EMANUEL SWEDENBORG 
 
 A BIOGRAPHY. 
 
 MX 
 
 JAMES JOHN GARTH '^’ILKLNSON. 
 
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 U)NIX)X: 
 
 WILLIAM NEWBERY. 6. KING STREET, IIOLBORN. 
 
LONDON ; ^ 
 
 PRINTED BY WALTON AND MITCBELL, 
 
 W'arilour Street, Oafurd Street. 
 
TO 
 
 Dr. P. E. SVEDBOM, 
 
 fellow op the hnivessitv of upsal, 
 
 H.A. 
 
 THIS W'OKK IS DEDICATED, 
 
 the author. 
 
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 PREFACE. 
 
 I HERE present to English readers a first attempt 
 towards a connected Biography of Swedenborg, fully 
 sensible of my own deficieneies for such an under- 
 taking. But my studies have seemed to require it 
 of me at a period when the exchange of thought 
 and learning is freer than heretofore, and when each 
 man’s wares are expected in the market. My first 
 end will be satisfied if it renders an author, hitherto 
 unknown from his great peculiarity, and difficult of 
 access from his bulk, an object of some knowledge 
 to the literary and intelligent classes. 
 
 In fulfilling my design I have endeavored to keep 
 always in view, that I am mating a life and not 
 pleading a cause. Still I have written the life af- 
 firmatively, beeause I could not help it. The method 
 has its advantages; for as our Carlyle says, “sym- 
 pathy is the first essential towards insight.” Nothing 
 however will better please me, than a fair biography 
 by another, from an opposite point of view. 
 
 For whatever I have said, I alone am responsible. 
 
VI 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 No body of persons is chargeable with my senti- 
 ments in the work. While writing it, I have had 
 no audience before me but the public. 
 
 I have every where made use of the most au- 
 thentic documents and sources. 
 
 The reader who desires a further elucidation of 
 Swedenborg’s philosophy, necessarily brief in a po- 
 pular life, will find more on the subject in the Intro- 
 duction to my translation of the Animal Kingdom, 
 and in my Introductory Remarks to Mr. Clissold’s 
 version of the Economy : I would also refer him to 
 Mr. Strutt’s translation of Swedenborg’s Chemical 
 Specimens, and to Mr. Chssold’s, of the Principia, 
 and to my Popular Sketch of Swedenborg’s Philoso- 
 phical Works. 
 
 I have omitted no tolerably authenticated singu- 
 larities of the subject of this Memoir. Such things 
 are odd in the hfe of particular persons, because we 
 do not understand the life. They either enlarge our 
 apprehension, or measure our dullness. I have said 
 the worst of Swedenborg that I honestly can : it 
 will be a good voice that says the lawful best. I 
 have not attempted it. 
 
 Hampstead, Oct. 5, 1849. 
 
/ 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 PACK 
 
 SWEDENBORG, THE PHILOSOPHER OF NATURE 1 
 
 PART II. 
 
 SWEDENBORG, THE SEER, THEOLOGIAN, AND PHILOSOPHER 
 OF SPIRIT 73 
 
 PART III. 
 
 PERSONAL TESTIMONIES AND ANECDOTES. 
 
 PART IV. 
 
 SPIRITUAL OPENINGS AND WANTS 
 
 248 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2015 
 
 https://archive.org/details/emanuelswedenbor00wilk_0 
 
LIFE OF SAVEDENBORG. 
 
 PART I. 
 
 There is, in the present day, a constantly increasing en- 
 quiry among intelligent persons, respecting the life and 
 labors of Swedenborg, whose name begins to be whispered, 
 with more or less respect, and with undefined feelings, 
 throughout Christendom ; and it is the intention of the 
 following pages to give a short account of that author’s 
 career, to serve as a guide to those readers who are inter- 
 ested in the subject, and to facilitate them in pursuing it 
 for themselves. We shall dogmatize but little in the nar- 
 rative, but chiefly state facts, and accompany them with a 
 few comments. We are no followers of Swedenborg, al- 
 though we accept his views of Christianity, but not because 
 he discovered them, but because they were there to be dis- 
 covered, and are true. The truth, we believe, is not 
 arrested or contained by any man, but as soon as found, 
 the mind may pass from that level, and rise from it as a 
 vantage ground to new truths. It is, therefore, in the 
 service of the public, and not of Swedenborg, that we write 
 these pages ; for the time has come when every enlightened 
 man and woman ought, for their own sakes, to know of 
 Swedenborg and his pretensions. 
 
 For consider the case. Here was an author, flourishing 
 in the last century, whose principal works were written 
 
2 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 from 1721 to 1772, and who, enjoying at first a good repu- 
 tation as a scientific and practical man, saw that reputation 
 gradually expire as his own mind unfolded in his works, 
 until at length he was only known as a visionary, and the 
 fact of his early career was scarcely remembered by his few 
 surviving contemporaries. There was every reason why 
 his works died to that age. He had a firm faith, from the 
 first, in the goodness of God, in the powers of the mind, 
 in the wisdom and easiness of creation, and in the immove- 
 able firmness of revelation ; later on, a belief too in spiritual 
 existence, in a sense intelligible to all mankind. In his 
 case, there was a breaking of shell after shell, — a rolling 
 away of delusion after delusion, until the truth was seen to 
 be itself real — to be the true creation, the world above 
 and before the world, of which mortal creatures are made. 
 How could so substantial a personage — a man whose spirit 
 and its relations were a body and a force — be seen at all in 
 the last century, when the public wave ran in spring-tides 
 towards materialism, frivolity, and all conventionalities ? 
 The savage might as easily value a telescope or a theodolite 
 as Europe estimate a Swedenborg at such an era. Accord- 
 ingly, in proportion as he transcended brute matter and 
 dead facts, he vanished from its sight, and was only men- 
 tioned with ridicule as a ghost-seer — the next thing to a 
 ghost. But how stands the matter now ? The majority, 
 it is true, know nothing of Swedenborg ; and it is for them 
 we write. But the vast majority of those who do know — 
 and the number is considerable in all parts of the civilized 
 w'orld — regard him with respect and affectionate admiration ; 
 many hailing him as the herald of a new church upon 
 earth ; many as a gift of the same provident deity who has 
 sent, as indirect messengers, the other secular leaders of 
 the race, — the great poets, the great philosophers, the 
 guiding intellects of the sciences ; many also still looking 
 towards his works in order to gain instruction from them. 
 
GROUNDS FOR WRITING IT. 
 
 3 
 
 and to settle for themselves the author’s place among the 
 benefactors of his kind. We ourselves are in all these 
 classes, allowing them to modify each other ; and perhaps, 
 on that account, are suitable to address those who know 
 less of the subject, for we have no position to maintain but 
 the facts of the case. 
 
 Now whence this change in public opinion ? It has been 
 the most silent of revolutions, a matter almost of signs 
 and whispers. Swedenborg’s admirers have simply kept 
 his books before the public, and given them their good 
 word when opportunity offered. The rest has been done 
 over the heads of men, by the course of events, by the 
 advance of the sciences, by our new liberties of thought, 
 by whatever makes man from ignorant, enlightened, and 
 from sensual, refined and spiritualized. In short, it is the 
 w'orld’s progress under Providence which has brought it to 
 Swedenborg’s door. For where a new truth has been dis- 
 covered, that truth has said a courteous word for Sweden- 
 borg ; where a new science has sprung up and entered upon 
 its conquests, that science has pointed with silent-speaking 
 finger to something friendly to, and suggestive of, itself in 
 Swedenborg ; where a new spirit has entered the world, that 
 spirit has flown to its mate in Swedenborg ; where the age 
 has felt its own darkness and confessed it, the students of 
 Swedenborg have been convinced that there was in him 
 much of the light which all hearts were seeking. And 
 so forth. The fact then is, that an unbelieving century 
 could see nothing in Swedenborg ; that its successor, more 
 trustful and truthful, sees more and more ; and strong in- 
 dications exist that in another five-and-twenty years the 
 field occupied by this author must be visited by the leaders 
 of opinion en masse, and whether they will or no ; because 
 it is not proselytism that will take them there, but the ex- 
 pansion and culmination of the truth, and the organic course 
 of events. The following pages will have their end if they 
 
 B 2 
 
4 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 be one pioneer of this path which the learned and the rulers 
 are to traverse. 
 
 Emanttel Swedenborg was horn at Stockholm in 
 Sweden, on the 29th of January, 1688. Descended from 
 a family of credit and respectability among the miners of 
 Stora Kopparberg (the great copper mountain), he was 
 the third child and second son of Dr. Jesper Swedberg, 
 Bishop of Skara in West Gothland, and of Sarah Behm, 
 daughter of Albrecht Behm, Assessor of the Royal Board 
 of mines. His father, a man of talent and influence, and 
 a voluminous author on many subjects both sacred and secu- 
 lar, held successively the appointments of Court Chaplain, 
 Professor of Theology, and Provost of the Cathedral at 
 Upsal, before he was made a bishop. The character of this 
 prelate stood high in Sweden ; his voice was heard on great 
 occasions, whether to reassure the people under the calamity 
 of battle or pestilence, or to rebuke the vicious manners of 
 the upper classes, or the faults of the king himself ; he 
 labored with constant and vigorous patriotism to rouse the 
 public spirit of the country for useful and Christian objects.* 
 Swedenborg’s parentage and home were, therefore, happy 
 omens of his future life ; he was brought up with strict but 
 kindly care; was carefully educated by his father in all 
 innocence and scientific learning ; and enjoyed the oppor- 
 tunities afforded by the sphere and example of family vir- 
 tues, accomplishments, and high station, with which he 
 was surrounded. 
 
 The only record we have of his childhood is in a letter 
 which he wrote late in life to Dr. Beyer. “ With regard 
 to what passed in the earliest part of my life, about which 
 you wish to be informed : from my fourth to my tenth 
 year, my thoughts were constantly engrossed by reflecting 
 i on God, on salvation, and on the spiritual affections of 
 
 * For further particulars respecting this prelate, see our Biography 
 of Jesper Swedberg in the Penny Cyclopcedia. 
 
A.D. 1688—1700.] BIRTH, PARENTAGE, ETC. 5 
 
 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 vivifying charity or love is no other 
 than the love of one’s neighbor; that God vouchsafes this 
 faith to every one ; but that it is adopted by those only who 
 practise that charity. 
 
 “ I knew of no other faith or belief at that time, than 
 that God is the creator and preserver of nature ; that he 
 endues man with understanding, good inclinations, and 
 other gifts derived from these. 
 
 “ I knew nothing at that time of the systematic or dog- 
 matic kind of faith, that God the Father imputes the 
 righteousness or merits of his Son to whomsoever, and at 
 whatever times, he wills, even to the impenitent. And had 
 I heard of such a faith, it would have been then, as now, 
 perfectly unintelligible to me.” 
 
 This information from Swedenborg himself shews at 
 how early a period he was penetrated with that theolo- 
 gical reform which is all in all in his latest writings ; and 
 when to this it is added, that his sayings at the time were 
 so extraordinary that his parents used to declare that “the 
 angels spoke through his mouth,” we see how deeply were 
 the preparations laid for that spiritual and mental condition 
 which his mature years were to present. Love as superior 
 to faith, and spiritual intercourse as a way of information 
 on spiritual things, were both shadowed forth in his very 
 childhood ; were both carried through science in his adult 
 life, furnishing the torch of so many intellectual discoveries ; 
 and at length were completed in an unparalleled dogmatic 
 
LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 system of theology on the one hand, in a bodily* introduc- 
 tion to the spiritual world on the other. It may be an- 
 swered that these confessions only prove the enthusiastic 
 character of our author ; but let us not beg the question 
 which Swedenborg’s life states. 
 
 In the sequel we shall have to point out some psycho- 
 logical peculiarities that occurred at “his morning and 
 evening prayers” during his tender years, but at present 
 we only note how free his father had left his mind of Lu- 
 theran dogmas, and how much his future course was in- 
 debted to this early respect which the Bishop paid to his 
 son’s independence. Reared as he was under a strict 
 ecclesiastic, it is surprising that up to his twelfth year he 
 knew nothing of “ the plan of salvation,” whether it argues 
 his own inability to learn it, or his father’s disbelief in it, 
 or the omission of the latter, from whatever motives, to 
 teach it to his son. Dr. Swedberg, however, was a serious 
 and earnest man, and under date of April, 1729, he thus 
 writes of the subject of our memoir ; — “Emanuel, my son’s 
 name, signifies ‘ God with us,’ — a name which should con- 
 stantly 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 indeed 
 been with him ; and may God he farther with him, until 
 he is eternally united with Him in his kingdom.” 
 
 Great care was bestowed by the Bishop on Swedenborg’s 
 education, which he received principally at the University 
 of Upsal. “A son of Bishop Swedberg,” says Sandel, 
 “ could not fail to receive a good education . . . such as was 
 suited to form his youth to virtue, industry and solid 
 knowledge, particularly in those sciences that were to con- 
 * By body we do not mean the material but the spiritual body ; 
 for all spiritual things are bodily, though not material. 
 
A.D. 1709-10.] 
 
 ACADEMICAL CAREER. 
 
 stitute his chief pursuit.”* During his residence at Upsal 
 Swedenborg was assiduous in studying the learned lan- 
 guages, mathematics, mineralogy, and natural philosophy. 
 
 In 1709, at the age of 22, he took his degree of Doctor 
 of Philosophy, and his first publication was an edition of 
 select Sentences of Seneca and Publius Syrus Mimus, 
 with comments of his own, which he had written for the 
 degree.f First the author gives parallel aphorisms and 
 passages from other writers, and then remarks of his own. 
 In the latter we have often to admire his precocious judg- 
 ment in treating of subjects which commonly belong to more 
 adult consideration. The moral tone of the commentary is 
 particularly vigorous, and when he speaks of friendship, 
 filial love, and the like, there is a genius in his words pro- 
 ceeding from the fountains of the heart. The work was 
 dedicated to his father, in a prelude full of gratitude and 
 respectful love. 
 
 At the same date he published, in a work of his father’s, 
 a Latin version^ of the Twelfth Chapter of Ecclesiastes, 
 which shewed great command of the Latin language and 
 poetical expression of a high order. 
 
 Having completed his university education, in 1710, ac- 
 cording to the practice of the time, he commenced a course 
 of travel, and first he came to London. In his brief diary 
 of the voyage, he relates with much simplicity the adven- 
 tures which befel him. After a severe storm, in which 
 there was danger of foundering, the ship was mistaken 
 for a Danish pirate by an armed English vessel, and 
 
 * An Account of Emanuel Swedenborg, as contained in a Eulo- 
 gium to his Memory, by M. Sandel. 
 
 t L. Anneei Senecce et Pub. Syri Mimi forsan et aliorum selectee 
 SententieB. Quas notis illustratas edidit Emanuel Swedberg 
 [Swedenborg]. Ad fidem rarissimee editionis principis anni 1709 
 denuo publici juris fecit et fragmenta nuper reperta adjecit Dr.J. 
 F. E. Tafel. 
 
 t Inserted in Tafel’s Magazin, Band. III., 1844. 
 
s 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 fired into, but without damage ; and secondly, when he 
 entered the port of London, some of his own countrymen 
 came on board, and persuaded him to land at once, in ig- 
 norance of the quarantine regulations. The plague at the 
 time was raging in his own country ; and Swedenborg re- 
 cords that it was with difficulty that he escaped hanging 
 for his imprudence. 
 
 He spent a twelvemonth at London and Oxford, from 
 whence be passed to the continent, and lived for more than 
 three years in France, Holland, and other countries. In 
 1/15, he published at Greifswalde an Oration on the return 
 of Charles XII. from Turkey, and a small volume of Latin 
 prose fables,* professedly after the manner of Ovid, but 
 shadowing forth the virtues and exploits of certain modern 
 Scandinavians; as he says, “kings and great people.” In 
 this work there is evidence of an acute faculty of observation, 
 of considerable power of fancy and humour, and especially 
 of a regard to the forms of mythological lore. In the latter 
 respect it suggests the Worship and Love of God, a work 
 of thirty years later date, which we shall have to notice 
 presently. At this time Swedenborg wrote to his brother- 
 in-law, that he was “ alternating mathematics with poetry 
 in his studies,” an instance of his early flexibility, and 
 which sheds light upon his future deeds. 
 
 From Greifswalde he returned home in 1715, through 
 Stralsuud, just as Charles XII. was about to be besieged 
 in that city, and it was probably shortly after this that he 
 put forth at Skara a little volume of poemsf written for the 
 most part on his travels. These poems display fancy, but 
 
 * Camena Borea, cum heroum et heroidumfactis ludens, sive Fa- 
 bell.® Ovidianis similes, H(C. Ab Emanuel Swedberg [Sweden- 
 borg]. Edidit Dr. J. F. E. Tafel. 
 
 t Ludus Heliconius, sive Carmina Miscellanea, quae variis in 
 locis cecinit Emanuel Swedberg [Swedenborg]. Receusuit Dr. 
 J. F. E. Tafel. 
 
A.D. 1710-15.] first TRAVELS; FABLES AND POEMS. !) 
 
 a controlled imagination. If we may convey to the English 
 reader such a notion of Latin verses, they remind one of 
 the Pope school, in which there is generally some theme or 
 moral governing the flights of the muse. Under various 
 forms, they hymn the praises of patriotism, love, friendship, 
 and filial regard, and they love mythological clothing. It 
 is noteworthy that we find so methodical a philosopher as 
 Swedenborg making courteous passes with the Muse, as 
 though to acknowledge the truth and import of immortal 
 song. Still his effusions were hardly more than a polite 
 recognition of poetry, that sweeter and weaker sex of truth ; 
 for to call Swedenborg himself a great poet, as Count 
 Hopken has done, is blind and undiscriminating. He did 
 indeed weave great poetry at last, but it was by the order 
 and machinery of a stupendous intelligence, and poetry so 
 produced is not proper poetry but reason, — is not female but 
 masculine truth. 
 
 One of his poems has been spiritedly paraphrased in 
 our own day by Francis Barham, who considers it by far 
 the finest in the collection, and to give the reader some 
 idea of the above volume, as well as to adorn our own pages, 
 we insert his version. “Swedenborg,” he premises, “was 
 at this time twenty-two years of age. Charles XII., the 
 glorious monarch of Sweden, after having reduced the 
 Danes to obedience, had attacked the Russians ; and, after 
 the disastrous battle of Pultowa, was enclosed in Bender, 
 the sport of Turkish intrigues. At this crisis of his fate, 
 the King of Denmark determined to avenge his past dis- 
 graces on the Swedes. He made a descent on Schonen, 
 and took the town of Helsingburg. The Swedes, however, 
 remained firm, and the disasters of their king rather in- 
 flamed their loyalty and patriotism than dispirited them. 
 An army, under Steinbock, partly consisting of undisci- 
 plined peasants, gave the Danes a bloody defeat, and forced 
 the survivors to quit the country with precipitation. 
 
 B 3 
 
10 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 “ Such was the occasion of Swedenborg’s triumphal 
 Ode to Steinbock on the Defeat of the Danes.” 
 
 The following is Barham’s paraphrase : — 
 
 “ Lulled be the dissonance of war — the crash 
 Of blood-stained arms — and let us listen now 
 To sweetest songs of jubilee. From harp 
 And thrilling lyre, let melodies of joy 
 Ring to the stars, and every sphere of space 
 Glow with the inspiring soul of harmony. 
 
 Phoebus applauds, and all the Muses swell 
 Our glory on their far-resounding chords. 
 
 Well may the youthful poet be abashed. 
 
 Who sings such mighty enterprise, — his theme 
 So great, so insignificant his strain ! — 
 
 Let Europe boast of Sweden — in the North, 
 
 South, East, and West, victorious. — Round the Pole 
 The seven Triones dance exultingly. 
 
 While Jove the Thunderer sanctions his decree. 
 
 Never to let the hyperborean bear 
 
 Sink in the all-o’erwhelming ocean stream ; 
 
 For when in the wave he bathes his giant limbs, 
 
 ’Tis but to rise more proudly. Even now 
 The fertile Scandia wreaths her brow with flowers. 
 
 And Victory’s trophies glitter over Sweden. 
 
 The God of battles smiles upon our race. 
 
 And the fierce Dane sues for our mercy ; — Yea, 
 
 The troops Insidious Cimbria sent against us. 
 
 Lie scattered by a warrior young in arms. 
 
 Though Swedish Charles, our hero King’s afar 
 In Russian battles — his bright valour fills 
 The heart of Steinbock — the victorious one ; — 
 
 These names of Charles and Steinbock like a spell 
 Created armaments, and hurled pale fear 
 Among our foes. — Steinboek ! thy red right hand 
 Hath smitten down the spoiler ; and in thee. 
 
 Another Charles we honor, — and rejoice 
 To hail thee, hero of thy grateful country. 
 
 Bind the triumphal laurel round thy brow. 
 
 Such chaplet well becomes the invincible ; 
 
 Ascend tby chariot — we will fling the palms 
 
MARTIAL ODE TO STEINBOCK. 
 
 11 
 
 Before thee, while the peal of martial music 
 Echoes thy high celebrity around. 
 
 Hadst thou in olden times of fable lived, 
 
 I had invoked thee as a demigod. 
 
 Behold, how glitteringly in northern heaven 
 Thy star exults : the name of Magnus fits 
 Both it and thee, inseparably linked : 
 
 In thee, the genius of the North expands. 
 
 And all the virtue of thy ancestry 
 Illustrates thee. Chief of our gallant chiefs — 
 
 Too gallant for a song so weak as mine — 
 
 Oh ! could their names enshrined in monuments 
 Appear, how would the eyes of Sweden kindle 
 To read them. Coronets of gold for thee. 
 
 Were all too little recompense ; — hereafter, 
 
 A crown of stars is aU thine own. The foe 
 Lies broken by thy force and heroism : 
 
 Numerous as Denmark’s sands they came — how few 
 Returned — their princes and their soldiery 
 Repulsed with scorn, while shuddering horror hung 
 Upon their flight — Jove’s thunderstorms assailed 
 Their bands of treachery, daylight was eclipsed 
 In thickest clouds, and the pure cause of God 
 And patriotism triumphed. Ay, the cause 
 Of Sweden’s royalty, which Denmark strove — 
 
 How vainly — to despoil. Our king perceived 
 Their rising hatred ; poets were forbid 
 To sing his praise — his praise beyond compare ; 
 
 For this, in sooth, the land was steeped in blood ; 
 Even for this, the fire and sword laid waste 
 Our native soU. Then let each warrior hind 
 The laurel chaplet, and the bard exult 
 O’er slaughtered rebels. For the destiny 
 Of Charles shall yet awake the Muse’s hymns. 
 
 Ah, soon return, — Oh, monarch of our love ! 
 
 Oh ! Sun of Sweden, waste not all thy light 
 To illume the crescent of the Ottomans : 
 
 Thy absence we bewail, wandering in glooms 
 Of midnight sorrow — save that these bright stars 
 That lead us on to victory, still console 
 Thy people’s hearts, and bid them not despair.” 
 
12 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 Our author was now on the threshold of active life, and 
 his Right Reverend father gave him full liberty to choose 
 the direction of his future career. The old gentleman has 
 left in the Library at Skara, an autobiography of 1000 
 pages, in which, as we have seen, he mentions his son 
 Emanuel with praise and pride. This book must be a cu- 
 riosity, and we hope will one day be published, to illustrate 
 the history and manners of the time and the writer. In the 
 course of other matter the Bishop says ; — “ I have kept 
 my sons to that profession to which God has given them 
 inclination and liking : I have not brought up one to the 
 clerical office, although many parents do this inconsider- 
 ately, and in a manner not justifiable, by which the Chris- 
 tian church and the clerical order suffer not a little, and 
 are brought into contempt.” 
 
 Swedenborg started in life with powerful family con- 
 nexions : one of his sisters married Eric Benzelius, a man 
 of great talents and influence, and subsequently Archbishop 
 of Upsal ; another was united to Lars Benzelstierna, gov- 
 ernor of a province, and whose son became a bishop. Other 
 members of his family also enjoyed ecclesiastical and civil 
 dignities. There can be no doubt that he had abundant 
 patronage with the court, in addition to the great talents 
 and moral integrity which were his personal commendation. 
 The profession to which he brought these advantages, was 
 such as was concerned about mining, smelting, and various 
 mechanical and engineering works. His letters from abroad 
 to Eric Benzelius at Upsal, brought him into connexion 
 with the active and youthful minds in that University, de- 
 tailing, as they did, whatever inventions, discoveries, and 
 good books he met with on his travels, as well as new ideas 
 and suggestions of his own. No sooner had he returned 
 to Sweden in 1715, than we find him entering upon the 
 active prosecution of his calling. 
 
 “ Swedenborg,” says Collin, “ is silent on the merits 
 
[a.d. 1715 - 16 .] MINING AND MECHANICS. 
 
 13 
 
 of his youth, which were great. The author of a disser- 
 tation on the Royal Society of Sciences at-Upsal, published 
 in 1789, mentions him as one of its first and best members, 
 thus: — ‘His letters to the Society while abroad, witness 
 that few can travel so usefully. An indefatigable curiosity, 
 directed to various important objects, is conspicuous in all. 
 Mathematics, astronomy, and mechanics, seem to have been 
 his favorite sciences, and he had already made great pro- 
 gress in these. Every where he became acquainted with 
 the most renowned mathematicians and astronomers, as 
 Flamstead, Delahire, Varignon, &c. This pursuit of know- 
 ledge was also united with a constant zeal to benefit his 
 country. No sooner was he informed of some useful dis- 
 covery, than he was solicitous to render it beneficial to 
 Sweden, by sending home models. When a good book was 
 published, he not only gave immediate notice of it, but 
 contrived to procure it for the library of the University.” 
 
 From 1716 to 1718 he edited a periodical work, en- 
 titled Dcedalus Hyperboreus* a record of the new flights 
 of mechanical and mathematical genius in Sweden. This 
 work reached six numbers. In the preface to it, the editor 
 shewed how little he valued the “ impossibihties” of the 
 day : he had already begun to think of flpng-machines, 
 and to speak of them as among the desiderata of the age ; 
 for he was imbued with the very spirit of our own railroad 
 and electric era, and had a very limited belief in final im- 
 possibilities. Among the contributors to this work was 
 Christopher Polheim, called the Swedish Archimedes, 
 whose connexion with Swedenborg was of great importance 
 to the latter. Besides this, the Daedalus is said to contain 
 the lucubrations and papers of a scientific society that was 
 founded by Eric Benzelius among the professors at Upsal. 
 
 In the course of 1716, Swedenborg was invited by Pol- 
 
 * The Dcedalus has not been translated into English. 
 
14 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 heim to repair with him to Lund, to meet Charles XII., 
 who had just escaped from Stralsund, when he enjoyed much 
 intercourse with the king, who was pleased to praise the D«- 
 dalus, and to take Swedenborg under his royal patronage. 
 It was his Majesty’s wish that in time he should succeed 
 Polheim, the Counsellor of Commerce. He had the choice 
 of three offices, and Charles had the warrant for the rank 
 and duties of extraordinary Assessor of the Board of jMines 
 made out for him. (The Board of Mines, it is to be ob- 
 served, was a constitutional department of the Government, 
 having inspection over the mines and metallic works, so 
 important to the prosperity of Sweden, whose foreign com- 
 merce is still greatly dependent upon its mineral wealth.) 
 On this occasion intrigue was busy against him, but the 
 clear-sighted Charles saw the merits of Swedenborg, and 
 confirmed him in his place, obliging the other candidate, 
 at the king’s own table, to write out the warrant himself. 
 The king also wrote a letter to the College of Mines, “ or- 
 dering that Swedenborg should have a seat and voice in the 
 College, whenever he could be present, and especially when- 
 ever any business of a mechanical nature was to be con- 
 sidered.” It was also expressly stated in the same docu- 
 ment, “ that Swedenborg was appointed to cooperate with 
 Polheim, and assist him in his affairs, and in the working 
 of his inventions.” The works of which he was thus 
 immediately summoned to the joint superintendence, were 
 the formation of the basin of Carlscrona, and of locks 
 between Lake Wener and Gottenburg, among the rapids 
 and cataracts of Trolhatta. Upon these undertakings he 
 was engaged from time to time until the death of his royal 
 master. 
 
 At this period there occurred an interesting passage in 
 his life. He sojourned in Polheim’s house, at once as his 
 coadjutor, and as his pupil in mathematics, and fell in love 
 with his second daughter, Emerentia Polheim. “ Polheim’s 
 
[a. D. 1716-18.] royal patronage, and first love. 15 
 
 eldest daughter,” says he in one of his letters, “ is pro- 
 mised to a page of the king’s named Marmenbrdm. I 
 wonder what people say of this in relation to myself. His 
 second daughter is, in my opinion, much the handsomest.” 
 The lady was only in her fourteenth year, and not being 
 willing to accept Swedenborg’s overtures, she did not suffer 
 herself to be betrothed. Her father however had a great 
 affection for him, and gave him the lady in a written agree- 
 ment, hoping that in future years his daughter would be 
 more favorably disposed. This bond his daughter, from filial 
 obedience, signed. Great was her depression of mind after 
 thus binding herself to one to whom she felt no attach- 
 ment ; and her brother, in compassion, abstracted the do- 
 cument secretly from Swedenborg, who used to read it over 
 day after day, and soon missed it. When Swedenborg 
 found what anguish he had caused to the object of his af- 
 fections, he freely relinquished all claims to her hand, and 
 took his departure from her father’s house ; and this is the 
 only love affair which his biographers have to record. For 
 the life of prodigious concentration that he was thenceforth 
 to lead, it seemed almost necessary that the ordinary impe- 
 diments to solitary and public energy should be put aside ; ^ 
 and this early disappointment probably had its share in 
 preventing him from contracting domestic ties. So at least 
 the best authorities presume. We shall once again recur 
 to this topic later on. 
 
 With regard to the Dcedalus, it appears to have been 
 stopped for want of funds. In a letter from Wennesborg, 
 (of which we insert the latter part also, for the light which 
 it throws on Swedenborg’s prospects at the time,) Sept. 14, 
 1718, our author says : “ I found his majesty very gracious 
 to me, more so than I could expect ; which is a good omen 
 for the future. Count Mornir also shewed me all the favor 
 I could possibly desire. Every day I laid mathematical 
 subjects before his majesty, who allowed every thing to 
 
16 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 please him. When the eclipse took place, I had his 
 majesty out to set it, and we reasoned much thereupon. 
 He again spoke of my Bcedalus, and remarked upon my 
 not continuing the work, to which I pleaded want of 
 means; this he does not like to hear of, so I hope to have 
 some assistance shortly. With respect to brother Esberg, 
 I shall endeavor to find him employment on the sluice 
 works. I wish my little brother were grown up. I think 
 I am already in a condition to begin a sluice work for my- 
 self, and when I have my own command, I shall be able 
 to serve both of them. My pay on the sluice works at 
 present is only three silver dollars per day ; I hope soon to 
 have more.” 
 
 We have some record of the sort of intercourse which 
 Swedenborg enjoyed with his Sovereign, in a letter that he 
 wrote to Nordberg, the biographer of Charles XII. In 
 this document he enters in detail upon certain long conver- 
 sations that His Majesty held with Polheim and himself, 
 upon the decimal mode of numeration ; and in the course 
 of which the king not only proposed, but actually pro- 
 duced, a specimen of a system founded upon ciphers up 
 to 64, which specimen, in his own hand-writing, he gave 
 to Swedenborg. He said to the latter one day, regarding 
 mathematics, that “ He who knew nothing of this science 
 did not deserve to be considered a rational man.” “A sen- 
 timent,” as Swedenborg adds, “ truly worthy of a king.” 
 
 For the rest, in these years Swedenborg was not without 
 family discrepancies, which caused him pain. Eric Ben- 
 zelius appears throughout to have been his trusted friend 
 and adviser, and we find him writing to his correspondent 
 as follows : “ Among all my relations I know of no one 
 who has wished me, and still wishes me, so well as your- 
 self. In this I was particularly confirmed by your letter 
 to my father respecting my journey. If I can in any way 
 shew my gratitude, it shall not be wanting. Brother Unge 
 
A.D. 1718.] 
 
 MILITARY ENGINEERING. 
 
 17 
 
 likes nobody ; at least he has estranged my dear father’s 
 and mother’s affections from me now for four years. How- 
 ever, it will not benefit himself.” At the same time, for 
 his own part, Swedenborg was using every effort to for- 
 ward the interests of his family, and especially of his bro- 
 thers, through his connexion with the highest personages 
 in the realm. 
 
 In 1718, Swedenborg executed a work of importance, 
 during the siege of Frederickshall. He contrived to trans- 
 port over hill and dale, by rolling machines of his own 
 invention, two galleys, five large boats and a sloop, from 
 Stromstadt to Iderfjol, a distance of 14 miles. By this 
 operation the king found himself in a situation to carry out 
 his plans / for under cover of these vessels, he transported 
 on pontoons his heavy artillery, which it would have been 
 impossible to have conveyed by land, under the very walls 
 of Frederickshall. It was at the siege of this fort that 
 Charles XII. was killed on the 30th of November. Swe- 
 denborg was not present at Frederickshall. He escaped 
 the winter campaign in Norway very narrowly, and not 
 without employing some little management. 
 
 In the same year our author published two works, 1 . 
 An Introduction to Algebra, under the title of The Art of 
 the Rules. This book, which we are not acquainted with 
 at first hand, was reviewed at considerable length, and 
 mentioned with honor, in the Literary Transactions of 
 Sweden,* not only because the author was the first Swede 
 who wrote on the higher branches of the subject, but for 
 the excellence of the treatise, its clearness, and the exam- 
 ples shewing the application and uses of the rules. Only 
 a part of the work was published ; the unpublished portion, 
 according to Lagerbring, contains the first account given in 
 Sweden of the differential and integral calculus. 2. At- 
 
 * Acta Literaria Sueciee, vol. i., p. 126. 
 
18 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 tempts to find the Longitude of places by Lunar observa- 
 tions. Both the above works were written in Swedish, and 
 published at Upsal. 
 
 Of this period of Swedenborg’s life there are some in- 
 teresting records preserved in his letters to Eric Benzelius, 
 from which we have already quoted. Notwithstanding the 
 king’s patronage, and Swedenborg’s increasing repute, the 
 latter appears to have been far from satisfied with his posi- 
 tion or prospects. He complains that his labors are not 
 appreciated. “ I have taken a little leisure this summer,” 
 says he, “ to put a few things on paper, which I think will 
 be my last productions ; for speculations and inventions like 
 mine find no patronage or bread in Sweden, and are looked 
 down upon by a number of political blockheads as a sort of 
 school-boy exercise, which ought to stand quite back, while 
 their presumptuous finesse and intrigues step forward.” It 
 may excite a smile to find the most voluminous author of 
 the last century imagining that his labors were completed 
 with what, in his case, were really but “ school-boy exer- 
 cises at the same time it is not surprizing, that one so 
 singly devoted to the arts and sciences, should conceive a 
 disgust for those who were jostling and manoeuvring towards 
 the world’s rewards up the stair of political intrigue, and 
 with whom his position brought him into contact. 
 
 In 1719, the Swedberg family was ennobled by Queen 
 Ulrica Eleonora, and from this time our author bore the 
 new name of Swedenborg,* by which his nobility was sig- 
 nified, and took his seat with the nobles of the equestrian 
 order in the triennial assemblies of the states. We are not 
 aware whether he bore any part in the deliberations of the 
 Assembly during this period of his life. His new rank 
 conferred no title beyond the change of name ; he was not 
 either a count, or a baron, as is commonly supposed. His 
 
 * We have used, as most convenient, the name of Swedenborg 
 throughout. 
 
A.D. 1719 .] 
 
 TREATISES IN SWEDISH. 
 
 J9 
 
 pen, which was gradually becoming fertile, yielded four 
 works in this year. 1 . A proposal for a Decimal System 
 of Money and Measures. 2. A Treatise on the Motion 
 and Position of the Earth and Planets. 3. Proofs derived 
 from appearances in Sweden, of the depth of the Sea, and 
 the greater force of the Tides, in the ancient world. And 
 4. On Docks, Sluices, and Salt Works. These little works 
 were all written in Swedish. In allusion to his proposal 
 for a decimal coinage, and to certain mathematical studies, 
 he says in another of his letters that “ it is a little dis- 
 couraging to him to be advised to relinquish his views, as 
 among the novelties which the country cannot bear.” And 
 he avows that for his part, he “ desires all possible novelties, 
 ay, a novelty for every day in the year,” for that “in every 
 age there is abundance of persons who follow the beaten 
 track, and remain in the old way ; while there are not more 
 than from six to ten in a century who bring forward innova- 
 tions founded on argument and reason.” He adds his con- 
 fidence that " he has proposed nothing that can cause the 
 slightest inconvenience to the country.” The world aroimd 
 him was in the midnight of the past, but he saw clearly 
 that in the distribution of human talent, there was no just 
 proportion kept between antiquity and genius, and he 
 labored and longed for the new era, for even then he lived 
 in the dim twilight of that day which is still but dawning 
 upon the earth — the day of the great installation of the 
 arts and sciences. 
 
 His work on the decimal system must have been thought 
 something of in his own country, for we find it reprinted 
 so late as 1795. We may add however that none of his 
 Swedish treatises are known in this country, excepting 
 those which also have a Latin version. 
 
 We have now sketched the preludium of Swedenborg’s 
 life — that portion of his career which belongs peculiarly to 
 his native country, and in concluding this department of 
 
20 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 our narrative, we will again borrow from the same collec- 
 tion of letters, to gain an insight into some of the motives 
 which caused him to desire another sphere of operations. 
 “What I have now printed,” says he, “ with a sheet on 
 the decimal system, will be my last production, for I find 
 that Pluto and Envy possess the Hyperboreans, and that a 
 man will prosper better among them by acting the idiot, 
 than by remaining a man of understanding.” And again : 
 “ Should I be so fortunate as to get together the means 
 which are required, and in the meantime . . . have been 
 able to acquire some credit abroad, I have determined to 
 go thither, to seek my fortune in my business, which is in 
 all such things as concern the advancement of mining. To 
 be loose and irresolute, to see one’s place abroad, and yet 
 to remain in the darkness and frost of Sweden, where the 
 furies. Envy and Pluto have taken up their abode and dis- 
 pense all rewards, and where all my pains is rewarded with 
 shabbiness, would be worthy only of a fool.” We give 
 these solitary specimens of grumbling, revealed in private 
 letters, to stand for just what they are worth. The author’s 
 station might be thought by those who are less fortunate, 
 an enviable one ; but it is highly probable that the office of 
 Assessor in the Mineral College, conferred upon him in 
 1716, involved few direct duties, and but little salary ; and 
 that it was not till he succeeded to the place held by Pol- 
 heim at the Board, aecording to the king’s original inten- 
 tion, that he derived from it a satisfactory income. Polheim 
 lived to the age of 90, and died in 1751. 
 
