilosophica et Mineirdia. In an autobiography he thus expresses his comfort in his Hon up to the ripe age of forty — " 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, through faith, we stand with our good and gracious God: and, blessed be the Lord's name ! God has to this hour DEATH OF SVEDBERG. 75 been with him, and may God further be with liim until he is eternally united with Hira in His Kingdom !" The Bishop composed the autobiography when he was between seventy-six and seventy-nine years old, from 1729 to 1732. With his own hand he made six copies, in folios of one hundred and sixty pages, " with good intention and in a fatherly spirit," and dedicated them with his usual sublime self-assurance, " to my children and posterity as an example how to condvict themselves after my death." In 1735, Bishop Svedberg died aged eighty-two, having ruled in the diocese of Skara for thirty-three years. So far back as 1718, the managing man had written out precise directions for his funeral. "There is to be no fuss made about my corpse ; the Masters of Arts and the Clergy of the vicinity are to bear it from my house to the grave, and if they grow tired the parishioners will relieve them. The funeral will take place by daylight, so that there may be no need for flambeaux or torches; the funeral sermon will be taken from the text, ' I believe in the communion of Saints, the remission of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. Amen.' Music and organ will be silent, and only the hymn, ' I know I shall again arise,' sung at the end. Meat and drink will be provided abundantly for the guests, and the remnants distributed among the poor of Asaka and Saranaka. The funeral memoirs written b}^ myself will be read before the sermon." Thus closed the long life of the busy Bishop, a man spiritual and worldly, liberal and intolerant, generous and grasping, lively and serious, and in all things restless and aggressive. Entertaining it likely was to meet Svedberg once in a while, and hear the rattle of his audacious tongue, and enter into the bustle of his doings; but to be associated with him permanently must have been weariness to the flesh. To the health of his enemies, whom he reckoned many, he used to drink ; but it is easier to imagine that he was disliked as a bore, as an intruder into matters beyond his pale, and as an upsetter of comfortable routine, than seriously hated as a foe. On the same ground we should suppose he was liked by his admirers rather than 76 CHARACTER OF SVEDBERG. reverenced or loved. There was not stillness in Liin to afford leisure for friendship, and his three mercantile mar- riages prove that his sensibilities were of a somewhat coarse texture. Music was a passion with Svedberg. Peter Hessclius, a clergyman, used to spend his evenings with his violin and flute at the Bishop's fireside, and wile away the hours with favourite tunes. "Heaven," said Svedberg, "is the land of music. There all motions are melodies. When I hear the roar of the waterfalls and the clatter of the mills, they bring to mind the constant harmonies I shall enjoy when I ascend to my eternal home and abide with the Angels." Peculiarly notable was his omnipresent self-esteem ; in all his affairs the Lord was on his side, and the Devil on his adversary's. In that conviction lay the secret of his per- tinacity, his naivete and perpetual activity. He never saw himself as others saw him ; hence he felt none of that tim- idity which afflicts those who can look at themselves out of their neighbours' eyes. His frankness was not sincerity so much as ignorance of the effect of his words. Dulness of this sort is a qualification for a certain order of worldly success. Men who are dead to the thouo-lits and feelinos of others concerning them, and supremely satisfied with their own rightness, can drive their measures through society in a style utterly impossible to sensitive organiza- tions. It is plain that was Svedberg's case. Indifferent because dead to unspoken opinion, he was able to work incessantly without being bewildered by doubt or fear. Direct resistance alone affected him, and he was satisfied if his imperious wishes were obeyed, without heed as to the motives from which obedience was yielded. Varied by culture and circumstance, we shall observe in Emanuel Swedenborg a repetition in many respects of his father's mind. Bishop Svedberg left a considerable fortune. Sweden- borg's share, added to what he had inherited from his step- mother, placed him in independence. He therefore found a substitute for his Assessorship, and resigning to him half THOUGHTS ABOUT HOLLAND. 77 bis salary, set off for the Continent in order to study Anatomy and Physiology and print promised books. His official income was 1,200 dalers, and as a daler was worth abont 2s. 6d., his income in English coin amounted to £150, a sum which had in Sweden a hundred years ago a value that £150 distantlj^ represents. On the 10th of July, 17o6, he sailed for Denmark, and spent about a week in Copenhagen. From thence he went to Hamburg, and Hanover, Holland, and Belgium. He entered Rotterdam in the midst of a fair, and, after some notes on the amusements of the people, he makes these reflections on the prosperity of the Dutch — "Here at Rotteirlam, I have been prompted to inquire, why God has blessed a people so boorish as the Dutch with such a fertile and luxuriant soil ; why He has pre- served them for so long a course of years from all misfor- tune ; and why He has raised them in commerce above all other nations, and made their provinces the emporium of the wealth of the world. On consideration, the first and pi'incipal cause appears to be that Holland is a republic, which form of Government is more pleasing to God than an absolute monarchy. In a republic no worship is paid to any man, but high and low think themselves equal to kings, as may be seen from the bearing