 Having followed Swedenborg, the Swede, through his 
 youth, and come to a convenient halting place, let us take 
 a brief survey of the ground we have passed over, and 
 gather up his character and properties, so far. He ger- 
 minated, as nearly all children do, in theology ; rose thence 
 into poetry and literature, speedily alternating them with 
 mathematics ; out of these proceeded mechanical and physi- 
 
A.D. 1719 - 20 .] CHARACTER AND PROSPECTS. 
 
 21 
 
 cal studies having a reference to practice. His early man- 
 hood was devoted to active employment, and spent partly 
 under the eye and command of the most severe of the Swed- 
 ish kings. Even at this time a widely contemplative element 
 glimmers from such of the foregoing works as we have pe- 
 rused. His ardent pursuit of geology, then a comparatively 
 new science, was already converting itself into cosmogonical 
 speculations. We are not indeed aware that any great 
 brilliancy was displayed in his works up to this date, but 
 rather great industry, fertile plans, a belief in the penetra- 
 bility of problems usually given up by the learned, a gradual 
 and experimental faculty, and an absence of preeocity. 
 In regard of general truths, he shewed the evidence of a 
 slowly-apprehending, persevering, and at last, thoroughly 
 comprehending mind. If we may use the metaphor, the 
 masonry of his intellect was large, slow, and abiding, but 
 by no means showy ; from the parts hitherto constructed, 
 we could hardly prophecy whether the superstructure woidd 
 be a viaduct, or a temple; a work of bare utility, or a 
 palace for sovereignty and state. 
 
 On the moral side, we infer strong but controllable 
 passions, not interfering with the balance of his mind, or 
 the deepness of his leisure. His filial affeetion is brilliant, 
 though we have no record of the extent of his obligations 
 to his mother, whose death took place in 1720 , to his 
 father’s “ great grief and loss.” His energy and fidelity 
 in his business commended him to those above him, and 
 he was probably more indebted to intrinsic qualities for his 
 position, than to his family connexions, or to clever cour- 
 ' tiership on his own part. His religious beliefs at this time 
 nowhere appear; but from indications in his books and 
 letters, it is certain that his mind was not inactive upon 
 the greatest of subjects, and that he was a plain believer 
 in revelation, though not without his own conjectures about 
 
22 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 its meaning and in»port. Such was Swedenborg in the 
 spring and flower of his long manhood. 
 
 In the spring of 1/21 our author visited Holland for 
 the second time, and in this year, besides being a contri- 
 butor to The Literary Transactions of Sweden* he pub- 
 lished the following little works at Amsterdam : — 1. Some 
 Specimens of a Work on the Principles of Natural Philo- 
 sophy, comprising New Attempts to explain the Phenomena 
 of Chemistry and Physics by Geometry. 2. New Obser- 
 vations and Discoveries respecting Iron and Fire, and par- 
 ticularly respecting the Elemental Nature of Fire ; together 
 with a New Construction of Stoves. 3. A New Method 
 of finding the Longitudes of Places, on Land or at Sea, by 
 Lunar Observations. 4. A New Mechanical Plan of Con- 
 structing Docks and Dykes. 5. A Mode of Discovering 
 the Powers of Vessels by the Application of Mechanical 
 Principles.-\ 
 
 From Amsterdam Swedenborg went to Leipsic, through 
 Aix-la-Chapelle, Liege and Cologne, and examined the 
 mines and smelting-works near those places; and in 1/22 
 he published at Leipsic, Miscellaneous Observations con- 
 nected with the Physical Sciences, Parts I. — III. ; and at 
 Hamburg, in the same year. Part IV., principally on Mi- 
 nerals, Iron, and the Stalactites in Baumann's Cavem.X 
 Swedenborg made this tour to improve his practical know- 
 ledge of mining, and at the same time to pubhsh the trea- 
 tises which he had on hand. The whole expense of his 
 
 * 1720 and 1721. 
 
 t These works have recently been translated by C. E. Strutt, and 
 published by the Swedenborg Association. We refer, with acknow- 
 ledgment, to Mr. Strutt’s Prefaces to this and his other translations, 
 as containing materials that have been of help to us in w-riting this 
 Memoir. 
 
 X Translated by C. E. Strutt. 
 
A. D. 1721 - 22 .] WORKS ON CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS. 23 
 
 journey was defrayed by Louis Rudolph, Duke of Brunswick, 
 who presented him on his departure from Blankenburg, 
 with a golden medallion and a weighty silver goblet ; Swe- 
 denborg, on his part, making an elegant acknowledgment 
 of the Duke’s munificence, in dedicating the Fourth Part 
 of his Miscellaneous Observations to that Sovereign. 
 
 In the Works we have just enumerated, Swedenborg 
 began his travels into future ages; he manifested the tokens 
 of a light distinct from contemporary genius, and with a 
 very decided intrepidity attempted to scale the proximate 
 heights of nature. The fortress of mineral truth was the 
 first which he approached, and with the most guarded 
 preparation. His method was furnished by geometry and 
 mechanics ; the laws of the pure seiences were to he the 
 interpreters of the facts of chemistry and physics. “ The 
 beginning of nature,” says he, “is identical with the 
 beginning of geometry ; the origin of natural particles is 
 due to mathematical points, just as is the origin of lines, 
 forms, and the whole of geometry : because everything in 
 nature is geometrical, everything in geometry, natural.” 
 He therefore attempted to traverse chemical essence and 
 combination by the fixed truths of mathematics, and to 
 carry the pure sciences into those which are mixed, in- 
 terpreting the latter by the former. It was the genuine 
 a posteriori method, — to begin with the known, and push 
 it into the unknown; to take the outermost truths of figure 
 or outline, and travel by their clue into the inner mineral 
 architecture, into chemistry itself. The immediate doctrine 
 which our author formed, and by which he worked, was, 
 that the particles of primary solids are moulded in the 
 interstices between the particles of fluids, and take the 
 shape of those interstices ; and that the framework thus 
 modelled, by undergoing fracture at its weakest parts, 
 through motion caused hy heat, &c., gives rise to new 
 shapes that become the initial particles of new substances. 
 
24 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 As with Thales of Miletus, the oldest Grecian speculator, 
 so with Swedenborg, water was the first of planetary ex- 
 istences, which in its oceanic depths, by the world of pres- 
 sure from above, broke up its own particles, forced them 
 to resign the last encasement of which they were made, 
 and by precipitating this into the interstices of other round 
 water particles, modelled the infinite seeds of the dry land 
 which was to come, in those precise and ever-working 
 matrices. Water was the womh of the infinitesimal land, 
 common salt, the first modelling of the future earth. The 
 fracture of the saline particle, breaking off its sharp parts, 
 gave rise to acids ; and the hody or stoma that was left, 
 constituted a peculiar earth. Of course we cannot pursue 
 this theory, but must be content with remarking, that 
 Swedenborg has worked his mould, the interstice of the 
 water-particle, (or we should rather say, the various inter- 
 stices, for round particles may be placed upon each other 
 in many ways so as to produce different forms,) with an 
 apparently exhaustive ingenuity. With surprizing power 
 of detail he has applied the principle to the chemical facts 
 known in his own day respecting diverse substances, as also 
 to light and colors ; suggesting a cosmogony and celestial 
 mechanics in the smallest things, similar to that which 
 obtains in the system of the universe. There seems no 
 reason why the intellect should not at length reach such a 
 position, though how far Swedenborg has attained it, 
 geniuses kindred to his own, if the old method of thought 
 be permanent, can perhaps alone decide. W'e ought, how- 
 ever, to note, that rigidly mechanical as our author’s 
 theory appears, it has at the core, in what he calls “ the 
 subtle matter,” that is to say fire, ether or caloric, a latent 
 dynamical principle which shapes and guides the mecha- 
 nical one, and upon which Swedenborg largely draws; 
 although it must also be confessed, that in his theory of 
 fire, he boldly pushes mechanics even into that fluid rest- 
 
A. D. 1721-22.] CHEMICAL ARCHITECTURE. 25 
 
 lessness, and harnesses the very horses of the sun to the 
 car of his ambitious geometry. Was he right, or was he 
 not, in supposing that knowledge of nature is only co- 
 extensive with mechanical ideas, and that though these do 
 not give motion, or life, yet where they are absent. Being 
 itself falls through into nothingness ? We apprehend that 
 the history of science will tell us, upon whatever ascer- 
 tained truth we fix, that that truth has a mechanical pre- 
 cision or basis, and that though it may have vital contents 
 besides, yet these are only true in themselves so far 
 as they also are similarly founded and embodied. The faith 
 in this principle, as it is successively produced, appears in 
 fact to be in the mind, the essential outline of the new 
 sciences; and the man who has the faith first, enters the 
 field thereby, and is the first to reap the knowledge. 
 
 For these works M. Dumas, the French chemist, does 
 not hesitate to ascribe to Swedenborg tbe origin of the 
 modern science of Crystallography. “It is to him we are 
 indebted,” says Dumas, “ for the first idea of making cubes, 
 tetrahedrons, pyramids, and the different crystalline forms, 
 by the grouping of spherical particles ; and it is an idea 
 that has since been renewed by several distinguished men, 
 Wollaston in particular.” 
 
 Before dismissing The Miscellaneovs Observations, we 
 will remark upon the pleasant mixture of practice and 
 theory which prevails in the work, and upon the extraor- 
 dinary actiidty of the author’s senses. Well does Sandel 
 say, that it was not only mines that he went to examine, 
 but that “ of all that could fix the attention of a traveller 
 there was nothing that escaped him.” His observations 
 are told in an easy style, which wins the reader’s confidence, 
 and one wishes that one had shared with his fellow-traveller. 
 Dr. John Hessel, the way-side conversation of so instructive 
 and amusing a pilgrimage. 
 
 After fifteen months spent abroad, Swedenborg returned 
 
 c 
 
26 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 to Stockholm in the midsummer of 1 722, where in that 
 year he published anonymously a work in Swedish, On 
 the Depreciation and Rise of the Swedish Currency. 
 What may be the nature, or merits, of this treatise, we do 
 not know, but that it had material in it may be surmised 
 from the fact, that it was re-published, with introductory 
 remarks respecting the coinage in ancient and modern times, 
 at Upsal in 1771. We shall see presently that Sweden- 
 borg did not cease to devote attention to the currency, and 
 that of his few senatorial acts in his later days, some had 
 reference to that especial subject. 
 
 It was now that he entered for the first time upon 
 the actual duties of the Assessorship, the functions of 
 which he had been unwilling to exercise until he had 
 completed his knowledge of metallurgy. For the next 
 eleven years he divided his time and occupations between 
 the business of the Royal Board of Mines and his studies. 
 The current of his life during this interval flows in a silent 
 stream, but not ineffectual, as we shall shortly learn. We 
 may picture the punctual official at his desk, and the cou- 
 rageous student, observer and contemplatist in over hours : 
 practice and theory in business — practice and theory in 
 science. 
 
 “The Consistory of the University and the Academy of 
 Sciences of Upsal,” as Sandel says, “did themselves the 
 honor of being the first to acknowledge the merit of their 
 illustrious countryman, and to shew him marks of their 
 esteem. In 1724 the Consistory had invited him to accept 
 the professorship of pure mathematics, vacant by the death 
 of Nils Celsius ; because, as they expressed themselves, 
 his acceptance of the office would be for the advantage of 
 the students and to the ornament of the University. But 
 he declined the honor. The Academy of Sciences admitted 
 him into the number of its members in 1729.” 
 
 Apropos of pure mathematics, he makes some amusing 
 
..D. 1722 - 33 .] ASSESSOR OF THE BOARD OF MINES. 
 
 27 
 
 remarks in a letter to his brother-in-law. “ I wonder at 
 Messieurs the mathematicians,” says he, “ having lost all 
 heart and spirit to realize that fine design of yours for an 
 astronomical observatory. It is the fatality of mathema- 
 ticians to remain chiefly in theory. I have often thought 
 it would be a capital thing if to each ten mathematicians 
 one good practical man were added, to lead the rest to 
 market : he would be of more use and mark than all the 
 ten.” One can understand why a professorship of pure 
 mathematics was not the chosen vocation of Swedenborg. 
 
 During this time his books were reviewed with commen- 
 dation in The Transactions of the Learned* published at 
 Leipsic, the great literary and scientific organ of the time; 
 his contributions to art and science being thankfully acknow- 
 ledged, although his theories brought the reviewers to a 
 non-plus, and made them exclaim, with a postponement of 
 which we also must avail ourselves — let others decide. 
 
 We are now about to enter upon another era of Sweden- 
 borg’s life, when his tentative youth and manhood were past, 
 and he came into possession of a region all his own, and pre- 
 sided there with an almost despotic strength of affirmation ; 
 at which we must not wonder, for whether owing to the fault 
 or discernment of his contemporaries, he inhabited his 
 intellectual estate unquestioned, unlimited, uncontradicted, 
 and alone. No longer an issuer of pamphlets, or an ordi- 
 nary petitioner of the arts and sciences, he had for years 
 lain fallow of small attempts, and had accumulated the 
 resources of his untiring industry and observation, in a 
 work with which his great career may be said to have com- 
 menced. We allude to his Prineipia. 
 
 In the middle of May, 1/33, he went abroad for the third 
 time, accompanied by Count Gyllenborg and other friends ; 
 and after spending five months in Germany, (storing himself 
 
 c 2 
 
 * Acta Eruditorum. 
 
28 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 with ei ery object that his large curiosity could bring before 
 him, whether arts, mauufactures, museums, books, scenery, 
 men, manners and customs, ecclesiastical institutions, or 
 governments,)* he commenced the printing of his Prm- 
 ci^na\ at Leipsic, in the month of October. This was the 
 first /o/m volume of three, collectively bearing the title of 
 Philosophical and Mineral Works, which were completed 
 and published at Dresden and Leipsic in the middle of 1/34. 
 His former patron, the Duke of Brunswick, at whose court 
 he was again a visitor, defrayed the cost of this expensive 
 publication, which was dedicated to the Duke, and enriched 
 with numerous copperplates, and with an engraved likeness 
 of the author. 
 
 It is a strange general title which he chose — Philoso- 
 phical and Mineral Works, but there is a meaning in this 
 uncommon blending. Philosophy is nothing, just in pro- 
 portion as it is not married with all things : and in the 
 ascending scale of its alliances, it first solicits the hand of 
 the mineral universe, before arriving at the higher degrees. 
 Such at all events was Swedenborg’s method, which his 
 title justly conveyed ; and he afterwards rose to the union of 
 the philosophical and organic, and finally to the marriage 
 of the philosophical and the human. It is there alone that 
 philosophy realizes its first love, and subjugating the earthly 
 bond, freshens itself age after age in contact with that 
 better nature which contains the eternal. 
 
 We must however sunder the philosophical and the 
 mineral, and look separately at each, for the author kept 
 tiiem perfectly free and distinct, though not disunited. 
 And first for the treatises on mining. These were Swe- 
 
 * Itinerarium, ex operibus Eman. Sw'edenborgii posthumis. 
 Pars I. Nunc primum edidit Dr. J. F. E. Tafel. 
 
 i' The Principia ; or the First Principles of Natural Things . 
 being New Attempts toward a Philosophical Explanation of the 
 Elementary World. 
 
A.D. 1733-34.] philosophy and metallurgy. 29 
 
 (lenborg’s offering to his business and position; the earnest 
 of his desire to leave the metallurgic world better than he 
 found it. The second folio volume (pp. 396) is on iron ; 
 the third (pp. 546), on copper and brass. Facts speak well 
 for their practical value. The chapters on the conversion 
 of iron into steel were reprinted at Strasburg in 1 737 ; and 
 the treatise on iron was translated into French by Bouchu, 
 and published at Paris in 1762 in the magnificent Bescrip- 
 tion des Arts et Metiers. Cramer says of the work, in 
 his Elements of the Art of Assaying, that Swedenborg has 
 “given the best accounts, not only of the methods and 
 newest improvements in metallic works in all places beyond 
 seas, but also of those in England and the American colo- 
 nies.” Each volume has a threefold division; the first 
 part on smelting, the second on assaying, the third on the 
 chemical processes and experiments about the metals. Each 
 volume is ushered in by a characteristic preface. In that 
 on iron, the author avows his desire to collect and publish 
 the mining and metallurgic secrets of different countries, 
 and indignantly denounces those who keep them from the 
 public for purposes of private gain. He also shews his 
 partiality for metallurgy, as being a thoroughly practical 
 science, “ all whose details are squared with works ;” yet 
 desires that it may “ enter into friendly relations with che- 
 mistry, and the two join hands, and tend unitedly to one 
 and the same goal.” He further states, that it had been 
 his intention to give “a theoretical treatise on the metals,” 
 but that an integral survey of chemistry and the elemental 
 world was necessary to such an enquiry : which again shews 
 the practical tendency to unity, to regard his subjects in 
 their planetary dimension, which was with him a constant 
 method, and governed all partieular investigations. In the 
 preface on copper, we have a gorgeous description of his 
 native mine at Fhalun, and a statement of the author’s 
 views of the causes and advantages of the deluge — not 
 
30 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 however the Noahtic, but a cosmogonic deluge; of how it 
 brought the treasures of the earth to the surface, and by 
 opening the womb of the general mother, contributed to 
 the multiplication of causes and occasions, and to the variety 
 of telluric substances. 
 
 “ In forming our estimate of Swedenborg’s calibre at this 
 time,” as we have observed elsewhere, “we cannot omit 
 taking notice of his large Treatises on Iron and Copper, 
 each occupying a folio volume, and busied with the practical 
 details of mining in various parts of the world. That a 
 mind of such potent theoretical tendency should have had 
 strength to undergo the dry labor of these compilations — 
 that one who breathed his native air in a profound region 
 of causes, should come for so long an abiding into the 
 lower places of the earth, to record facts, processes and 
 machineries, as a self-imposed task in fulhlment of his 
 station as Assessor of Mines — this is one remarkable feature 
 of a case where so much is remarkable, and shews how 
 manly was his will in whatever sphere he exerted himself. 
 The books of such a man are properly works, not to be 
 confounded for a moment with the many-colored idleness of 
 a large class who are denominated ‘thinkers.’ ”* 
 
 The Principia next claims our attention, and calls forci- 
 bly to mind the truth of a remark by Mr. Emerson, that 
 it would require “a colony of men” to do justice to the 
 works of Swedenborg. From the barest descriptions of 
 iron and copper works, such as the Vulcanian workmen 
 might themselves appreciate, we arrive by a step at a 
 pinnacle of one of those mountains where a Newton and a 
 Humboldt might be useful fellow-watchers of the most deli- 
 cate laws on the one hand, of the panorama of a subjacent 
 universe on the other. We pay the work no ill compliment, 
 and have the authority of the translator of the Principia 
 * A Popular Sketch of Swedenborg’s Philosophical Works, pp. 
 29 - 30 . 
 
A.D. 1734.] 
 
 THE PRINCIPIA. 
 
 31 
 
 with us, when we state our belief that it still belongs to the 
 future. The following is a short account of the book from 
 Mr. Clissold’s Preface. 
 
 “ The object of the Principia is to trace out a true system 
 of the world, and in so doing the author has distributed his 
 subject into Three Parts. The First Part treats of the 
 origin and laws of motion, and is mostly devoted to the 
 consideration of its first principles ; which are investigated 
 philosophically, then geometrically, their existence being 
 traced from a first natural point down to the formation of a 
 solar vortex, and afterwards from the solar vortex to the 
 successive constitution of the elements and of the three 
 kingdoms of nature. From the first element to the last 
 compound it is the author’s object to shew that effort or 
 conatus to motion tends to a spiral figure ; and that there 
 is an actual motion of particles constituting a solar chaos, 
 which is spiral and consequently vortical. 
 
 “ In the Second Part the author applies this theory of 
 vortical motion to the phenomena of Magnetism, by which 
 on the one hand he endeavours to test the truth of his 
 principles, and on the other by application of the principles 
 to explain the phenomena of Magnetism ; the motion of 
 the magnetical effluvia being as in the former case con- 
 sidered to be vortical. 
 
 “ In the Third Part the author applies the same princi- 
 ples of motion to Cosmogony, including the origination of 
 the planetary bodies from the sun, and their vortical revo- 
 lutions until they arrived at their present orbit ; likewise to 
 the constitution and laws of the different elements, the mo- 
 tions of all which are alleged to be vortical ; likewise to the 
 constitution and laws of the three kingdoms of nature, the 
 animal, vegetable, and mineral ; so that the entire Prin- 
 cipia aims to establish a true theory of vortices, founded 
 upon a true system of corpuscular philosophy.” 
 
 In this work then the author applies an active geometry 
 
32 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 to the mundane system, carrying the conception of a spiral 
 or breathing movement down the stairway of natural being, 
 and shewing the productions and evolution of the motion 
 in its various spheres ; thereby accounting, on a single 
 principle, for the properties of atoms, as of universes ; and 
 piercing the generative process of worlds by the same law 
 that beholds their actual state. The geometrical method 
 is evidently one way of passing from the known to the un- 
 known, that is to say, of reasoning by analogy ; although 
 it may be doubted whether this method is sufficiently living 
 to suggest all the analogies of the case : however, we can 
 hardly question that it is the ultima ratio of other methods. 
 It was, indeed, fertile in Swedenborg’s hands ; nay, his 
 primitive idea of a spiral effort is of vegetable-organic 
 power ; it evokes the mundane tree of the Scandinavian 
 mythology, puts it into science, and enables it to bear 
 atmospheres and auras for leaves and flowers, and sun and 
 multitudinous planet as fruits, upon its all-spreading and 
 all-shadowing boughs. Nevertheless it may be that an 
 approach to the subject directly founded upon man and or- 
 ganization as both principle and method, will lead to a 
 deeper admission into world-making, and account more in- 
 telligibly for the distribution of the system, bringing home 
 its reasons to the doors of all ; which can never be done 
 by the geometrical procedure. 
 
 In spite of the signal piety displayed throughout the 
 Principia, the work was prohibited by the Papal authority 
 in 1739, because, as Mr. Clissold thinks, it was held to 
 contravene the position that God created all things out of 
 nothing ; and also because of the difficulty of reconciling 
 such a process of creation as Swedenborg conceives with 
 the literal interpretation of the First Chapter of Genesis. 
 Respecting the first reason, Mr. Clissold keenly remarks, 
 that “no definition is more common than that truth is that 
 which IS ; hence in a corresponding sense, untruth, error 
 
A.D. 1734.] GEOMETRY AND METAPHYSICS, 
 
 33 
 
 or falsehood is that which is not, and consequently that 
 which is the genuine nonentity — or, nothing. Upon this 
 ground, to say that God created all things out of nothing, 
 is to attribute the origin of all things to error and hence 
 to e\dl.” But leaving this destructive dialectic, which 
 marches a decisive moral truth through the cold intellect- 
 ualism of nothing, and burns it down, we resume our nar- 
 rative of Swedenborg’s works. 
 
 At Dresden and Leipsic, in the same year (1/34) with 
 the volumes we have just described, he published also 
 Outlines of a Philosophical Argument on the Infinite, * a 
 small work dedicated to his brother-in-law, then Bishop 
 Eric Benzelius, who, he tells us in a dedication to that 
 prelate, had been the first, by his advice and wishes, to 
 direct the author’s attention to that and similar subjects. 
 Swedenborg had previously held some private polemics of 
 an interesting nature with the friendly Bishop, in which 
 the former had certainly the best of the argument, and 
 he now brought the fruit of more mature study to the notice 
 of his old correspondent. The work may be regarded as in 
 a measure a supplement to the Principia, following a similar 
 method with that Treatise ;f for the Author here also pro- 
 ceeds from the common conceptions of the finite and infinite, 
 and of the soul and the body, to construct a system of rela- 
 tions, which he afterwards applies to the facts of Revelation, 
 and thus again imbeds the abstract world of truth in the 
 real. What we said of the method of the Principia applies 
 equally to the Outlines. It is doubtful whether geometrical 
 conceptions furnish the best beginning for a system of the 
 outward universe; it is equally, or rather, much more 
 
 * Outlines of a Philosophical Argument on the Infinite, and the 
 Final Cause of Creation ; and on the Intercourse between the Soul 
 and the Body. 
 
 t The reader who desires a further account of the Outlines will find 
 a summary of the work in our Popular Sketch, pp. 19 — 24 
 
 c 3 
 
34 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 doubtful, whether metaphysical conceptions are the best 
 commencement for an explanation of either psychology or 
 Scripture. But Swedenborg was before his age in daring 
 to bring any department of the mind in contact with these 
 real subjects ; and with respect to the present field, it is 
 one which he cultivated theneeforth, again and again, by 
 method after method. So that we need not censure him, 
 until we have snfiiciently admired his progress. 
 
 Sandel affirms that during the printing of the above 
 works at Dresden and Leipsic, Swedenborg “ visited the 
 mines of Austria and Hungary, a journey which lasted a 
 year.” Of this journey, however, we are doubtful, for the 
 author himself makes no mention of it, but states, on the 
 contrary, that he went from Leipsic to Cassel, inspecting 
 the mines in that Dutchy, and then hastened homewards 
 through Gotha, Brunswick and Hamburg, by Ystad to 
 Stockholm, where he arrived in July, 1/34, at the time 
 the States General were in session ; an important period, 
 when a new code of laws was adopted in Sweden, and when 
 probably our author took his seat in the House to which he 
 belonged. He, therefore (p. 28), could not have spent a 
 year as Sandel relates, and indeed there is nothing to shew 
 that he had visited Austria or Hungary. On his outward 
 journey, however, he had been at Prague, and spent a con- 
 siderable time in examining the Bohemian mines. 
 
 The publication of the preceding works gave him a Euro- 
 pean reputation, and his correspondence was eagerly sought 
 by Christian Wolff, and others of the learned. In 1734, 
 Dec. 17, the Imperial Aeademy of Sciences of Petersburg 
 appointed him a corresponding Member. At this time he 
 was a diligent student of Wolff’s philosophy, in which he 
 discerned considerable similarity to his own, though the 
 reader observes in Swedenborg an original power of which 
 there is not a glimmer in Wolff. The difference between 
 them lay not so much in their first conceptions, or even in 
 
A.D. 1734-36.] SWEDENBORG AND WOLFF. 
 
 35 
 
 the order and method of these, as in the facility with which 
 Swedenborg applied his mind to, and modified it by, na- 
 ture, for his genius was docile ; while on the other hand, 
 Wolff remained always a spinner of ingenuities and con- 
 ceptions ; yet even in subtlety of thought Swedenborg is 
 immeasurably the superior ; witness his theory of what he 
 terms the “actives” in nature, his explanation of elas- 
 ticity, &c. ; things to which Wolff could make no approach. 
 The one was a facile metaphysician after the school of Leib- 
 nitz; the other was a philosophical scientific explorer, 
 ready to make temporary use of any metaphysic that 
 opened a gate into facts, but always deriving from those 
 facts a different statement of his grounds. The works of 
 the one are all “thinking;” in those of the other we come 
 constantly to solid floors, and are forced to exclaim, “ That 
 is nature herself, and no man made it.” 
 
 From 1734 to 1736 our author remained in Sweden. 
 On the 26th of July, 1735, he lost the good Bishop, his 
 father, from whom, according to Robsahm, he inherited a 
 considerable sum ; and, on the 10th of July, 1736, he again 
 “ went abroad for a sojourn of three or four years, to write 
 and pubhsh a certain work,” as he says in his journal* of 
 the tour. On this occasion, he relinquished half of his 
 salary (1200 silver thalers was the whole,) to his substi- 
 tutes, but re-entered upon the full income when he came 
 back. The same fresh curiosity, the same ardent love of 
 knowledge, the same manifold sympathy, appear in the 
 note-book of these travels, as in that which we have previ- 
 ously mentioned, and we can only regret that any portion of 
 so entertaining a document is lost. He passed through 
 Denmark, Hanover and Holland, and arrived at Rotterdam 
 at the time of the fair, when he took due opportunity to 
 
 * Ifinerarium, ex operibus Eman. Swedenborgii posthumis. 
 Pars II. Nunc primum edidit Dr. J. F. E. Tafel. Stuttgard, 1844. 
 
36 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 admire the amusements of the people, mountebanks, shews, 
 and whatever was to be seen. Then immediately after- 
 wards come his reflexions upon the prosperity of the Dutch. 
 “Here at Rotterdam,” says he, “it has suggested itself 
 to me to inquire, why it is that God has blessed a people 
 so barbarous and boorish as the Dutch, with such a fertile 
 and luxuriant soil ; that he has rescued them, for so long 
 a course of years, from all misfortunes ; that he has raised 
 them up in commerce above all other nations, and made 
 their provinces the mart and emporium of the wealth of 
 Europe and the world. On consideration, the first and 
 principal cause of these circumstances appears to be, that 
 Holland is a Republic, which form of government is more 
 pleasing to God than an absolute monarchy ; as we may 
 see from the history of Rome. In a Republic, no venera- 
 tion or worship is paid to any man, but the highest 
 and the lowest think themselves equal to kings and em- 
 perors ; as may be seen from the characteristic bearing of 
 every one in Holland. The only one whom they worship 
 is God. And when God alone is worshiped, and men are 
 not adored instead of him, 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 mas- 
 ters under the government of the most high God; and 
 the consequence is, that they do not depress their man- 
 liness 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 commit 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 they 
 learn to have one thing concealed in the breast, and to 
 bring forth another upon the tongue ; where their minds, 
 by inveterate custom, become so false and counterfeit, that 
 in divine worship itself their words differ from their thoughts. 
 
A.D. 1736.] 
 
 THE DUTCH REPUBLIC. 
 
 37 
 
 and they proffer their flattery and deceit to God himself, 
 which certainly must be most displeasing to him. This 
 seems to be the reason why the Dutch are more prosper- 
 ous in their undertakings than other nations. But their 
 worshipping Mammon as a Deity, and caring for nothing 
 but gold, is a thing which is not compatible with long 
 prosperity. Yet perhaps there are ten in a thousand, or 
 ten thousand, who avert the punishment, and cause the 
 rest to participate with them in the abundance and blessings 
 of this life.” 
 
 On his journey from Antwerp to Brussels by trekschuit 
 (the river boats of the Netherlands), he had among his 
 fellow-passengers two barefoot Franciscan friars, one of 
 whom stood in one spot for four hours, praying devoutly all 
 the time ; upon which Swedenborg 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 hypocrisy, as with the 
 Pharisees. Prayer avails much, as we know from the 
 instance of Moses when his people was rebellious, as well 
 as from other examples. Paul was also desirous that others 
 should pray for him.” 
 
 Our author paid great attention throughout to the state 
 and ordinances of the Roman Catholic church, and in no 
 carping spirit ; yet he noted with strong animadversion 
 the sensuality of the priests, over and above what was 
 needed to lead the minds of populations manageable only 
 through the senses. “The monks,” says he, “at Roye 
 are fat and corpulent, 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 willing to take from 
 the poor all their substance for nothing. What is the good 
 of barefoot Franciscans?” On the 4th of September he 
 arrived at Paris, in which city he spent a year and a half. 
 
38 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 Of Paris he says, “that pleasure, or more properly speak- 
 ing, sensuality, appears to be there carried to its possible 
 summit.” His mind at this time was directed to the ge- 
 neral state of France, and his auguries were sagacious 
 enough. “It is found,” he observes, “that the tax which 
 they term the ‘ tenths’ dixieme') yields annually 32 mil- 
 lions sterling ; and that the Parisians spend two-thirds of 
 this amount over their own city. In the remote provinces 
 the impost is not in general fairly paid, because the people 
 make false returns. One-fifth of the whole possessions 
 of the kingdom is in the hands of the ecclesiastical order. 
 If this condition of things last long, the ruin of the empire 
 will be speedy.” We cannot but think of the most terrible 
 page of modern history, when we read these quiet lines of 
 Swedenborg. 
 
 From France he went into Italy, and spent a year (1738- 
 39) at Venice and Rome. On his journey from Novara to 
 Milan, he was in some danger from a treacherous vetturino,* 
 who several times drew a hanger upon him, which Swe- 
 denborg ultimately escaped by persuading the scoundrel 
 that he had no money on his person. His note-book of 
 this tour shews that he was occupied with investigating the 
 modern institutions, as well as the remains of antiquit)", in 
 the various Italian cities. 
 
 He nowhere informs us what the work was that he had 
 gone abroad to write and publish. In 1736, while at 
 Paris, we find him meditating a treatise to prove that 
 “ the soul of wisdom lies in the acknowledgment 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.” On another oc- 
 casion he tells us that he is working at the outlines of 
 a book “ De anni genere,” unless this be a mistake of 
 
 * The vetturino is a functionary in Italian travelling, who under- 
 takes at once to convey and provide for the ti’aveller. 
 
A.D. 1736-41.] TR.WELS IN FRANCE AND ITALY. 39 
 
 the learned editor of his Itinerary,* for we can neither 
 translate it, nor see it as a continuation of his labors. 
 At this time he was still pondering on the subjects treated 
 in the Principia, and on Oct. 4, 1/36, after recording a 
 visit to the Tuilleries gardens, he adds, “My walk was 
 exceedingly pleasant to-day ; I was meditating on the forms 
 of the particles in the atmospheres.” Again on the 9th 
 of August, 1738, at Venice, he says that he “had com- 
 pleted his work and here his own mention of his labors 
 ceases in this journal. 
 
 It is indeed recorded in one list of his works, and we 
 have obtained collateral evidence of the fact, that he pub- 
 lished Two Dissertations on the Nervous Fibre and the 
 Nervous Fluid, at Rome in 1740; yet it is hardly pro- 
 bable that he had returned to Rome in that year, and 
 accordingly his authorship of such a publication is doubtful. 
 Nevertheless it is easiest to account for the assertion by sup- 
 posing its truth ; and certainly the title of the work bears a 
 Swedenborgian aspect.f It appears to be more certain, 
 that in this year on his way from Italy, he was at Leipsic, 
 where he put forth a kind of sonnet in honor of the cente- 
 nary of printing. But however this may be, or wherever 
 he next travelled, (for his journal terminates abruptly at 
 Genoa on the 17th of March, 1739,) it appears that his 
 Economy of the Animal Kingdom was the work that he 
 
 * This Itinerary was written in Swedish, but has been elegantly 
 translated into Latin by Dr. Achatius Kahl of Lund, and edited by 
 Dr. J. F. E. Tafel. The original MS. is difficult to decyj)her. 
 
 t Sprengel, in his History of Medicine, (the French translation 
 by Jourdan, vol. iv., p. 326,) mentions a work which he supposes 
 to be Swedenborg’s, viz., Dilucidationes de Origine Animce et Malo 
 Hereditario, 8vo., Stockholm, 1740. As we have not been able to 
 meet with these Thoughts on the Origin of the Soul and Hereditary 
 Evil, we cannot say what intrinsic evidence they may present of his 
 authorship. It is likely that he returned to Stockholm during this 
 year. 
 
40 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 wrote during this tour. It will be recollected that in the 
 middle of 1736 he had gone abroad for three or four years 
 of literary labor ; now the First Part of the Economy ap- 
 peared in 1 740. A number of small MS. treatises lately pub- 
 lished,* were the outlines of this work, and were probably 
 written early in these travels. The end of his studies, as 
 we shall soon discover, was a knowledge of the soul ; but 
 for long he was doubtful how to approach it. At first he 
 began from the philosophical side,f after a rather wordy 
 trial of which, he came gradually round to the anatomical, 
 and at length rose upwards from the bodily structure bv a 
 purely inductive process. It is most probable that he de- 
 posited the MS. of the Economy at Amsterdam, on his 
 way from Leipsic to Sweden in 1740; that he lived in his 
 own country from 1740 or 1741 till 1744, and in the latter 
 year came again to Holland, and from thence went to Eng- 
 land, where we meet him in 1745. To these conjectures 
 we are helped by his publications. 
 
 We have now then to record that in 1740-1 he published 
 in 4to. at Amsterdam his Economy of the Animal Kingdom, \ 
 — a large work in which our courageous miner sunk a shaft 
 into the deep veins of the organic sciences. 
 
 Probably on his return to his own country, he became a 
 Fellow, by invitation, of the Royal Academy of Sciences of 
 Stockholm, then first incorporated by a charter from the 
 Crown, though founded as a private association by Linnaeus 
 and a few friends in 1739. “ He was a worthy member,” 
 
 says Sandel, “ of this Royal Academy ; and though before 
 his admission into it he had been engaged with subjects 
 different from those which it cultivates, yet he was not 
 willing to be a useless associate. He enriched our memoirs 
 
 * Posthumous Tracts. 
 
 t See his Preface to the Posthumous Tracts. 
 
 X The Economy of the Animal Kingdom, considered Anatomically, 
 Physically, and Philosophically. 
 
A. D. 1741 - 45 .] advent to the human body. 41 
 
 with an article O71 inlaid work in marble for tables, and 
 for ornamental purposes generally." This memoir (in 
 Swedish) may be seen in the Transactions of the Academy 
 for 1/63, vol. xxiv., pp. 10/ — 113. 
 
 We must now spend a few moments in tracing his advent 
 to the animal kingdom, under which title he exclusively 
 signified the human body. 
 
 At the outset of his studies he lets us know in an early 
 letter, that he had come to a “ determination to penetrate 
 from the very cradle to the maturity of nature” — from the 
 atoms of chemistry to the atoms of astronomy — from the 
 smallest groups to the largest — from the molecular to the 
 universal : and this determination, which hitherto impelled 
 him along the varied line of physics, now took wings, and 
 combining with a higher nature, carried him into the realms 
 of organization. He had touched upon this region manj- 
 times in the course of his physical preamble, but gently 
 and modestly, and as it were with pausing footsteps. In 
 the Miscellaneous Obseiwations he had admired the facile 
 circulation of the blood in the capillaries. In a manuscript 
 of about the same date he entered at considerable length 
 into a doctrine of the membranes, and followed to a certain 
 extent the same track as Hartley afterwards in his famous 
 seheme of vibrations. In the Principia he had laid down 
 the law, that the human frame is an organism respondent 
 to the vibrations and powers of all the mundane elements ; 
 that there is membrane and fluid within the body, beating 
 time and keeping tune with airs and auras in the universe ; 
 that man and nature are coordinate in the anatomical 
 sphere ; that the body is one vast instinet acting according 
 to the circumstances of the external world. In the Oiit- 
 lines this correspondence is re-asserted in a masterly style, 
 and moreover the human body is opened somewhat, as a 
 machine whose utter wisdom harmonizes with God alone, 
 and leads right minds to God : but in all these works the 
 
42 
 
 LIFE OF SVVEDENBORG. 
 
 author’s deductions are close to facts, comparatively timid, 
 and limited to the service in each instance of the particular 
 argument in hand. Yet it is easy to see from all, that he 
 was laboriously wending his way from the first to the 
 temple of the body, at whose altar he expected to find the 
 soul, as the priest of the Most High God. 
 
 It is evident that his studies for compassing this ob- 
 ject, were of no common intensity. He made himself inti- 
 mately acquainted with the works of the best anatomists of 
 his own and preceding ages, and transcribed from their 
 pages the descriptions suited to his purpose, forming what 
 was in fact a manuscript encyclopedia for his own use. He 
 made a note-book also of the technical terms of the sciences : 
 and labored to be before his age in the conveniences of a 
 scholar, as he was assuredly before it in the wants of his mind. 
 We do not know to what extent he was a practical anato- 
 mist; he informs us that he had made use of the dissecting 
 room ; and it is said that he attended the instructions of 
 Boerhaave* at the same time as the elder Mouro; the 
 authority for which is however only traditional. Be this 
 as it may, it is plain that Swedenborg derived his know- 
 ledge of the body chiefly from plates and books ; though 
 assuredly he was one who lost no opportunity of pursuing 
 his subject in the best way. We therefore conclude that 
 he gained what experience he could by dissection, but relied 
 in the main on the facts supplied by the accredited authori- 
 ties, as hopeless to exceed these in accuracy, also as being 
 more impartial over the data supplied by others, and, more- 
 over, as feeling his own vocation to lie rather in the inter- 
 pretation, than in the collection, of phenomena. 
 
 From 1741 to 1/44, Swedenborg appears to have de- 
 voted himself entirely to the study of the human frame ; 
 indeed, when we consider the quantity of works and manu- 
 
 Boerhaave died at Leyden in 1737. 
 
A.D. 1744 - 45 .] PHILOSOPHICAL ANATOMY. 
 
 43 
 
 scripts vrhich he has left on the subject it is difficult to sup- 
 pose otherwise than that his principal attention was directed 
 to it from the time of the publication of his Philosophical 
 and Mineral works, — a period of 11 years to 1744. In 
 1744-5 he published his Animal Kingdom* in 4to., Parts I. 
 and II. at the Hague, Part III. in London, but his habits 
 and sojournings at this period there are no data to shew. 
 How he managed to be absent from his Assessorship, where 
 he studied, whom he conversed with, what sympathies he 
 enjoyed, or whether he worked with only his great cause 
 over his head, are points which we do not know. We shall, 
 therefore, give a brief general account of his contributions 
 to philosophical anatomy, including under our remarks the 
 whole of his treatises in this department. 
 
 The Economy of the Animal Kingdom treats of the blood 
 and the organs which contain it, of the coincidence between 
 the movements of the brain and lungs ; and of the human 
 soul ; The Animal Kingdom, of the organs of the abdomen, 
 of those of the chest, and of the skin. The descriptions 
 of the best anatomists are admirably selected as a basis of 
 fact for each chapter, and prefixed thereto, after which fol- 
 lows the author’s induction or theory, and next a comment 
 upon it illustrated by the previous facts. The method ob- 
 viously is, to state and study the facts first ; thus to elicit 
 from them a vintage of first principles ; and then to keep 
 and refine this wine of truths within the vessels of the facts, 
 amplifying it wherever possible to the unfilled capacity of 
 the latter. It is difficult to conceive a more excellent method 
 for philosophical anatomy, or one which keeps the stages of 
 truth-making more distinct, or more profitable to each other. 
 There is one vessel which is all facts ; there is a second 
 which is all principles ; there is a third in which the two 
 come together, and the principles suggest new experiments, 
 
 * The Animal Kingdom, considered Anatomically, Physically, 
 and Philosophically. 
 
44 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 and the facts enlarged principles. The method is a little 
 image of the grand circulation of the sciences, from facts or 
 confused general truths, through universal truths, to par- 
 ticular or clear general truths. There is not one of such 
 truths but becomes a fact before the method has done with it. 
 
 In the works we are considering, as indeed in all that 
 Swedenborg wrote, there is an unconcealed belief from the 
 first in God and his providence, and such a belief as results, 
 not from meditation only, or from sceptical second thought, 
 but from the religious atmosphere of Christendom. On 
 this head our author was a child to the end of his days, 
 and never questioned the earliest instructions which he had 
 received from his father and mother, whom he honored to 
 the extent of believing, that thought can never begin ah 
 origine, as though it had no human parentage. He knew 
 that every truth and mental possession has its genealogy, 
 which it can no more deny or question with propriety, than 
 we ourselves can dispense with our natural ancestry; by 
 proceeding from whom we start from the vantage ground of 
 previous manhood, and may be originators in our line, in- 
 stead of fruitlessly repeating the past of creation for each 
 fresh individual. Especially did he know that no Christian 
 man can, without sheer impuissance, begin out of Chris- 
 tianity. Accordingly Swedenborg took full advantage of the 
 religion of his time, and the belief in a personal God was 
 with him the fountain of sciences, which alone allowed a 
 finite man to discover in nature the wisdom that an infinite 
 man had planted there. Nothing is more plain than that 
 only in so far as man is the image of God, and can think 
 like God, can he give the reason of anything that God has 
 made. Not to admit then a personal God is to deny the 
 grounds of natural knowledge, to make it what the philo- 
 sophers call subjective, that is to say, true for you, but not 
 God’s truth or true in itself. 
 
 It was, however, Swedenborg’s avowed aim to lead the 
 
A. D. 1744-45.] THE MEANING OF ORDER. 45 
 
 sceptic to an acknowledgment of God through the wisdom 
 of God in nature ; and, for this purpose, he did not begin 
 by himself postponing and denying God, but by a plenary 
 acknowledgment, as the door into the secret parts of nature 
 where the divine wisdom is enthroned. This constituted 
 the providence of God as the order of nature, which order 
 was now to be unfolded. What are the great outlines of 
 our knowledge of order ? Arrangement, distribution, hie- 
 rarchy, likeness, relation, fitness, law, and other terms, 
 are expressions of what we mean by order. To look, then, 
 for and from order in nature, is to look from and for these 
 various demareations and conjunctions; in Swedenborg’s 
 words, it is to look from the principle of series, by which 
 nature moves in rows, lines, or regiments, — from the prin- 
 ciple of degrees, by which everything is in its own rank, 
 and knows its place, — from the principle of association, 
 whereby friendly and mutually-helpful substances and 
 things are near each other, and work for each other, — from 
 the principle of forms, whereby nature descends down 
 the stairs of excellence and universality, from vortex to 
 spire, from spire to circle, and from circle to angle, and 
 reascends by supersinuations from the earth to the sun, 
 and from the mineral to man, — from the principle of 
 influx or influence, according to which not physical force 
 alone is power, but every ray of purpose and intention 
 is communicated from every side, and from above to 
 below, and received and acted upon, — from the principle 
 of correspondence and representation, whereby all fitness 
 comes ; fitness of the body to the soul, and vice versa, as 
 being both the same thing in different spheres ; fitness of 
 man to nature ; fitness of man to man, and of nature to 
 nature, and of all good things to God ; and, as the corol- 
 lary of this fitness, a conjunction of all the fellow works 
 and fellow workers into one grand unity, which is reality 
 and creation, the solid and universal order, the whole being 
 
46 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 consummated in the idea of organization or truth. Such 
 was Swedenborg’s analysis of our current knowledge of 
 order, as the instrument of God’s doings, and of man’s 
 discoveries and imitations which are the sciences and the 
 arts. To this was added what he termed the Doctrine of 
 Modification, which recognizes the manner in whieh vital 
 and other vibrations permeate the world ; in which the 
 Word of God and the words of man — in which all expres- 
 sions, whether looks, voices, acts, or things — make their 
 way through the universe, and infect with their own life 
 and powers the system and its parts : speech and the modi- 
 fications of the air being the ready symbol of this general 
 converse and parliament of the beings and creatures, wherein 
 the laws are resumed according to the interests of the whole. 
 
 Swedenborg did not then attempt to enter the body either 
 abruptly or without assistance, but only after gathering up 
 all his mind, and marshalling his forces, from the first 
 generalizations in which every childhood is fruitful down to 
 the last which his maturity supplied. He advanced, in fact, 
 under all the discipline and with all the machinery and 
 strategy of his age and of his own genius, and with the 
 name of the God of Battles and the Prince of Peace dis- 
 tinctly emblazoned on his tranquil banners. There is some- 
 thing really hushing and imposing in the measured tread 
 of his legions, in the formal music which drills the very air 
 where his staff of general truths is in the field, and in the 
 absence of passion in so firm a host advancing to such im- 
 portant conquests. 
 
 “ I intend to examine,” says he, “physically and phi- 
 losophically, the whole anatomy of the body ; of all its 
 viscera, abdominal and thoracic ; of the genital members 
 of both sexes ; and of the organs of the five senses. Like- 
 wise, 
 
 “ The anatomy of all parts of the cerebrum, cerebellum, 
 medulla oblongata, and spinal marrow. 
 
A.D. 1744-43.] SCIENTIFIC SOUL-SEEING. 
 
 47 
 
 “ Afterwards, the cortical substance of the two brains, 
 and their medullary fibre ; also the nervous fibre of the 
 body, and the muscular fibre, and the causes of the forces 
 and motion of the whole organism : Diseases, moreover, 
 those of the head particularly, or which proceed by de- 
 flu.\ion from the brain. 
 
 “ I purpose afterwards to give an introduction to Rational 
 Psychology, consisting of certain new doctrines, through 
 the assistance of which we may be conducted from the 
 material organism of the body, to a knowledge of the soul 
 which is immaterial : these are, the Doctrine of Forms ; 
 the Doctrine of Order and Degrees ; also, the Doctrine of 
 Series and Society ; the Doctrine of Influx ; the Doctrine 
 of Correspondence and Representation ; lastly, the Doctrine 
 of Modification. 
 
 “ From these doctrines I come to the rational psychology 
 itself, which will comprise the subjects of action, of exter- 
 nal and internal sense, of imagination and memory, also of 
 the affections of the animus ; of the intellect, that is to 
 say, of thought and the will ; and of the affections of the 
 rational mind ; also of instinct. 
 
 “ Lastly of the soul, and of its state in the body, its 
 intercourse, affection, and immortality ; and of its state 
 when the body dies. The work to conclude with a Con- 
 cordance of Systems. 
 
 “ From this summary or plan, the reader may see that 
 the end I propose to myself iu the work, is a knowledge of 
 the soul ; since this knowledge will constitute the crown of 
 my studies. This, then, my labors intend, and thither 
 they aim. ... In order therefore to follow up the investi- 
 gation, and to solve the difficulty, I have chosen to ap- 
 proach by the analytic way ; and I think I am the first 
 who has taken this course professedly. 
 
 “ To accomplish this grand end I enter the circus, de- 
 signing to consider and examine thoroughly the whole 
 
48 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 world or microcosm which the soul inhabits ; for I think 
 it is in vain to seek her anywhere but in her own king- 
 dom. . . . 
 
 “ When my task is accomplished, I am then admitted 
 by common consent to the soul, who sitting like a queen 
 in her throne of state, the body, dispenses laws, and 
 governs all things by her good pleasure, but yet by 
 order and by truth. This will be the crown of my toils, 
 when I shall have completed my course in this most spacious 
 arena. But in olden time, before any racer could merit 
 the crown, he was commanded to run seven times round 
 the goal, which also I have determined here to do. . . . 
 
 “ I am, therefore, resolved to allow myself no respite, 
 until I have run through the whole field to the very goal, 
 or until I have traversed the universal animal kingdom to 
 the soul. Thus I hope, that by bending my course in- 
 wards continually, I shall open all the doors that lead to 
 her, and at length contemplate the soul herself: by the 
 divine permission.” 
 
 One of his MS.* again places these designs iu a clear light. 
 “ I have gone through this anatomy,” says he, “ with the 
 single end of investigating the soul. It will be a satis- 
 faction to me if my labors be of any use to the anato- 
 mical and medical world, but a still greater satisfaction if 
 I afford any light towards the investigation of the soul.” 
 The whole course of the sciences, he observes, has aimed 
 at this effect. “ The learned world has striven hither with- 
 out any exception ; for what else has it attempted, than the 
 ability to speak from general principles, and to act syn- 
 thetically on the lower sphere ; such however is angelic per- 
 fection, such is heavenly science ; such also was the first 
 natural science, and such ambition is therefore innate in 
 ourselves ; thus we too strain towards the integrity of our 
 
 * Published by Dr. Tafel as the Seventh Part of The Animal 
 Kingdom. 
 
CHRISTIANIZATION OF SCIENCE. 
 
 49 
 
 first parent, who concluded from principles to all effects, 
 and not only saw universal nature beneath him, but com- 
 manded its subject spheres.” All science by this account 
 is the way back to a divine magic and a spiritual seership. 
 “ Hence,” he adds, “ our mighty interest iu attaining to 
 principles of truth.” He concludes by avowing, that “ he 
 knows he shall have the reader’s ear, if the latter be only 
 persuaded that his end is God’s glory and the public good, 
 and not his own gain or praise.” 
 
 His object then was, to open a new way through natural 
 knowledge to religious faith, and to transfer to Christianity 
 the title deeds of the sciences. 
 
 We have said enough, however, of his preparations ; it 
 is time to speak of what he accomplished. And still, in 
 treating of such a genius, we must guard the reader 
 against supposing that he was bound to his own stated me- 
 thod, to the fettering of his powers. The extraordinary 
 flexibility with which he handled his rules, constituted a 
 new and inimitable regime presiding over them all, and 
 which gave him the benefits of lawlessness in addition to 
 the benefits of law. In his mind, formality and freedom 
 went hand in hand, and strengthened each other by a per- 
 petual procreation of new rules, interpretation of old, and 
 the eruption of fresh liberty at every exigency or circum- 
 stance not provided for in his code. Truth rose on his 
 path as an ever broadening constitution. 
 
 But did he, or not, arrive at the soul by the aid of the 
 general doctrines we have particularized, and which seemed 
 to be the ladder that the soul let down to whoso would 
 climb her secret chambers ? He came, instead, to the 
 inner parts of the living body, but not to the soul. It was 
 an achievement to dissect the body alive without injuring 
 it, nay with its own concurrence ; to disintegrate brain, 
 lungs, heart, and vitals, and to see them as individuals, 
 as partial men ; so to endow them with the whole frame, 
 
 D 
 
50 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 that they could subsist to the mind as human creatures ; 
 and this Swedenborg has done to a considerable extent : but 
 to see the soul, or the spiritual body, was not accorded to 
 him at this stage. The doctrine of correspondence might 
 have shewn it ; but then before correspondence works there 
 must be two experimental terms, two visible things ; the 
 soul must be already seen, after which, correspondence 
 will shew its fitness with the body, and illustrate each by 
 each. In a word, sight or experience is the basis of know- 
 ledge ; the invisible is the unknown, and no doctrines can 
 realize it, or honestly bring it near to our thoughts. It rests 
 upon Swedenborg’s confession, not less than upon his 
 quitting the before mentioned track, that his principles so 
 far did not and could not lead him to an acquaintance with 
 the soul. 
 
 But if, whilst engaged upon an impossible quest, he lost 
 himself among nervous and spirituous fluids and the like 
 entities, which are most real, only not the soul, still he 
 shed surprizing light upon the plan and life of the human 
 body. His method was eminently good for this. The doc- 
 trines he worked with, the preliminaries he believed in, are 
 the common sense of all plans and organizations. Who- 
 ever makes or constitutes anything, does it by sponta- 
 neous obedience to these very laws : whoever works suc- 
 cessfully, works through the doctrine of forms, whereby 
 superiority in material, design and so forth, has an inti- 
 mate favor shewn it, and governs the lower parts ; through 
 series and order, whereby ari’angement enters ; through 
 degrees, whereby step over step is measured and laid; 
 through association, — viz., of the kindred parts with each 
 other ; through modification, whereby the play of circum- 
 stances has channels laid down in the work contemplated, 
 through which the world-power flows, and is turned to 
 use : — not to particularize Swedenborg’s w'heels of method 
 more precisely. Now then, tliese ubiquitous laws are the 
 
THE LIFE-SPRINGS OF SCIENCE. 
 
 51 
 
 life, or in the life, of our minds ; and applied to the body, 
 they put thereinto the only life which we, at second hand, 
 can give it — the life of imagination, fancy, thought, pas- 
 sion ; bestowing upon it a theatric scientific vitality, beyond 
 which mere science cannot go ; for science deals with cleverly 
 galvanized puppets after all — with animated machines ; it 
 subsists by a life from without, and is not itself the com- 
 plete man to whom brains and pulsing heart are a divine 
 right in his inside. 
 
 In broad terms, it may be stated, that Swedenborg has 
 thus animated the human body with the outermost circle 
 of common sense reduced to formulas, to w’hich he has 
 added from his own unconfined experience a very large 
 amount of life of a description unaccounted for by his doc- 
 trines ; borrowing vitality every now and then, Prometheus- 
 like, from a wider sphere than that of his own philosophy, 
 — in short, from the next human body, or the social man. 
 Immeasureably high as he stands in comparison with the 
 anatomists, we regard his unconsciousness of the social 
 world as a life-giver to the corporeal, as the great lacuna of 
 his philosophical works. For if life is to be brought to the 
 body ah extra, why not take it from the vast reservoir of 
 our daily experience, — from home, friends, country, and 
 the world, and carrying it by the chalice of analogy, pour 
 it through all convenient doctrines into that empty shell of 
 the anatomists ? If order is the unlocking of that hide- 
 bound place, why not take the order from our own growth 
 and ages, — from that which opens us for life after life ? 
 If series and degrees, why rest in mineral thoughts, and 
 why not draw upon those manifest series, dispositions 
 and ranks, that exist in our communities ? If life is to 
 come to the body, why not go directly for it to the great 
 motives which sway the world, and which are both indi- 
 vidual and social ? If influx or influence, why disregard 
 the influence of man upon man in the collective and general 
 
 2 D 
 
52 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 spheres ? In short, why not get enlirenment from life as 
 we all understand and speak of it day by day ? This it is 
 which glitters from all eyes about our path, and bathes and 
 surrounds us ; this runs through our frames, and stirs our 
 muscles doubly moved by our own and the general will ; 
 this penetrates through our thickest skins, and warms our 
 hearts with their strongest fires : in the light of this we are 
 all anatomized into vitals larger than ourselves, cut from 
 the texture of our extended lifetime, and our secret souls 
 are placed under our eyes, and still more under the world’s. 
 It is indeed strange that in these doctrines of Swedenborg, 
 there was no doctrine of life, no conduit whereby the main 
 essence could run into the dead carcass. And yet life is 
 what we best understand, and death is what wants most ex- 
 plaining. But the truth is, that to have proceeded so far 
 as this, Swedenborg — necessarily ignorant of the social 
 sciences, like all in his day — must have taken his general 
 doctrines from new fields, which, at that time, was impos- 
 sible. 
 
 Thus, however, it is, that a living anatomy grows up. 
 The first life, faint yet beautiful, comes from the first 
 perceptions of life in humanity and consequently in phi- 
 losophy ; from the formulas derived from our infantile ex- 
 perience; from the child’s ideas of order, which are the 
 boundary of philosophy.* The second and subsequent lives 
 
 * These philosophical formulas are, for example, the simple ab- 
 stractions of end, cause, and effect ; the axioms that “ substances are 
 the subjects of all predicates that “ the general includes the parti- 
 cular;” that substance and form are inseparable ; and the like. Swe- 
 denborg carried these ideas through certain provinces of nature, and 
 enriched them with reality. This is the way to one order of the phi- 
 losophical sciences, but the method is not powerfully analytic, because 
 the above abstractions being themselves deficient in intrinsic nature, 
 your instrument of analysis is single and indivisible ; it may and does 
 produce arrangement, but it is general itself, and only capable of 
 arranging generals, but by no means particular and colored things. 
 
THE LIFE-SPRINGS OF SCIENCE. 
 
 .53 
 
 upon which anatomy can enter, arise from subsequent 
 perceptions of life as exemplified in our social and hence 
 new individual relations ; and the wisdom or last life of the 
 science, lies in the transplanting of our religious life, or our 
 relation to God, into the bodily fabric. The body already 
 contains all these lives, because it contains ourself; but 
 not consciously until the sciences have put them into the 
 dead body, and resuscitated it. Swedenborg has then only 
 treated his subject anatomically, physically, and philoso- 
 phically ; or first in its dead truth, secondly in its relations 
 with the physical universe, which sways it with motion as 
 the herald of vitality ; thirdly, as possessing our common 
 sense in the lowest degree ; but furthermore it requires to 
 be treated humanly, socially and spiritually. Be it ad- 
 mitted, however, that in his triple method, Swedenborg has 
 already raised to the cube the sciences of the body which 
 the anatomists had left at the simple degree, and has thereby 
 facihtated the next steps to be taken. 
 
 His observations or facts are as superior to the ordinary 
 foundations as his method is better than the procedures 
 which are still in vogue. His power of remark is more 
 physiognomical than in any previous writer with whom we 
 are acquainted. Other collectors of facts rushed at once 
 into dissection and violence, and broke through the speak- 
 ing face of things in their impatience. He on the other 
 hand, proceeded cautiously and tenderly, and only cut the 
 skin when he had exhausted its looks and expressions, 
 conversing first with the face, then with other parts of the 
 surface, and at last with the inner inexpressive parts, the 
 poor dumb creatures which were the sole company of the 
 anatomists. He was the most grandly superficial writer 
 who had then arisen, — a rare qualification in its good 
 sense, and which gives the benefit of travel to the sciences, 
 enabling them to take liberal views of their materials ; a 
 qualification, moreover, which is the preparative for depth, 
 
54 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 for the whole surface alone leads to the centre, and when 
 complete is itself an apparent sphere, the most perfect of 
 scientific forms. Accordingly when Swedenborg goes up- 
 wards or inwards he is guided to the sun, or the core, hy 
 myriads of rays from the translucent skin, and ubiquitous 
 fingers invite and beckon him into the depths. Such is 
 nature’s privilege for those who beseech her permissions, 
 and read the wishes of her broader lineaments. 
 
 In illustration of these remarks we have only space to 
 allude to one fact and doctrine made use of by our author 
 in the foregoing works, but that one is of the utmost value 
 both in his system and history ; we mean his doctrine of 
 respiration. Let any reader think for a moment of what 
 he experiences when he breathes, and attends to the act. 
 He will find that his whole frame heaves and subsides at 
 the time; face, chest, stomach, and limbs are all ac- 
 tuated by his respiration. His sense is, that not only his 
 lungs but his entire body breathes. Here is a large surface 
 of fact ; the foundation-story of any doctrine of respiration. 
 The most unlearned experience contains it as well as the 
 most learned, and often much more vividly, for learning 
 sometimes hinders the breath ; the plethora of science and 
 philosophy confines the heaving to the chest alone, and the 
 learned puff and pant. Now mark what Swedenborg elicited 
 from this fact, because he accepted it as a material for 
 science. If the whole man breathes or heaves, so also do 
 the organs which he contains, for they are necessarily 
 drawn outwards by the rising of the surface ; therefore they 
 all breathe. What do they breathe ? Two elements are 
 omnipresent in them, the bloodvessels and the nerves, the 
 one giving them pabulum, the other life. They draw then 
 into themselves blood, and life or nervous spirit. Each 
 does this according to its own form ; each, therefore, has 
 a free individuality like the whole man ; each takes its food, 
 the blood, when it chooses ; each wills into itself the life 
 
THOUGHT AND BREATH. 
 
 5a 
 
 according to its desires. The man is made up of manlike 
 parts ; his freedom is an aggregate of a host of atomic, 
 organical freedoms. The heart does not cram them with 
 its blood, but each, like the man himself, takes what it 
 thinks right ; the brain and nerves do not force upon them 
 a heterogeneous life, but each kindles itself with appropriate 
 life, according to what it already has, and what it wants to 
 have. There is character and individuality in every mole- 
 cule ; and the mind is properly built upon faculties ana- 
 logous to its own, conferred upon material organs. It 
 handles nature by the willing correspondence of nature in 
 this high machine, with its own essential attributes. The 
 body is a mind and soul of flesh. 
 
 But furthermore, thought commences and corresponds 
 with respiration. The reader has before attended to the 
 presence of the heaving over the body ; now let him feel his 
 thoughts, and he will see that they too heave with the 
 mass. When he entertains a long thought, he draws a 
 long breath ; when he thinks quickly, his breath vibrates 
 with rapid alternations ; when the tempest of anger shakes 
 his mind, his breath is tumultuous ; when his soul is deep 
 and tranquil, so is his respiration ; when success inflates 
 him, his lungs are as tumid as his conceits. Let him make 
 trial of the contrary ; let him endeavor to think in long 
 stretches at the same time that he breathes in fits, and he 
 will find that it is impossible ; that in this case the chop- 
 ping lungs will needs mince his thoughts. Now the mind 
 dwells in the brain, and it is the brain, therefore, which 
 shares the varying fortunes of the breathing. It is strange 
 that this correspondence between the states of the brain or 
 mind and the lungs has not been admitted in science, for it 
 holds in every case, at every moment. In truth it is so un- 
 failing, and so near to the centre of sense, that this has 
 made it difficult to regard it as an object ; for if you only 
 try to think upon the breathing, in consequence of the fixa- 
 
56 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 tion of thought you stop the breath that very moment, and 
 only recommence it when the thought can no longer hold, 
 that is to say, when the brain has need to expire. Now 
 Swedenborg, with amazing observation and sagacity, has 
 made a regular study of this ratio between tbe respiration 
 and the thoughts and emotions ; he shews in detail that the 
 two correspond exactly, and moreover that their correspond- 
 ence is one of the long-sought links between the soul and 
 the body, whereby every thought is represented and carried 
 out momentaneously in the expanse of the human frame, 
 which it penetrates by vicegerent motions or states. Thus, 
 if the mind is tranquil, the body is similarly tranquil, and 
 the two are at one, that is to say, united ; if the mind is 
 perturbed, the body is likewise so in the most exact simili- 
 tude ; if the mind loves what is high, the body looks to it 
 and aspires to reach it ; and while the two work for each 
 other, that is to say, so long as health sufficient lasts, there 
 must be connexion between them, or the all-knowing soul 
 would not profit by its own tool, its very double in the world. 
 It is difficult to give a more plain or excellent reason of the 
 tie between the body and the soul, than that the latter finds 
 the body absolutely to its mind ; while, on the other hand, 
 the living body clings to the soul, because it wants a friendly 
 superior life to infuse and direct its life. 
 
 The power which Swedenborg possessed of watching his 
 own breath, is not, as we hinted before, unconnected with 
 his biography, but explains in a measure much of which 
 he was the subject. For to note the respiration (we invite 
 the reader to make the attempt) implies its gradual cessa- 
 tion, because of the fixed thought required. This cessation 
 of the breath, to which our author was evidently used, 
 involves, where it is persisted in, one of two things ; either 
 the passing into unconsciousness, where the thought cannot 
 breathe without the lungs, or else, where this rare condition 
 is possible, the cessation of the pulmonary movements, the 
 
THOUGHT AND BREATH. 
 
 57 
 
 thought in the brain persisting the meanwhile, but without 
 intercourse with the body, and taking cognizance no longer 
 of the lower world, but of the cerebral or proximately spi- 
 ritual state. The latter happens only where there is a more 
 inward thought which endures when the outward is sus- 
 pended. The management of the respiration then with 
 some persons, or its similar ordinary habit in others, is one 
 way to annul for the time that intercourse of the mind with 
 the body which respiration establishes, and to enfranchise 
 the mind in its own sphere. There can be no doubt that 
 Swedenborg was peculiarly endowed in this respect, as we 
 shall abundantly illustrate when we come to speak of the 
 psychology of his seership. 
 
 But we must not forget that we are now treating of his 
 contributions to science, of which we have recorded the above 
 as among the most valuable, and as incalculable in its results 
 both upon thought and practice. In stating, however, any 
 one point as remarkable in such a genius, we are in danger 
 of having it understood that his claims in this respect can 
 be enumerated by any critic or biographer. On the con- 
 trary, we should have to write a volume were we barely to 
 devote but a few lines to each detail of his excessive fruit- 
 fulness. Suffice it to say, that there is no enquirer into 
 the human body, either for the purposes of medical or 
 general intelligence, above all, there is no philosophical ana- 
 tomist, who has done justice to himself, unless he has 
 humbly read and studied — not turned over and conceitedly 
 dismissed — the Economy and Animal Kingdom of Sweden- 
 borg. These works of course are past as records of ana- 
 tomical fact, but in general facts that are bigger than ana- 
 tom j', they have not been excelled, and none but a mean 
 pride of science, or an inaptitude for high reasons, would 
 deter the enquirer from the light he may here acquire, in 
 spite of meeting a few obsolete notions, or a few hundreds 
 of incomplete experiments. 
 
58 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 We are indeed free to admit that Swedenborg’s tools 
 have been handled and improved since his own time. The 
 law of series, to which he attributed so much, has been 
 set in a new light, and made into a machine of tenfold 
 power, by Charles Fourier, and analogy has been only too 
 prolific in the hands of the German Oken. The latter, we 
 may remark, is all analogy, with no roots. The day of 
 railroads has been preceded by railroads in thought, with 
 all the excesses and expenses of their material types, and 
 these mental iron ways are the analogies between different 
 provinces of nature, whereby sciences, incommunicable 
 hitherto as Japan or China, are now running into each 
 other for mere lust of travel. But however rapid our 
 mental touring, there are still towns in Swedenborg that 
 have not been visited ; a prudence in his transit that has 
 not been sufficiently imitated ; a motive in his journeys 
 that will give life to their record when newer travellers suc- 
 cumb. A better method than his may now be purchased, 
 but it is the observation of the man himself that is enduring 
 and inimitable. 
 
 The reception of Swedenborg’s natural philosophy by the 
 world furnishes a negative event of some interest in his 
 biography. So long as he confined himself to the practical 
 sphere, his treatises met with a fair share of approval, both 
 in his own country and throughout Europe ; but the mo- 
 ment his own genius appeared, it consigned him, as we said 
 at the outset, to temporary oblivion — a goal at which he 
 arrived after passing through some preliminary opprobrium. 
 The Transactions of the Learned, published at Leipsic, 
 was not slow to discover his uncommon qualities, or to de- 
 nounce them. In February, 1/22, the reviewer said of 
 his Chemical Specimens, “ The author has displayed great 
 abilities and equal industry ; but how far he has followed 
 truth in his theories, let others decide.” In 1/35, in 
 reviewing his Outlines on the Infinite, the same journal 
 
SWEDENBORG AND HIS REVIEWERS. 
 
 59 
 
 charged him with materialism. And in 1747, it gave a 
 derisive notice of his Animal Kingdom, ending with the 
 significant words : “ So much for Swedenborgian dreams.” 
 These dreams however had not gone to their glorious limits 
 then. Swedenborg kept pace with his reviewers in an opposite 
 spirit. Thus he says at the close of The Principia : “ In 
 writing the present work, I have had no aim at the applause 
 of the learned world, nor at the acquisition of a name or 
 popularity. To me it is a matter of indifference whether 
 I win the favorable opinion of every one or of no one, 
 whether I gain much or no commendation ; such things 
 are not objects of regard to one whose mind is bent on 
 truth and true philosophy ; should I, therefore, gain the 
 assent or approbation of others, I shall receive it only as 
 a confirmation of my having pursued the truth. I have 
 no wish to persuade any one to lay aside the principles of 
 those illustrious and talented authors who have adorned 
 the world, and in place of their principles to adopt mine : 
 for this reason it is that I have not made mention so much 
 as of one of them, or even hinted at his name, lest I 
 should injure his feelings, or seem to impugn his senti- 
 ments, or to derogate from the praise which others bestow 
 upon him. If the principles I have advanced have more 
 of truth in them than those which are advocated by others ; 
 if they are truly philosophical and accordant with the phe- 
 nomena of nature, the assent of the public will follow in 
 due time of its own accord; and in this case, should I fail 
 to gain the assent of those whose minds, being prepossessd 
 by other principles, can no longer exercise an impartial 
 judgment, still I shall have those with me who are able 
 to distinguish the true from the untrue, if not in the 
 present, at least in some future age. Truth is unique, 
 and will speak for itself. Should any one undertake to 
 impugn my sentiments, I have no wish to oppose him ; 
 but in case he desire it, I shall be happy to explain 
 
60 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 my principles and reasons more at large. What need how- 
 ever is there of words ? Let the thing speak for itself. 
 If what I have said be true, why should I be eager to 
 defend it ? — surely truth can defend itself. If what I have 
 said be false, it would be a degrading and silly task to de- 
 fend it. Why then should I make myself an enemy to 
 any one, or place myself in opposition to any one?” And 
 again he observes in the Economy : “Of what consequence 
 is it to me that I should persuade any one to embrace my 
 opinions? Let his own reason persuade him. I do not 
 undertake this work for the sake of honor or emolument ; 
 both of which I shun rather than seek, beeause they dis- 
 quiet the mind, and because I am content with my lot : 
 but for the sake of the truth, which aloue is immortal, 
 and has its portion in the most perfect order of nature ; 
 hence in the series of the ends of the universe from the 
 first to the last, or to the glory of God ; which ends He 
 promotes : thus I surely know who it is that must reward 
 me.” Of his sincerity in these declarations, the repose 
 which pervades his books, and the hearty pursuit of his 
 subject at all times, bear .incontestable witness. 
 
 The absence of his laurels never troubled him, he was 
 not afraid of pillage or plagiarism, there was none of the 
 fire of eompetition in him, he was never soured by neglect, 
 or disheartened by want of sympathy. It is, however, 
 remarkable how entirely the foregoing works were unknown 
 even to those w'ho knew him best personally. His intimate 
 friend Count Hopken says, that “he made surprizing dis- 
 coveries in anatomy, which are recorded somewhere in cer- 
 tain literary transactions,” evidently in complete ignorance 
 of the great works that he had published, and moreover 
 ill-informed upon the subject of the ‘Transactions.’ And 
 yet Swedenborg was not mistaken in his estimate of his 
 own powers, or in the belief that posterity had work and 
 interest in store in writings that, at the time, were utterly 
 
LEARNING AND INNOVATION. 
 
 61 
 
 neglected. The history of literature is eloquent upon the 
 fate of those who were before their age, and that fate was 
 never more decisive for any man, or more cheerfully acqui- 
 esced in by any, than Swedenborg. 
 
 It is interesting to know the amount of learning possessed 
 by those who have caused revolutions in thought or insti- 
 tuted empires in the arts, and especially so in the case of 
 Swedenborg, who professed to build upon facts supplied 
 by the past. Undoubtedly his learning was not so thorough 
 as to lead to danger of mere scholarship ; nay from long 
 experience in editing his works, we pronounce his acquaint- 
 ance with the ancients loose and inexact ; and with more 
 modern writers, (we speak principally of the anatomists,) 
 undoubtedly wide and general, but by no means verbatim 
 ■et litteratim. Theory was his joy, and so strongly did he 
 asseverate his main discoveries, that he often based them 
 upon citations which will not bear their weight. His 
 ignorance, however, of philosophy, and inability to learn 
 or remember it, were the defences of that freedom which 
 made him what he was. In this he is like other origin- 
 ators, who happily did not comprehend the details of that 
 which they departed from ; had they understood these in 
 the way in which sympathy understands, it is probable that 
 they would not have escaped in time from their systematic 
 fascination. The same allegation has been made of Bacon, 
 who they say would never have attacked Aristotle, had he 
 appreciated him. It is very probable, and shews that a 
 certain ignorance is a genial night when a new birth is to 
 come. That which originates novelties is some new want, 
 and no merely intellectual quarrel with the past ; hence, to 
 this extent, the past cannot fairly be attended to. 
 
 In the same year as the third part of the Animal King- 
 dom, i. e., in 1/45, Swedenborg published in London 
 another work in two parts. On the Worship and Love of 
 
G2 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 God* We shall presently see that he was residing in 
 London during this period, which became so important an 
 era in his life. Of his sojourn and habits at the time we 
 have no particulars, and hence our biographical course 
 again enters upon a review of his work. 
 
 The Worship and Love of God is a centering of all that 
 he had previously elicited from his studies, and an attempt 
 moreover to carry them into another field. As the title 
 prepares the reiider to expect, it is an end in his scientific 
 march. He began from God as the fountain of the sciences ; 
 the wisdom of creation was the desire and wisdom of his 
 labors ; and here he ended with his beginning, carrying 
 God’s harvest to God. Apparently he did not know that 
 his literary life was closed, but stood amid the sheaves, 
 contemplating the tillage of future years in the old domain ; 
 although trembling nevertheless in the presence of an undis- 
 closed event. But we must not anticipate. 
 
 In The Worship and Love of God, Swedenborg gives an 
 ornate scientific narrative of the creation of our solar system, 
 dropping the mathematical form of The Principia, and 
 telling the story of the world in a physical and pictorial 
 strain. The method runs from the general to the uni- 
 versal, making use of nature as a vast tradition that speaks 
 to these who understand her, of the whole past by the 
 present. Thus as the sun is the material sustainer of the 
 system, so this sustenance demonstrates a parental relation, 
 and hence the sun was originally its material parent. Fur- 
 ther as all growth and springing take place in spring times, 
 
 * The Worship and Love of God ,■ Part I. On the Origin of the 
 Earth, on the state of Paradise in the Vegetable and Animal King- 
 doms, and on the Birth, Infancy, and Love of Adam, or the first- 
 born Man. Part II. On the Marriage of the First-born ; and on the 
 Soul, the Intellectual Mind, the state of Integrity, and the Image 
 of God. 
 
THE SCIENTIFIC EDEN. 
 