of every one in Holland. They only worship God ; and when God alone is worshipped, and men are not adored instead, such worship is most acceptable to Him. "Then again, in Holland there is the greatest liberty. None are slaves, but all are as lords and masters, under the government of tlie most high God; and the consequence is, that they do not repress their manliness either by shame or fear, but always preserve a firm and sound mind in a sound body, and with a free spirit and an erect countenance com- mit themselves and their property to God, who alone ought to govern all things. It is not so in absolute monarchies where men are educated to simulation and dissimulation; where tliey learn to have one thing concealed in the heart, and to bring forth another upon the tongue ; where their ndnds by inveterate custom become so false and counterfeit 78 RESIDENCE IN PARIS. that tliey proffer their flattery and deceit to God Himself, which certainly must be most displeasing to Him. These seem to be the reasons why the Dutch are more prosperous in their undertakings than other nations. Their worship- ping Mammon however as a Deity, and caring for nothing but gold, is a thing not compatible with long prosperity ; yet perhaps there are ten in a thousand, or in ten thousand, who avert the punishment, and cause the rest to participate in the abundance and blessings of this life." On his journey from Antwerp to Brussels by boat he had among his fellow -passengers two bare-foot Franciscan friars, one of whom stood on a spot for four hours, praying devoutly all the time; upon which he remarks, "This custom of praying is doubtless well pleasing to God if it proceed from a true and faithful veneration and from a pure mind, and not from simulation and hj^pocrisy, as with the Phari- sees. Prayer avails much, as we know from the instance of Moses when his people were rebellious, and from other examples. Paul was also desirous that others should pray for him." Roye in Picardy he describes as " a miserable town. The monks are fat and voluptuous, and an army of such fellows might be banished without loss to the state. They fill their bellies, take all they can get, and give the poor nothing but fine words and blessings ; and yet they are ready to receive from the poor all their substance. What is the good of barefoot Franciscans ? " On the 3rd of September he arrived in Paris, where he remained for a year and a half; during the last four months of 1736, the whole of 1737, and 1738 to the 12th of March. This was his second visit to Paris; in 1712-13 he spent a year there. " 4ith Sept. — I saw the city around the Faubourg St. Ger- main, was in Notre Dame, the garden of the Luxembourg, and at the theatre. The Parisians carry pleasure, or rather sensuality, to its highest pitch. " Mh Sept. — I have been in the King's palaces, the Tuilleries and the Louvre, where I admired the statues of great, noble, and renowned men. I was also in the Hotel Royal des PARISIAN PLEASURES. 79 Invalides, which is a miracle of architecture, a temple of beauty ! " ISth Sept. — AVas at the Italian Comedy. " \Mli Sept. — Have been to the Opera, which is magni- ficent, and to the Comedy. " 18;'/<- Sept. — Was in the churches of the Franciscans and Cistercians, and to the Italian Comedy. I had some con- troversy with an Abbe about the worship of the Saints. He utterly denied that they are worshipped, contending that worship is solely rendered to God, veneration to Saints, and double veneration to the Virgin Mary. "28th Sepit- — Was at the Opera and saw excellent acting and dancing. "10th Oct. — It is reckoned that the tax called the tenths yields annually 32,000,000 livres, and that the Parisians spend two-thirds of the sum over the city. One-fifth of France is in the hands of the Church. If this lasts long, the ruin of the empire is certain. " 17th Oct. — I have been to the Opera at the Palais Royal, where a charming piece was performed. The best dancers are Malter and Desmoulins. Among the actresses most ])raised are Madame Breton and Madame Mariette; among the actors, Fribaud and Fel; among the singers, Pellecier and Antier. " I was also at the Sorbonne hearing a theological debate. " Oct. SOtlt. — I was at the Church of the Augustins, where Guillaume, preacher to the King, delivered a sermon like an actor, in a most artificial manner. "Nov. Srd. — I was at the palace where the Parliaments are held, and one is now commencing its sittings. In the large hall of assembly many candles were lit, and the place was filled with most exquisite music. The nobles were robed in purple. The bishop presided in his sacred garments. "I went to St. Chapelle, which St. Louis built in 1245. Among the relics shown is a fragment of the cross, a thorn from the crown of thorns, the spear, the sponge, and other things purchased at great cost, and brought from Constan- tinople." 80 ITALIAN TOUR. So day after day was passed during the first months of this Parisian residence. Swedenborg was an active sight- seer, with a universal curiosity. His journal contains few opinions, and is little more than a catalogue of sights. He left Paris for Italy on the 12th of March, 1738. At Lyons he spent some days inspecting the city and its maufactories. After a tedious and dangerous journey across the Alps he reached Turin, through the streets of which marched a body of monks bearing lighted candles as he entered. From Turin he passed to Milan, and on the way his guide proved a robber. He tln-eatened Swedenborg with his dagger, who managed to convince him that as he had no money, his murder would be a profitless crime. At Venice he settled for five months, from April to August. Mantua, Ferrara, Bologna, Florence, Pisa, and Siena were next visited, and on the evening of the 2oth of September, he entered Rome by the Flaminian Way through the People's Gate. There he abode until the 15th of February, 1739, for four and a half months. His journal, like that kept in Paris, consists of a mere list of the sights of Rome, with here and there a note of admiration over some picture, statue, or palace. His lodging, he states, was near the house where Christina of Sweden lived and died. Swedenborg's presence in Rome set the Cardinals thinking about him and his writings; and the Opera Philosophica et Miiieralia was honoured with an entry in the Index Expur- gatorius in 1739. In his journal he does not mention the Pope. It is not likely he saw Clement XII., for he was an old man, worn out and blind. He had been elected Pope in 1730, at the age of seventy-eight, and full of infirmities, as a brief respite to conflicting claims; but he lived to rule wisely and well for ten years, rather longer, it is said, than intended. From Rome he returned to Florence, where he had the pleasure of spending two hours in conversation with the Grand Duke and Duchess; then he went to Leghorn and thence to Genoa, where his journal concludes thus — " 17th March, 1739 — I have come to Genoa, which has an excellent harbour, superb palaces, and a senate house, the SEVEN tears' study. 81 most splendid imaginable, in which is a picture of Chris- topher Columbus, so livingly painted that I conld conceive nothing more perfect. "I saw the Doge, dressed in red to the shoes, and the Nobles, who are eight hundred, all in black with little tippets, and with noses and faces like apes. "I was in a most pleasant garden, which now in the middle of March is in high bloom, oranges and citrons are ripening, olives are gathered from the trees, Pomona is bringing her harvest." After this date we are without record of his goings. In 1740-41 he must have been at Amsterdam, for there he printed his Economy of the Aniinal Kingdom. In 1740 he seems to have been at Leipsic, for there he published ten Latin verses celebrating the third centenary of the art of printing. It is probable he went home in 1741, for we know he returned to Holland from Sweden in the summer of 1743 and published at the Hague Parts I. and II. of his Animal Kingdom. In 1744 he left Plolland for London, where, in 1745, he published Part III. of the Animal King- dom, and the Worsliip and Love of God. This is a meagre summary of seven years, but there is nothing more known from the summer of 1786 to the summer of 1743: to the latter date we shall recur by and bye. From the mass of writing he produced in these years, we conclude that he spent his time studying the works of the Anatomists, attending lectures, and getting into dis- secting rooms whenever he had an opportunity. In his itinerary he makes few references to his studies. On the 21st of July, 1736, he notes that he is reading and making extracts from Wolf's Cos'mology and Ontology. On the 6th of September, in Paris, we find him meditating a treatise to prove, that "The Soul of Wisdom lies in the acknow- ledgment and knowledge of the Deity;" and on the next day a second treatise, setting forth, that "It is now time to proceed from facts to the exploration of Nature." He was still pondering on the theme of the Principia, for, on the 4th of October, recording a visit to the Gardens of the Tuileries, he adds, "my walk was exceedingly pleasant 82 MISTRESSES. to-day; I was meditating on the forms of the particles of the atmospheres." There is an anecdote connected with this part of Sweden - Lorg-'s life, which may be mentioned. When he was an old man, General Tuxen asked, why he did not wed witli Emerentia Polhem, and he frankly answered, "She would not have me." Tuxen then ventured to inquire, whether in his youth he had been indifferent to women. Sweden- borg replied, "Not altogether. In my youth I had a Mistress in Italy." When in Italy he was fifty-two years old, not an age usually spoken of as that of youth ; but at the time the confession was made he was eighty, and to eighty fifty might appear as youth. We have already referred to a similar connection, reported by Robsahm * in these words — "It is well known that Swedenborg in his youth had a Mistress, whom he left because she was false to him. Besides this there cannot be found in his life any trace of a disorderly love."t No doubt Robsahm refers to his life in Stockholm and not in Italy. It may have been that Swedenborg was misunderstood by General Tuxen, and that Italy was supplied by his imagination. Yet there is fair cause for belief in both Mistresses. The confession to Tuxen was not exliaustive, and Robsahm did not know everything. Moreover the Italian Mistress is more credible after the Stockholm one, even as the chances of marriage are greater with widowers than bachelors. Let us now look over the books which Swedenborg has printed. * M. RobsaliTi, Director of the Bank of Stockliolra, became intimate with Swedenliorg towards the close of his life, and published a i^amphlet descrip- tive of his habits and conversation. Kobsahm's anecdotes have been often printed, but the English versions are usually more or less garbled. I shall often quote Robsahm as saying this or that, and let this reference to him as an authority suffice. t Tafel's Sammhing von Urkunden hetreffend dan Leben und den Character Eman. Swedenborg' s. Ahtheilung III., p. 20. 83 CHAPTER VII. THE ECONOMY OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM.* SwEDENBORG, vve have seen, arrived at the conclusion, that the Soul was a machine consisting of the inmost and subtilest parts of the Body. That he might discover the Soul in its fastnesses, he resolved to pierce the Body from the outside, memhrane by membrane. He recorded the resolve in 1734, and in 17-il, after seven years' search, he published the result in the Economy of the Animal Kingdom. By the Animal Kingdom, he did not mean the Kingdom of Animals, but Man only, Man being the summary of all Animals — "Man did not begin to exist until the Kingdoms of Nature were completed: then all were concentrated in Man. Thus in Man, the microcosm, the wdiole Universe may be contemplated from beginning to end, from first to last." Blood. In the pursuit of his argument he limits his attention to the Blood ; for " whatever exists in the Body pre-exists in the Blood. It is the complex "of Nature: to its constitution the Animal, Vegetable, Mineral and Elemental Kingdoms contribute: in fine, it is the epitome of the riches of the Universe." In the Frincipia he told us, that a Water-globule was the ultimate and first material out-come of the inner force of Nature. For like reasons he now tells us the same concern- ing a Red Blood-globule — ■ * (Economia Eegni Animalis in Transactiones divisa: quarum hcec prima cle Sanguine, ejus Arteriis, Venis et Corde ag'd : Anatomice, Physice et Philo- sophice perluslrata. Gui accedit Introductio ad Psychologiam Rationalem. Amstelodami, 1741. (Economia Regni Animalis in Transactiones divisa: quarum hccc secunda de Cerebri Motu et Cortice et de Ani7)ia Humana agit: Anatomice, Physice et Philosophice perlustrata. Amstelodami, 1741. 84 ECONOMY OF ANIMAL KINGDOM. "There is not in the whole compass of Nature a single compound entity more simple and perfect than a globule of Blood ; for it comprehends every constituent of the Mundane System. Hence the infinite variety of liquids and solids in the Animal Kingdom which proceed from the fountain of the Blood. Animal Spirits. Swedenborg resorted to Anatomy less for instruction than for confirmation. He had settled that the Soul was the inmost of the Body; he demanded of Anatomy what the inmost of the Body is; and to his delight the Anatomists supplied him with an idea which perfectly met his require- ment: they all believed in Animal Spirits — "The Learned in general, and the Anatomists in par- ticular, describe the Animal Spirits as running through the finest threads of the Nerves, as calling out the force of the Muscles, as being sublimated from the Blood, and as having their birth in the Brain, which they term the mart and emporium of the Animal Spirits." The fact is, the doctrine of a Nerve Spirit never ceased to be orthodox until our own day. All the old masters in Anatomy were its adherents. They never saw the Spirit, but as Haller observed, "that only proves the weakness of our Senses, but has no validity against the existence of a Juice or Spirit in the Nerves." The wisest among the old Anatomists knew, that it was vain to seek the Animal Spirits in the corpse. The difference between a live Body and a dead one was to them, the difference between the presence and the absence of Animal Spirits. They knew that a corpse was not a Man, but only a vesture from which the Man had fled; that which had fled they called Animal Sj)irits. Some of them said the Animal Spirits were the Soul, some said they were only the Body of the Soul, and some gave other definitions of their being and functions; but all united in the confession of their existence. These Animal Spirits were precisely what Swedenborg wanted for the perfection of his theory. So essentijil were they to him that he says — ECONOMY OF ANIMAL KII^GDOM. 85 " With those who deny the existence of an Animal Spirit, as denying First Principles, I hold no disputation. Their minds, sunk in unwisdom, are entirely confined to their eyes, and all causes with them are confused in effects." Three Bloods and their Organs. The Red Blood-globule is composed of six globules of White Blood set in a cube of Salt. The White Blood- globule is again divided into smaller globules, set in rarer Salts : these globules the eye with every help cannot dis- tinguish : they are the habitations of the Animal Spirits. The Red Blood has its birth in the Stomach, from which it ascends as Chyle into Serum, and is taken up and worn as a vesture by the White Blood. The White Blood is derived from Ether sucked out of the Air in the Lungs: from Ether likewise are taken those rare Salts in which its globules are fixed. " The Lungs may be considered as a single Stomach con- sisting of an infinite number of smaller ones, feeding on aerial food, just as the Stomach feeds on terrestrial food." The Brain is the organ of the Animal Spirits, as the Stomach is of the Red Blood, and the Lungs of the White. The Animal Spirits "by a transcendental art" are elab- orated in the cortical spherules of the Brain ; " by a wonderful process they are conceived within, and excluded from the exquisitely fine wombs of the cortical substance," and by the Nerves are conveyed to the remotest hamlets of the Body, and emitted into the Blood. The Nerves are the conduits of the Animal Spirits, and through them they glide with the swiftness of light. There is no part or substance in the Body which is not permeated and interfused by the Animal Spirits ; " they are the life and cause, the mother and nurse of the inferior Bloods," and of all the bones and tissues condensed therefrom. We have thus three fountains for the three Bloods: the Brain for the Animal Spirits, the Lungs for the White Blood, and the Heart for the Red. The motion of the Red Blood is 8G ECONOMY OF ANIMAL KINGDOM. Rotatory, of the White Spiral, and of the Animal Spirits Vortical. The Brain pulsates and propels the Animal Spirits through the Nerves just as the Heart does the Red Blood bred in the Stomach. What the Heart is to the arterial and venous circulation, the Brain is to the nervous. Each of the spherules of the cortical substance is a little heart prefixed to its fibre, and by a perpetual systole and diastole does its work. Brain and Lungs. In this work the Brain is assisted by the Lungs. Between the pulsations of the one and the respirations of the other there is a perfect accord. The peculiarity of Swedenborg's own breathing probably directed his attention to the intimate relation between the Brain and the Lungs. He had from childhood been accustomed