 63 
 
 SO the vernal seasons of all things point backwards to a 
 primordial universal spring, the ocean of every rill of 
 geniality, the germinal warmth of the world. This pa- 
 rentage with its conditions is unfolded; the conception and 
 birth of the planets near the bosom of the sun, from his 
 own body and substance ; their incubation in the great egg 
 of the universe; their exclusion therefrom, and their entry 
 into space for themselves. The first kingdoms of nature 
 are also described, and their dilference from all others, 
 for they were pregnant with all; moreover the general 
 spring resulting from the nearness of the earth to the sun, 
 and from the rapidity of its revolutions, whereby all the 
 seasons were blended into one as their temperate and de- 
 lightful mean, night also being melted into, and mingled 
 through, day, as winter through summer. And as the mi- 
 neral was parturient with the vegetable, and the vegetable 
 with the animal, so the innermost of the vegetable, the tree 
 of life, bore the transcendent ovum of our race, and there 
 the infinite met the finite, and the first Adam was born. 
 This concludes one department of the work. It will be seen 
 that Swedenborg’s is a theory of spontaneous generation, 
 extending to universes with their contents, and so far, not 
 dissimilar in some respects to the theories founded upon 
 recent geological and astronomical views. There reigns 
 throughout it, however, a constant sense of the presence 
 of the Creator, who descends through all his work, (spon- 
 taneous creation being His way of causation then,) and 
 at last reappears beneath his work as above it, and of him- 
 self attaches it to himself through his final creature, man. 
 
 The remainder of the book is occupied with a descrip- 
 tion of the education of the first man, which took place 
 by spiritual ministrations ; and the second part is devoted 
 to the creation of Eve, with her education, and marriage 
 to Adam ; the whole being an allegory of a six days’ work. 
 It is noticeable that Adam, born an infant, is instructed 
 
64 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 in intellectual matters, and whatever conduces to wisdom, 
 but Eve, in scientific truths, particularly those of the human 
 frame, the brain and the living fibres; somewhat in the 
 reverse order of the present culture of the sexes. In both 
 sexes, however, the spirit-lessons are taught by delightful 
 representation and sceuework born of the plastic atmos- 
 pheres; and the novitiate mankind is raised to its feet, 
 and eye after eye opened to the heaven above them, by 
 sportive similar children fluttering around, and by attrac- 
 tive fruitage pendent over head from the motherly groves 
 of Paradise. 
 
 Nothing can be more vernal than the earlier portion of 
 the work ; the reader is guided deeper and deeper into a 
 delicious embowerment, and treads the carpets of a golden 
 age. Every clod and leaf, grove, stream, and a multitude 
 of rejoicing inhabitants, all the dews, atmospheres, and 
 skyey influences, the very stars of the firmament, busily 
 minister with a latent love, and each with a native tact and 
 understanding, to the coming heir of the world, the son 
 of earth, the mind in a human form, who can look from 
 the paradise of earth to the paradise of heaven, and vene- 
 rate and adore the Creator, returning to God immortal 
 thanks for himself and all things. At last in the cen- 
 tral grove, in the most temperate region of the earth, 
 where the woven boscage broke the heat of day, and so 
 “induced a new spring under the general one;” and where 
 the gushing streamlets veined the area, and lifted by the 
 sun in kindliest vapors, hung upon the leaves, and descended 
 in continual dews, — in this intimate temple of the general 
 garden, lo, the tree of life, and the arboreal womb of the 
 nascent human race. Truly a bold Genesis ; but the steps 
 that lead to it, though beautiful as sylvan alleys, are also 
 of logical pavement, and the appreciating reader, for the 
 time at any rate, is carried well pleased along in the flow 
 and series of the strong-linked narrative. 
 
THE SCIENTIFIC EDEN. 
 
 65 
 
 The subsequent portion of the work is inferior in interest 
 to the beginning ; less artistical and more didactic ; certain 
 abstractions which are difficult to embody, wisdoms, intel- 
 ligences, and the like demi-persons, are among the actors 
 in the drama. It reminds one, though in an elevated ratio, 
 of tales of the genii, for there is something inhuman about 
 all that is more or less than human, and wisdoms and in- 
 telligences come under one or the other designation. More- 
 over the instructions of these ambiguous agencies are rather 
 prolix, and their dogmatism is occasionally dubious. It 
 is in the philosophical narrative that Swedenborg has shewn 
 truly surprizing powers which we may challenge literature 
 to surpass : so far as this extends, the work is a great and 
 rushing inspiration ; for the rest, it is a poor unripeness 
 of his theology, though abundant in charming details, and 
 crowded with significance. 
 
 We have now concluded a rapid survey of this part of 
 the Swedenborg library, and we will say a few words on 
 the author’s style. We find increased life in this respect 
 as we proceed with his works. The style of The Principia 
 is clear, felicitous, though somewhat repetitious, and occa- 
 sionally breaks forth into a beautiful but formal elo- 
 quence. The ancient mythology lends frequent figures to 
 the scientific process, and the author’s treatment would 
 seem to imply his belief that in the generations of the gods, 
 there was imbedded a hint of the origin of the world. 
 Occasionally subjects of unpromising look are invested with 
 sublime proportions, as when he likens the mathematical 
 or natural point to a “ two-faced Janus, which looks on 
 either side toward either universe, both into infinite and 
 into finite immensity.” The manner of the Outlines on 
 the Infinite is not dissimilar to that of The Principia, only 
 less elaborate, and somewhat more round and liberal. The 
 style of The Economy, however, displays the full courtli- 
 ness of a master, — free, confident, confiding; self-compla- 
 
66 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 cent, but always aspiring ; at home in his thoughts, though 
 voyaging through untravelled natures ; then most swift in 
 motion onwards when most at rest in some great attainment ; 
 not visibly subject to second thoughts, or to the devil’s 
 palsy of self-approbation ; flying over great sheets of reason 
 with easy stretches of power; contradicting his predecessors 
 point-blank, without the possibility of ofiending their 
 honored manes : in these and other respects the style of 
 The Economy occupies new ground of excellence. The latter 
 portion of the work particularly, “On the Human Soul,” 
 is a sustained expression of the loftiest order, and in this 
 respect won the commendations of Coleridge, who was no 
 bad judge of style. The Animal Kingdom, however, is 
 riper, rounder, and more free than even the last-mentioned 
 work ; more intimately methodical, and at the same time 
 better constructed. The treatises on the organs, them- 
 selves correspondently organic, are like stately songs of 
 science dying into poetry ; it is surprizing how so di- 
 dactic a mind carved out the freedom and beauty of these 
 epic chapters. It is the same with The Worship and Love 
 of God, the ornament in which is rich and flamboyant, 
 but upborne on the colonnades of a living forest of doc- 
 trines. We observe then, upon the whole, this peculiarity, 
 that Swedenborg’s address became more intense and orna- 
 mental from the beginning to the end of these works ; a 
 somewhat rare phenomenon in literature, for the imagina- 
 tion commonly burns out in proportion as what is termed 
 sober reason advances, whereas with this author his ima- 
 gination was kindled at the torch of his reason, and never 
 flamed forth freely until the soberness of his maturity had 
 set it on fire from the wonderful love that couches in all 
 things. 
 
 What is the import of the scientific system which he 
 left? We have seen that it arose from a catholic expe- 
 rience and observation, and carried the particular sciences 
 
IMPORT OF HIS SYSTEM. 
 
 67 
 
 which it traversed, beyond the limits of class-cultivation. 
 We have seen that the philosophic miner brought forth the 
 human frame from the colleges of medicine, and conferred 
 the right to know it upon all w'ho study universal knowledge. 
 We have also seen that he incorporated the formulas of the 
 old philosophy, making them no longer abstractions, but 
 the life or order of these sciences. We may now then state 
 that Swedenborg’s philosophy attains its summit in the 
 marriage of the scholasticism and common sense, with the 
 sciences, of his age ; in the consummation of which mar- 
 riage his especial genius was exerted and exhausted. In 
 him the oldest and the newest spirit, met in one; reverence 
 and innovation were evenly mingled; nothing ancient was 
 superseded, though pressed into the current service of the 
 century. He was one of the links that connect bygone 
 ages with to-day, breathing for us among the lost truths of 
 the past, and perpetuating them in unnoticed forms along 
 the stream of the future. He lived however thoroughly in 
 his own age, and was far before his contemporaries, only 
 because others did not, or could not, use the entire powers 
 of its sphere. We regard him therefore as an honest repre- 
 sentative of the eighteenth century. He in his line, gives 
 us the best estimate of the all which any man could do in 
 Europe at that period. But who can exceed his age, 
 although not one in a generation comes up to it ? It is not 
 for mortals to live, excepting in, and for, the present; the 
 next year’s growth of thought is as unattainable for us 
 to-day, as the crops of the next summer. Still the future 
 may and does exist in prophecies and shadows. These, 
 among other things, are great scientific systems, t’ne chil- 
 dren of single powerful minds, the Platos, Aristotles and 
 Swedenborgs ; yet which are but outlines that will one day 
 have contents that their authors knew not, modifications 
 that their parents could not have borne, supersessions 
 that hurt no one, only because their sensitive partisans 
 
68 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 have given place to other judges. It is humanity alone that 
 realizes what its happiest sons propose and think they carry ; 
 most things require to be done for ages after their authors 
 have done them, that so the doing may be full ; and above 
 all, the race is the covert individual who writes the philoso- 
 phies of the world. Add, that whatever system is safe 
 always follows practice. 
 
 It will be borne in mind that we here speak of his system, 
 particularly with reference to its generative power, and 
 which system, we presume, has been exceeded and sur- 
 passed : with reference, however, to his physical principles, 
 such as the doctrine of respiration above-mentioned, these 
 are sempiternal pieces of nature, and rank not with the 
 results, but among the springs of systems. The world will 
 therefore taste them afresh from age to age, long after dis- 
 carding the beautiful rind which enclosed them in the pages 
 of their first discoverer. 
 
 Swedenborg’s scientific system, with all its detail, may 
 indeed be judged from its ends ; its proposed introduction 
 to the soul, which it did not bring about, and on this head 
 we remark that it is entirely a subjective scheme. It mat- 
 ters little whether we dive into the interiors of the mind, or 
 those of the body, by the study of consciousness, or of ana- 
 tomy, by mental, or bodily introspection : in either case 
 we are equally subjective, we go away from expression and 
 conversation, and kill or paralyze that whose life we wish to 
 learn. This of course can never lead to a knowledge of the 
 entire soul, though just where we cease to cut up, and 
 institute gentle conversation in the subjective sphere, it 
 may give us knowledge of partial souls, of the subordinate 
 animation of particular organs of the body and faculties of 
 the mind. But the human soul is a man, the man is a 
 society, the society is human nature, and it is by con- 
 versing with the largest lives at first, that we are instructed 
 by and bye in the class languages of the lesser, and in the 
 
CONVERSATION WITH NATURE. 
 
 69 
 
 dialects of the least. It is to this new end that the present 
 sciences are tending. 
 
 An era has consequently arrived when the principles of 
 thought itself consist of larger atoms than heretofore, and 
 moreover when thought more patiently grows from deeds, 
 and philosophy from history. This is the era of the public 
 mind and the public sciences. The unity of the world is 
 beginning to be recognized as the basis of teaching ; the 
 universality of phenomena as the explanatory statement 
 of single facts. The sweep of the ocean currents is seen by 
 the child as part of a planetary picture. The fortunes of 
 each trade are found to be regulated by the whole mundane 
 society. Private medicine resolves itself into the question 
 of public healing. And so forth. It is clear that no 
 previous philosophy could anticipate the wants of such a 
 condition ; that no system can apply to it but one which 
 blooms from its own summit. When such a system arrives, 
 it will be as an expressive and decorous skin, both hiding 
 and revealing the subjective wisdom of the past, and 
 through whose transparency the common eye will see deeper 
 into organization than the anatomist or metaphysician by 
 groping in the vitals of his sciences. 
 
 In thus emancipating ourselves from the plan which 
 Swedenborg prescribed, we can only wonder what he would 
 have accomplished had he lived in our day and drank its 
 spirit. How manfully would he have handled the terrible 
 problems of the time ! How would he have compacted the 
 social and political in the narrow breast of the physical 
 thought, and in that compression and condensation of life, 
 have given breath and stroke to the deadest laws ! How 
 would he have exulted in that free humanity which sees 
 that the truths and weal of the millions are the ground 
 from which future genius must spring : that the next unity 
 is not of thought with itself or nature, but of practice and 
 
70 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 thought with happiness ! In the meantime his scientific 
 works are and will be helpful; and we regard it as a mis- 
 fortune that, thi'ough whatever cause, the ripest minds 
 have not the same acquaintance with these books as with 
 the other philosophies ; for Swedenborg belongs to our own 
 age as a transition ; and it will be found that, at least in 
 time, he is the first available schoolmaster of the nations. 
 Well did he conceive the problem of universal education, 
 which lies not merely in teaching all men, but first in teach- 
 ing them a new kind of knowledge, catholic and delightful 
 enough for those who cannot learn class sciences, but only 
 truths like dawn and sunset, as self evident and imme- 
 morial as the ways of nature from of old. 
 
 Let it not, however, be supposed that Swedenborg 
 thought he had completed the method of the sciences, or 
 even inaugurated the new day that his genius foresaw. On 
 the contrary, he looked for this from the hands of his suc- 
 cessors, and his humility covered the whole ground of his 
 mind, although it did not discourage him from the most 
 energetic labors. Fully conscious of his own limits, he 
 called upon the age to supply a stronger intelligence and a 
 more winning explorer. “ It now remains for us,” says 
 he, “to close with nature where she lies hidden in her 
 invisible and purer world, and no longer barely to celebrate 
 her mystic rites, but to invite her in person to our chamber, 
 to lay aside the few draperies that remain, and give all her 
 beauty to our gaze. . . . She now demands of the present 
 century some man of genius — his mind developed and cor- 
 rected by experience, prepared by scientific and other cul- 
 ture, and possessing in an eminent degree the faculty of 
 investigating causes, of reasoning connectedly, and of con- 
 cluding definitely on the principles of series ; — and when 
 such an one comes, to him, I doubt not, she will betroth 
 herself ; and in favor of him will yield to the arrows of 
 
SCHOOLMASTER AND NATURAL THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 71 
 
 love, will own his alliance and partake his bed. Oh ! that 
 it were my happy lot, to fling nuts to the crowd and head 
 the torch-bearers on her marriage day!” 
 
 A word on Swedenborg thus far as a natural theologian. 
 This was a character which he professed, and it is difficult 
 to give too high an estimate of the manner in which he 
 supported it. There is a peculiar sacredness peiwading the 
 treatment of his subjects, depending on the perception that 
 their last wisdom is always God. He seldoms utters the 
 divine name, but points to a truth and sapience in things, 
 which elicit the repeated inward thought, “ this is none 
 other than the house of God, and this is the gate of 
 heaven.” Without having stirred a step, we suddenly find 
 that we are in the sanctuary ; we kneel with the kneeling 
 creation, with the stones, the suns, and the organs, and the 
 invisible love hears its own murmur in our heart of hearts. 
 The litanies and chants of this natural piety are the in- 
 trinsic order of the creatures and the upward leap of their 
 motions from the mineral to the immortal man. Swe- 
 denborg’s natural theology is all facts and things, which, 
 won to speak by his good genius, tell their own tale, and 
 acknowledge, and to the limit of their capacity, describe, 
 the Author of their being. And doubtless everything is a 
 divine act, the bare story of which is its maker’s most 
 affecting praise. 
 
 We have said that Swedenborg did not attain to the 
 human soul, to that sensible imagination thereof that he 
 desired; but as this is a subject of some importance to 
 what follows, we will briefly state his culminating point 
 in the foregoing works. He saw clearly that the soul is 
 finite; that it is part of a purer world; that it is doubly 
 immortal, once by the grace of God, and once by the con- 
 trivances and immunities of nature; that the deeds done in 
 the body prescribe its ultimate form ; that it is different in 
 different brains and men, and a most active essence; that 
 
72 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 it is subtle and all pervading, has an ethereal envelope, and 
 is in the perfect shape of the human body. Putting all 
 which together, we arrive at a scientific theory of the soul 
 very much like that which apparitions would suggest. 
 Indeed there is a close similarity between Swedenborg’s 
 doctrine and that founded upon experience by the Seeress 
 of Prevorst, and moreover we are prepared to shew that 
 our author was a believer in ghostly matters at a compa- 
 ratively early period. So far then his induction doubles in 
 with supernatural experience common to all nations and 
 ages, and which, though thin and vapory, has yet per- 
 formed we know not how important a part in keeping a 
 faith in immortality alive in spite of the sceptics and the 
 philosophers. 
 
 We now pass onwards to another man and author, to 
 Swedenborg the seer and theologian. 
 
PART II. 
 
 Throughout his life, as we have hitherto detailed it, we 
 have seen in Swedenborg a eontinual tendency from the 
 natural to the spiritual, a steady ascension from the sciences 
 towards natural theology, and an acceptance throughout 
 of biblical revelation. We have now to contemplate him 
 after he had attained the goal of his endeavors, and when, 
 on looking back to his previous life, he tells us that he saw 
 its purpose, that “ he had been introduced by the Lord 
 first into the natural sciences, and prepared from 1710 till 
 1/44, when heaven was opened to him : the reason why he, 
 a philosopher, had been chosen for this ofifice, being, that 
 spiritual knowledge, which is revealed at this day, might 
 be reasonably learned, and naturally understood ; because 
 spiritual truths answer to natural ones, which originate, 
 flow from, and serve as a foundation for them.” Although, 
 however, as we have observed, this opening of the spiritual 
 was Swedenborg’s tendency from the first, yet plainly he 
 never anticipated either the manner or the extent of it. It 
 would seem that he expected the kingdom of God to come 
 upon him in the shape of clear principles dednced from all 
 human knowledge ; a scientific religion resting upon nature 
 and revelation, interpreted by analysis and synthesis, from 
 the ground of a pure habit and a holy life. His expecta- 
 tions were fulfilled, not simply, but marvellously. He was 
 
71 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 himself astonished at his condition, and often expressed 
 as much. “ I never thought,” said he, “I should have come 
 into the spiritual state in which I am, but the Lord had 
 prepared me for it in order to reveal the spiritual sense of 
 the Word, which He had promised in the Prophets and 
 the Revelations.” What he thenceforth claimed to have 
 received and to be in possession of, was spiritual sight, 
 spiritual illumination, and spiritual powers of reason. And 
 certainly in turning from his foregone life to that which 
 now occupies us, we seem to be treating of another person, 
 — of one on whom the great change has past, who has 
 tasted the blessings of death, and disburdened his spiritual 
 part, of mundane cares, sciences and philosophies. The 
 spring of his lofty flights in nature sleeps in the dust 
 beneath his feet. The liberal charm of his rhetoric is put 
 off, never to be resumed. His splendid but unfinished 
 organon is never to be used again, but its wheel and essence 
 are transferred for other applications. It is a clear instance 
 of disembodiment — of emancipation from a worldly lifetime ; 
 and we have now to contemplate Swedenborg, still a 
 mortal, as he rose into the other world.* From that eleva- 
 tion he as little recurred to his scientific life, though he 
 had its spirit with him, as a freed soul to the body in the 
 tomb : he only possessed it in a certain high memory, 
 which offered its result to his new pursuits. 
 
 Faithful to our intention at the beginning of this nar- 
 rative, we shall chiefly recount the marvels which follow, in 
 Swedenborg’s own words, leaving to the reader full freedom 
 respecting these unwonted announcements. 
 
 “ I have been called,” says he in a letter to Mr. Hartley, 
 dated 1769, “to a holy office by the Lord himself, who 
 
 * It has been reproached to Swedenborg by the first essayist of 
 the day, that he represents the universe in a “ magnetic sleep,” which 
 is true enough, because nothing else would give the tint of both life 
 and death. 
 
,.D. 1745 .] the lord appears to him. 
 
 75 
 
 most graciously manifested himself in person to me, his 
 servant, in the year 1743; when He opened my sight to 
 the view of the spiritual world, and granted me the privi- 
 lege of conversing with spirits and angels, which I enjoy 
 to this day. . . . The only reason of my later journeys to 
 foreign countries, has been the desire of being useful, by 
 making known the secrets entrusted to me.” 
 
 Another aecount of the same event has been related by 
 M. Robsahm, who enquired of Swedenborg where and how 
 his revelations began. “ I was in London,” said Sweden- 
 borg, “ and dined late at my usual quarters, where I had 
 engaged a room, in whieh at pleasure to prosecute my 
 studies in natural philosophy. I was hungry, and ate with 
 great appetite. Towards the end of the meal I remarked 
 that a kind of mist spread before my eyes, and I saw the 
 floor of my room covered with hideous reptiles, such as 
 serpents, toads and the like. I was astonished, having 
 all my wits about me, and being perfectly conscious. The 
 darkness attained its height and then passed away. I now 
 saw a man sitting in a corner of the chamber. As I had 
 thought myself entirely alone, I was greatly frightened 
 when he said to me, ‘ Eat not so much!’ My sight again 
 became dim, but when I recovered it I found myself alone 
 in my room. The unexpected alarm hastened my return 
 home. I did not suffer my landlord to perceive that any- 
 thing had happened ; but thought it over attentively, and 
 was not able to attribute it to chance, or any physical 
 cause. I went home, but the following night the same 
 man appeared to me again. I was this time not at all 
 alarmed. The man said : ‘ I am God, the Lord, the 
 Creator and Redeemer of the world. I have chosen thee 
 to unfold to men the spiritual sense of the Holy Scripture. 
 I will myself dictate to thee what thou shalt write.’ The 
 same night the world of spirits, hell and heaven, were 
 convincingly opened to me, where I found many persons 
 
 E 2 
 
76 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 of my acquaintance of all conditions. From that day forth 
 I gave up all worldly learning, and labored only in spi- 
 ritual things, according to what the Lord commanded me 
 to write. Thereafter the Lord daily opened the eyes of my 
 spirit, to see in perfect wakefulness what was going on in 
 the other world, and to converse, broad awake, with angels 
 and spirits.” 
 
 Dr. Beyer gives a third narrative of the transaction. 
 “The report,” says he, “of the Lord’s personally appear- 
 ing before the Assessor, who saw Him sitting in purple 
 and in majestic splendor near his bed, whilst He gave him 
 commission what to do, I have heard from his own mouth, 
 whilst dining with him at the house of Dr. Rosen, where 
 I saw, for the first time, the venerable old man. I re- 
 member to have asked him how long this appearance con- 
 tinued. He replied, that it lasted about a quarter of an 
 hour. I also asked him whether the vivid splendor did 
 not pain his eyes? which he denied. ... In respect to the 
 extraordinary case of the Lord appearing to him, and 
 opening, in a wonderful manner, the internal and spiritual 
 sight of His servant, so as to enable him to see into the 
 other world, I must observe that this opening did not 
 occur at once, but by degrees.” 
 
 In his Diary the same event appears to be narrated ; the 
 paragraph is as follows: — 
 
 “ A vision in the day time : of those who are devoted to 
 conviviality in eating, and indulge their appetites. 
 
 “397- In the middle of the day at dinner an angel spoke 
 to me, and told me not to eat too much at table. Whilst 
 he was with me, there plainly appeared to me a kind of 
 vapor steaming from the pores of the body. It was a most 
 visible watery vapor, and fell downwards to the ground 
 upon the carpet, where it collected, and turned into divers 
 vermin, which were gathered together under the table, and 
 in a moment went off with a pop or noise. A fiery light 
 
..D. 1745.] 
 
 EAT NOT SO MUCH. 
 
 appeared within them, and a sound was heard, pronouncing, 
 that all the vermin that could possibly be generated by 
 unseemly appetite, were thus cast out of my body, and 
 burnt up, and that I was now cleansed from them. Hence 
 we may know what luxury and the like have for their bosom 
 contents. 1745. April.” Smile not, reader, at this plain 
 representation of what lies under thy sumptuous table : 
 perhaps thou dost not yet know, what shall be taught thee, 
 that solid temperance is both more difficult, and more fruit- 
 ful, than fluid ; and that revelations and overloaded sto- 
 machs are contrarious. We shall recur to this topic in 
 Part III. of our Work. 
 
 It would appear from a collation of the various accounts 
 of the event referred to, that it took place in 1745, in the 
 middle of the month of April. Nevertheless there is 
 ground for concluding, that although the Lord appeared 
 to Swedenborg at that time, yet his immediate preparation, 
 and the opening of his spiritual sight, were operations ex- 
 tended over several years : a circumstance rendered the 
 more likely, because his subsequent state was plainly 
 gradual and progressive, which warrants the opinion that 
 it was at first brought on by degrees. 
 
 We must here recur to Swedenborg’s doctrine of respi- 
 ration, at which the reader may be surprized, but we shall 
 have him with us in the sequel. The truth is, that with- 
 out respiration a man can neither be born, nor die; it is 
 breathing that opens the gates of this world’s life, and 
 cessation of the breath that marks our exit through the 
 opposite portal. Now the terms of breathing being birth 
 and death, the whole intermediate career, — all the actions 
 that oscillate between the two, — are nothing in one sense 
 but the contents or details of breathing. As we breathe, 
 so we are. Inward thoughts have inward breaths, and purer 
 spiritual thoughts have spiritual breaths hardly mixed with 
 material. Death is breathlessness. Fully to breathe the 
 
7S 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 external atmosphere, is equivalent cceteris paribus, to living 
 in plenary enjoyment of the senses and the muscular powers. 
 On the other hand, the condition of trance or death-life, is 
 the persistence of the inner breath of thought, or the soul’s 
 sensation, while the breath of the body is annulled. It 
 is only those in whom this can have place, that may still 
 live in this world, and yet be consciously associated with 
 the persons and events in the other. Hybernation and 
 other phenomena come in support of these remarks. Thus 
 we have common experience on our side, in asserting that 
 the capaeities of the inward life, whether tliought, medi- 
 tation, contemplation, or trance, depend upon those of 
 the respiration; and the reader is now prepared for what 
 Swedenborg says of himself, regarding his endowments 
 in this respect. 
 
 He tells us in his Diary (n. 3464) that there are many 
 species of respirations, producing for their subjects divers 
 introductions to the spiritual and angelic persons with 
 whom the lungs conspire; that according as the breath 
 continues or ceases, the man dies back for the time into 
 the inward life, meets its inhabitants, and explores their 
 scenes. After describing various kinds of respirations, 
 sensible and insensible, he goes on to say, that he was at 
 first habituated to insensible breathing in his infancy, when 
 he said his morning and evening prayers, and occasionally 
 afterwards, when exploring the concordance between the 
 heart and lungs, and particularly w'hen writing his thought- 
 ful works; and this he observed for several years. On 
 these occasions he always remarked, that his respiration 
 was tacit, and hardly sensible ; a circumstance respecting 
 which he not only thought but wrote : and thus for a 
 number of years, beginning with childhood, he was intro- 
 duced into these peculiar respirations, mainly by intense 
 speculations, in which breathing stops, for otherwise in- 
 tense intellectual speculation is impossible. He further 
 
l.d. 1745 .] 
 
 HIS POWERS OF BREATHING. 
 
 79 
 
 adds that when heaven was opened to him, and he spoke 
 with spirits, the above was so thoroughly the case, that 
 sometimes for nearly an hour together he hardly breathed 
 at all, only drawing in enough breath to serve as a supply 
 for his thoughts: in which way he was introduced by the 
 Lord into inward breathing. The same phenomena also 
 occurred when he was going to sleep, and he thinks that 
 his preparation went on during repose. So multiple was 
 it, by his own account, so obedient had his breathing be- 
 come, and so correspondent with all spheres, that he ob- 
 tained thereby the range of the higher world, and was 
 enabled to be at home among spirits and angels. 
 
 Among other passages in his Diary to the same effect, 
 we also cite the following (n. 3317, 3320) on this inter- 
 esting subject. “ My respiration,” says he, “has been so 
 formed by the Lord, as to enable me to. breathe inwardly 
 for a long period of time, without the aid of the external 
 air, my respiration being directed within, and my outward 
 senses, as well as actions, still continuing in their vigor, 
 which is only possible with persons who have been so 
 formed by the Lord. . . I have also been instructed, that 
 my breathing was so directed, without my being aware of 
 it, in order to enable me to be with spirits, and to speak 
 with them.” And again he says, “ It has been shewn me 
 that each of the bodily senses has its peculiar respiration, 
 yea, its peculiar place of respiration. . . Moreover it was 
 granted me to gather the same thing from much experience 
 before I spoke with spirits, and to see that breathing cor- 
 responds with thought ; as for instance during my infancy, 
 when I tried purposely to hold my breath, also at morning 
 and evening prayers, and when I attempted to make the 
 rhythm of the breath correspond with the heart’s pulsation, 
 in which case the understanding began almost to be ob- 
 literated. And furthermore afterwards, when I was writing 
 
LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 and using my imagination, at which time I could observe 
 that I held my breath, which became in a manner tacit.” 
 
 Some analogous power over the breath — a power to live 
 and think without respiring, for it is the bodily respiration 
 that draws down the mind at the same time that it draws 
 up the air, and thus causes mankind to be compound, or 
 spiritual and material beings— some analogous power to the 
 above, we say, has lain at the basis of the gifts of many 
 other seers besides Swedenborg. It is quite apparent that 
 the Hindoo Yogi were capable of a sjmilar state, and in 
 our own day the phenomena of hypnotism* have taught us 
 much in a scientific manner of these ancient conditions and 
 sempiternal laws. Take away or suspend that which draws 
 you to this world, and the spirit, by its own lightness, 
 floats upwards into the other. There is however a dif- 
 ference between Swedenborg’s state, as he reports it, and 
 the modern instances, inasmuch as the latter are artificial, 
 and induced by external effort, whereas Swedenborg’s was 
 natural also and we may say congenital, was the combined 
 regime of his aspirations and respirations, did not engender 
 sleep, but was accompanied by full waking and open eyes, 
 and was not courted in the first instance for the trances or 
 visions that it broiight. Other cases moreover are occa- 
 sional, whereas Swedenborg’s appears to have been unin- 
 terrupted, or nearly so, for twenty-seven years. But of 
 this we shall have to speak further presently. 
 
 We have now therefore accounted in some measure for 
 one part of Swedenborg’s preparation, and what we have 
 said comports with experience, which shews that those 
 amphibious conditions with which we are more familiar, 
 hinge upon certain peculiarities of bodily structure or 
 endowment ; and we have thereby prepared the reader to 
 
 * See Braid’s Neurypnology, or the Rationale of Nervous Sleep, 
 London, 1843. 
 
A.D. 1745 .] 
 
 HIS POWERS OF BREATHING. 
 
 81 
 
 admit, that if living below the air or under water, requires 
 a peculiar habit or organism, so also does living above the 
 air — above the natural animus {ave/ios) of the race, require 
 answerable but peculiar endowments. The diver and the 
 seer are inverse correspondences. Swedenborg himself cor- 
 roborates this, where in enumerating the conditions requisite 
 to qualify for the ecstatic life, he particularizes that a pecu- 
 liar state is indispensable, mainly regarding the connexion 
 of the brain with the heart, between which the lungs are 
 the uniting medium ; a state which may either be natural, 
 or the result of artificial means applied to the existing 
 organization. 
 
 To shew how intelligent Swedenborg was of these deep 
 things, we have only to examine his anatomical works and 
 manuscripts, which present a regular progress of ideas on 
 the subject of respiration. “ If we carefully attend to pro- 
 found thoughts,” says he, “ we shall find that ivhen we 
 draw brealh, a host of ideas rush from beneath as through 
 an opened door into the sphere of thought; whereas when 
 we hold the breath* and slowly let it out, we deeply keep 
 the while in the tenor of our thought, and communicate as 
 it were with the higher faculty of the soul; as I have 
 observed in my own person times out of number. Retaining 
 or holding back the breath is equivalent to having inter- 
 course with the soul: attracting or drawing it amounts to 
 intercourse with the body.” 
 
 This indeed is a fact so common that we never think 
 about it: so near to natural life, that its axioms are almost 
 too substantial for knowledge. Not to go so profound as 
 to the intellectual sphere, we may remark that all fineness 
 of bodily work — all that in art which comes out of the 
 
 • We again request the reader to watch his own breath, and he will 
 in due time spontaneously learn many interesting truths about res- 
 piration. 
 
 E 3 
 
82 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 infinite delicacy of manhood as contrasted with animality — 
 requires a corresponding breathlessness and expiring. To 
 listen attentively to the finest and least obtrusive sounds, 
 as with the stethoscope to the murmurs in the breast, or 
 with mouth and ear to distant music, needs a hush that 
 breathing disturbs; the common ear has to die, and be 
 born again, to exercise these delicate attentions. To take 
 an aim at a rapid-flying or minute object, requires in like 
 manner a breathless time and a steady act : the very pulse 
 must receive from the stopped lungs a pressure of calm. 
 To adjust the exquisite machinery of watches, or other in- 
 struments, compels in the manipulator a motionless hover of 
 his own central springs. Even to see and observe with an 
 eye like the mind itself, necessitates a radiant pause. 
 Again, for the negative proof, we see that the first actions 
 and attempts of children are unsuccessful, being too quick, 
 and full moreover of confusing breaths: the life has not 
 fixed aerial space to play the game, but the scene itself 
 flaps and flutters with alien wishes and thoughts. In short, 
 the whole reverence of remark and deed depends upon the 
 above conditions, and we lay it down as a general truth, 
 that every man requires to educate his breath for his busi- 
 ness. Bodily strength, mental strength, even wisdom, all 
 lean upon our respirations; and Swedenborg's case is but a 
 striking instance raising to a very visible size a fact which 
 like the air is felt and wanted, but for the most part not 
 perceived. 
 
 We have dwelt upon the physical part of inspiration and 
 aspiration, because with the subject of this memoir, body 
 was always connected with, and fundamental to, spirit; 
 and therefore it is biographically true to him, to support his 
 seership by its physical counterpart. Moreover it is im- 
 portant for all men to know how much lies in calm, and to 
 counsel them (whether by biography, or science, it matters 
 
A.D. 1745 .] 
 
 SPIRITUAL EXPECTATIONS. 
 
 83 
 
 not,) to look to the balance of their life-breath, and to let 
 it sometimes incline as it ought, towards the immortal and 
 expiring side. 
 
 But if Swedenborg was expressly constructed and pre- 
 pared for spirit-seeing, the end developed itself in a measure 
 side by side with the means, which is also a law of things. 
 We have seen that in his boyhood his parents used to 
 declare that angels spoke through his mouth, which again 
 calls to mind the entranced breaths of prayer that he com- 
 memorates at this period. Much later on, but before his 
 theological mission commenced, we find him intellectually 
 aware that heaven might be entered by the sons of earth, 
 and, as he then thought, by the analytic method of science, 
 which having arrived on some of the peaks of truth, would 
 introduce us to those who are at home in that region, and 
 enable us to revert with a kind of spiritual sight to the 
 world from which we had ascended. He says on this head, 
 that “knowledge unless derived from first principles is but 
 a beggarlj* and palliative science, sensual in its nature, not 
 derived from the world of causes, but animal, and without 
 reason: that to explore causes, we must ascend into infi- 
 nity, and then and thence we may descend to effects, when 
 we have first ascended from effects by the analytic way. 
 Furthermore, that by this means we may become rational 
 beings, men, angels, and may he among the latter, when 
 we shall have explored truths, and when we are in them : 
 that this is the way to heaven, to the primeval state of man, 
 to perfection.” This is doubtless a bold interpretation of 
 induction and deduction, but no one knew better than 
 Swedenborg in his day, whither real methods would con- 
 duct us. It only concerns us however now to show, that 
 he was conscious of a possible entrance for the under- 
 standing into the atmospheres of the higher world, and that 
 he conceived it to lie in true ladders of doctrine framed bv 
 good men out of true sciences. 
 
84 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 But we are moreover enabled to add that his senses also 
 were stricken by spiritual objects before his express mission 
 commenced. For example, in his posthumous Adversaria 
 on Genesis and Exodus, when speaking of the spiritual 
 meaning of flames of fire, he observes that “flames signify 
 confirmation or attestation of truth; and that this has been 
 shewn to him from above.” He proceeds to say that “ he 
 had seen flames of different sizes, and of different color and 
 splendor, and this, so often, that for several months whilst 
 writing a certain work,* scarcely a day passed in which 
 there did not appear before him flames as vivid as those of 
 a common fire, which,” he adds, “ was a sign of approba- 
 tion; and this was before the time when spirits began to 
 speak with him viva voce.” 
 
 So again he says in his diary,f that “ for many years 
 before his mind was opened, and he was enabled to speak 
 with spirits, there were not only dreams informing him 
 respecting the subjects that were written; J but also changes 
 of state when he was writing, and a peculiar extraordinary 
 light in the writings: afterwards many visions when his 
 eyes were shut; light miraculously given; spirits influencing 
 him as sensibly as if they appealed to the bodily senses; 
 temptations also from evil spirits almost overwhelming him 
 with horror; fiery lights; words spoken in early morning; 
 and many similar events.” 
 
 To some of these particulars we have his current testi- 
 mony at the very time when they were happening. Of 
 this, the Fourth Part of the Animal Kingdom (a MS. writ- 
 ten, for the most part, as it would appear, during 1744) 
 affords the proofs. At p. 82 of this work he has the fol- 
 lowing Observandum. “ According to admonition heard, 
 
 * Supposed by Dr. Tafel to be the Worship and Love of God, but 
 it might be the Fourth Part of the Animal Kingdom. 
 
 t N. 2951. 
 
 t He often speaks thus impersonally. 
 
i.D. 1745.] 
 
 THE DAWN OF SEERSHIP. 
 
 85 
 
 I must refer to my philosophical Principia . . . and it has 
 been told me that hy that means I shall he enabled to 
 direct my flight whithersoever I will.” Twice also in the 
 same work he notifies that he is commanded to write what 
 he is penning.* At p. 194 he mentions that he saw a 
 representation of a certain golden key that he was to carry, 
 to open the door to spiritual things. At p. 202 he remarks 
 at the end of a paragraph, that “ on account of what is 
 there written there happened to him wonderful things on 
 the night between the first and second of July;” and he 
 adds ill the margin, that the matter set down was “ foretold 
 to him in a wonderful manner on that occasion. ”f Still 
 further on (p. 215) he again refers to his extraordinary 
 dream of the above date. 
 
 This brings us to the subject of his sleep, which will 
 contribute its share to his psychological history. So ob- 
 servant was Swedenborg of what went on within him- 
 self, that he l'^^^ i MS. record of several of his dreams 
 from 1736 to 1740, which, however, unfortunately is not 
 accessible, having been taken out of the MS. volume which 
 contained it, to be kept by the Swedenborg family. 
 But we have his testimony in several parts of his MSS., 
 that for years before 1745 his dreams were ordered and 
 instructive, and constituted one department of his prepara- 
 tion. The further notice, however, of this head, we leave 
 to a future time ; we can better follow it up when the whole 
 of the author’s posthumous works are before the public. 
 