to sink into depths of thought, in which, while his Brain paused, his Lungs lay still. The state was a kind of trance, which after middle life developed into a prodigious faculty. Any one, who pays attention to his own thoughts and breathings, will quickly observe how intimately they correspond. As often as the Brain is intent and thinking deeply, it will be noticed that the Lungs rest inactive; when the Brain is exhilarated and joyous, that the Lungs expand and inhale great gusts of Air; when the Brain collapses with fear, that the Lungs do the same; and when the Brain is disturbed with anger, that the Lungs gulp in the Air in quick mouthfuls. All know the meaning of the deep sigh of care, which is only a great breath in- spired and expired after a prolonged thought. The sym- pathy between the Brain and the Lungs is perfect. Result of the Inquest. At first Swedenborg seemed inclined to think, that in the Animal Spirits he had found the Soul. He owned, that though everything in the Body confirmed their existence, yet "they could not be discovered by the acutest sense, because they lie so deeply hid in Nature, and that no thought can approach unto them, except by way of Analogy." ECONOMY OF ANIMAL KINGDOM. 87 After a while however he decided, that the Animal Spirits were not the Soul, but the Body of the Soul, and the Soul he removed into a higher and inner region, saying, " That the Animal Spirits are the organ of the Soul, just as the eye is the organ of sight, the ear of hearing, the tongue of taste, and the brain of universal perception. The Animal Spirits form and rule the Body, but they in turn are ruled and formed by the higher forces of the Soul." These con- clusions he attained " by that Intuition whereby many truths are captured without the aid of the Sciences or far- fetched arguments, by that Intuition which enables us to decide in an instant whether what any one tells us is true, or not." At the end of his work we find ourselves no nearer a resolution of the mystery of the Soul than at the beginning. " If it is asked," he writes, " whether the Soul be material or immaterial, I inquire. Pray, what is Matter ? If it be defined as extension endued with inertia, then the Soul is not material; for inertia only belongs to the last things of Nature, such as Water and Minerals. The first Aura of the World is not Matter in this sense ; neither gravity nor levity can be predicated of that Aura; but on the contrary active force. On the other hand, Is not everything in Creation extended? and since extended. May not the Soul on that ground be called material? Let us not however trifle over words." With satisfaction we perceive that he was not betrayed by his theories, that he felt their iusufiiciency, and that he was willing to abandon all as labour lost, and enter upon fresh and more arduous toils if so be the truth might be won. Note this confession — Ignis Fatuus. "To discover the Soul there are two ways; one by bare reasoning, the other by anatomy. On making the attempt I found myself as far from my object as ever. No sooner did I feel the Soul within my grasp than I found it eluding me, though it never wholly disappeared from my view. Thus my hopes were not destroyed but deferred, and I have 88 ECONOMY OF ANIMAL KINGDOM. frequently reproached myself with stupidity for being ignorant of that which was yet everywhere most reall}'- present to me ; since b}^ reason of the Soul we hear, see feel, perceive, remember, imagine, think, desire, will, and are, move and live. Thus did I seem to see, and yet not to see, the very object witli the desire of hnoiving ^vhich I tvas never at rest At length I awoke as from a deep sleep, and discovered that nothing is further removed from the Under standing than what is present to it, that nothing is more present to the Understanding, than what is universal, prior, and superior — than what is indeed itself What is more omnipresent than the Deity (in Him we live, and are and move) and yet what is more remote from the operation of the Understanding?" Preparatory to metaphysical disquisition, Swedenborg compiled from the best Anatomists, articles descriptive of the vessels and circulation of the Blood. This has led some to suppose that his knowledge of the Body was limited to books and drawings. He leaves us in no doubt, however, that he frequented the dissecting-room, but whether in Holland, Paris, or Venice he does not say : probably wher- ever in his travels there was an anatomical school he found means of entrance. His reasons for making these careful digests of the observations of others I quote at length, as they suppl}^ at the same time an accurate estimate of his own speculative genius — " In the experimental knowledge of Anatomy our way has been pointed out by men of the greatest and most cul- tivated talents. Assisted and fortified by the works of these illustrious men, I have resolved to commence and complete my design; that is to say, to open some part of those things ivJuch it is generally supposed Natvure has involved in obscurity. Here and there I have taken the liberty of throwing in the results of ray own experience ; but this only sparingly, for, on deeply considering the matter, I deemed it better to make use of the facts supplied by others. Indeed there are some that seem born for ex- perimental observation and endowed with a sharper insight ECONOMY OF ANIMAL KINGDOM. 