 Lastly, there is one doctrine that Swedenborg held, 
 and which constitutes an immediate link between intellect 
 and reality, possession with which would contribute to pre- 
 
 * “Jussus sum. Tta videar jussus.” MS., p. 202, 223. 
 
 t “ Hsec quae scrips! praenuntiata mihi sunt mirabiliter, vide finem 
 Juli 1 et 2. Scrips! Jul. 2.” MS., p. 174 in margin. We give 
 these references to the MS., because by some oversight the words 
 appear to have been omitted from Dr. Tafel’s edition. 
 
86 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 dispose to spiritual experience ; we mean the doctrine of 
 Universal Correspondency. To this great intellectual sub- 
 stance we shall have to recur in the sequel, but for the 
 present it suffices to observe, that it imports that bodies 
 are the generation and expression of souls ; that the frame 
 of the natural world works, moves and rests obediently to 
 the living spiritual world, as a man’s face to the mind or 
 spirit within. Now this plainly makes all things into signs 
 as well as powers ; the events of nature and the world be- 
 come divine, angelic, or demoniac messages, and the smallest 
 things, as well as the greatest, are omens, instructions, 
 warnings, or hopes. Accordingly it was on iutellectual 
 reasons of solid science, that Swedenborg interpreted the 
 events about him as of spiritual significance, and we are 
 not surprized to find that his always recording pen noted 
 down minute occurrences as pregnant to himself. We 
 find one remarkable instance of this in the last MS. we 
 have cited, where the author takes account of the presence 
 and absence and the movements of a fly in his apartment.* 
 This of course is either insanity or a high pitch of wisdom, 
 in which, however, it only partakes of that double chance 
 that permeates the universe. The philosophers and the 
 mad doctors regard all spiritual experience of a real kind as 
 delusion ; but our theory is different, and we see in it both 
 good and bad, sound and insane, and judge each case on 
 its own merits, not cramping the verdict by ill-advised 
 general rules. In this we have Scripture, tradition, the 
 present usages of society, and the balance of the twelve 
 judges at Westminster, on our side, to say nothing of 
 practical charity towards our fellow citizens. 
 
 Among many more important circumstances, Sweden- 
 borg’s clear-seeing stands apart from most others by com- 
 
 * Op. at., p. 164. “ SeJ haec obscura sunt, forte nec vera : 
 
 vidi muscam, ilia abiit, recessi. Iteratum de veritatibus, secundum 
 monitiones, ut autumo ilia rediit me invito, et ego viam tuli.” 
 
A.D. 17-15.] TWO THINGS AT ONCE. 87 
 
 prising the two worlds at once. In him the inward thought 
 had learned to breathe, and the inward sight to exert itself, 
 by contemplative respirations and abstractions, but this 
 being attained, and the spiritual power developed and set 
 free, it appears that his bodily activity was no hindrance to 
 his spiritual. Perhaps the former could go on habitually 
 while the latter was the express field of his consciousness. 
 Thus, by analogy, we find that we can perform several acts 
 at once, provided some have become habitual, aud they 
 are not all in the same sphere. For instance, we walk to 
 our journey’s end by sheer habit, and converse and observe 
 different objects on the way, without confusing the opera- 
 tions of our limbs. But a child just learning to walk, must 
 bend will, eyes, mind and care upon its legs, or it will fall 
 to the ground : but by and bye its mind becomes emanci- 
 pated from its members, and it can run, and prattle of dif- 
 ferent things, at the same time. So we can, when the eye 
 is practised, see the whole of a landscape by habit, and 
 yet see some special object therein by quite a different ob- 
 servation. And in the same manner, raising these common 
 examples to higher powers, there is no reason why two 
 worlds and dramas should not appear to the same duplex 
 individual, the natural side being seen by indefeasible 
 habit, the spiritual by direct present attention; or vice 
 versa. There is no reason why active and passive sight 
 should not coexist to this extent. 
 
 But we owe an apology to the reader for so long detaining 
 him on the threshold, a course which we should not have 
 taken but that the current of the age has set in strongly 
 towards spiritual seerships, as witness the facts produced 
 every day by mesmerism, and now placed beyond a doubt. 
 The sequel of our remarks will shew that we had reason in 
 these preliminaries. 
 
 Respecting the reasons for Swedenborg’s “call,” we give 
 them in his own words. “ I was once asked,” says he. 
 
88 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 “howl, a philosopher, became a theologian. My reply 
 was : In the same way that fishermen became the disciples 
 and apostles of the Lord. And I added, that /, too, from 
 early youth had been a spiritual fisherman. On this, my 
 enquirer asked what I meant by a spiritual fisherman. To 
 which I answered, that a fisherman, in the spiritual sense 
 of the Word, signifies one who rationally investigates and 
 teaches natural truths, and afterwards spiritual truths. . . . 
 My interrogator then said: Now I can understand why the 
 Lord chose fishermen for disciples ; and therefore I do not 
 wonder that he has also chosen you ; since, as you observed, 
 you were from early youth a fisherman in a spiritual 
 sense, or an investigator of natural truths ; and the reason 
 that you are now an investigator of spiritual truths, is, 
 because the latter are founded upon the former. ... At 
 last he said: Since you have become a divine, what is your 
 system of divinity? These are its two principles, said I, 
 that God is one, and that there is a conjunction 
 OF CHARITY AND FAITH. He replied. Who denies these 
 principles? I rejoined. The divinity of the present day, 
 when inwardly examined.” 
 
 After having been “ called to a holy ofl[ice by the Lord 
 Himself,” Swedenborg at once girded himself to the work 
 of his new commission. Negatively he had already one 
 important qualification for it, he had read no dogmatic or 
 systematic theology, and had none of its “ unfounded 
 opinions and inventions” in his mind to be extirpated. 
 He now, therefore, learnt the Hebrew language, and read 
 over the Word of God many times, studying its spiritual 
 correspondences, and was thereby enabled to receive in- 
 struction from the Lord, who is the Word. At once also 
 he began to commit his studies to paper, thinking out the 
 extent of his immense theme in the act of writing. Of the 
 continued character of these studies, we have before us a 
 stupendous record in the manuscripts which he left on the 
 
A. D. 1745 - 47 .] THE SPIRITUAL FISHERMAN. 89 
 
 books of the Old Testament, and which shew an unwearied 
 power, and a gradually-brightening intelligence on the scope 
 and spirit of the Bible. It was by slow degrees that he 
 rose from his previous conceptions to the new development 
 that we find in his next publication : his earlier manuscripts 
 being in some measure a continuation of the psychological 
 and intellectual system that appears in the Worship and 
 Love of God. His spiritual experiences also in the first 
 instance partook somewhat of that thinness which we have 
 noted as peculiar in the last-mentioned work ; he still re- 
 garded spirits as minds and intelligences appearing under 
 human forms; he heard their spiritual voices, and saw them 
 as it were in ethereal outline, not being yet opened to regard 
 them as our only acquaintances, — men and women. How- 
 ever his Adversaria, from which we gather these particu- 
 lars, are in truth a marvellous series of cogitations, and 
 setting his own works aside, we know not with what com- 
 mentaries they are comparable for unfolding the spiritual 
 aspect of the Holy Scriptures, and the subjective philo- 
 sophy of the human mind. 
 
 His personal history at this date is scanty, and almost 
 conjectural. He resided in London (probably with Brock- 
 mer, in Fetter Lane) until the beginning of July, 1745, 
 when he took ship to Sweden, arriving thither after a 
 passage of more than a month, on the seventh of August. 
 During the voyage his spiritual intercourse, was suspended ; 
 perhaps at this period, the sea was not so favorable for it 
 as the land. He remained in Sweden in 1746, and in the 
 earlier part of 1747 also. 
 
 He had now entered upon a vocation which no longer 
 permitted him to discharge the functions of his office as 
 Assessor of the Board of Mines, and in 1747 he asked 
 and obtained permission of King Frederick to retire from 
 it. His petition to his Majesty contained also two other 
 requests, namely, that he might enjoy during life, as a re- 
 
90 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 tiring pension, one half of the salary attached to the Asses- 
 sorship ; and that his retirement from the office might not 
 be accompanied by any addition to his rank or title. He 
 gives his motives in the transaction in his own modest way. 
 “ My sole view in this resignation,” says he, “ was, that I 
 might be more at liberty to devote myself to that new func- 
 tion to which the Lord had called me. On resigning my 
 office, a higher degree of rank was offered me, but this I 
 declined, lest it should be the occasion of inspiring me with 
 pride.” The king granted his desires, but in consideration 
 of his services of 31 years, continued to him the whole 
 salary of his late office : a proof of the esteem in which he 
 was held in Sweden. 
 
 We presume that he made this last voyage to Sweden for 
 the purpose of obtaining his dismissal from the Assessor- 
 ship, which when he had procured, he again repaired to 
 London in 1747, and wrote out the first volume of the 
 Arcana Celaistia for the press, to which John Lewis was 
 “ eye witness.” This was published about the middle of 
 1749. At the beginning of 1750 he was out of England, 
 probably in Sweden, for he sent the MS. of the second 
 volume of Arcana from abroad to London to be printed. 
 He was certainly in his own country in 1751, when we 
 meet him at the funeral of his old coadjutor, Polheim, an 
 occasion on which he saw hath sides of his friend’s grave. 
 We quote from his Diary (commenced about 1747) the 
 record of the burial. 
 
 “Polheim,” says he, “died on Monday, and spoke with 
 me on Thursday. I was invited to the funeral. He saw 
 the hearse, the attendants, and the whole procession. He 
 also saw them let down the coffin into the grave, and con- 
 versed with me while it was going on, asking me why they 
 buried him when he was alive? And when the priest pro- 
 nounced that he would rise again at the day of judgment, 
 he asked why this was, when he had risen already? He 
 
A.D. 1747-56.] 
 
 TRAVELS AND LABORS. 
 
 91 
 
 wondered that such a belief should obtain, considering that 
 he was even now alive ; he also wondered at the belief in 
 the resurrection of the body, for he said that he felt he 
 was in the body : with other remarks.” 
 
 From 1749 to 1756 appeared his great work, the Arcana 
 Ccelestia,* in eight volumes 4to., containing, in 10,837 
 paragraphs, an exposition of the spiritual sense of the 
 books of Genesis and Exodus. This work was published 
 in London, volume by volume, the second being issued in 
 numbers, with an English version, said to be executed by 
 one Marchant. Swedenborg’s publisher, John Lewis before 
 mentioned, has left some notice of him at this time. He 
 says that, though he is “ positively forbid to discover the 
 author’s name,” yet he hopes to be excused for mentioning 
 “ his benign and generous qualities.” He “ avers that this 
 gentleman, with indefatigable pains and labor, spent one 
 whole year in studying and writing the first volume of the 
 Arcadia, was at the expense of £200 to print it, and ad- 
 vanced £200 more for the printing of the second ; and 
 when he had done this, he gave express orders that all the 
 money that should arise in the sale, should be given towards 
 the charge of the Propagation of the Gospel. He is so far 
 from desiring to make a gain of his labors, that he will not 
 receive one farthing back of the £.‘400 he hath expended ; 
 and for that reason his w'orks will come exceedingly cheap 
 to the public.” 
 
 Let us now turn to the work itself, and waste as little 
 force as possible upon admiration of it in a literary sense. 
 Tlie author indeed professed to have derived the whole of 
 it from direct rational illumination by the Lord : no spirit 
 and no angel had infused its supernatural knowledge, but 
 
 * Arcana Ccelestia. The Heavenly Arcana which are contained 
 in the Holy Scriptures, or Word of the Lord, Unfolded, beginning 
 with the Book of Genesis. Together with Wonderful Things seen 
 in the World of Spirits and in the Heaven of Angels. 
 
92 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 it proceeded directly from the Almighty himself. As, how- 
 ever, it was an intellectual light by which the Most High 
 communicated himself to Swedenborg’s understanding, and 
 through that to his spiritually-opened senses, so it comes 
 to be judged and apprehended by the human understanding, 
 and is freely placed before the rational powers. No man, 
 according to Swedenborg, is bound to receive it on his ipse 
 dixit, but he is to examine it, and decide according to in- 
 trinsic evidence. 
 
 The work runs in two parallel streams ; there is on the 
 one hand a series of scriptural interpretations unlocking 
 the letter of the Word into truths pertaining to the Lord 
 and the inner man ; there is on the other a narrative inter- 
 jected between the chapters of the former, and embracing 
 a description of the wonders of the other life. We must 
 give to these two departments a separate consideration. 
 
 For the first, the position of the Bible is defined as the 
 Word of the Lord, and the nature of biblical evidences is 
 thereby determined. If it be the book and message of the 
 Infinite, its proper attestations are its intrinsic divinity ; 
 its wisdom and its love ; its adaptation to man as a religious 
 being in all time and place, and in all states of existence : 
 in a word, it must contain details, infinite in every way, 
 and connecting every possible state of the soul with the 
 Fountain of blessings. This profound creed respecting the 
 Word, is the postulate of Swedenborg’s Arcana, to be 
 proved in the sequel by the shewing of the work itself. 
 
 The method whereby the Word is unfolded is called in 
 general the science of correspondences. If there be unity 
 in the creation, then is the whole one coherent plan, be- 
 ginning from God, and ending in God. If there be order, 
 then is there a hierarchy of natures, whereof the highest 
 are first produced, and nearest to their source ; the second 
 creatures standing next to the first, and the third to the 
 second : each being placed between those which are next 
 
l.d. 1749 - 56 .] 
 
 ARCAN.4 CCELESTIA. 
 
 93 
 
 of kin to it above and below. If there be life and move- 
 ment, then the action must pass in the before-mentioned 
 order, and each new mean, as it is produced, will engender 
 the means of representing and carrying Itself out in another 
 and a further sphere. These are our needful thoughts of 
 every eonsistent work, and the perfection of the work is in 
 proportion to the strictness with which the above conditions 
 are realized. Let the reader apply the case to anything 
 which he himself does, and he will discover that the unity 
 of his result eontains and depends upon these particulars. 
 
 But nature is the work of God, and the Word is the 
 speech of God, and the speech is in like manner a work. 
 The Word therefore involves the above substantial laws. 
 In its innermost essence it is divine ; in its next intentions 
 it regards the ends that are to follow from it, in times 
 beyond the present, and in realms beyond time itself ; 
 speaking to the ultimate races of man, and to the highest 
 heavens : in its next meanings it speaks to a future less 
 remote, and to a lower altitude of heaven, and so forth ; 
 until at length it addresses each man and spirit in his own 
 language, and in his own age. Like the world itself it 
 stands for ever, but the race according to its various state, 
 draws from its inexhaustible bosom new mines of treasure, 
 from its surface new circumstances of life, from its atmos- 
 phere new sources of power. 
 
 What therefore is the science of correspondences? It 
 is the intellectual teaching of the rehations between all 
 different spheres. The difficulty of illustrating it lies in 
 the fact that the works of God differ from those of God’s 
 image, man, in one important particular. The human 
 workman in this world is only conscious of operating on 
 one platform at once ; if he makes a machine, it is all in 
 nature ; if he writes a hook, it carries, to his mind, but 
 one meaning. The divine workman, however, operates at 
 once in all altitudes and worlds : his fiat, and its produc- 
 
94 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 tions, pervade the depth and breadth of his creation: his 
 creative wisdom passes by unknown paths through every 
 sphere, and the same ray of divine light deposits in one 
 an angelic affection, in the next a human love, in the next 
 au animal faculty, and only terminates by creating some 
 animal, vegetable, or mineral reality or modification, which 
 breathing straightway with the divine effort, tends upwards 
 again through the same scries, subsisting from all, sup- 
 porting all, and running back through all. What makes 
 the difference of these productions ? Not the creative ray, 
 but the place, time, state, and circumstances upon which 
 it works ; for it is no other than one wisdom in a various 
 exercise. The correspondence between the forms that it 
 leaves in its passage, is simply this, that they are all one 
 in soul, but each suited to a different use ; and hence as a 
 rule, correspondence is a divine equation, whereb}' one 
 thing is to one sphere precisely as another thing is to 
 another sphere. Whenever this is the case, the two things 
 are fundamentally united ; they mutually do each other’s 
 work in their own places, and are each others, no matter 
 how unlike they appear in form ; for the form is but the 
 face or body that each shews to its peculiar sphere. Now 
 if we had experience of this compound operation in our 
 own works, we should easily admit it of the works and 
 Word of God : as it is, however, we obtain a glimpse of 
 it in another way, by symbols in language, which make 
 the objects of nature into bodies of thought, thereby sug- 
 gesting that all things are the naturalization of divine 
 thoughts ; by the human face, which expresses the soul, 
 and thus presents us with two corresponding things in two 
 different spheres : also by gestures and particular acts, 
 which, we know not why, are felt to be images of the 
 persons who produce them, and are interpreted of them by 
 this signification. Not to mention other illustrations. 
 
 The Word of God then, on Swedenborg’s shewing, con- 
 
A. D. 1749-56.] SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE. 95 
 
 tains various bodies of divine truth adequate to divers orders 
 of angels and men ; to the celestial man, in whom good- 
 ness is paramount, it is celestial, and teaches the truths of 
 the innermost heaven : to the spiritual man, in whom 
 truth is supreme, it is spiritual, and teaches the truths of 
 the second heaven : to the lower heavens, and to the na- 
 tural world, it is natural, and teaches truths by symbols 
 in the one case, and by a mixture of history and symbol 
 in the other. It has therefore three general senses, which 
 correspond to each other, but is throughout divine in its 
 origin and end. The Arcana Coelestia is chiefly devoted to 
 an exposition of the spiritual sense of one portion of it. 
 
 This brings us to the second department of the work, 
 or the spiritual experience, which comprises lengthy ac- 
 counts of the other world. And here we may remark that 
 some persons have greatly regretted that the author should 
 have introduced these narratives into his interpretation. 
 Among the rest, Swedenborg’s friend. Count Hopken “once 
 represented to the venerable man, that he thought it would 
 be better not to mix his beautiful writings with so many 
 memorable relations, or things heard and seen in the spi- 
 ritual world, ... of which ignorance makes a jest and 
 derision.” But Swedenborg answered, that “ this did not 
 depend upon him ; that he was too old to sport with spi- 
 ritual things, and too much concerned for his eternal 
 happiness to give in to such foolish notions,” with more 
 to the same purport. And still notwithstanding the Count 
 says, that “ he could have wished that Swedenborg had 
 left them out, since they may prevent infidelity from ap- 
 proaching his doctrines.” The truth however is that they 
 are vital to his doctrines, and to omit them, would reduce 
 his interpretations to a philosophical system, that like 
 the rest would have no hold upon creation, and no heel 
 upon infidelity, which indeed it would supply with a new 
 field of operations. 
 
96 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 A visitant of the spiritual world, Swedenborg has de- 
 seribed it in lively colors, and it would appear that it is 
 not at all like what modern ages have deemed. According 
 to some, it is a speck of abstraction, intense with grace 
 and saving faith, and other things of terms. Only a few 
 of the oldest poets — always excepting the Bible — have sha- 
 dowed it forth with any degree of reality, as spacious for 
 mankind. There Swedenborg is at one with them, only 
 that he is more sublimely homely regarding our future 
 dwelling-place. The spiritual world is the same old world 
 of God in a higher sphere. Hill and valley, plain and 
 mountain, are as apparent there as here. The evident dif- 
 ference lies in the multiplicity and perfection of objects, 
 but everything with which we are familiar is perpetuated 
 there, and added to innumerable others. The spiritual 
 world is essential nature, and spirit besides. Its inhabit- 
 ants are men and women, and their circumstances are so- 
 cieties, houses and lands, and whatever belongs thereto. 
 The common-place foundation needs no moving, to support 
 the things which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor the 
 heart of man conceived. The additions and pinnacles of 
 wisdom are placed upon the basis which God has laid. Thus 
 nature is not only a knowledge, but a method ; our intro- 
 duction to the mineral, vegetable and animal worlds, to the 
 air and the sun, is a friendship that will never be dissolved : 
 there is no faithlessness in our great facts if only we are 
 faithful to them, but stone and bird, wood and animal, sea 
 and sky, are acquaintances which we meet with in the spi- 
 ritual sphere, in our latest manhood or angelhood, equally 
 as in the dawn of the senses, before the grave is gained. 
 Such is the spiritual world : duration and immensity resum- 
 ing nature, but subject to spiritual laws. 
 
 What do these spiritual laws introduce ? Or first, what 
 is the regime of the natural laws ? The latter, we reply, 
 give fixity to things. The order of the sun and planets 
 
A.D. 1749-56.] 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL WORLD. 
 
 97 
 
 introduces time through measured movements, while cohe- 
 sion and gravitation keep spaces permanent, and all things 
 born in this Cosmos suck time and space from the revolving 
 world ; thus day and night, size and separation are written 
 upon them from the beginning. Whatever changes they 
 undergo are through and in time and space. These rules 
 of fixation are the natural laws, which support mankind 
 and the human faculties, but do not obey them. The spi- 
 ritual laws on the other hand, are the laws of the mind, 
 or laws like the mind’s, swaying a universe of forms like 
 those of nature. The spiritual world is full of quasi na- 
 tural objects, but which are not fixed, but fluid to the 
 spirit. Its centre is not the sun, but the divinity, and 
 humanity also is its subsidiary centre. As humanity is the 
 second law and force of that world, so its contents and 
 changes represent those of humanity. Its spaces and 
 quarters are determined by the spiritual sun, which is 
 the divine love ; those who reciprocate that love the most, 
 are in the spiritual east; tliose who receive the divine 
 wisdom are in the south ; and the declensions of these 
 qualities constitute severally the west and north of the 
 spiritual quarters. The whole combines into instant and 
 irresistible arrangement according to the spiritual affi- 
 nities of the parts. And as humanity in the aggregate 
 gravitates to its own places in the inward world, so does 
 each nation, each society, and finally every individual; and 
 wherever they be, the three kingdoms, in divine plenitude, 
 are there also; the inhabitants still stand upon the ground, 
 but it is a floor that symbolizes and depends upon their 
 spiritual status; they still see the growths of the vegetable 
 world, but these are the very germination of their senses; 
 nor are there wanting birds and animals, new and old, to 
 reflect, by exact coordination, their intelligence and afiPec- 
 tions. Hence the spiritual universe is the last justice and 
 harmony of mere mankind, where for goodness there is 
 
 F 
 
98 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 goodness, for the beautiful soul, beauty; and in every 
 particular, for the moral, a corresponding physical. The 
 world, the scenery, the house, the associations, stand and 
 change with the inhabitants. The whole is not only a 
 mansion but an instruction; for the good a pathway of 
 brightening wisdom and a countercheck to the conscience ; 
 for the wicked self-punishment and self-imprisonment, sup- 
 porting, compressing, and correcting. 
 
 The same laws associate all men with their likes, all 
 societies with those next them in the genus, and finally 
 bind the whole of humanity into one indissoluble body, 
 whose place is God. For love and liking are spiritual 
 nearness, and produce conjunction according to their inten- 
 sity. Those who ardently desire to see each other, straight- 
 way are together, — the desire is spiritual presence. Thus 
 the diversities of love sift men into their places with accu- 
 rate finality, in a universe where all is Love’s. 
 
 We may now see how essential was Swedenborg’s spi- 
 ritual experience to his interpretation of the spiritual corre- 
 spondences of the Bible. He says indeed that he received 
 the latter from the Lord, but as he received it by rational 
 means, this does not exclude any of the providential ways 
 by which he could be instructed. And mingling with 
 societies whose inward states were effigied in the outward 
 forms of the world, and who had witnessed for thousands 
 of years (to measure their wisdom by our computation) the 
 correspondence between the outward and the inward; who 
 had tallied off thought and affection as they arose, and all 
 their own human deeds and words, against the events and 
 forms which surrounded them; he could not but learn in 
 innumerable instances that the one set of things answered 
 to the other, and thereby acquire correspondences by much 
 hearsay as well as much experience. Otherwise, inasmuch 
 as the events of this world do not proceed by individual 
 correspondence, he could never have learnt that particular 
 
A.D. 1749-56.] 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL WORLD. 
 
 99 
 
 natural forms correspond to particular spiritual states, the 
 former never being seen to be produced in myriads of 
 instanees concurrently with the latter. He might indeed 
 have surmised the fact by a brilliant genius for analogies, 
 which assuredly he possessed, but the spiritual world alone 
 can furnish the proof positive, by exhibiting the generative 
 act in which the outward answers to the inward. For 
 example, he says that the ass corresponds to scientific 
 truth; the horse, to intellectual truth. Now this he might 
 have divined, and corroborated, by tables of analogies, in 
 which these animals would be shewn, by a kind of spiritual 
 rule of three, to be to nature, what those truths were, to 
 spirit; but the proof would have been only mental, until, 
 in the spiritual world, he saw that horses and asses were 
 respectively always present, and circumstaneed, when, and 
 according as, those inward qualities were central; in which 
 case reiterated coincidenee would suggest causation, and 
 have the force of fact. 
 
 There is oneimportant function of correspondence towhich 
 we have slightly adverted, and upon which we must spend a 
 few moments. All correspondence means conjunction, and 
 produces it, for correspondence is nothing but harmony, and 
 harmony is extended love. The body corresponds to the 
 soul, and so the two cohere together, and both are alive. 
 Now as the natural and spiritual senses of the Word corre- 
 spond, so also they are closely united as a body and a soul, 
 and hence Swedenborg avers that the Word is the means 
 of union between the world and heaven, and that to enter 
 devoutly into its body or letter is to enter heaven upon earth, 
 and to have the angels present in the inner sphere, and the 
 Lord above all. In all nature God is present, but the 
 Word is the immediate body of the divine wisdom, and in 
 the body and no other circumstance, dwells the soul. 
 
 Among the great topics treated of in the Arcana, is that 
 of the process of resurrection from the dead, which Swe- 
 
 F 2 
 
100 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 denborg experienced, in order to make it known.* Birth 
 into the other life is better attended than births into this 
 world. It is a work of celestial skill, committed to pecu- 
 liar angels. They occupy the heart of the dying man, 
 and uniting with it, isolate him from all lower spirits. They 
 sit at his head, and communicate their thoughts with his 
 face, so that another face is induced upon him ; indeed 
 tw'o faces, for there are two angels. When they find that 
 their faces are received by him, they know that he is dead. 
 They discourse with his soul by still vibrations of the lips. 
 They bend the scents of death into fragrance ; for an aro- 
 matic odor as of embalmment exhales from the corpse in 
 their presence, whose perfume wards away evil spirits. They 
 keep his thoughts in the pious frame usual at the point 
 of death; and converse with him by “cogitative speech.” 
 Swedenborg perceived, as they were assiduous about him, 
 that they made light of all fallacies and falsities, not treat- 
 ing them with ridicule, but discarding them as nothings. 
 He felt his own pulse during their union with his heart. 
 After the celestial have communicated the novitiate’s first 
 life, the spiritual succeed them, and unroll the films from 
 his eyes, introducing him into spiritual light. He then 
 enters upon his own faculties, and at first is happy and 
 joyful, the good spirits remaining with him whilst he desires 
 them ; but at length he follows his own life, and procures 
 his own associates, good or evil. In cases of natural death 
 resurrection takes place on the third day after decease. The 
 force which causes it, is the vivid spiritual attraction of the 
 Lord’s mercy, which withdraws the vital substances from 
 the intricacies of the body, and separates them, so that 
 nothing living is left behind. Such is the mode. It is 
 analogous to birth into this world, only that the growth 
 of spiritual life is rapid compared witli natural ; the new- 
 
 It happened to him March 1, 1 748. See his Diary. 
 
A. D. 1749-56.] resurrection described. 101 
 
 born man becoming adult and personal in a few days instead 
 of many years. 
 
 In the limited space of this biography, we cannot give 
 even an idea of the contents of the Arcana, or of the spi- 
 ritual sense, descriptive of man’s regeneration, which Swe- 
 denborg evolves from the Scripture: but of the manner of 
 the work we may say a few words with less injustice. Con- 
 ceive then, gentle reader, twelve goodly 8vo. volumes (in 
 English) written with such continued power that it seems 
 as if eating, drinking and sleeping had never intervened 
 between the penman and his page, so unbroken is the sub- 
 ject, and so complete the sense. Add to the other health 
 and harmony of this unflagging man, a memory of the 
 most e.xtraordinary grasp, which enabled him to administer 
 the details of an intellect ranging through all truth on the 
 one hand, and through the whole field of Scripture illus- 
 tration and text upon the other. Then take into account 
 the unity of the work from first to last; the constant refer- 
 ence that binds all parts of it together, and shews the 
 caution with which each strong affirmation is at first set 
 down. Observe also the felicity of phrase, the happiness 
 of mind, the easy greatness, which shine along and dignify 
 those serious pages. Remark also that the author does 
 not deal in generalities, hut sentence for sentence, and 
 word for word, he translates his text into spiritual meaning, 
 and criticises and supports himself with nearly every 
 parallel text in the sacred writings. Literature, good 
 reader, shews no similar case, and though the fate of it he 
 left to the future, yet we may safely predict that it will 
 be found impossible to refute it on its own grounds; and 
 perhaps it would not be wise for thee to wait until a valid 
 refutation shall come — in the production of a better inter- 
 pretation, — one more worthy of God, and more serviceable 
 to human weal. We say this that thou mayest use what 
 
102 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 thou hast, hut nowise doubting that the Almighty has 
 more to give, through other sons than Swedenborg. 
 
 In \ 7^^y on the 23rd of July, Swedenborg was in Stock- 
 holm. This we learn incidentally from his Diary. It was 
 in this year that a revolution was attempted in Sweden, and 
 on the day above-mentioned, the leaders of the conspiracy. 
 Count Brahe and Baron Horn, were executed in the capital. 
 Swedenborg did not lose sight of Brahe when he was beyond 
 the axe ; as the following passage reports : — 
 
 “ Of those who are resuscitated from the dead, and have 
 made confession of faith in their last moments (Brahe). 
 
 “5099. Brahe was beheaded at 10 o’clock in the morning, 
 and spoke with me at 10 at night ; that is to say, twelve 
 hours after his execution. He was with me almost without 
 interruption for several days. In two days’ time he began 
 to return to his former life, which consisted in loving worldly 
 things, and after three days, he became as he was before 
 in the world, and was carried into the evils that he had 
 made his own before he died.” 
 
 This perhaps was the occasion to which Robsahm alludes 
 in the following: “One day,” says he, “as a criminal was 
 led to the place of execution to be beheaded, I was by the 
 side of Swedenborg, and asked him how such a person felt 
 at the time of his execution. He answered, ‘When a man 
 lays his head on the block, he loses all sensation. When 
 he first comes into the spiritual world, and finds that he is 
 living, he is seized with fear of his expected death, tries 
 to escape, and is very much frightened. At such a moment 
 no one thinks of anything but the happiness of heaven, or 
 the misery of hell. Soon the good spirits come to him and 
 instruct him where he is, and he is then left to follow his 
 own inclinations, which soon lead him to the place where 
 he remains for ever.” 
 
 In 1758, Swedenborg published in London the five fol- 
 
l.d. 1756-58.] 
 
 COUNT BRAHE. 
 
 103 
 
 lowing works. 1 . An account of the Last Judgment and 
 the Destruction of Babylon; shewing that all the predic- 
 tions in the Apocalypse are at this day fulfilled ; being a 
 relation of things heard and seen. 2. Concerning Heaven 
 and its Wonders, and concerning Hell, being a relation of 
 things heard and seen. 3. On the White Horse mentioned 
 in the Apocalypse. 4. On the Planets in our Solar System, 
 and on those in the Starry Heavens; with an account of 
 their inhabitants, and of their Spirits and Angels. 5. On 
 the New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine, as revealed 
 from Heaven. We have now to speak seriatim of these 
 productions. 
 
 1. Swedenborg’s Doctrine of the Last Judgment requires 
 a short preface to understand it, but unlike other accounts 
 of the great assize, it comes into human history, and 
 has a very intelligible connexion with future progress. The 
 earth, says he, is the seminary of the human race, and the 
 spiritual world is their destination. Mankind are educated 
 here through the senses in a natural body, aud after 
 death their life continues with spiritual senses, and in a 
 spiritual body. The supply of nutriment from earth to 
 heaven, that is to say, of fresh human races, is perpetual, 
 and will never cease; for every divine work represents infi- 
 nity and eternity, and hence the generations of men in the 
 natural world will continue for everlasting. The earth 
 therefore will not be destroyed at the day of Judgment. 
 Furthermore, all angels aud spirits have once been men 
 upon some planet; there is no direct creation of angels, 
 but every celestial inhabitant has risen according to his 
 desert, from the ranks of mankind. Thus there is no 
 finite being superior to man, and no substantial interme- 
 diate between man and his Maker. Now it follows from 
 this that as heaven is peopled from this world, the state of 
 the spiritual world depends upon t'nat of the natural. When 
 the ages pour into it good and true persons, then the upper 
 
104 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 world thrives, and its integrity is maintained; on the other 
 hand when ages are declining, when hereditary vices taint 
 mankind, and posterity goes on from bad to worse, then 
 the human materials supplied to the inward world, disease, 
 derange and threaten it. At such a time our foul ancestry 
 collects above us and around us, and acting from behind 
 upon the nature that we have inherited from them, and 
 from above upon our actual thoughts and lives, tends to 
 environ us with a dense atmosphere of falsehood and 
 iniquity. It is a common fallacy to suppose that we live 
 by ourselves; our very inmost minds are immersed in the 
 whole of humanity, they depend upon the entire past, as it 
 is realized in those who have carried its spirit into the other 
 life. When the spiritual world is crowded with unworthy 
 ages, the light of heaven can no longer reach their descen- 
 dants, for by the laws of the supernal order, the Lord’s 
 influence passes through the angelic heaven by distinct 
 gradations into the world; and the latter being overhung 
 by clouds of malignant and false natures, the beams of the 
 celestial sun no longer reach it. Should this continue, the 
 extinction of the human race, through vice and lawlessness, 
 would at length ensue : and hence wdienever mankind is 
 falling, a special divine interposition alone can renew the 
 broken order, restore the balance, revivify the earth, and 
 present for the tottering heavens a fresh basis of establish- 
 ment. Now this crisis has been imminent on this planet 
 three several times; once in the most ancient church, whose 
 last judgment was typified by the flood; once when the 
 Lord was in the world, and when He said, “ Now is the 
 judgment of this world; now is the prince of this world 
 cast out:” and again: “ Be of good cheer; I have over- 
 come the world.” And a third time, teste Swedenborg, in 
 1757, when the first Christian church was consummated; 
 for it is to be observed that each judgment marks a divine 
 epoch, or takes place at the end of a church, and a church 
 
A.D. 1757.] 
 
 THE CRIMINAL CHURCH. 
 
 105 
 
 comes to an end when it has no longer any faith in conse- 
 quence of having no charity. 
 
 We observe that this doctrine of the last judgment is a 
 kind of historical necessity, if the other life be indeed real, 
 and if this life prepare its subjects: if on the other hand 
 dead men are to stand for nothing, and if either annihila- 
 tion, or any other piece of philosophy, such as the soul 
 lying in the body’s grave, be admitted, then is history 
 cut from behind us every hour, and we stand as discon- 
 nected mortals in its broken chains; in which case the 
 affiliation of ages to each other is mere fortuity, and gene- 
 ration itself is only an ideal game. Belief in immortality 
 however — belief in the enduring manhood of mankind, im- 
 plies a belief in the substance and power of the dead, and 
 to leave them out of the historic calculus, would be like 
 omitting from the forces of the world its imponderable and 
 atmospheric powers, which are the very brains and lungs 
 of its movements, though, save by their effects, invisible 
 and quasi spiritual. 
 
 Now the Christian church had been declining from the 
 days of the Apostles, with whom it was first founded in 
 love and simple faith. It had declined through the anger 
 and hatred of the Christians ; through their violence and 
 bloody wars ; through their love of dominion in a kingdom 
 where all were to be servants ; through their love of the 
 world in a state whose early builders had all things in com- 
 mon, and in which the Lord’s morrow would take care of 
 itself; through their councils where the human mind 
 erected itself in session upon the truths of God, and made 
 them into coverings for human sins; through the popedom, 
 which sat upon the vacant throne of the Messiah; through 
 the reformation, which kindled fresh hostilities and pas- 
 sions, and brought into clear separation the mind and heart 
 of the church, writing up justification by faith on the hall 
 of the concourse of evil-doers: finally through the wide 
 
 F 3 
 
106 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 spread Atheism which found too valid an excuse in the 
 manifold abominations of the Christians. Through these 
 stages had the church proceeded, and in 1757 the measure 
 was full, the race upon earth had seen the last remnant of 
 the heavenly azure disappear, and the thick night had 
 closed in. For all these deeds had been carried upwards, 
 and re-transacted with fresh power and malignity in the 
 spiritual world; their several ages were still extant, and 
 busily at work for themselves, as well as in the souls of 
 their posterity. 
 
 The judgment required could not take place in nature, 
 but where all are together, and therefore in the spiritual 
 world, and not upon the earth. This article from Sweden- 
 borg also depends upon an acknowledgment of the reality 
 of the life after death; also that heaven and hell are from 
 mankind exclusively, and that all who. have been born since 
 the creation are in one or the other of them. Moreover 
 no one is judged from the natural man, or therefore in the 
 natural world, but from the spiritual man, and therefore 
 in the spiritual world, where he is known as he really is. 
 If men judge of actions by the spirit, surely God judges of 
 them by the spirit much more purely; that is to say, in 
 the real and collective sense, judges the race in the spi- 
 ritual world. And to conclude these reasons, those who 
 have died are already fully embodied, will need no resur- 
 rection of their poor flesh, and will not and cannot return 
 to earth to seek it. 
 
 This judgment of which we are treating is no vindictive 
 assize, such as we are unaccustomed to in this world, but 
 veritably spiritual historic, like the greatest judgments 
 which are written in the records of nations, like the least 
 which are pronounced from the bench by the law. Nay 
 history in its fluctuations represents these divine settlements 
 and periods better than anything else; and moreover attests 
 them, simply because it proceeds from them. When the 
 
L.n. 1757.] 
 
 TRIAL AND JUDGMENT. 
 
 107 
 
 vice and pomp of empires stop the world’s progress, and 
 new eras struggle vainly for birth against the powers that 
 be, then comes in the hand of God, and restores the 
 balance, by removing the high places where sin has dwelt. 
 .\nd so in the spiritual world. God and his ministers are 
 there more plainly, and the largest rights and the equi- 
 librium of universes are then decided in their proper 
 assize. Such visitations have been periodical, and are not 
 reserved for the end of time, but rather occur near its 
 beginning, to make the course of heaven free for the eman- 
 cipated generations. The time when the tares and the 
 wheat are separated, is not at the end of harvests, but 
 the future has the beneht of the separation, harvests innu- 
 merable are gathered thereafter, and fertility only begins 
 when the weeds are exterminated. So also it is that the 
 diviner epochs of the world cannot open until the Day 
 of Judgment is past. 
 