89 than others, as if they possessed naturally a finer acumen; such are Eustachius, Ruysch, Leeuwenhoek, Lancisi, etc. There are others again who enjoy a natural faculty for contemplating facts already discovered, and eliciting their causes. Both are peculiar gifts and are seldom united in the same person. Besides I found when intently occupied in exploring the secrets of the Human Body, that as soon as I discovered anything that had not been observed before, I began (seduced probably by self-love) to grow blind to the most acute lucubrations and researches of others, and to originate a whole series of inductive arguments from my particular discovery alone; and consequently to be incapaci- tated to view and comprehend, as accurately as the subject required, the idea of universals in individuals, and of indi- viduals under universals. Nay, when I essayed to form principles from these discoveries, I thought I could detect in various other phenomena much to confirm their truth, although in reality they were fairly susceptible of no con- struction of the kind. / therefore laid aside my instru- ments, and restraining my desire for making observations, determined rather to rely on the researches of others than to trust to my own." Not the least interesting portions of the Uconomy of the Animal KingdoTn are several in which we note the dawn of some of the chief ideas wdiich gave specialty to his future life, and which have made him a name among men. These for instances — The Spiritual Body. "Should any one of the external spheres of Nature be dissolved, the internal nevertheless remains unharmed; for though the effect be lost the cause endures: thus wherever Air ceases Ether is found: when the Red Blood dies the Animal Spirits survive : though death destroy the Body the Soul escapes unscathed. " When by death the Soul is emancipated from the bonds and trammels of the earth, it appears in the exact form of the Human Body, and enters on a life pure beyond imagina- tion." 90 ECONOMY OF ANIMAL KINGDOM. No Resurrection, or Return to the Flesh. " Freed from the entanglement of the Flesh, the Soul rises from a lower to a higher life. Never again can it attract the elements from the three Kingdoms of the World where- with to form anew a fleshly covering. The carnal Body is at death dissolved beyond recovery ; the Soul has no more any need or desire for its service." God animates the Soul. " Though the Spirituous Fluid is indestructible and im- mortal, it is not immortal per se. The Soul cannot truly of itself be called immortal ; because it is created by the one Immortal Being, who is Eternal Life. For Him to create anything in itself immortal would be to create that which He is. Whereas, what God does, is to preserve the Soul immortal through His indwelling." Earth the Seminary of Heaven. " We then clearly perceive, that everything in Creation tends to an end. That end is Man. Thereby the Creator unites Himself with a responsive Creation in a Society of Souls in the Heavens. " If there be a Society of Souls, must not the city of God on the universal Earth be its seminary ? The most univer- sal law of its citizens is, that they love their neighbour as themselves and God more than themselves. All other things are means to this Divine end. "The Holy Scripture is the code of rules for attaining this Divine end. These rules are not so dark and difficult as Philosophy and the Love of Self and the World would make them ; nor so deep and hidden that any sincere Soul led by the Spirit of God may not draw water for all its needs." The Spiritual Sun. " To know how God enters and vivifies the Soul is infinitely above comprehension ; there is no analysis and no abstraction which can reach so high ; for whatever is in God, and whatever law God acts by, is God. The only ECONOMY OF ANIMAL KINGDOM. 91 representation we can have is by way of comparison with light ; for as the Sun is the fountain of light to the World, so the Deity is the Sun of Life and Wisdom. . . As the Sun of the World flows into objects and subjects according to the form of each, so also does the Sun of Life and Wisdom. We are not however at liberty to go further into the details of the comparison, inasmuch as one Sun is within Nature, and the other is above it ; one is physical, the other purely moral ; one lies under the range of the Mind, the otlier is withdrawn among the sacred mysteries of theology." Man takes his Soul from his Father and his Body fro'cn his Mother. " The Soul of every child is derived from its Father, and the Souls of all from Adam, who received his immediately from the Creator. If the Soul be the Spirituous Fluid, it can come from no other place than the soil of its birth in the Father. The Body alone is from the Mother." * These passages are worth attention ; they mark an advance in Swedenborg's mind ; and by and bye we shall find similar opinions offered as supernatural revelations. CHAPTER VIIL THE ANIMAL KINGDOM, t " Not very long since," writes Swedenborg, " I published the Economy of the Animal Kingdom, and, before traversing * This notion is at least as old as Aristotle. + Bej.'iiim Anlmale Anatoinlce, Physice et Philosophice 'perlustratum. Cujus Pars Prima. De Visceribus Abdominis sen de Organis Regionis Inferioris agit. Hag£e Comitum, 1744. Regmtm Animate A 7^10711106, Physice et PhilosoiJldce perlustratnm. Cvjus Pars Secuiida. De Visceribus Thoracis seu de Organis Regionis Superioris agit. Hagce Comitum, 1744. Regnum Animale Anaiomice, Physice et Philosophice perlustratum. Cujus Pars Tertia. De Cute, Sensu Tactus, et Gustus; et de Formis Organicis in Genere, agit. Londini, 1745. 