 The judgment of 1757, comprised all those who had left 
 the world since our Lord’s coming, those who had lived pre- 
 viously having been tried in the judgment which was effected 
 during His advent. It took effect, however, principally 
 upon only one section of that great multitude of spirits. 
 For there are in the spiritual world three departments ; 
 viz., heaven, where those are received who are decisively 
 good ; hell, or the abode of the contrary persons j and the 
 intermediate state, called the world of spirits, where all 
 are at first assembled, and where those who can keep up 
 the outward semblance of order, whether they be good or 
 bad, are congregated so long as their inward nature does 
 not disclose itself. It was in the latter receptacle that 
 the current of respectable and professing Christendom 
 had disembogued its hourly myriads, and there, under the 
 varnish of goodness and religion, many had built up their 
 doctrinal cities, and engendered false heavens and apparent 
 churches. Thence they radiated darkness upon the earth. 
 
108 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 and communicating with heaven by their excellent seeming, 
 and with hell by their hearts, they sufFoeated and extin- 
 guished the divine light which flowed down worldwards 
 from above the heavens. The dispersion of this great 
 hypocrisy was the divine object of the judgment, and con- 
 sequently the preservation of the balance between heaven 
 and hell, on which human freedom is founded. “The first 
 heaven and the first earth” composed of the above associa- 
 tions, “passed away” in the following manner. 
 
 The nations and peoples of seventeen centuries were ar- 
 ranged spiritually, each according to its race and genius : 
 those of the reformed churches in the middle, the Romanists 
 around them, the Mahometans in a still outer ring, and 
 the various Gentiles constituting a vast circumference to 
 the area, while beyond all the appearance as of a sea was 
 the boundary. This arrangement was determined by each 
 nation’s general faculty of receiving divine truths. Visita- 
 tion was then made by angels, and admonition given, and 
 the good were singled out and separated by the heavenly 
 ministers. Then there appeared a stormy cloud above those 
 seeming heavens, occasioned by the Lord’s especial pre- 
 sence, for guard and protection, in the lowest plane of the 
 real heavens ; and as his divine influence came in contact 
 with the falsity and evil of those who were to be judged, 
 their inward parts were manifested, and their characters 
 roused ; in consequence of which they rushed into enor- 
 mities. Then were there great spiritual earthquakes, signs 
 also from heaven terrible and great, and distress of nations, 
 the sea and the salt water roaring. These changes of state 
 were accompanied by concussions of their houses and lands, 
 and gaps were made towards the hells underneath, commu- 
 nication with which was opened, wherefrom there were 
 seen exhalations ascending as of smoke mingled with sparks 
 of fire. At this time the Lord appeared in a bright cloud 
 with angels, and a sound was heard as of trumpets — a sign 
 
i.D. 1757 .] 
 
 THE DAY OF JUDGMENT. 
 
 109 
 
 of the protection of the angels by the Lord, and of the 
 gathering of the good from every quarter. Then all who 
 were about to perish were seen in the likeness of a great 
 dragon, with its tail extended in a curve and raised towards 
 heaven, brandishing about, as though to destroy and draw 
 down heaven ; but the tail was cast down, and the dragon 
 sank beneath. Afterwards the whole foundation subsided 
 into the deep, and every nation, society and person was 
 committed to a scene corresponding outwardly with his own 
 genus, species, and variety of evil ; and in this manner 
 the new hells — the prison houses of the first Christian 
 epoch were formed and arranged. 
 
 “After this there was joy in heaven and light in the world 
 of spirits, such as w^as not before ; and the interposing 
 clouds between heaven and mankind being removed, a 
 similar light also then arose on men in the world, giving 
 them new enlightenment.” Such is Swedenborg’s account 
 of that new day that dawned in the last century, and which 
 shines onward since to joy and freedom. 
 
 “Then,” says Swedenborg, “I saw angelic spirits in 
 great numbers rising from below, and received into heaven. 
 They were the sheep, who had been kept and guarded by 
 the Lord for ages back, lest they should come into the 
 malignant sphere of the dragonists, and their charity be 
 suffocated. These persons are understood in the Word by 
 the bodies of saints which arose from their sepulchres and 
 went into the holy city ; by the souls of those slain for the 
 testimony of Jesus, and who were wiitching ; and by those 
 who are of the first resurrection.” 
 
 Of these occurrences our Author was a witness in the 
 spiritual world, and for many years before they happened 
 he had a presage of them, though neither he nor the angels 
 knew of the period, agreeably to the declaration, that of 
 that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are 
 in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father. Yet in his 
 
no 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 Diary (Feb. 13th, 1/48, n. 765) he records, that “57, or 
 1657, has been shewn him in vision; the numbers were 
 written before his eyes, but he did not well know what 
 they meant.” It was a forecast of this judgment, which 
 happened in the year 1757, and took many months to 
 execute. The Romanists were judged first, the Protestants 
 at some interval afterwards. 
 
 Since the last judgment no one is allowed to remain in 
 the world of spirits more than 30 years, whereas previously 
 to that event, many had been there for centuries. There 
 will be no more general judgments, because the way to the 
 final state is now laid down for ever, and the outward man 
 can no longer differ from the inward in the spiritual world. 
 
 We have dwelt thus long upon Swedenborg’s doctrine 
 and description of the Judgment, because it illustrates the 
 pretensions of his writings in an extraordinary manner, 
 and is the postulate of the descent of a new dispensation 
 to the earth, of which he announced himself to be the 
 messenger. Moreover it explains his views of the future, 
 and authorizes him in a certain sense to break with history, 
 to discard the philosophical stream that has come down 
 through the middle ages, and to look for new developments 
 of the race in no mere perfectioning of the past. It was 
 the church of the New Jerusalem which began to descend 
 from God out of heaven when in 1757 the “age” of pri- 
 mitive Christianity had been “ consummated.” 
 
 2. The next work which we have to notice is his doctrinal 
 narrative of Heaven and Hell, a book which though suffi- 
 ciently remarkable, yet quells literary criticism. We would 
 fain speak of its power, but are wrested irresistibly from 
 that purpose, and compelled to canvass its truth. We would 
 fain discuss its beauty and sublimity, but its good and 
 service will have all place. We feel invited to test its reality 
 by evidence, but its moral power appeals only to self-evi- 
 dence. It belongs in short to a new literature, shaping and 
 
l.d. 1758 .] 
 
 HEAVEN AND HELL. 
 
 Ill 
 
 fashioning itself from within : it is a spiritual growth, and 
 though you may either adopt or set it aside, you can neither 
 praise nor blame it. This is one reason why Swedenborg’s 
 works have obtained such little notice; they are too imper- 
 sonal : you may speak roughly to them, but they do not 
 answer : nothing but harmony or sympathy comprehends 
 them, or elicits a response. To mere criticism they are life- 
 less and uninteresting. Their region lies away from brawls. 
 The most spirited impugner does not even contradict them, 
 because he is not where they are. The ether can only be 
 moved by the ether, or by something still more tranquil. 
 
 The work we are considering is on the life and laws of 
 heaven and hell. It comprises their universal gravitation, 
 the appearances and realities of their inward cosmogony 
 not less than the fates of their single inhabitants. It is at 
 once human and immense ; the soul’s sphere become the 
 law and order of a divine creation. It is no ghostly nar- 
 rative, but substantial like earthly landscapes, only that 
 vices and virtues are its moving springs, and it is plastic 
 before the eminent life of man. Here are the circum- 
 cumstances to which the heart aspires, and the justice which 
 the poets feign. Here the attributes of deity are conferred 
 in the largest measure upon the creature, and every man 
 lives in a world minutely and changefully answering to his 
 mind and life. 
 
 Space and time, with all their contents, that is to say, 
 the universal world, determined by love and wisdom, and 
 corresponding, object for subject, with the latter — these 
 constitute the spiritual world. In the heavens, therefore, 
 all are near to God, because all love him, and love is near- 
 ness ; moreover all are near to each other in proportion to 
 mutual love ; and hence the law of love being the space- 
 maker, combines all into the most exact and just societies ; 
 a neighborhood is a special affection, a district is an affection 
 more general, and so forth. Love is combination, decline 
 
112 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 of love is removal, hatred is opposition and contrariety of 
 space. All moreover are surrounded by lovely and produc- 
 tive objects by the same law, for love is with these objects, 
 and they with love. Heaven therefore clothes itself with 
 all beauty. The opposite to this is the case with hell, 
 whose inhabitants are indeed combined by similarity of 
 passion, but discord reigns in their terrible coagulations ; 
 all that is deformed and foul in nature is already in the 
 hells, whose loves it effigies, and whose outward kingdom 
 it is. In both states all the objects are spiritual-real ; the 
 sun of heaven, never setting, but always in the east, is 
 the sphere of the Lord ; its heat is his goodness and its 
 light his truth. In hell there is no sun, but the inhabitants 
 roam in darkness corresponding to th^jmselves, for they are 
 darkness ; their light is artificial, as of coal fires, meteors, 
 ignes fatui, and the lights of night; they inhabit scenery 
 of which they are the souls, as bogs, fens, tangled forests, 
 caverns, charred and ruined cities. Such is the grouping 
 of man towards God, of man also to his fellow man, and 
 of man towards the forms of creation. It is the law of 
 love become all-constructive, and extending organically 
 through space and time, that produces the order of heaven 
 and hell. 
 
 Heaven is supremely human, — nay more, it is one man. 
 As the members of the body make one person, so before 
 God, all good men make one humanity : every society of 
 them is a heavenly man in a lesser form, and every angel 
 in a least. The reason is, that God himself is an Infinite 
 Man, and he shapes his heaven into his own image and 
 likeness, even as he made Adam. The oneness of heaven 
 comes from God’s unity ; its manhood from his humanity. 
 Heaven has, therefore, all the members, organs, and vis- 
 cera of a man ; its angel-inhabitants, every one, are in 
 some province of the Grand Man. Indefinite myriads of us 
 go to a fibre of humanity. Some are in the province of the 
 
A.D. 1758 .] 
 
 HEAVEN AND HELL. 
 
 113 
 
 brain ; some in that of the lungs ; some in that of the 
 heart ; some in those of the belly ; some are in the legs 
 and arms ; and all, wherever humanized, that is to say, 
 located in humanity, perform spiritually the offices of that 
 part of the body whereto they correspond. They all work 
 together, however spaced apparently, just as the parts of 
 a single man. Their space is but their palpable liberty, 
 and they touch the human atoms next them more closely, 
 by offices which unite them in God, than the contiguous 
 fibres of our flesh. Nothing can intervene between those 
 whom God has joined, but the visible grandeur of all things 
 at once cements and emancipates them. 
 
 Hell, on the other hand, is one monster, compact of all 
 spiritual diseases, and compressed into one hideous unity. 
 It works by coercions for all those evil uses that human 
 nature, evil in its ground, requires for its subsistence. It 
 stands against heaven, foot to foot, member against mem- 
 ber, and province against province. In its collective capa- 
 city it is the devil and Satan ; the devil is the name and 
 style of its evil, and Satan that of its falsehood. 
 
 Good and evil spirits are attendant upon every man ; he 
 receives from them all his thoughts and emotions. The 
 good are ever busy, pouring in tendencies to virtue, with 
 intellectual power to apprehend and execute it; the evil are 
 always attempting to drug us with contrary influences. In 
 the balance between their agencies, our freedom lives. Our 
 trials and temptations arise from these opposing powers, 
 each of which struggles to possess us for itself. The Lord 
 moderates the conflict, and continually preserves the equi- 
 librium. This doctrine is a consequenee of the oneness of 
 all ereatures, and of their spiritual connectedness, for how 
 can beings so powerful as angels and spirits, and so imme- 
 diately above and beneath us, fail to oj;erate upon us in 
 their own sphere? Man being only a recipient organ, it 
 is in the nature of things that the creatures next him in 
 
114 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 the scale, should out of their more subtle life communicate 
 themselves in vibrations to his brain and bodily organs, 
 constituting his outward spiritual world, which he receives 
 according to his own freedom. His lifelong choice of these 
 influences determines his state after death, when he goes 
 to his fathers, that is to say, to those very persons of whom 
 he has made himself an adopted son, by doing their work 
 in this lower world. So by his deeds here, he chooses his 
 company for ever. 
 
 The maintenance of a world like the spiritual gives a 
 new idea of the divine almightiness. Where every thought 
 becomes real, how consummate the order must be, to pre- 
 serve the harmony. Imagine this world, if all our desires 
 and thoughts took effect upon their objects! What de- 
 struction would ensue! What exquisiteness of spiritual 
 association then is requisite to perpetuate such a state! 
 What communion of joys there must be in the heavens ! 
 What instant crushing of lusts in the hells ! The same 
 divine love that is softer than morning in the one, must be 
 chains of adamant in the other, or the inward universe 
 would go to pieces in a moment. Verily such a society 
 requires an active God. 
 
 Our limits forbid other details, but we beg the thoughtful 
 reader to notice the coherency of Swedenborg’s narration, and 
 on consulting the Heaven and Hell, to observe the reality 
 which pervades it. Undoubtedly it portrays such a world 
 as this world prepares for ; yea, such as this world would 
 be if it could. Our sympathies reach up into it ; our trades 
 and professions are learnt for it ; our inner bodies are formed 
 in and like our outer to inhabit it; our loves and friendships 
 are perpetuated in it if we please ; already our worship 
 traverses it to God ; our Bible in its spiritual splendor is 
 there ; our Saviour in his humanity is its soul ; and indeed, 
 such a world is the home for which our nature, and all 
 nature yearns. Ah ! you will reply, it is too much founded 
 
A.D. 1758 .] 
 
 HEAVEN AND HELL. 
 
 115 
 
 upon human love, and too congenial to our eldest thoughts ! 
 There is truth in the objection. 
 
 After perusing such an apocalypse, what a trifler seems 
 the parliament of philosophers debating the immortality of 
 the soul. It is as though, at this date, we should examine 
 the evidence for the existence of mankind. Once for all, 
 the question is killed ; and whether Swedenborg be a true 
 seer or not, he has convinced us at any rate that the Platos 
 and Catos, Seneca and Cicero, were ineffectual because not 
 visionary, and that their words are henceforth waste where 
 not experimental. Worlds can only be explored by travellers 
 thither ; reason and guessing at a distance are futile, unless 
 the feet can be plucked from the old goutiness, the mind 
 quit its fixed thoughts, and the eye alight upon the facts. 
 The conditions of spiritseeing are as those of nature-seeing : 
 the man and the sight must come together. 
 
 But the eternity of hell, — what does Swedenborg say of 
 that momentous creed ? In the first place, he denies that 
 any existence is fundamentally punishment, but on the 
 contrary, delight. Hell consists of all the delights of evil ; 
 heaven, of all those of goodness. The Lord casts no one 
 into hell, but those who are there cast themselves thither, 
 and keep themselves where they are. It is the last dogma 
 of free will, — that of a finite being perpetuating for ever 
 his own evil, standing fast to selfishness without end, ex- 
 cluding Omnipotence in all its dispensations, and making 
 the “will not” into an everlasting “cannot,” to maintain 
 itself out of heaven, and contrary to heaven. The ques- 
 tion is, whether it is true of man experimentally; and 
 further, whether any conceivable benevolence can invent 
 reform for every sinner ? Damnation is a practical question. 
 If our human statesmen can abolish the prison and the 
 transportation, the fine and punishment, and draw all 
 men into the social bond, then doubtless the Divine Ruler 
 who works through our means, will accomplish more than 
 
116 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 this in the upper region in the fulness of his eternal days : 
 but until all the wickedness of this world can be absorbed 
 and converted, we see little hope from practice for the ab- 
 negation of the hells. They are, says Swedenborg, the 
 prisons of the spiritual world, and every indulgence com- 
 patible with the ends of conserving and blessing the uni- 
 verse, is accorded to the prisoners. Moreover, the unhappy 
 are not tormented by conscience, for they have no con- 
 science, but their misery arises from that compression 
 which is necessary to keep within bounds those who are 
 not in harmony with the Divine love, and the outgoings of 
 whose terrible life cannot be permitted by the Lord. Lusts 
 which truth and goodness cannot recognize are the worm 
 that never dies, and the fire that is not quenched. The 
 collision of falsehoods is the gnashing of hell’s teeth. Yet 
 the unhappiest are immortal, because they have an inalien- 
 able capacity to love and acknowledge God, and this capa- 
 city for union with Him, whether exerted or not, is the 
 postulate of religion and the seed of immortality. 
 
 The mistake hitherto has lain in conceiving the future 
 life as too unlike the present, — as replete with divine inter- 
 ventions ; whereas the divinity works in both worlds 
 through human means, and in the limits which He sets to 
 his power, creates the freedom of his children. Within 
 that freedom filled with his laws, (and freedom itself is but 
 his widest law,) he allows mankind to help themselves, 
 and by personal efforts, whether individual or social, to 
 rise or fall, as the case may be. It is only where freedom 
 works itself out and begins to die — when sin grows in- 
 voluntary, and the heavenly space granted to a world 
 is corrupt and perishing, that a Divine intervention takes 
 place, and a new religion or reattachment to God is effected 
 thereby. But Omnipotence meddles not with that pure 
 power which it has previously given away. 
 
 3. But we have now to follow our spiritual traveller through 
 
A.D. 1758 .] 
 
 VNIVF.RS.4L TRAVELLING. 
 
 117 
 
 extremely foreign journeys — through the planets of our own 
 universe, and into distant solar systems. Ever since as- 
 tronomy taught us that the stars are estates like our own 
 world, we have acquired a curiosity about them ; we desire 
 to know whether any, and what sort of persons, dwell 
 there ; and if we can affirm inhabitants, the faith takes a 
 heart which beats with a natural throb and foretaste of 
 acquaintanceship. Friendship and intercourse with the 
 starry people is a want with every faithful child; God gives 
 all an affectionate curiosity ample to enfold Orion and the 
 Dogstar. Swedenborg felt this too, for he knew as much 
 as the astronomers, and had moreover rooted himself in the 
 belief that a means so immense as the sun-strewn firma- 
 ment was not meant for the little mankind and the little 
 heaven of one planet, but for human races indefinite in 
 extent, variety, and function. Moreover, the Grand Man 
 or heaven is so immense, as to require the inhabitants of 
 myriads of earths to constitute it ; those whom our own 
 earth supplies nourish but a patch in the skin of universal 
 humanity; there requires immortal food for every other 
 part, and planetary seminaries in divine profusion where 
 men are reared. The plurality of the angels perfects heaven, 
 just as the multitude and variety of good affections perfects 
 the human mind. Our traveller, therefore, knew that the 
 stars were full of people, and he soon found that they were 
 not inaccessible. 
 
 One means of intercourse with other worlds is as follows. 
 The spirits and angels deceased from each planet, are, by 
 spiritual affinity, near that planet. Every man also is a 
 spirit in his inward essence ; and if the proper eyes be 
 opened, can communicate with other spirits. In the higher 
 world into which he is thus admitted, space and time are 
 not fixed, but are states of love and thought. Now this 
 being the case, the passage through states or variations of 
 the mind itself, takes the place of passage through spaces. 
 
118 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 Passage through states is spiritual travelling. Hence when 
 Swedenborg was ten hours in one instance, and two days 
 in another, in reaching certain of the planets, he implies 
 that the changes of state in his mind whereby he approxi- 
 mated to the native spirits of that orb, went on for such a 
 time, or rather were of such a quality. So also if any 
 spirit could be brought into the same state with the spirits 
 of Saturn, he would then be with them, because similarity 
 of state in the spiritual world is sameness of place. Now 
 being thus with the spirits of any particular earth, if the 
 men of that earth had communication with spirits (which 
 Swedenborg avers to be the case with nearly every planet 
 but our own), the traveller, through the spirits, might 
 have intercourse with the inhabitants, and might see the 
 surface of their earth through their eyes. It was by this 
 circle that our author visited several worlds, his variations 
 and approximations being directed by the Lord, all for the 
 moral purpose that we might know experimentally that 
 man is the end of the universe, and that where there are 
 worlds there are men, and that we might be taught the 
 immensity, and somewhat of the plan and constitution, of 
 the inward heavens. 
 
 “ Man,” says Swedenborg, “ was so created, that whilst 
 living in the world among men, he should also live in hea- 
 ven among the angels, and vice versa ; to the end that 
 heaven and the world might be united in essence and action 
 in him ; and that men might know what there is in heaven, 
 and angels what there is in the world ; and that when men 
 die, they might pass from the Lord’s kingdom on earth to 
 the Lord’s kingdom in the heavens, not as into another 
 thing, but as into the same, wherein they also were when 
 they were living in the body.” 
 
 The particulars which our author has given respecting 
 other worlds are homely enough, and more remarkable on 
 the spiritual than on the material side. The spirits of 
 
A.D. 1738.] RELIGION OF THE UNIVERSE. 1]9 
 
 Mercury, we learn, are the rovers of the inner universe, a 
 curious correspondence with the style of the heathen Mer- 
 cury — the messenger of the gods. They belong to a pro- 
 vince of the memory in the Grand Man, and as the memory 
 requires constant supplies to store it with knowledge, so the 
 Mercurials, who are the memories of humanity, are em- 
 powered to wander about, and acquire knowledges in every 
 place. The people of the Moon are dwarfs, and do not 
 speak from the lungs, but from a quantity of air collected 
 in the abdomen, because the moon has not an atmosphere 
 like that of other earths : which suggests the analogy of 
 certain of the lower animals that gulp down the air, and give 
 it out again in a peculiar manner ; among others a species 
 of frog, which makes thereby a thundering sound like that 
 attributed by our traveller to the Lunarians. They corres- 
 pond in the Grand Man to the ensiform cartilage at the 
 bottom of the breast bone. It is remarkable as showing 
 the limits of spiritual seership, that Swedenborg speaks of 
 Saturn as the last planet of our system ; his privilege of 
 vision not enabling him to anticipate the place of Herschel. 
 
 The theological particulars in the book are important. 
 We are told that the good in all worlds worship one God 
 under a human form ; that the Lord was born on this earth 
 because it is the lowest and the most sensual, and hence, 
 the fitting place for the Word to be made flesh. By virtue 
 however of the incarnation here, the divine humanity is 
 realized for the entire universe in the other life, all being 
 there instructed in the realities of redemption, and their 
 inward ideas thereby united to that stupendous fact. Swe- 
 denborg’s work now under consideration, may be charac- 
 terized as a Report on the Religion of the Universe. 
 
 4. The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrine is a trea- 
 tise on spiritual ethics, delivering in a clear manner the 
 practical part of the author’s system. The reader of it will 
 gain a high idea of the moral requirements that Swedenborg 
 
120 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 makes upon him. One doctrine brought out in strong 
 relief is the superiority of the affectional to the intellectual 
 element, the predominance of good over truth, of charity 
 over faith, and of deeds over words, before God. Prior to 
 Swedenborg, the human loves or affections were little con- 
 sidered, but he shews that they are our very life, that 
 intelligence is their minister, and that their condition deter- 
 mines our lot in the future world. There is no point in 
 his psychology more brilliantly vindicated than this main 
 law of the power of love. At the end of the work w'e have 
 his ideas on ecclesiastical and civil government, which are 
 eminently those of conjoint liberty and order. The Lord’s 
 ministers are to claim no power over souls, and he who 
 differs in opinion from the minister, is peaceably to enjoj' 
 his sentiments, provided he makes no disturbance. The 
 dignity of offices is only annexed to persons, but does not 
 belong to them. The sovereignty itself is not in any per- 
 son, but is annexed to the person. Whatever king believes 
 contrary to this, is not wise. Absolute monarchs who 
 believe that their subjects are slaves, to whose goods and 
 lives they have a right, are “not kings, but tyrants.’’ 
 
 One cannot but regret the absence of biographical details 
 from this part of Swedenborg’s history. The reason doubt- 
 less is, that whilst in London, (where we presume he spent 
 a good share of the time from 1747 to 1758,) he had no 
 acquaintance with whom he sympathized on the subjects 
 that now interested him. It was probably not until his 
 theological works had been for years before the public, that 
 he became acquainted with those English friends who have 
 left some record of him. Previously to this, he was known 
 only to those with whom he lodged, or had business. Mrs. 
 Lewis, his publisher’s wife, knew him ; and “thought him 
 a good and sensible man, but too apt to spiritualize things.’’ 
 He was also fond of the company of his printer, Mr. Hart, 
 of Poppin’s Court, Fleet Street, and used often to spend 
 
A.D. 1758 - 59 .] the fire of Stockholm. 
 
 121 
 
 the evening there. But these worthy people contribute no 
 particulars to our biography. 
 
 Swedenborg was probably in London during the latter 
 part of 1/58; the year in which the works that we have 
 just been speaking of, were printed. We find him return- 
 ing to Gottenburg from England on the 19th of July, 1759, 
 and here he gave a public proof that he had a more 
 spacious eyesight than was usual in his day. Immanuel 
 Kant, the transcendental philosopher, shall be our histo- 
 rian of the occurrence that took place. 
 
 “ On Saturday, at 4 o’clock, p.m.” says Kant, “ when 
 Swedenborg arrived at Gottenburg from England, Mr. 
 William Castel invited him to his house, together with a 
 party of fifteen persons. About 6 o’clock, Swedenborg 
 went out, and after a short interval returned to the com- 
 pany, quite pale and alarmed. He said that a dangerous 
 fire had just broken out in Stockholm, at the Sudermalm 
 (Gottenburg is 300 miles from Stockholm), and that 
 it was spreading very fast. He was restless, and went out 
 often. He said that the house of one of his friends, whom 
 he named, was already in ashes, and that his own was in 
 danger. At 8 o’clock, after he had been out again, he 
 joyfully exclaimed, ‘Thank God! the fire is extinguished, 
 the third door from my house.’ This news occasioned 
 great commotion through the whole city, and particularly 
 amongst the company in which he was. It was announced 
 to the governor the same evening. On the Sunday morn- 
 ing, Swedenborg was sent for by the governor, who 
 questioned him concerning the disaster. Swedenborg de- 
 scribed the fire precisely, how it had begun, in what 
 manner it had ceased, and how long it had continued. On 
 the same day the news was spread through the city, and, 
 as the governor had thought it worthy of attention, the 
 consternation was considerably increased; because many 
 were in trouble on account of their friends and property, 
 
 G 
 
122 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 which might have been involved in the disaster. On the 
 Monday evening, a messenger arrived at Gottenburg, who 
 was despatched during the time of the fire. In the letters 
 brought by him, the fire was described precisely in the 
 manner stated by Swedenborg. On the Tuesday morning 
 the royal courier arrived at the governor’s, with the melan- 
 choly intelligence of the fire, of the loss which it had 
 occasioned, and of the houses it had damaged and ruined, 
 not in the least differing from that which Swedenborg had 
 given immediately it had ceased; for the fire was extin- 
 guished at 8 o’clock. 
 
 “ What can be brought forward against the authenticity 
 of this occurrence? My friend who wrote this to me, has 
 not only examined the circumstances of this extraordinary 
 case at Stockholm, but also, about two months ago, at 
 Gottenburg, where he is acquainted with the most respec- 
 table houses, and where he could obtain the most authentic 
 and complete information; as the greatest part of the inha- 
 bitants, who are still alive, were witnesses to the memor- 
 able occurrence.” 
 
 Kant had sifted this matter, and also that of the Queen 
 of Sweden (p. 126-7 below), to the utmost, by a circle of en- 
 quiries, epistolary as well as personal ; and his narrative is 
 found in a letter to one Charlotte de Knobloch, a lady of 
 quality, written in 1768, two years after Kant had attacked 
 Swedenborg in a smiall work entitled. Dreams of a Ghost Seer 
 illustrated by Dreams of Metaphysics. His account comes, 
 therefore, as a suitable testimony. But what proof is so 
 good as the reappearance of the facts ? Powers and events 
 of the kind are now common enough not to excite surprize 
 from their rarity. Mesmerism produces a per centage of 
 seers equal occasionally to such achievements. Nay, but 
 the faculty of transcending the horizon of space and the 
 instance of time, is as old as history: there have always 
 been individuals who in vision of a higher altitude, saw 
 
A.D. 1759 .] 
 
 CLAIRVOYANCE. 
 
 123 
 
 the refractions of the distant and the future painted upon 
 the curtains of the present. At any rate Swedenborg was 
 aware of the faculty long before he^me a seer. Thus in 
 h\s Animal Kingdom, Part VII., p. 237, when speaking of 
 the soul’s state after death, he has the following, illustrative 
 of its powers. “ I need not mention,” says he, “ the mani- 
 fest sympathies acknowledged to exist in this lower world, 
 and which are too many to be recounted: so great being 
 the sympathy and magnetism of man, that communication 
 often takes place between those who are miles apart. Such 
 statements are regarded by many as absurdities, yet ex- 
 perience proves their truth. Nor will I mention that the 
 ghosts of some have been presented visibly after death 
 and burial;” &c., &c. To account for events like Sweden- 
 borg’s vision of the fire of Stockholm, (which also Rob- 
 sahm says that he foretold,) we need not pierce the vault 
 of nature; this world has perfections, mental, imponderable, 
 and even physical, equivalent to supply the sense. The 
 universe is telegraphically present to itself in every tittle, or 
 it would be no universe. There are also slides of eyes in 
 mankind as an Individual, adequate to converting into sen- 
 sation all the quick correspondence that exists between things 
 by magnetism and other kindred message bearers. It is 
 however only fair to Swedenborg to say, that he laid no 
 stress on these incidental marvels, but devoted himself to 
 bearing witness to a far more peculiar mission. 
 
 There is no doubt that the rumor of this alfair soon 
 travelled to Stockholm, and coupled with the strange repute 
 in which Swedenborg was already held, stimulated curiosity 
 about him on his return to the capital. The clergy, as 
 may be imagined, were not unconcerned spectators of the 
 doings of one so intimately connected with some of the 
 highest dignitaries of the Lutheran church. At first he 
 had spoken freely to them of his spiritual intercourse, but 
 perceiving their displeasure excited, he became more cau- 
 
 g2 
 
124 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 tious. A circumstance that occurred shewed that even at 
 this time (1760) they were longing to exercise a superin- 
 tendence over him. They observed that he seldom went 
 to church, or partook of the Holy Supper. This was owing 
 partly to the contrariety of the Lutheran doctrine to his 
 own ideas, and partly, Robsahm says, to the disease of 
 the stone which troubled him. In 1760 two bishops, his 
 relations, remonstrated with him in a friendly manner upon 
 his remissness, lie answered that religious observances 
 were not so necessary for him as for others, as he was asso- 
 ciated with angels. They then represented that his example 
 would be valuable, by which he suffered himself to be per- 
 suaded. A few days previously to receiving the Sacrament, 
 he asked his old domestics to whom he should resort for 
 the purpose, for “he was not much acquainted with the 
 preachers.” The elder chaplain was mentioned. Sweden- 
 borg objected that “he was a passionate man and a fiery 
 zealot, and that he had heard him thundering from the 
 pulpit with little satisfaction.” The assistant-chaplain was 
 then proposed, who was not so popular with the congrega- 
 tion. Swedenborg said, “I prefer him to the other, for I 
 hear that he speaks what he thinks, and by this means has 
 lost the goodwill of his people, as generally happens in this 
 world.” Accordingly he took the Sacrament from this 
 curate. 
 
 It was not however the clergy alone who felt an interest 
 in watching his career, but he had beeome an object of 
 curiosity to all classes. Supernaturalism has charms for 
 every society, whether atheistic or Christian, savage or 
 civilized, scientific or poetic. May we not say, that it is 
 the undercharm of all other interests, and that from child- 
 hood upwards the main expectation of every journey, the 
 hope of every uncovering, the joy of every new man and 
 bright word, is, that we may come at length somewhere 
 upon that mortal gap which opens to the second life. Su- 
 
A. D. 1760-61.] the living and the dead. 125 
 
 pernaturalism in all ages has had also a commercial side, 
 and has been cultivated as a meaus to regain missing pro- 
 perty, or to discover hidden treasures. The good people 
 of Stockholm were perhaps spiritual chiefly in this latter 
 direction. It was in 1761 that Swedenborg was consulted 
 on an affair of the kind by a neighbor of his, the widow 
 of Lewis Von Marteville, who had been ambassador from 
 Holland to Sweden. Curiosity too was a prompting motive 
 in her visit ; and she went to the seer with several ladies of 
 her acquaintance, all eager to have “a near view of so 
 strange a person.” Her husband had paid away 25,000 
 Dutch guilders, and the widow being again applied to for 
 the money, could not produce the receipt. She asked Swe- 
 denborg whether he had known her husband, to which he 
 answered in the negative, but he promised her, on her 
 entreaty, that if he met him in the other world, he would 
 enquire about the receipt. Eight days afterwards Von 
 Marteville in a dream told her where to find the receipt, as 
 well as a hair-pin set with brilliants, which had been given 
 up as lost. This was at 2 o’clock in the morning, and the 
 widow, alarmed yet pleased, rose at once, and found the 
 articles, as the dream described. She slept late in the 
 morning. At 1 1 o’clock a.m. Swedenborg was announced. 
 Ilis first remark, before the lady could open her lips, was, 
 that “during the preceding night he had seen Von Mar- 
 teville, and had wished to converse with him, but the latter 
 excused himself, on the ground that he must go to discover 
 to his wife something of importance.” Swedenborg added 
 that “ he then departed out of the society in which he had 
 been for a year, and would ascend to one far happier 
 owing, we presume, to his being lightened of a worldly 
 care. This account, attested as it is by the lady herself, 
 through the Danish General, Von E , her second hus- 
 
 band, was noised through all Stockholm. It ought to be 
 
126 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 added, that Madame offered to make Swedenborg a hand- 
 some present for his services, but this he declined. 
 
 It was in the same year (1761) that Louisa Ulrica, a 
 sister of Frederick the Great of Prussia, and married to 
 Adolphus Frederick, King of Sweden, received a letter 
 from the Duchess of Brunswick, in which she mentioned 
 that she had read in the Gottingen Gazette, an account of 
 a man at Stockholm, who pretended to speak with the dead, 
 and she wondered that the Queen, in her correspondence, 
 had not alluded to the subject. The Queen had no doubt 
 heard of the Marteville affair, and this, coupled with her 
 sister’s desires, made her wish to satisfy herself by an in- 
 terview with Swedenborg. Captain de Stahlhammer out of 
 many authorities is the one whose narrative we select of 
 what passed at that interview. 
 
 “ A short time,” says Stahlhammer, “ after the death of 
 the Prince of Prussia, Swedenborg came to court [being sum- 
 moned thither by the senator. Count Scheffer]. As soon as 
 he was perceived by the Queen, she said to him, ‘ Well, 
 Mr. Assessor, have you seen my brother?’ Swedenborg 
 answered. No; whereupon she replied, ‘ If you should see 
 him, remember me to him.’ In saying this, she did but 
 jest, and had no thought of asking him any information 
 about her brother. Eight days afterwards, and not four 
 and twenty hours, nor yet at a particular audience, Sweden- 
 borg came again to court, but so early that the Queen had 
 not left her apartment called the white room, where she 
 was conversing with her maids of honor and other ladies of 
 the court. Swedenborg did not wait for the Queen’s com- 
 ing out, but entered directly into her apartment, and 
 whispered in her ear. The Queen, struck with astonish- 
 ment, was taken ill, and did not recover herself for some 
 time. After she was come to herself, she said to those 
 about her, ‘ There is only God and my brother who can 
 
A.D. 1761 .] 
 
 THE aUEEN OF SWEDEN. 
 
 127 
 
 know what he has just told me' She owned that he had 
 spoken of her last correspondence with the prince, the 
 subject of which was known to themselves alone.” 
 
 “The only weakness,” adds the Captain, “of this truly 
 honest man was his belief in the apparition of spirits; but 
 I knew him for many years, and I can confidently affirm, 
 that he was as fully persuaded that he conversed with 
 spirits, as I am that I am writing at this moment. As a 
 citizen, and as a friend, he was a man of the greatest 
 integrity, abhorring imposture, and leading an exemplary 
 life.” 
 
 Did space allow, we could produce a little volume of 
 testimony to the truth of these narrations, as well as fill 
 them up with several interesting particulars. But we will 
 only add what the Chevalier Baylon records of his inter- 
 view with Louisa Ulrica : “ I found an opportunity,” says 
 he, “of speaking with the Queen herself, who is now dead, 
 concerning Swedenborg, and she told me herself, the anec- 
 dote respecting herself and brother, with a conviction which 
 appeared extraordinary to me. Every one who knew this 
 truly enlightened sister of the great Frederick, will give me 
 credit when I say, that she was by no means enthusiastic 
 or fanatical, and that her entire mental character was wholly 
 free from such conceits. Nevertheless, she appeared to me 
 to be so convinced of Swedenborg’s supernatural intercourse 
 with spirits, that I scarcely durst venture to intimate some 
 doubts, and to express my suspicion of secret intrigues ; 
 for when she perceived my suspicion she said with a royal 
 air, ‘ I am not easily duped and thus she put an end to 
 all my attempts at refutation.” 
 
 But neither Swedenborg’s spiritual intercourses, nor the 
 laborious works that he was composing, were an excuse to 
 him for neglecting the affairs of this world when oppor- 
 tunity required, and accordingly in 1 76 1 we find him taking 
 part in the deliberations of the Diet which met in January 
 
128 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 of that year. Three memorials are preserved which he pre- 
 sented to the Swedish parliament : one, at the opening of 
 the Diet, congratulating the House upon its meeting, coun- 
 selling the redress of grievances which might otherwise 
 enable the disaffected to impair and destroy the constitution, 
 and especially deprecating that systematic calumny which 
 is not less destructive to the stability of governments than 
 to public and private character. In this paper the quiet 
 sage expresses his preference for that mixed form of monar- 
 chy which then prevailed in Sweden, and he ends as he 
 began it, with a powerful appeal to the members to obviate 
 change by the prosecution of useful reforms. In the next 
 memorial (whether they were spoken by himself from his 
 place we do not know) he insists upon some of the same 
 topics, but mainly upon the preservation of the liberties 
 of the people, and upon the French in preference to the 
 English alliance ; the latter being incompatible, as he said, 
 with the bond between England and Hanover, which had 
 formerly belonged to Sweden. He forcibly expresses the 
 evils of despotic governments, in which full play is given 
 to the hereditary vices of the sovereign, and denounces 
 absolutism as alike injurious to the ruler and the people, 
 observing that as for the latter, “it is unlawful for any 
 one to deliver over his life and property to the arbitrary 
 power of an individual ; for of these God alone is Lord 
 and Master, and we are only their administrators upon 
 earth.” Especially alluding to the danger in which a 
 country stands that is thus subject to an individual, from 
 the subtle power of the papacy, he has the following, which 
 may serve as a specimen of his style in these documents : — 
 “ It would be tedious to enumerate all the misfortunes 
 and the grievous and dreadful consequences which might 
 happen here in the north under a despotic government ; 
 I will mention therefore only one — popish darkness, — and 
 will endeavor to exhibit it in its true light. 
 
A.D. 1761.] MEMORIALS TO THE DIET. 129 
 
 “ We know from experience bow the Babylonian whore 
 (which signifies the popish religion) fascinated and bewitched 
 the reigning princes of Saxony, Cassel, and Zweibriicken, 
 also the king of England, shortly before the house of Ilan- 
 over was called to the British throne, and how it is still 
 dallying with the Pretender ; how in Prussia likewise, it 
 tampered with the present king, when crown-prince, through 
 his own father; not to mention King Sigismund and Queen 
 Christina in Sweden. We are well aware, too, how this 
 whore is still going her rounds through the courts of re- 
 formed Christendom. If, therefore, Sweden were an abso- 
 lute monarchy, and this whore, who understands so well 
 how to dissemble, and to adorn herself like a goddess, were 
 to intrude herself into the cabinet of a future monarch, is 
 there any reason why she should not as easily delude and 
 infatuate him, as she did the above-mentioned kings and 
 princes of Christendom ? What opposition would there 
 be, what means of self-protection, especially if the army, 
 which is now upon a standing footing, were at the disposal 
 of the monarch ? What could bishops and priests, toge- 
 ther with the peasantry, do, against force, against the 
 determination of the sovereign, and against the crafty cun- 
 ning of the Jesuits? Would not all heavenly light be 
 dissipated ; would not a night of barbarian darkness over- 
 spread the laud ; and if they would not be martyrs, must 
 not the people bow down the neck to Satan, and become 
 worshippers of images, and idolaters? 
 
 “ The dread of this and every other slavery, which 1 
 need not here describe, must hang over us for the future, 
 should there take place any alteration in our excellent con- 
 stitution, or any suspension of our invaluable liberty. The 
 only guarantee and counter check against such calamities 
 would be oath and conscience. Certainly if there were an 
 oath, and the majority were sufficiently conscientious to 
 respect it, civil and religious liberty, and all that is valuable, 
 
 g3 
 
130 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 might, indeed, in every kingdom remain inviolate : but, on 
 the other hand, we must bear in mind that the papal chair 
 can dissolve all oaths, and absolve every conscience, by 
 virtue of the keys of St. Peter. It is easy for a monarch 
 to assert, and with every appearance of truth, that he has 
 no thought of or desire for absolute rule ; but what each 
 fosters in his heart and keeps studiously apart from the 
 outward man, is known only to God, to himself, and to 
 his private friends, through whom, however, what is hidden 
 occasionally manifests itself. I shudder when I reflect 
 what may happen, and probably will happen, if private 
 interests, subverting the general welfare into a gross dark- 
 ness, should here attain the ascendancy. I must observe, 
 also, that I see no difference between a king in Sweden 
 who possesses absolute power, and an idol ; for all turn 
 themselves, heart and soul, in the same way to the one as 
 to the other, obey his will, and worship what passes from 
 his mouth.” 
 
 The third memorial is upon the subject of finance, and 
 laments the depreciation of the Swedish paper money in 
 eonsequence of the suspension of cash payments. The 
 wary senator coneludes by saying, that “if an empire could 
 subsist with a representative curreney without a real cur- 
 reney, it would be an empire without its parallel in the 
 world.” 
 
 We have no further details of Swedenborg’s parliamentary 
 career; only we learn from Count Ilopken, (for many years 
 Prime Minister of Sweden, and during that time until the 
 revolution in 1772 the second person in the kingdom,) that 
 “ the most solid memorials, and the best penned, at the 
 diet of 1761, on matters of finance, were presented by 
 Swedenborg ; in one of which he refuted a large work in 
 4to. on the same subject, quoted the eorresponding pas- 
 sages of it, and all in less than one sheet.” It appears 
 also that he was a member of the Secret Committee of the 
 
A.D. 1761 .] 
 
 MEMORIALS TO THE DIET. 
 
 131 
 
 Diet, an office to which only the most sage and virtuous 
 were elected. When we consider the mountain of obloquy 
 which rested at that day on a spirit seer, who moreover 
 announced in his own person a new commission from the 
 Almighty, we must grant that there w as a wise deportment 
 in Swedenborg, an extraordinary helpfulness for the public 
 service, to maintain him in such a position in the assembly 
 of his nation ; nor can it fail to reflect credit upon Sweden 
 herself that she so far appreciated her remarkable son as 
 not to accuse him of any disqualifying madness in the ex- 
 ercise of his public functions. That tolerance of the seer 
 in the statesman heralds a new code of sanity, in which 
 the clearest sight and the most uncommon gifts will no 
 longer be held to be less sound, than dull routine of eye 
 and understanding, provided the stranger accompaniments 
 are backed by virtue and common sense, 
 
 “ During the sittings of the Imperial Diet,” says Rob- 
 sahm, “ he took great interest in hearing what was done 
 in his absence in the House of Nobles, in which, as the 
 head of his family, he had a right to a seat ; but when he 
 perceived that hatred, envy and self-interest reigned there, 
 he was seldom after seen in the House. In conversation 
 he freely expressed his disapprobation of the discord that 
 prevailed in the Diet, and adhered to neither of the parties 
 there, but loved truth and justice in all his feelings and 
 actions.” 
 
 The discord to which Robsahm alludes as so distasteful 
 to Swedenborg, was doubtless that produced by the factions 
 of the Hats and Caps, the former designating the French, 
 the latter the Russian intrigue in Sweden, These parties 
 kept the nation in a constant ferment, and the thraldom of 
 the king, Adolphus Frederic, by the nobles, was carried 
 to an extent that produced a threat of abdication in 1768, 
 A counter-revolution took place in the reign of his son, 
 Gustavus III., who in 1/72, supported by the army and 
 
132 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 the body of the people, reestablished the relative powers 
 of the various branches of government nearly as before 
 1680. 
 
 To return from this digression, we now recite an anec- 
 dote which makes it appear that Swedenborg had passed 
 into Holland before July, 1762. “I was in Amsterdam,” 
 said an informant of Jung Stilling, “ in the year 1762, on the 
 very day that Peter the Third, Emperor of Russia, died, in a 
 company, in which Swedenborg was present. In the midst 
 of our conversation, his countenance changed, and it was 
 evident that his soul was no longer there, and that some- 
 thing extraordinary was passing in him. As soon as he 
 came to himself again, he was asked what had happened 
 to him. He would not at first communicate it, but at 
 length, after being repeatedly pressed, he said, ‘ This very 
 hour, the Emperor Peter III., has died in his prison, 
 (mentioning, at the same time, the manner of his death.) 
 Gentlemen will please to note down the day, that they may 
 be able to compare it with the intelligence of his death in 
 the newspapers.’ The latter subsequently announced the 
 Emperor’s death, as having taken place on that day.” 
 
 In 1763* our author published at Amsterdam the fol- 
 lowing six works : — 1. The Doctrine of the New Jerusalem 
 respecting the Lord. 2. The Doctrine of the New Jeru- 
 salem respecting the Sacred Scripture. 3. The Doctrine 
 of the New Jerusalem respecting Faith. 4. The Doctrine 
 of Life for the New Jerusalem. .5. Continuation respecting 
 the Last Judgment and the Destruction of Babylon. 6. 
 Angelic Wisdom concerning the Divine Love and the Divine 
 Wisdom. We have now to devote a brief attention to the 
 contents of these several works. 
 
 * It was in this year that Swedenborg’s article on Inlaying (above, 
 p. 41.) appeared in the Transactions of the Royal Academy at Stock- 
 holm : probably he had communicated it to that body before he set 
 out on his voyage to Holland. 
 
i.D. 1762-63.] THE GODHEAD OF CHRIST. 
 
 133 
 
 1 . The Doctrine of the Lord contains our author’s scrip- 
 tural induction of the divinity of Christ, of the personality 
 of the divine nature, and of the faet and meaning of the 
 incarnation. The theist asks the question. What is God? 
 but Swedenborg, the far deeper, and more childlike ques- 
 tion, Who is God ? one whieh seems very infantine to our 
 theological artificiality and old want of innocence. Now 
 in this work the Godhead of our Saviour is made to rest 
 upon the whole breadth of Scripture authority ; and is pre- 
 sented as the last principle and the highest theory of the 
 Christian faith. The author does not proeeed by the erec- 
 tion of particular texts into standards, but elicits his results 
 from the general face of revelation. His views of the 
 Trinity are given with clearness, and their substance is, 
 that there is a trinity (not of persons, but) of person, in 
 the Godhead, and that Christ is the person in whom the 
 trinal fulness dwells. 
 
 In this creed. Deity is the essential and infinite Man, 
 presented to the perceptive love of the earliest races, but 
 to the very senses of the latest. If God can be in contact 
 with our highest faculties, — can create himself into the 
 sphere of our hearts and minds, — there is no limiting his 
 power to descend to our other faeulties, and to become 
 extant as a man among men, — as a part of the world among 
 other parts.* Nay, by the rules of the soundest philosophy, 
 we ought to look for Him in this field, and hence the 
 question of Who he is becomes paramount. Now when 
 the first bond was broken — when the eldest religion perished 
 — from that moment was another bond required, and an 
 incarnation was necessary. This was seen by the ancient 
 
 * If God can be inspirituate, surely he can also be incarnate ; 
 for spirit is more bodily than flesh. To deny the possibility of the 
 Incarnation, is a denial throughout the soul of the possibility of God’s 
 presence, and a resolution of all the religious ideas into a Deific self- 
 ishness, such as Fichte preached. 
 
134 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 people, and as a part of the divine logic of creation, they 
 expected the Messiah, and even loved to have posterity, 
 because the stream of childhood ever pointed to the second 
 Adam, who was to be born in the fulness of time. He 
 came at the end of the Jewish church, when the last link 
 of the old covenant was broken, and He himself constituted 
 a new and everlasting covenant, uniting man by his very 
 senses with an object “ divinely sensual” — with God him- 
 self manifest in the flesh. 
 
 There had been upon this earth a succession of churches, 
 each with its own bond, or its peculiar religion. The 
 Adamic church — the Adam of Genesis — was a church of 
 celestial love, with wisdom radiating from the inmost heart, 
 in harmony with the paradisiacal creation, and naming the 
 creatures after its own truth. This was Eden, the only 
 heaven which has yet existed upon earth. To this elevated 
 church the Lord was a divinely angelic man, seen by celes- 
 tial perceptions, and even represented to the senses; for 
 the senses opened into heaven. This church descended 
 through many periods, which are typified in the Word as 
 the posterity of Adam; and its consummation was the 
 flood, when it perished, and only Noah and his sons, — a 
 lower or spiritual church, survived that suffocation whereby 
 the race was extinguished so far as breathing the highest 
 atmosphere was concerned; the Noachists however living in 
 a new dispensation, to respire a secondary religion. Every 
 such declension is a veritable drowning, in which the higher 
 perceptions cease, and a certain prepared remnant of the 
 universal humanity, survives to people a new dry land on 
 a lower level. The celestial church had for its spring spon- 
 taneous love ; the spiritual church on the other hand, con- 
 science. Even the latter, however, did not stand, but its 
 decay is written from Noah to Abraham, when “ the angel 
 of Jehovah” was no longer manifested to any faculty. The 
 two realities of the church, love, and conscience as a ground 
 
..D. 1763.] 
 
 SUCCESSION OF CHURCHES. 
 
 J35 
 
 of faith, having been destroyed in the soul, a church of for- 
 malities was the only descent remaining, and this was the 
 Jewish dispensation, which however was not a church, but 
 only the representation of one. Obedience was the spring 
 of this last covenant, and so long as the people kept it, 
 natural and national blessings were given them from on 
 high. At length even obedience came to an end, and 
 neither victories in war, nor harvests divinely given, nor 
 terrors denounced by prophets, nor actual evil fortune, 
 could keep the people to their bond. The basis of creiition 
 could no longer support the falling superstructure. The 
 resources of finite humanity were exhausted, and it only 
 remained for Him who was the Creator, to become the 
 Redeemer — for him who was the Alpha to become the 
 Omega of his work. He came into the world by the world’s 
 ways of birth, that he might absorb the world, and be under 
 it sustaining as above it creating, — that is to say, be All in 
 all, the First and the Last. The infinite entered the real 
 world by the real means — by the gates of generation, and 
 the Lord became incarnate through the Virgin Mary. All 
 his progress also was real, and through mundane laws; and 
 thus his sensual and maternal humanity was united with 
 his divinity by the like trials — by the like education, — as 
 we ourselves experience in the regeneration. Swedenborg’s 
 view of the Lord’s life is indeed totally practical, and the 
 life of every regenerating man is an image of that process 
 whereby the maternal humanity became a divine humanity, 
 the Son of God, God with us, Jesus Christ, God and Man. 
 The subject cannot be thought of from metaphysical postu- 
 lates, but only from a life in harmony with it, that is to 
 say, from the process whereby each man subdues his own 
 sensuality and evil, unites his outward with his inward 
 mind, and finally becomes a spiritual person even in what- 
 ever pertains to the exercise of his senses. In the Lord 
 however all that which in us is finite, was, and is, infinite; 
 
136 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 and thus instead, like us, of only subduing those hellish 
 minds which are immediate to ourselves, his redeeming 
 victories over selfishness and worldliness, subjugated all 
 that is hellish — in the language of Swedenborg, all the 
 hells; and now holds them, for whosoever lives in, and to 
 Him, in everlasting subjugation. This is redemption, and 
 this was the final purpose for which the Lord assumed 
 humanity, and appeared upon this earth, his operations 
 upon which extend through all systems of worlds, and from 
 eternity to eternity. These are the stages through which 
 the Lord presented Himself according to our need, first as 
 \ a God-angel, and lastly as a God-man. 
 
 The trinity then is in, and from, Jesus Christ, the new 
 name of our God. The Father is his divine love; the Son 
 is his divine wisdom, that is to say, the divinely human 
 form in which he is self-adapted to his creatures, or a per- 
 sonal God; the Holy Spirit is the influence which he com- 
 municates to individuals and churches. This trinity is 
 imaged in the soul, body, and operation of every man. The 
 father is inaccessible to us but of Christ, even as our own 
 souls are not to be reached by others but through our 
 bodies. All worship therefore is to he directed to Jesus 
 Christ alone; and in the heavens the wisest angels know 
 no other father. Thus there is oneness and body in our 
 adoration. 
 
 The Divine Love and Wisdom, which we notice next, 
 furnishes the rational counterpart to the Doctrine of the 
 Lord. It is a treatise on the divine attributes, in which 
 affirmation and self-evidence are the method, and the truly 
 human testifies of the divine. Man, it is clear, must think 
 of God as a man — must think from his own experience 
 towards divine virtues — from his own deeds towards God’s 
 deeds, which are creation. The must in this case is a 
 necessity of our being, which is the same thing as to say, 
 that it is God’s ordinance, and the true method. It is 
 
A.D. 1763.] 
 
 GOD IS A MAN. 
 
 137 
 
 therefore a verity substantial as our souls, nay consubstan- 
 tial with their Maker. No idealism then here intervenes, 
 but we touch the solidity of eternal truth, and in our 
 minds and bodies we have an attestation and vision of the 
 Creator. But if God be the infinite man, the universe 
 which proceeds from him must represent man in an image, 
 and all the creatures must likewise so represent. Mineral, 
 vegetable, and animal forms, nay atmospheres, planets and 
 suns, are then nothing less than so many means aud ten- 
 dencies to man, on different stages of the transit, and finite 
 man resumes them all, proclaims visibly their end, and 
 may connect them with their fountain. It is throughout a 
 system of correspondences, all depending upon the activity 
 of a personal God, as the substance of the latter depends 
 upon the intervention of God in history, as Jesus Christ. 
 Remove from the centre of the system the position that 
 God is a man, and he becomes necessarily unintelligible to 
 mankind; he has made them think of him otherwise than 
 as he is; they communicate with him by no religion, but 
 the beginning of their knowledge is darkness, its object a 
 mere notion, and their love falls into a void: there is in 
 short no correspondence between the Creator and any crea- 
 ture. Maintain however that master position, and huma- 
 nity is the way to the Divine Humanity, the high road of 
 the living truth. 
 
 The path by which God passes through heaven into 
 nature is laid down in distinet degrees, and “ the doctrine 
 of degrees” furnishes a principal instrument with Sweden- 
 borg in these elucidations. Degrees are the separate steps 
 of forms or substances, the measured walk of the creative 
 forces; thus the will in one degree is the understanding in 
 the next, and the body in the third: the animal in the 
 highest is the vegetable in the second, and the mineral in 
 the lowest : and all these are one, like soul aud body ; and 
 are united, and eaeh uses the lower, by the handles of its 
 
]38 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 harmony with inferior utilities; just as a man is united 
 with, and makes use of, the various instruments which 
 extend the powers of his mind and arms through nature. 
 The world therefore is full of interval and freedom, and in 
 the movements of each creature, whereby it lays hold of 
 whatever supports it, the whole becomes actively one, and 
 marches forward in the realms of use, where it meets the 
 Omnipotent again. 
 
 The Doctrine of the Sacred Scripture is the doctrine of 
 the Lord, and of the manhood of God, in its middle form, 
 for the Word is the wisdom whereby both the world was 
 made and man is regenerated. It is a law of divine order, 
 that whatever is omnipresent and all prevalent, is also in 
 time centred in its own form ; for no creative attribute is 
 lost by diffusion, but reappears in fuller splendor when its 
 orb is complete. This is the order of the incarnation. 
 And so also when the Word has created all things, and 
 moved through humanity, when deep has called unto deep, 
 and speech has overflowed from human tongues, the same 
 Word takes at last a form among its creatures, and appears 
 among our words as the Book of God. Its form in this 
 case is determined by those to whom it comes. It is given 
 in the lowest speech, that it may contain all speech, and 
 be adequate to the whole purpose of redeeming mankind. 
 Such a Word is the Bible. Before the present Bible, 
 however, there existed an ancient Word, (still extant, 
 according to Swedenborg, in Great Tartary), of which the 
 Book of Jashur, the Wars of Jehovah, and the Enuncia- 
 tions formed part: this was the divine voice to an earlier 
 humanity. The Word which we now possess is written 
 in four styles. The first is by pure correspondences thrown 
 into a historical series; of this character are the first eleven 
 chapters of Genesis narrating down to the call of Abraham. 
 The second style is the historical, consisting of true his- 
 torical facts, but containing a spiritual sense. The third 
 
..D. 1763.] 
 
 THE BIBLE AND THE WORD. 
 
 139 
 
 style is the prophetical. The fourth style is that of the 
 Psalms, between the prophetical style and common speech. 
 
 It is the divine sense within the letter that constitutes 
 the holiness of the Bible: those books that are wanting in 
 this sense are not divine. The following books are the 
 present Word. “The five books of Moses, the book of 
 Joshua, the book of Judges, the two books of Samuel, 
 the two books of Kings, the Psalms of David, the Pro- 
 phets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, the Lamentations, Ezekiel, Daniel, 
 Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Ha- 
 bakkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi; and in 
 the New Testament, the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, 
 Luke, John, and the Apocalypse.” 
 
 The Word exists in the heavens equally as upon the 
 earth, hut in its spiritual and celestial senses. Its stu- 
 pendous powers and properties are there evident, examples 
 of which are given by Swedenborg. If it is read in holy 
 moods, heaven sympathizes ; the devout mind enters it as 
 a Shekinah, and is angel-haunted : when love and inno- 
 cence read it upon earth, its inward life is perused equi- 
 valently by special angels, and the letter in correspondence 
 becomes divine and holy. Especially so when little children 
 read it, and its literal sense is offered obediently to the in- 
 forming influx. In such moments the veil is rent, and a 
 marriage of heaven and earth is consummated. The per- 
 petual holiness of the Word to us, depends upon no “me- 
 chanical inspiration viewed as a book, the Bible is dead 
 like other books, but the mind that approaches it, is influ- 
 enced as it deserves, and spirit and life come down accord- 
 ingly. The afiinities that constitute presence in the other 
 life, illustrate the character of the Word. The letter is 
 truth in a fixed circumstance, answering to the Lord and 
 the whole heaven, and he who reads it aright, engenders 
 for himself divine and spiritual associations. Within it 
 
140 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 dwells the living God. The conditions of its inspiration 
 are like those of the animation of our bodies. The letter 
 as well as the body is in itself motionless and inanimate ; 
 but both have souls, and when mankind addresses the literal 
 Word, it hears and quickens from its divine life, as our 
 frames, when objects strike them, feel and act from the life 
 within. 
 
 This assertion of the Word’s divinity implies a counter 
 statement regarding the writers of the Bible. The more 
 the genius in any work, the less is the work its authors ; 
 the more the property, the less can it be owned. No man 
 ever claims his inspired moments, until afterwards, when 
 he is dis-inspired. The divinity however of a work abne- 
 gates its instruments, let them have been as busy as they 
 will : they are mere tools, chosen only to deposit the work 
 in some one place or age. The inspired penmen then are 
 simply clerks, notwithstanding that their names appear 
 upon the letter, fitting it to Jewish or Christian times. 
 The patriarchs, prophets, psalmists and evangelists are not 
 holy men ; they are not even venerable for the most part, 
 but the voice of sacred history itself generally assails them. 
 “Their names,” says Swedenborg, “ are unknown in hea- 
 ven.” There are no saints with earthly names, but only 
 sinners, scarlet more or less. God’s is all the glory, but 
 Abraham, Moses, David, or John, are plain mortals like 
 ourselves, entitled to no great consideration when their office 
 is laid aside, and their divine insignia are put off. The 
 men “after God’s own heart,” are only so for a time and 
 a mission : every one is “ a man after God’s own heart” 
 for the functions that he does best. Holiness is not in- 
 volved. The Jews, the chosen people of God, were chosen 
 because they were the worst of people, for redemption 
 begins at the bottom. In admitting therefore the divinity 
 of the Word, we rid ourselves of the Bible writers, and 
 
A.o. 1763.] 
 
 THE EPISTLES OF PAUL. 
 
 141 
 
 their idiosyncrasies ; and we know that as the fi.\ed Word 
 was produced through them, they necessarily occupy the 
 lowest stratum of human history. 
 
 W'e have not space here to mention the various modes of 
 inspiration (by voices, visions, &c.) recounted by Sweden- 
 borg from the facts of the case and the letter of the Scrip- 
 ture, and which be himself also experienced for the instruc- 
 tion’s sake : they are indeed interesting, and comport with 
 circumstances that are at this day coming to light, at the 
 same time that they contrast, toto coelo, with metaphysical 
 philosophy. We can only however notify to the reader, 
 that Swedenborg has given their theory from the experi- 
 mental or real, and biblical side, for there is much in the 
 Bible upon the subject, when it is looked for with a scien- 
 tific aim. 
 
 It may here be expedient to give Swedenborg’s dictum 
 on the Epistles, upon wliich the doctrinals of Christendom 
 are so commonly founded. 
 
 “ W’ith regard,” says he, “ to the writings of Paul and 
 the other apostles, I have not given them a place in my 
 Arcana Ccelestia, because they are dogmatic writings 
 merely, and not written in the style of the Word, as are 
 those of the prophets, of David, of the Evangelists, and 
 of the Revelation of St. John. 
 
 “ The style of the Word consists throughout in corre- 
 spondences, and thence effects an immediate communication 
 with heaven; but the style of these dogmatic writings is 
 quite different, having, indeed, communication with heaven, 
 but only mediately or indirectly. 
 
 “ The reason why the apostles wrote in this style, was, 
 that the first Christian Church was then to begin through 
 them; consequently, the same style as is used in the Word 
 would not have been proper for such doctrinal tenets, which 
 required plain and simple language, suited to the capacities 
 of all readers. 
 
142 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 “ Nevertheless, the writings of the apostles are very 
 good books for the church, inasmuch as they insist on the 
 doctrine of charity, and of faith from charity, as strongly as 
 the Lord Himself has done in the Gospels, and in the 
 Revelation of St. John, as will appear evidently to any one 
 who studies these writings with attention. 
 
 “ In the Apocalypse Revealed, No. 417, I have proved, 
 that the words of Paul, in Rom. hi. 28, are quite misun- 
 derstood, and that the doctrine of justification by faith 
 alone, which at present constitutes the theology of the 
 reformed churches, is built on an entirely false founda- 
 tion.” 
 
 We notice in the doctrine of Scripture, as throughout 
 the author’s works, a turning of the tables in the matter of 
 evidence. Instead of commencing enquiries with no beliefs, 
 he accepts the most universal creeds as the hypotheses of 
 investigation, and puts them to the fact. To commence 
 from nothing is to end in nothing, as the present biblical 
 scholars illustrate. But Swedenborg takes the divinity and 
 holiness of the Bible as his postulate, and then looks for 
 the like in the text. His method, to say the least, has 
 ended in no reductio ad absurdum, but the interpretation 
 gained has confirmed the truth of the preliminaries. No 
 writer has shewn so sublime a quality in the Bible as Swe- 
 denborg, none has added to the probability of its divine 
 origin so practical and scientific a demonstration. If wis- 
 dom and beauty shewn in nature, be God’s evidence there, 
 then by parity of reason, wisdom and goodness expounded 
 in Scripture should be the witness of his Word in the latter 
 sphere. The theorem of plenary inspiration, or the con- 
 trary, can only be settled by this procedure, which makes 
 one process for all truths; but never by what are called 
 “ evidences” proceeding from void hearts and unbelieving 
 understandings. If nature even were investigated by the 
 latter, it would never declare its author, or let its unhappy 
 
A.D. 1763.] 
 
 FAITH AND LIFE. 
 
 143 
 
 questioner escape from the labyrinth of its contradictions 
 and interpolations. 
 
 The Doctrine of Faith in Swedenborg’s writings occupies 
 a part of great simplicity. Faith, says he, is an inward 
 acknowledgment of the truth, which comes to those who 
 lead good lives from good motives. “ If ye will do the 
 works ye shall know of the doctrine.” Faith therefore is 
 the eye of charity. Spiritual clear-sightedness is its emi- 
 nent attribute. It is not the organon of mysteries, for 
 there is no belief in what we do not understand. There 
 may be suspension of the judgment, but never faith. The 
 highest angels do not know what faith is, and when they 
 hear of any one believing what he does not understand, 
 they say, “ this person is out of his senses.” With them, 
 faith is only truth. Divine and human knowledges are 
 under the same class; for both there is the base of scientific 
 proof: but with this caution, that each state apprehends 
 only its own objects, and that practical goodness is the 
 ground upon which religious truth can be properly or 
 profitably received. 
 
 The Doctrine of Life is equally simple. We are to shun, 
 as sins as against God, whatever is forbidden in the Ten 
 Commandments, and to do the duties of our callings. The 
 shunning of evils as sins is the first necessity; the doing 
 good is possible after that. Charity consists in this course, 
 and faith follows it by divine ordination. A life of this 
 kind is the only contribution that each man can make to 
 the New Jerusalem. No one however can do good which 
 is really such, from self, but all goodness is from God. 
 
 For the rest, our sage is no counsellor of asceticism; he 
 admits us to enjoy the good things of this life, in preparation 
 for those of another; he advocates no self-immolating 
 pietism, but “ a renunciation of the world during a life in 
 the world;” and as sense is an everlasting verity, he teaches 
 the expansion of the senses, under the spiritual powers. 
 
144 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 Under this head we may properly cite the “Rules of 
 Life” which he laid down for his own guidance, and which 
 are found interspersed in various parts of his Manuscripts. 
 They are the following. “ 1 . Often to read and meditate 
 on the Word of the Lord : 2 To submit everything to the 
 will of Divine Providence: 3. To observe in everything a 
 propriety of behavior, and always to keep the conscience 
 clear; 4. To discharge with fidelity the functions of his 
 employment and the duties of his office, and to render 
 himself in all things useful to society.” 
 
 In 1764 Swedenborg published at Amsterdam a con- 
 tinuation of his work on the divine attributes, under the 
 title. Angelic Wisdom concerning the Divine Providence, in 
 which he identifies Providence with the Lord’s government 
 of mankind. He states the ends which the Divine Provi- 
 dence has in view, whereof the first and last is the forma- 
 tion of an angelic heaven out of the human race. He then 
 propounds various laws of the Divine Providence which are 
 unknown in the world, and occupies a considerable part of 
 this very beautiful Treatise, with setting us right upon 
 points on which infidelity founds objections, and in short, 
 with vindicating the ways of God to man. He insists on 
 the universality of Providence, and on its presence with all 
 men alike, the wicked as well as the good, but the former 
 will not receive its blessings, and their freedom of choice is 
 respected. Hell is the false creation which they make, the 
 Lord sets their places there, and ordains them for their 
 greatest good. Upon the subject of predestination, Swe- 
 denborg maintains that all are predestined to heaven, and 
 it is their own doing if they do not arrive thither. Momen- 
 taneous salvation from immediate mercy is impossible, and 
 the belief in it, is “ the fiery flying serpent of the chureh,” 
 which raises sensual evils to a new deadliness of sting, 
 and moreover imputes damnation to the Lord. 
 
 We now turn aside for a moment from Swedenborg’s 
 
,.D. ir64.] 
 
 RULES OF LIFE. 
 
 145 
 
 published works, to his posthumous Diary, the last date 
 in which is the 3rd of December, 1/64. This daybook he 
 had began in 1747, perhaps after finishing the Adversaria 
 on Genesis and Exodus, the last date in which is February 
 9th in the latter year. We must attempt to convey to the 
 reader some notion of this extraordinary Manuscript, which 
 extends over a period of seventeen years. We have termed 
 it a Day-book, and such it veritably was in the intention of 
 the book maker, being written on those English “ oblong 
 folios” which are so common in our counting houses. In 
 these business-like volumes thought and vision are duly 
 “entered” with the greatest regularity; in the earlier part 
 of the work the date is generally subjoined to the para- 
 graphs, and here and there parts are crossed out, having 
 been faithfully “posted,” and “delivered” into the author’s 
 published books. The whole is in more than six thousand 
 paragraphs, of which the first hundred and forty-eight are 
 missing: it makes six closely printed octavos, and consi- 
 dering the difficulties of the original, to which we can bear 
 witness, it is but fair to mention the name of Tafel, its 
 editor. Professor of Philosophy and Librarian of Tubingen, 
 as an honorable specimen of even a German scholar. 
 
 Almost every reader would smile doubtfully if he perused 
 a page or two of this Diary. He would meet with conver- 
 sations with Moses and Abraham, Aristotle, Cicero and 
 Caesar Augustus, Charles the Xllth of Sweden and 
 Frederic of Prussia, the author of the whole Duty of Man, 
 and other of the deceased, and as the belief practically runs, 
 the annihilated worthies and notables of history. lie would 
 find them treated as living men and real forces. He would 
 learn of strange punishments and new criminalities; of 
 fathomless pools of evil ; of goodness detected in those that 
 history condemns, and of the mask of excellence quite 
 fallen away from some of her brightest exemplars ; of Paul 
 and David among the lost, and Mahomet a Christian con- 
 
 H 
 
146 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 vert. But let him read on, aud the laugh dies before the 
 supernaturaluess of the unbending context. Moreover amid 
 the narrative, he meets with thoughts of the newest import; 
 with lovely sentiments fragrant towards God and man; and 
 with lessons pointing life and the world towards plain goals 
 of blessedness. It will be no doubtful contest with him 
 between the sanity and the insanity of the author; strange- 
 ness will recede by degrees, over-mastered by the moral 
 element that explains the appearances into truths; and 
 whatever the verdict be, it will be granted that a profound 
 meaning lurks in even the oddest forms of this spiritual 
 common-place book. 
 
 A great part of it dwells upon unhappy themes, and 
 indeed no book more deranges one’s habits of thought than 
 this unreserved Diary. Our crotchet of the abstract 
 nobleness of spirits, receives there a rude shock. Our 
 father’s souls are no better than ourselves; no less mean 
 and DO less bodily; and their occupations are often more 
 unworthy than our own. A large part of their doings 
 reads like police reports. Even the angels are but good 
 men in a favoring sphere: we may not worship them, for 
 they do not deserve it; at best, they are of our brethren, 
 the prophets. It is very matter-of-fact. Death is no change 
 in substantials. The same problems recur after it, and 
 man is left to solve them. Nothing but goodness and 
 truth are thriving. There is no rest beyond the tomb, but 
 in the peace of God which was rest before it. This is the 
 last extension of ethics, and while it deprives the grave of 
 every vulgar terror, it lends it the terrors of this wicked 
 world, which itself is the reign and empire of the dead. 
 INIoreover while the Diary abolishes our spiritual presump- 
 tions, it justifies to nearly the whole extent the low senti- 
 mental credence on ghostly subjects, as well as the tradi- 
 tions and the fears of simple mankind. The earthly soul 
 cleaves to the ground and gravitates earthwards, dragging 
 
a.d. 1764.] 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL DIARY. 
 
 147 
 
 the chain of the impure affections contracted in the world ; 
 spirits haunt their old remembered places, attached by 
 undying ideas: hatred, revenge, pride and lust persist in 
 their cancerous spreading, and wear away the incurable 
 heart strings: infidelity denies God most in spirit and the 
 spiritual world; nay, staked on death it ignores eternity in 
 the eternal state with gnashing teeth and hideous clenches : 
 and the proof of spirit and immortal life is farther off than 
 ever. The regime of the workhouse, the hospital, and the 
 madhouse is erected into a remorseless universe, self-fitted 
 with steel fingers and awful chirurgery; and no hope lies 
 either in sorrow or poverty, but only in one divine religion, 
 which hell excludes with all its might. Human nature 
 quails before such tremendous moralities : freedom tries to 
 abjure the life that it is, and calls upon the mountains and 
 rocks to cover and to crush it. A new phase appears in the 
 final state ; the memory of the skies is lost ; baseness ac- 
 cepts its lot, and falsehood becomes self-evident : wasting 
 ensues to compressed limb and faculty, and the evil spirit 
 descends to his mineral estate, a living atom of the second 
 death. Impossibility is the stone of his heart, and crooked- 
 ness the partner of his understanding. He is still associated 
 with his like in male and female company, and he and his, 
 in the charry light of hell, which is the very falsity of evil, 
 are not unhandsome to themselves. Such is the illusive 
 varnish which in mercy drapes the bareness of the ugly 
 skeletons of devils and sataus. 
 
 We cannot dismiss the Diary without observing how true 
 Swedenborg is to himself in a record whose publication he 
 did not contemplate. His public words are at one with his 
 secret thoughts ; he is as grave in heart as in deportment. 
 To one who has perused the work, the question of sincerity 
 never more occurs: he would as soon moot the sincerity of 
 a tree. And indeed the enquiry after sincerity, in the 
 
 H 2 
 
148 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 ordinary sense, goes but a little way in the determination 
 of such a case. 
 
 Besides the Diary, Swedenborg for several years had 
 been engaged upon an extensive work on the Apocah^se, 
 which is published among his posthuma, but which he did 
 not complete. The original edition of the Apocalypse Ex- 
 plained occupies four large 4to. volumes. That he intended 
 to produce it is evident from the clearly written manuscript 
 with occasional directions to the printer, and from the first 
 volume of the copy being marked in the title-page with 
 London, 1 7.59 ; which renders it moreover probable that 
 he had begun the work after finishing the Arcana in 1756. 
 However this may be, we learn that on one occasion he 
 “ heard a voice from heaven, saying, ‘ Enter into your bed- 
 chamber, and shut the door, and apply to the work begun 
 on the Apocalypse, and finish it within two years.’ ” The 
 Apocalypse Explained is one of the finest of his works, 
 interpreting that book of the Testament down to the tenth 
 verse of the nineteenth chapter, and pregnant, if we may 
 use the expression, with a number of distinct treatises on 
 important subjects ; but it has been supposed that he thought 
 it too voluminous and elaborate. Certain it is that he aban- 
 doned the work, and set himself to produce an exposition 
 in a smaller compass, which he published under the title of 
 Apocalypse Revealed * 
 
 It does not appear whether Swedenborg revisited Sweden 
 from 1762 to 1764: he may have resided in Amsterdam 
 during the whole period, or he may have paid a visit to 
 England ; but it is probable that he returned home during 
 the latter year, for in the first half of the next year he was 
 again in Sweden. Soon, however, he set forth upon new 
 travels, and in 1765 came from Stockholm to Gottenburg, 
 
 * The Apocalypse Revealed; in which are disclosed the Arcana 
 therein foretold, and which have hithei'to remained concealed. 
 
A.D. 1764-66.] 
 
 DR. BEYER. 
 
 149 
 
 where, during a week’s stay, while waiting for a vessel to 
 England, he accidentally met Dr. Beyer, Professor of Greek 
 and Member of the Consistory of Gottenburg, who having 
 heard that he was mad, was surprized to find that he spoke 
 sensibly, without discovering any marks of his alleged 
 infirmity. Ue invited Swedenborg to dine with him the 
 day following, in company with Dr. Rosen. After dinner 
 Dr. Beyer expressed a desire to hear from him a full account 
 of his doctrines; upon which Swedenborg, animated by the 
 request, “ spoke out so clearly and wonderfully,” that both 
 the doctors were astonished. They did not interrupt him, 
 but when he had finished, Beyer requested him to meet 
 him the next day at M. Wenngren’s, and to bring with him 
 a paper containing the substance of his discourse, in order 
 that he might consider it more attentively. Swedenborg 
 complied, kept the engagement, and taking the paper out 
 of his pocket in the presence of Beyer and Wenngren, he 
 trembled and appeared much afifected, the tears flowing 
 down his cheeks; and presenting the paper to Dr. Beyer, 
 he said, “ Sir, from this time the Lord has introduced you 
 into the society of angels, and you are now surrounded by 
 them.” They were all affected. He then took his leave, 
 and the next day embarked for England. From that time 
 Dr. Beyer became a student of his doctrines, and in spite 
 of persecution, he remained stedfast to them throughout 
 his life, and busied himself upon an elaborate Index* to 
 Swedenborg’s theological writings, which was published 
 thirteen years after, just as Dr. Beyer died. 
 