92 ANIMAL KINGDOM. the whole field in detail, made a rapid passage to the Soul, and put forth an article concerning it. On considering the matter more deeply, I found I had directed my course thither too hastily, having only explored the Blood and its organs: I took the step impelled by a burning desire for know- ledge. " The Soul acts in the supreme and innermost parts and cannot be reached until all her swathings have been one by one unrolled. I am therefore determined to allow myself no rest until I shall have opened all the doors which lead to her, and at last contemplate the Soul herself by Divine permission." Thus clearly does he set forth his aim, and thus his plan — " I intend to examine, physically and philosophically, the whole Anatomy of the Body, its Viscera, abdominal and thoracic, the Generative Organs of both sexes, and the Organs of the five Senses. Likewise, the Anatomy of all parts of the Cerebrum, Cerebellum, Medulla Oblongata, and Medulla Spinalis. " Afterw^ards, the cortical substance of the two Brains, and their medullary fibre ; also, the nervous and muscular fibres of the Body and the forces and motion of the whole organism : Diseases moreover, those of the Head particularly, or which proceed by defluxion from the Cerebrum. " I propose afterwards to give an introduction to Rational Psychology, consisting of certain new Doctrines by the assistance of which we may be conducted from the material Body to the immaterial Soul. These Doctrines are — ■ The Doctrine of Forms. | The Doctrine of Influx. The Doctrine of Order and ' The Doctrine of Corre- Degrees. j spondence and Bepresen- The Doctrine of Series and I tation. Society. The Doctrine of Modifica- I tion. " From these Doctrines I come to the Rational Psychology itself, which will comprise — ANIMAL KINGDOM. 93 Subjects of Action. I Imagination and Memory. External and Internal The Affections of the Will. Sense. The Affections of the Intellect, Thought, and j Rational Mind. Will. I Instinct. " Lastly, of the Soul and of its connection and intercourse with the Body, its affections and immortality, and its state when the Body dies. The work will conclude with a Concordance of Systems. " From this summary the reader may see, that the end I propose is a knowledge of the Soul ; that knowledge will be the crown of my studies. Tliis then my labours intend, and thither they aim." In what a different sense he is here writing of the Soul from that in which he formerly wrote, take this example — " It is impossible to climb or leap from the organic, physical, and material World (I mean the Body) immediately to the Soul, of which neither Matter nor any of the adjuncts of Matter are predicable ; for Spirit is above the comprehen- sible modes of Nature, and in that reoion where the siofnifica- tions of physical things perish." He writes for Unbelievers. He supposes that some may object to his search after the Soul, on the ground that the Soul dwells in the realm of Faith and not of Intellect; and that Reason ousht to confine its exercise to the Earth, and not aspire to heights for which it has no wings, and which lie in the domain of Revelation. " I grant this," he says. " Those who are inspired by a Divine Faith despise the assistance of confirmatory arguments, and perhaps they will laugh at these labours of mine; nor would I persuade any one who comprehends these high truths by Faith to attempt to compass them by his Intellect: let him abstain from my books. Who so believes Revelation implicitly, without consulting the Intellect, is the happiest of mortals, the nearest to Heaven, and at once a native of both Worlds. 9i ANIMAL KINGDOM. " These pages of mine are written for those only who never believe anything but what they can receive with the Intellect; consequently, who boldly invalidate the existence of all things sublimer than themselves, as the Soul, Eter- nal Life and Heaven. Since they do not perceive these things, they reject them as empty phrases, phantasms, trifles, fables, conceits, and self-delusions; consequently, they honour and worship Nature and themselves; they compare them- selves to brutes, and fincy they shall die as brutes die, and their life exhale and evaporate ; thus they rush fearlessly into wickedness. "For these persons only I am anxious; for them I indite, and to them I dedicate my work." T'wo Paths. There are two ways, he says, which promise to lead to the Soul — the Analytic and the Synthetic. Deductive Metltod. In the synthetic way Swedenborg will not walk; he utterly condemns it, saying — " Synthesis has been the fovourite method with philoso- phers since philosophy began. It is a method pleasing and wonderfully akin to the human Mind ; it enables the philoso- ])her to indulge his own tastes, assume the principles he likes, and proclaim them as truths. Should anything ad- verse in experience arise. Synthesis easily polishes it away, represses, or removes it. We are easily beguiled into the ideal games of Synthesis; the race is easy. We fix our goal, and bound between it and the starting place. " Synthesis is easy and agreeable ; but it is not the way that leads to truth. Could any one tell me by Synthesis, or a priori, what is contained in the Body ? Could any one without experience predict that it contained a heart, liver, kidneys, arteries, mesentery, and a myriad other things ? " Alas ! through Synthesis we are often so puffed up with self-conceit that we fancy we are in the sky when we are squatting on the earth, in the light when we are in the dark, and at the inmost when we are at the outmost. ANIMAL KINGDOM. 95 Synthetic reasoning is the source of the insanities of the human Mind. " The Mind absorbs through the Senses all the materials on which it reasons. We are born in complete ignorance, and in process of time our Senses are opened ; through them impressions are received and sublimated into ideas, which by Reason are methodized into doctrines. This is Man's only way of attaining truths so long as his Soul abides in the Bod3\ " In fact. Synthesis is nothing but a poor, precocious and vague Analysis ; it gives out no more than has crept into the Intellect by the Senses, and to a fragment of experi- ence, frequently distorted, would subdue universal experi- ence. Whence come opinions, hypotheses, theories, systems. " These monstrous hypotheses are born, have their day of glory, grow old, die, and are forgotten ; but from their ashes broods of new ones spring, which walk as spectres through the eartli, and like enchantresses distract the human Mind perennially. Hence errors, mental darkness and strife, scholastic contentions over straws, and the flight and exile of truths." What an excellent piece of self-criticism have we here ! Whilst reading the Prioicipia, the Infinite and the Econ- omy of the Animal Kingdom^ we might have vented our weariness in terms like these. Nevertheless, the expression of revulsion against theory goes to an unwarrantable extreme ; it is like an out-and-out curse of wine in the suffering and disgust after a night of excess. Inductive Method. " So much for Synthesis," he continues, " now for Analysis. " Analysis commences from effects and phenomena and mounts to causes and causes of causes. It searches for facts, collects them from every quarter, and reduces them to order. Analysis invokes all the Sciences. Thus helped, the Mind founds and rears her palace, not in the Air, which is not her element, but on the solid Earth. " Analysis is the only open way to truths for us earth- 96 ANIMAL KINGDOM. born men ; but verily it is a long and toilsome road ; for as all truths are related, to attain thorough knoM'ledge of one we must needs make acquaintance with many. We must court all the Muses, " When at length by Analysis we have attained the prin- ciples of things, we may then advocate them ; and from the mountain of Principle sit and contemplate the realm of Experience. Yet when we have done our utmost, there will remain many things hid in obscurity ; for, while the Mind is buried in the Body, it can never rise wholly above the mists of the Senses. " We are now in possession of vast stores of experimental knowledge, lying dead and unused. Let us then gird up our loins for the work. Experience is at our side with a full horn of plenty. The nine Virgins are present with the riches of nearly two thousand years. Nor do I think we ought to wait any longer, lest haply experimental know- ledge should be overtaken by age, night and oblivion, and the Arts and Sciences be carried to the tomb ; for, unless I mistake the signs of the times, the World's destinies are tending thitherwards. All things at the present day stand provided and prepared and await the light. The ship is in the harbour, the sails are swelling, the east wind blows ; let us weigh anchor and put forth to sea." The order pursued in the Animal Kingdom is the same as in the Economy. First is premised a copious selection of facts from the Anatomists on the organ under consideration, and then follows Swedenborg's own induction, sometimes as rich in metaphor and analogy, observation and suggestion, as Bacon's Essays themselves — bits of writing which he never elsewhere equalled. He only published three volumes of his great undertak- ing. The First Part appeared at Amsterdam in 1744. It treats of the Viscera of the Abdomen, and consists of chapters on the Tongue, Mouth, and Fauces as the thresholds of the abdominal regions, on the Pharynx, Stomach, Intestines, Mesentery, Thoracic Duct, Glands, Liver, Pancreas, Spleen, Kidneys, Bladder, and Peritouoeum. ANIMAL KINGDOM. 97 The Second Part likewise appeared at Amsterdam in 174)4. It treats of the Viscera of the Thorax, and is com- posed of Chapters on the Nose, Larynx, Trachea, Lungs, Pleura, Thymus Gland, and Diaphragm. The Third Part appeared in London in 1745. It treats of the Skin and the Sense of Touch, Organic Forms generally, the Sense and Sensorium of Touch specifically, the Use of Touch, and Sense of Taste. This Third Part was the last of his physiological publica- tions. The work he had mapped out for himself he never completed ; yet his manuscripts prove that he had advanced far beyond the point where he bade farewell to the printer ; among them is a work on the Brain of upwards of a thousand pages, besides treatises on other portions of the Body, some of which have been printed. I shall not cumber these i)ages with their enumeration : they will be found in a catalogue at the end of the volume. CHAPTER IX. THE WOESHIP AND LOVE OF GOD.* The Worship and Love of God, published in London in 1745, would appear to have been written several years preceding that date. It has a closer affinity with the Priricijna of 1734 tluin with tlie Animal Kingdom of 1744, though annotated with the later thought. In the Principia, Swedenborg worked out Creation as far as Paradise, and in the Worship and Love of God he takes up the thread of his story and tells us how Plants and Animals and Adam and Eve were broucjht into beinff. He thus opens his enterprise — * Pars I. DeCultuet Amove Dei; uhi agltur de Telluris Ortu, Paradino et Vivaria, turn de Primogeniti sen Adami Navilate, Infantia et Amore. Londini, 1745. Pars II. De Conjugio Adami, et de Aniina, Mente Intellectuali, Statu Integritatis, et Imagine Dei. Londini, 1745. H 98 WORSHIP AND LOVE OF GOD. " Walking alone in a pleasant grove in autumn for the purpose of composing my thoughts, I grew sad as I observed the falling leaves flying around, and began to consider whether all things do not pass through similar vicissitudes; thus whether it is not the same with ourselves as with forests ; for we too commence in a kind of spring and pass through summer to decay. Nor is this the case only with individuals, but likewise with communities. Humanity has liad its gold and silver ages, which have changed to iron and will moulder to clay. "The wise Ancients clearly perceived from the analogy of Nature, that Man must have had his spring when Earth was a Paradise fanned with zephyrs and warmed with a gentle and considerate Sun." Swedenborg too would revive and contemplate this Paradise with the mirrors of analogy — " Nevertheless without the favour of the Supreme Deity, from whom all truths enter our understandings, inquiry would be vain; v/herefore let us supplicate His presence and aid." The Sun and Ids Children. " There was a time when the Sun was overspread with effluvia, which condensed about him like the white of an agg. On the surface of this exhalation, a crust formed like the shell of an egg. Thus hemmed in, he burned to be