 Swedenborg did not make a long stay in England, but 
 after a few weeks or mouths proceeded to Holland, spend- 
 ing the winter of 1765-66 at Amsterdam, where he pub- 
 lished the Apocalypse Revealed in the spring of the latter 
 year. This work, as was his wont, he gave away liberally 
 
 * Index initialis in Opera Swedenborgii Theologica. 4to. Ani- 
 stelodami, 1779. 
 
150 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 to the Universities and superior clergy, and to many emi- 
 nent persons, in England, Holland, Germany, France and 
 Sweden. 
 
 The Apocalypse Revealed is an interpretation of the book 
 of Revelation, on principles similar to those made use of in 
 the Arcana Ccelestia, and which we have already mentioned. 
 The spiritual sense alone furnishes the key to this often ex- 
 pounded scripture, and those who were ignorant of that 
 sense, could not unfold its true meaning. It does not fore- 
 shadow outward events either in the church or the world, 
 nor the progress of the Christian church from its begin- 
 ning ; but it records in spiritual symbols the end of that 
 church, and the establishment of its successor ; both in the 
 spiritual world. It is the book of the Last Judgment, which 
 we have described above. It commences as “ the Revelation 
 of Jesus Christ,” signifying that those who acknowledge 
 his divinity by good lives from charity and faith, are the 
 witnesses and partakers of this Apocalypse. It appeals to 
 all in the Christian church, under the sevenfold designation 
 of the churches of Asia, whose variety describes the entire 
 circuit of the life and faith of Christendom in the two 
 worlds. It then describes their exploration, by the influx 
 of divine light from the ancient heavens : first, the explo- 
 ration of the reformed church, aud lastly that of the 
 catholic: the doctrine of justification by faith being typified 
 by the dragon ; the dominion of the Romanist church, by 
 the great harlot sitting upon many waters. It proceeds to 
 narrate the divine judgment on these churches : also in the 
 nineteenth chapter, the glorification that ensued in heaven 
 when the catholic religion was removed ; and in the twen- 
 tieth, the damnation of the dragon. Then proceeds, chap, 
 xxi., xxii., the descent from heaven of the New Jerusalem, 
 with a description of its spiritual glories. 
 
 A volume, unless it were a reprint, would not give an 
 analysis of this book on the Apocalypse. When we say 
 
A.D. 1766.] THE APOCALYPSE REVEALED. 151 
 
 that the commentary takes the text word by word, and 
 translates it into spirit, we still convey but a slender idea 
 of what is done. Our own first impressions on reading the 
 work will not soon be forgotten. Following the writer 
 through the long breaths and flights of this vast empyrean, 
 we were momently in anxious fear that to sustain a context 
 of such was impossible. Each fresh chapter seemed like a 
 space that mortal wing must not attempt ; and yet the fear 
 was groundless, for our guide sailed onward with a tranquil 
 motion as if he knew the stars. History and common sense, 
 panting and gasping science, philosophy in its better part, 
 above all, the confidence in a divine support and a supernal 
 mission, appeared to be covertly and unexpectedly present, 
 to annihilate difficulties, and pave the skyey way of this 
 humble voyager. And when we had again alighted from 
 that perusal which strained every faculty to the utmost, it 
 was as though we had been there before, so entire was the 
 impression of self-evidence that was left upon the mind. 
 Genesis and the Revelation were closely at one in this mar- 
 vellous Apocalypse, thenceforth the most open of the Bible 
 pages : the two ends of the Scripture called to each other ; 
 an arch of divine light spanned the river of the Word, and 
 the original Eden blossomed anew in the midst of the street 
 of the holy city. The author the while disclaimed the au- 
 thorship, for “ what man,” says he, “can draw such things 
 from himself.” 
 
 In 1/C6, simultaneously with the Apocalypse Revealed, 
 Swedenborg republished his youthful work on a New Method 
 of Finding the Longitudes. This method, as he informed 
 the Swedish Archbishop, Menander, “ of calculating the 
 ephemerides by pairs of stars, several persons in foreign 
 countries were then employing, who had experienced great 
 advantage by the observations made according to it for a 
 series of years.” His faculty of remark, it appears, was 
 still awake to whatever he thought might be useful in the 
 
152 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 mundane sense. It is not improbable that he was solicited 
 to this reprint. 
 
 After the 15th of April he again visited England for two 
 or three months, watching the disposition of our bishops, 
 and any favouring events in the theological world. 
 
 Mr. Springer, the Swedish Consul in London, is the 
 only person who mentions any particulars of this visit. He 
 and Swedenborg had been good friends in Sweden, but 
 Springer was surprized at our author’s continued intimacy 
 with him, “as he was not a man of letters.” This, how- 
 ever, was perhaps one ground of the friendship. Swedenborg 
 desired Springer to procure him a vessel for Sweden and a 
 good captain, which he did. An agreement was made with 
 one Di.von. Swedenborg’s effects were carried on board, 
 and as his lodgings were at a distance from the port (pro- 
 bably in Cold Bath Fields), he and Springer took for that 
 night (Sept. 1, 1/66) a bed at Mr. Bergstrom’s Hotel, the 
 King’s Arms, in Wellclose Square. Swedenborg went to 
 bed. Springer and Bergstrom from an adjoining room heard 
 a remarkable noise, and could not imagine its cause. They 
 peeped through a door with a little window in it, that looked 
 into the room where he lay, and they saw him with his 
 hands raised as towards heaven, and his body appearing to 
 tremble. He spoke much for half an hour, but they could 
 not understand what he said, except only when he let his 
 hands fall down, they heard him ejaculate. My God. He 
 then remained quietly in bed. They went into the room, 
 and asked him if he was ill. He said, “No, but he had 
 had a long discourse with some of the heavenly friends, 
 and was in a great perspiration.” He got up and changed 
 his shirt, and then went to bed again, and slept till morning. 
 This anecdote, trivial as it may appear, portrays in a mea- 
 sure his physical state during one of his trances. His 
 natural voice, it seems, was stirred during a spiritual con- 
 versation. This occasionally occurs in sleep, where a lively 
 
A.D. 17C6.] 
 
 VOYAGE TO SWEDEN. 
 
 153 
 
 dream will call forth sounds and movements from the sleeper. 
 The trembling of the body is note-worthy, and is often wit- 
 nessed in the first phases of ecstase and catalepsy. As to 
 the noise that was heard, it might have been merely Swe- 
 denborg’s voice muffled by distance, or rendered imperfect 
 by his state ; or it might have proceeded from the spirits 
 who were with him ; for spirits, according to the Seeress 
 of Prevorst, and homelier authorities, can make themselves 
 audible more readily than visible, particularly if they are 
 of a heavy and worldly cast ; in which case they can even 
 move heavy bodies. These, however, that Swedenborg 
 was talking with, were heavenly spirits. 
 
 In the morning Captain Dixon came for Swedenborg, 
 and Springer took leave of him, and wished him a happy 
 voyage. Bergstrom asked him how much coffee he should 
 pack for him, as he took a certain portion of it daily. Swe- 
 denborg said that no great quantity would be needed, as 
 by God’s aid they would enter the port of Stockholm at 2 
 o’clock on that day week. It happened exactly as he fore- 
 told, as Dixon upon his return informed Springer. A vio- 
 lent gale accelerated the voyage, and the wind was favorable 
 to every turn of the vessel. Dixon told Ferelius that he 
 had never in all his -life had so prosperous a transit. 
 
 Swedenborg arrived at home on the 8th of September, 
 and for some time resided in the Sudermalm, the southern 
 suburb of Stockholm. His house was pleasantly situated, 
 neat and convenient, wdth a spacious garden, and other 
 appendages. His own room or study was small, and con- 
 tained nothing elegant. It was all that he wanted, but 
 would have satisfied few other men. He kept two servants, 
 a gardener and his wife, to whom he gave the produce of 
 his garden. In 1767, for the convenience of his numerous 
 visitors, he had a handsome summer house erected, with 
 two wings, one of which contained his library. He after- 
 wards built two other summer houses, one of them after 
 
 H 3 
 
154 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 the model of a structure that he had admired at a noble- 
 man’s seat in England. The other was square, but could 
 be turned into an octagon by folding back the doors across 
 the corners. To add to the amusement of his friends and 
 their children, he had a labyrinth constructed in a corner 
 of his garden, and a secret door, which, on being opened, 
 discovered another door with a window in it. This appeared 
 to open into a garden beyond, containing a shady green 
 arcade with a bird cage hanging under it ; but the window 
 was a mirror, and presented only a reflexion of the objects 
 around. He took great pleasure in his garden ; it was orna- 
 mented after the Dutch fashion, and cost him a considerable 
 sum annually to keep it up, but in his latter years he suf- 
 fered it to go into disorder. 
 
 Notwithstanding that he was very accessible, he took 
 precautions to stand on a fair footing with his visitors. 
 During interviews he always had one of his domestics pre- 
 sent in the room, and insisted upon the conversation being 
 carried on in Swedish. Widows went to him to enquire 
 about the state of their husbands in the other w'orld; and 
 others, who looked upon him as a soothsayer, besought him 
 with questions about property lost or stolen. When people 
 went to him for such purposes, he often refused to gratify 
 them, and earnestly advised them to abandon their quest. 
 He had perhaps learnt prudence from experience, especially 
 of the fair sex ; for he used to say in justification of his 
 caution : “Women are artful; they might pretend that I 
 have sought a near acquaintance with them ; and besides, 
 it is well known that persons turn and distort what they do 
 not understand.” 
 
 The following anecdote from his female domestic at once 
 illustrates what we have been relating, and shews the candor 
 of the man. Bishop Ilallenius, the successor of Sweden- 
 borg’s father, paying a visit to Swedenborg, the disconrse 
 began on the nature of common sermons. Swedenborg 
 
l.d. 1-66.] 
 
 HABITS AND PRECAUTIONS, 
 
 155 
 
 said to the bishop, among other things: ‘You insert things 
 that are false in yours;’ on this, the bishop told the gar- 
 dener, who was present, to retire, but Swedenborg com- 
 manded him to stay. The conversation went on, and both 
 turned over the Hebrew and Greek Bibles, to shew the 
 texts that were agreeable to their assertions : at length the 
 conversation finished, by some observations intended as re- 
 proaches to the bishop on his avarice, and various unjust 
 actions ; ‘ You have already prepared yourself a place in 
 hell,’ said Swedenborg ; ‘ but,’ added he, ‘ I predict that 
 you will some months hence be attacked with a grievous 
 illness, during which time the Lord will seek to convert 
 you. If you then open your heart to his holy inspira- 
 tions, your conversion will take place. When this happens, 
 write to me for my theological works, and I will send them 
 to you,’ In short, after some months had passed, an officer 
 of the province and hishoprick of Skara came to pay a visit 
 to Swedenborg, On being asked how the Bishop Hallenius 
 was, ‘ He has been very ill,’ replied the officer, ‘ but at 
 present he is well recovered, and has become altogether 
 another person, being now a practiser of what is good, full 
 of probity, and returns sometimes three or four fold of 
 property, for what he had before unjustly taken into his 
 possession,’ From that time the bishop became an open 
 supporter of Swedenborg’s doctrine. 
 
 The most harmless men are not on that account without 
 enemies, particularly if they add to prudence plain and 
 honest speaking, as was the case with Swedenborg ; for 
 nothing excites some persons to violence more than the 
 spectacle of that self-collectedness and self-respect which 
 they do not feel in themselves, Swedenborg underwent 
 this penalty of his character. On one occasion a young 
 man went to his house with the intention of assassinating 
 him. The gardener’s wife, observing something extraor- 
 dinary in his manner, told him that Swedenborg was out. 
 
156 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 but he would not believe it, and rushed past her towards 
 the garden. Happily a nail in the lock of the door caught 
 his cloak, and in his attempt to disengage himself, his 
 naked sword fell from under the cloak out of his hands, 
 and thus detected, he became embarrassed, and escaped 
 with all speed. He was afterwards, the story says, killed 
 in a duel. No doubt, however, this was an isolated in- 
 stance, the result of some frenzy or madness acting upon an 
 excitable brain, for we do not find that this person knew 
 anything of Swedenborg. 
 
 In the autumn of this same year he was visited by the 
 Rev. Nicholas Collin, a Swedish clergyman, who has left 
 a pleasing account of his interview with Swedenborg, who 
 “at that time,” he says, “was a great object of public at- 
 tention in the capital, and his extraordinary character was 
 a frequent topic of discussion.” The old man received the 
 youthful student very kindly (Collin was then but twenty 
 years of age), and in the course of a three hours’ conver- 
 sation, reiterated the fact of his spiritual intercourse, as 
 declared in his works. Collin requested of him as a great 
 favor, to procure him au interview with his brother, de- 
 ceased a few months previously. Swedenborg answered, 
 that God, for wise and good purposes, had separated the 
 world of spirits from ours, and that communication was 
 not granted except for cogent reasons ; whereupon Collin 
 confessed that he had no motives beyond gratifying bro- 
 therly affection, and an ardent wish to explore scenes so 
 sublime and interesting. Swedenborg told him, that “his 
 motives were good, but not sufficient; that if any important 
 spiritual or temporal concern had been involved, he would 
 have solicited permission from those angels who regulate 
 siich matters.” We cite the latter sentence to shew what 
 noble offices are assigned to finite beings. Indeed an in- 
 structive chapter might be written from Swedenborg’s life 
 and works, upon the new functions connected more or less 
 
..D. 1766-67.] 
 
 Collin’s visit. 
 
 157 
 
 with this world, — as of atteiidiug the birth of the newly 
 dead into the spiritual state, of educating departed infants 
 and simple spirits, of governing sleep and infusing dreams, 
 and indefinite other things besides, — which constitute a 
 department of the duties of the human race translated into 
 the sphere of spiritual industry. For heaven is the grand 
 workman ; the moments of the eternal sabbath are strokes 
 of deeds : and the more of these can be given to be done 
 by men and angels, the more is the creation real, because 
 cooperating with God. 
 
 In 1/67* our author was still in Stockholm, observing 
 with care the effect produced by his writings. At this time 
 he noted that his countrymen began to think more of cha- 
 rity than heretofore, and “ to be persuaded that faith and 
 charity cannot be separated.” And in reply to a question, 
 
 “ How soon the New Church is to be e.xpected ?” he wrote, 
 that “ the Lord is preparing at this time a new heaven of 
 such as believe in Him, and acknowledge Him to be the 
 true God of heaven and earth, and also look to Him in 
 their lives, by shunning evil and doing good.” “The uni- ( 
 versities of Christendom,” says he, “ are now being in- 
 structed for the first time, and from them will come minis- 
 ters ; but the new heaven has no power over the old clergy 
 who are too well skilled in the doctrine of justification by 
 faith alone.” For as he observes in another letter, “ all 
 confirmations in matters pertaining to theology, are as it 
 were glued fast into the brains, and can with difficulty be 
 removed; and while they remain, genuine truths can find 
 no place.” 
 
 * “ In his journal for 1767 there is a note in his own handwriting, 
 in which he relates that he has spoken with the celebrated musician, 
 M. Roman, on the day of the celebration of his funeral.” We copy 
 this extract from the New Jerusalem Magazine, 1790, p. 54. What 
 journal it can be that is referred to, we do not know. Jean Helmich 
 Roman was the father of Swedish music, and certainly died in 1767. 
 
158 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 It was in this year that Kant’s attention was first called 
 to the narrations which were rife about Swedenborg (see 
 above, p. 121, 122). The philosopher describes his pre- 
 vious state of mind with regard to supernatural occurrences. 
 He had made himself acquainted with a great number of 
 the most probable stories, but considered it wisest to incline 
 to the negative side, “ not that he imagined such things 
 to be impossible,” but because the instances are in general 
 not well proved. This not unreasonable scepticism he 
 brought to Swedenborg’s cases. He had received the ac- 
 count of them from a Danish officer, his former pupil, 
 who at the table of the Austrian Ambassador, Dietrichstein, 
 at Copenhagen, with several other guests, read a letter 
 just received by the host from Baron de Lutzow, the Meck- 
 lenburg Ambassador at Stockholm, in which he said that 
 he, in company with the Dutch Ambassador, was present 
 in the Queen’s palace when Swedenborg gave her the mes- 
 sage from her dead brother. This authentication surprized 
 Kant, and as he prettily says : “ Now in order not to reject 
 blindfold the prejudice against apparitions and visions by a 
 new prejudice, I found it desirable to inform myself of the 
 particulars of the transaction.” How few of the matter- 
 of-fact people “find it desirable to inform themselves!” 
 But to continue, Kant instituted searching enquiries, which 
 ended in corroborating the affair ; and Professor Schlegel 
 also added his voice, that it could by no means be doubted. 
 Kant’s Danish friend, being about to leave Copenhagen, 
 advised Kant to open a correspondence with Swedenborg 
 himself. This he did, and his letter was delivered by an 
 English merchant at Stockholm. Swedenborg received it 
 politely, and promised to reply. As no answer came, Kant 
 commissioned an English gentleman then at Konigsberg, 
 and who was going to Stockholm, to make particular en- 
 quiries respecting Swedenborg’s alleged “miraculous gift.” 
 This friend stated in his first letter to Kant, that the most 
 
..D. 1767.] 
 
 KANT AND SWEDENBORG. 
 
 159 
 
 respectable people in Stockholm attested the account of the 
 transaction alluded to. He himself, however, he confessed, 
 was still in suspense. His succeeding letters were of a 
 different purport. He had not only spoken with Sweden- 
 borg, but had visited him at his house, and was in aston- 
 ishment at his case. Swedenborg, he said, was a reason- 
 able, polite and open-hearted man. He told him unre- 
 servedly that God had accorded to him the gift of conversing 
 with departed souls at pleasure. He was reminded of 
 Kant’s letter : he said that he was aware he had received 
 it, and would already have answered it, but that he should 
 proceed to London in the month of May this year (1/68), 
 where he would publish a book in which the answer, as to 
 every point, might be met with. There is somewhat of 
 uncommon candour in Kant’s deportment throughout this 
 enquiry, the more so as the transcendental system that he 
 excogitated excludes reality with triple bars from every 
 sphere, and so aggravates what the philosophers term the 
 “subjective” portion of man’s nature, as to make all ob- 
 jects unattainable in their true selves. But Kant had genius 
 sufficient to let him out occasionally from the prison of his 
 intellectual reveries. The anecdote is due to Kant himself, 
 even more than to Swedenborg. 
 
 It is perhaps in this period of his life that we may place 
 an interview with him recorded by Atterbora, the poet, in 
 his Swedish Seers and Bards.* “A single anecdote,” says 
 
 * Svenska Siare och Skalder tecknade af P. B. A. AUerbom, 
 Fursta Helen. Upsala, 1841. In this work, which from what we 
 hear, ought to be known to the English public, Atterbom considers 
 Swedenborg chiefly from an aesthetic point of view, as a thinker on 
 the beautiful. “ Swedenborg’s visions or Memorable Relations,” 
 says he, “not unfrequently vie in beauty with their biblical prototypes, 
 and many of them, if they had been found in the works of Dante, 
 or Milton, would long since have been trumpeted forth over Europe 
 with rapturous plaudits.” The parts of the work which we have seen 
 are on Swedenborg, Ehrensvard, amd Thorild. 
 
ICO 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 Atterbom, “in relation to his spiritual intercourse, we 
 cannot refrain from introducing, especially as none of those 
 hitherto known so artlessly delineates his peculiar and un- 
 restrained mode of living, at the same time, both in the 
 natural and spiritual world. The occurrence took plaee 
 with a distinguished and learned Finlander (Porthan),* 
 who, during the whole of his life, believed rather too little 
 than too much. This learned man, when a young graduate 
 from the university, was on his travels, and came to Stock- 
 holm where Swedenborg was living. Far from being a 
 Swedeuborgian, he on the contrary regarded the renowned 
 visionary as an arch-enthusiast; still he thought it his duty 
 to visit this wonderful old man, not merely out of curiosity 
 to see him, but also from a cordial esteem for one who in 
 every other respect was a light of the North, and a pattern 
 of moral excellence. On his arrival at the house in which 
 Swedenborg resided, he was introduced into a parlor by a 
 good-humored old domestic, who went into an inner apart- 
 ment to announce the stranger, and immediately returned 
 with an apology from his master, as being at that moment 
 hindered by another visit, but which would probably not 
 be of long duration ; on whicli account the young graduate 
 was requested to be seated for a few minutes — and was left 
 in the parlor alone. As he happened to have taken his seat 
 near the door of the inner apartment, he could not avoid 
 hearing that a very lively conversation was carried on, and 
 this, during a passing up and down the room : in consequence 
 of which he alternately perceived the sound of the conver- 
 
 * “ Gabriel Henry Porthan became aftenvards Professor in Abo, 
 and has left a great name in Swedish literature, as a celebrated anti- 
 quary and humanist.’’ He died March 16, 1804, aged 65. Bishop 
 
 , Porthan’s disciple, and Atterbom’s friend, and still alive in 
 
 February, 1844, is the authority for the narration, as Professor Atter- 
 bom has himself informed us. 
 
>.D. 1767 - 68 .] 
 
 Virgil’s visit. 
 
 161 
 
 sation at a distance, and then again immediately near him- 
 self; and plainly, so that every word might be heard. He 
 observed that the conversation was conducted in Latin, and 
 that it was respecting the antiquities of Rome : a discovery, 
 after which, being himself a great Latinist, and very con- 
 versant on the subject of those antiquities, he could not 
 possibly avoid listening with the most intense attention. 
 But he was somewhat puzzled when he heard throughout 
 only one voice speaking, between pauses of longer or shorter 
 duration ; after which the voice appeared to have obtained 
 an answer, and to have found in the answer a motive for 
 fresh questions. That the hearer of the persons conversing 
 was Swedenborg himself, he took for granted, and the old 
 man was observed to be highly pleased with his guest. But 
 who the latter was, he could not discover ; but ouly that 
 the conversation was concerning the state of persons and 
 things iu Rome during the time of the emperor Augustus : 
 and particulars on these points were elicited, which he with 
 unavoidable and increasing interest endeavored to lay hold 
 of, since they were altogether new to him. But as he be- 
 came more and more absorbed in the subject itself, and was 
 endeavoring to forget the marvellous in the treatment of it, 
 the door was opened; and Swedenborg, who was recogniz- 
 able from portraits and descriptions of him, came out into 
 the parlor with a countenance beaming with joy. He greeted 
 the stranger, who had risen from his seat, with a friendly 
 nod, but merely in passing by him: for his chief attention 
 was fixed upon the person who was invisible to the stranger, 
 and whom he conducted with bows through the apartment 
 and out at the opposite door : repeating at the same time, 
 and in the most beautiful and fluent Latin, various obliga- 
 tions, and begging an early repetition of the visit. Imme- 
 diately afterwards, on entering again, he went straight up 
 to his later guest, and addressed him with a cordial squeeze 
 of the hand : ‘ Well, heartily welcome, learned Sir ! excuse 
 
162 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 me for making you wait ! I had, as you observed, a visitor.’ 
 The traveller, amazed and embarrassed : ‘ Yes, I observed 
 it.’ Swedenborg: ‘ And can you guess whom?’ ‘Impos- 
 sible.’ ‘ Only think, my dear Sir : Virgil ! And do you 
 know : he is a fine and pleasant fellow. I have always had 
 a good opinion of the man, and he deserves it. He is as 
 modest as he is witty, and most agreeably entertaining.’ 
 
 ‘ I also have always imagined him to be so.’ ‘ Right ! and 
 he is always like himself. It may, perhaps, not be un- 
 known to you, that in my first youth I occupied myself 
 much with Roman literature, and even wrote a multitude 
 of Carmina, which I had printed at Skara ?’ ‘ I know it, 
 
 and all judges highly esteem them.’ ‘I am glad of it; it 
 matters little that the contents were respecting my first 
 love. Many years, many other studies, occupations and 
 thoughts, lie between that period and the present. But 
 the so-unexpected visit of Virgil awaked up a crowd of 
 youthful recollections ; and when I found him so pleasant, 
 so communicative, I resolved to avail myself of the occasion, 
 to ask him of things concerning which no one could better 
 give information. He has also promised me to come again 
 before long. . . . But let us now talk of something else ! 
 It is so long since I have met with any one from Finland ; 
 and besides a young Academician ! Come in, and sit down 
 with me ! With what can I serve you? But first give me 
 an account of everything you can, both old and new.’ And 
 afterwards, — thus continues the witness and deponent of 
 this scene to one of his intimate friends, from whose lips 
 we received the account, — afterwards, during the whole 
 period of my intercourse with this singular old man, whom 
 I subsequently visited several times, I did not perceive the 
 least that was extraordinary, excepting only his amazing 
 learning in all the branches of human science and investi- 
 gation. He never afterwards touched upon anything super- 
 natural or visionary. So insane as he appeared to me at 
 
A. D. 1767-68.] neglected HISTORICAL SOURCES. 163 
 
 first, I nevertheless separated from him with the greatest 
 gratitude, both for his highly learned conversation, and 
 his constant and exceeding kindness both in word and deed 
 — and above all, with the greatest admiration, although 
 mingled with regret, that, on a certain point, a screw in the 
 venerable man was loose or altogether fallen away.” 
 
 Here is a royal gate into history, for the future to open. 
 If we want the biography of Virgil, let Virgil tell it ; no 
 one else can satisfy either biographer or reader. Virgil and 
 his memory are alive ; for God is not the God of the dead, 
 but the God of the living. There are no dead in the vulgar 
 sense, and there is no oblivion. There is want of spiritual 
 sympathy in us, which kills the living, and obliterates their 
 memory. The ancient men are secret, for we are estranged 
 from their love line. Antiquarianism cannot dig them up, 
 because they are not underground. But likeness of mind 
 is an exorcism that they cannot refuse, and which properly 
 applied, will refresh their oldest memories, and make them 
 confidential. The highest who has left the earth, has its 
 dear images with him, albeit quiescent for the most part, 
 but may be led down, when the Lord pleases, by the stairs 
 of the unforgettable past, and visit our abodes. It is only 
 to open his mind world-wards, and straight he can com- 
 mune with an earthly seer — if he can fiud one. The love 
 we bear to human story, the insatiable curiosity towards 
 early times, the very madness of antiquarianism, demand 
 this authentication, which, it is plain, would be simply 
 satisfying and nothing more. It is then extraordinary that 
 it is not common. 
 
 The exact month of Swedenborg’s next foreign travel 
 is uncertain, but just before he undertook it, his friend 
 Robsahm met him in his carriage riding out of Stockholm, 
 and asked him how he could venture upon so long a journey, 
 being eighty years old? and whether they would ever meet 
 again ? Have no anxiety on that subject, said he, for if 
 
164 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 you live we shall meet again here, as I have yet another 
 journey like this before me. We also have it recorded that 
 his repeated voyages to and fro had become a matter of 
 notoriety at Elsinore, where he frequently visited the 
 Swedish consul, M. Raiding ; and it was during the transit 
 we are referring to that he made the acquaintance of General 
 Tuxen at the Consul’s table. The General questioned him 
 upon the report of the Queen of Sweden’s affair, and re- 
 ceived an account of it from his own lips. He also asked 
 him how a man might be certain whether he was on the 
 road to salvation, or not. Swedenborg told him that this 
 was easy ; that he need only examine himself by the ten 
 commandments ; as for instance, whether he loves and fears 
 God ; whether he is rejoiced at the welfare of others, and 
 does not envy them; whether he puts aside anger and 
 revenge for injuries, because vengeance belongs to God : 
 and so on. If he can answer this examination in the af- 
 firmative, he is on the road to heaven ; if his heart is the 
 other way, then he is on the road to hell. This led Tuxen 
 to think of himself, as well as others, and he asked Swe- 
 denborg whether he had seen King Frederick V. of Denmark, 
 deceased in 1/66, adding that though some human frailty 
 attached to him, yet he had certain hopes that he was 
 happy. Swedenborg said, “ Yes, I have seen him, and he 
 is well off, and not only he, but all the kings of the house 
 of Oldenburg, who are all associated together. This is not 
 the happy case with our Swedish kings.” Swedenborg 
 then told him that he had seen no one so splendidly minis- 
 tered to in the world of spirits as the Empress Elizabeth of 
 Russia, who died in 1762. As Tuxen expressed astonish- 
 ment at this, Swedenborg continued : “ I can also tell you 
 the reason, which few would surmise. With all her faults 
 she had a good heart, and a certain consideration in her 
 negligence. This induced her to put off signing many 
 papers that were from time to time presented to her, and 
 
..D. 1767-68.] 
 
 GENERAL TVXEN. 
 
 165 
 
 which at last so accumulated, that she could not examine 
 them, but was obliged to sign as many as possible upon 
 the representation of her ministers ; after which she would 
 retire to her closet, fall on her knees, and beg God’s for- 
 giveness, if she, against her will, had signed anything that 
 was wrong.” When this conversation was ended, Sweden- 
 borg went on board his vessel, leaving a firm friend and 
 future disciple in General Tuxen. 
 
 It is probable that Swedenborg went from Stoekholm to 
 London in the middle of the year, according to what he 
 signified to Kant’s friend. However on November 8, 1/68, 
 we again meet him at Amsterdam, whither he had gone to 
 print another important work. The Delights of Wisdotn 
 concerning Conjugal Love, and the Pleasures of Insanity 
 concerning Scortatory Love. This book he published with 
 his name, as written by Emanuel Swedenborg, a Swede. 
 
 In every new view of mankind, and in each fresh system 
 of doctrines which professes to apply itself to the wants of 
 an age, the subjeet of marriage can hardly fail to have an 
 important place ; in many systems indeed, it furnishes the 
 erperimentum crucis, and at once decides their pretensions. 
 It now devolves upon us to say a few words upon this topic, 
 in its connexion with Swedenborg’s doctrines. 
 
 The author affirms, upon a union of experimental with 
 rational evidence, that sex is a permanent fact in human 
 nature, — that men are men, and women, women, in the 
 highest heaven as here upon earth: that it is the soul which 
 is male or female, and that sex is thence derived into the 
 mortal body and the natural world ; therefore that the dif- 
 ference of sexes is brighter and more exquisite in proportion 
 as the person is high, and the sphere is pure. The dis- 
 tinction not only reaches to the individual, but it is atomi- 
 cally minute besides ; every thought, affection and sense of 
 a male is male, and of a female is feminine. The smallest 
 drop of intellect or will is inconvertible between the sexes ; 
 
1(56 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 if man’s, it can never become woman’s ; or vice versa. The 
 sexual distinction is founded upon the two radical attributes 
 of God, — upon his divine love, and his divine wisdom ; 
 whereof the former is feminine, and the latter masculine. 
 The union of these in Him is the divine marriage ; and 
 the creation proceeds distinctly from them, and images, or 
 aspires to, a marriage in every part. The lightning fiats 
 twine and kiss ere ever they separate. The world would be, 
 and the church is, an everlasting wedlock. Therefore there 
 are marriages in heaven, and heaven itself is a marriage. 
 The text that “ in heaven they neither marry, nor are given 
 in marriage,” is to be understood in a spiritual sense. It 
 signifies that the marriage of the soul with its Lord, or 
 what is the same thing, the entrance of man into the 
 church, which is the bride of the Lamb, must be elFected 
 in this world, or it cannot have place afterwards. It also 
 signifies, that angels, whether men or women, already 
 have the marriage principle in them as a ground of their 
 angelship, or they could not acquire it after death : hence 
 they are virtually married, and do not marry, nor are given 
 in marriage. It is as though it had been said, that no one 
 goes to heaven, but those who already are in heaven ; or 
 have heaven in them, and are heaven. But this Scripture 
 by no means excludes the blessed from that conjugal union 
 which is their summary bliss, and which is the foregone 
 conclusion of their admission to eternal life. The text, 
 however, does exclude sensual and natural views of mar- 
 riage, and so is suitable in its form to the Jewish mind 
 and the corporeal nature, which otherwise would have con- 
 ceived only carnally of a celestial bond. 
 
 We must guard, however, against supposing that the 
 spiritual is not real and bodily ; for everything inward has 
 its last resort in substantive organization. The bodies of 
 angels are as our’s in every part, but more expressive, 
 plastic, and perfect. Their conjugal union, which is true 
 
A.D. 17G8.] SEX AND MAURIAGE IN HEAVEN. 
 
 1G7 
 
 chastity and playful innocence, is bodily like our own ; nay, 
 far more intimate : its delights, immeasurably more blessed 
 and perceptible that on earth, commence in the spirit, and 
 are of the spirit even in the body : its powers, springing 
 from a divine fountain, are marred by no languor, but spire 
 in an unconsuming flame of perennial virility. This world, 
 however, and not the other, is the theatre of prolification ; 
 the fi.xed soil of nature alone produces new beings; whence 
 angelic marriages do not engender natural but spiritual 
 births, which are the various endowments of love and 
 wisdom ; wherefore, by this offspring or fw-spring, the 
 partners breed in themselves human fulness, which consists 
 in desiring to grow wise on the man’s part, and in loving 
 whatever belongs to wisdom on the wife’s. Thus conjugal 
 love is a means of their eternal progression, by which 
 they become younger and younger, more and more deeply 
 the sons and daughters of the Almighty, and are born again 
 from state to state as happier children in the cycle of 
 wedded satisfactions. 
 
 To conjugal love our author assigns the highest position 
 in the soul : in its descent it is the gate by which the 
 human race enters into existence ; in its ascent and upper 
 faculty it is the door through which the Lord enters into 
 the mind. It is the appointed source of all creatures, from 
 which beneath springs generation, and regeneration comes 
 through it from above. The purity of the source deter- 
 mines the world’s condition at any given period, influencing 
 posterities organically, and the mind and will in their finest 
 springs. Nay, upon this depends the spiritual world itself; 
 for earthly marriage is the seminary of heaven, as adultery 
 is the seminary of hell. Children born of parents imbued 
 with truly conjugal love, derive from those parents the 
 conjugal principle of goodness and truth, which gives them 
 an inclination and faculty, if sons, to perceive whatever 
 
168 
 
 LIFK OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 ' appertains to wisdom, and if daughters, to love the things 
 that wisdom teaches. 
 
 It is plain that of an affection so exalted there are few 
 patterns to be found on earth, and that even where it 
 dwells, it may not be manifest; and for this reason our 
 author was obliged to describe it from experience in heaven, 
 where it reigns in open day as a fundamental love. Fact 
 alone supplies description, and the facts of conjugal union 
 were not given on this globe in that age ; it was then needful 
 to explore the heavens, in which that ancient love is stored. 
 For this purpose, as the ages are differenced by this very 
 affection, he prayed to the Lord to be allowed to visit them, 
 and travelled in spirit with an angel guide to the golden, 
 silver, copper, iron, and still later periods ; that is to say, 
 to the men and women who are still in those states. And 
 everywhere he learnt from the best and the eldest the tale 
 of their faithful loves ; or, as in the lower ages, observed 
 that the decadence of their state was in proportion to their 
 w^ant of fealty to the primeval bond. He learnt that the 
 marriage of one man with one vvife is the law of heavenly 
 union, corresponding to the unity of God, to the single- 
 heartedness of man, to the marriage of the good with the 
 true, and of the Lord with the church. Polygamy, how- 
 ever, and varying unions, were the sign and the cause of 
 a broken religion, and the avenues of sensuality towards 
 hell. He brought back to this earth the documents of the 
 other life on this point, the Reports of the great epochs, 
 and these are given in his memorable relations, a series of 
 narratives between the ethical chapters, which complete 
 by experience the field which is given through doctrine 
 in the latter. 
 
 Never was monogamy so rescued from the baser justifica- 
 tions of worldly prudence, and placed so merely on the 
 pedestal of religion and divine necessity, as in Swedenborg’s 
 
A. D. 1768 ] MARRIAGE FROM THE BEGINNING. 169 
 
 system : with him it is the ideal of union, and everything 
 in the sexual commerce is tried and judged by its ten- 
 dency or approximation to indissoluble marriage. Well 
 may the state be guarded, which is to be eternal : well 
 may the force be subject to heavenly rules, whose effects 
 extend through all generations in the lines of time, and 
 upward through the hierarchies of that past, which is but 
 the depth and height of the present. 
 
 Such, at least, is the consequence of the creed, that 
 sexual distinctions are eternal, and monogamy their divine 
 end: it evidently confers the heart of spirituality upon 
 the marriage-tie, and tends to maintain it for both divine 
 and human reasons. Nor are the celestial reports devoid 
 of interest in the matter ; for were it not for them, the 
 sanctity of marriage would fail of present experience, and 
 come in time into the hands of the philosophers, who keep 
 no account of their receipts. 
 
 In the latter part of the work the author treats of the 
 misfortunes and abuses of the sexual relation ; of its pre- 
 sent state in the world ; of its substitutes in cases where 
 marriage cannot be contracted ; and of other kindred sub- 
 jects. He also depicts the nature of adultery from his 
 experience of hell. With regard to most of these topics, 
 we must refer the reader to the book itself, but we may 
 observe that it is said that fornication is light in propor- 
 tion as marriage is contemplated, and that “pellicacy,” 
 or the keeping to one mistress, is preferable to vague 
 amours ; that it is allowable in certain circumstances to 
 certain temperaments ; always provided that the mind in- 
 tends marriage when events allow. With regard to divorce, 
 it is not allowable save only for adultery ; but as to separa- 
 tion a mensa et toro, there are many “ legitimate, just 
 and conscientious causes” of it, all of which are also per- 
 missions of concubinage, practised under rules, and en- 
 tirely separated both as to time and place from the conjugal 
 
170 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 relation ; but such provisional intercourse must on no 
 account coexist with marriage connexions. 
 
 How far the latter permissions, recognized as rules of 
 conduct, are compatible with our social state and present 
 manners, we leave to others to determine ; as also whether 
 such practices, already common, would be shorn of their 
 defilement, and converted into ways to marriage, by the 
 application of conscientious rules. The question is engaging 
 attention enough in many countries. Swedenborg has only 
 discussed it on the spiritual side ; he has not shewn it to 
 be feasible in the State ; and as to further questions in- 
 volved, such as the rights of illegitimate offspring, the 
 degrees of legitimacy, &c., &c., he has left them out, and 
 indeed, as we apprehend, they must be treated from a 
 different ground, before the permissions above given can 
 safely come into the laws. Until then, an unhappy con- 
 science from lese Societe must attend them, even though 
 they be dictated by the spiritual man. 
 
 Our course as a faithful biographer has enjoined upon 
 us this subject, never a pleasing one to the reader ; but 
 facts so broadly written in the title page of an important 
 work, cannot be omitted from an account of it ; and no 
 estimate of Swedenborg as a moralist would be even toler- 
 ably complete, if his views on such a point were not in- 
 cluded. Moreover the age demands the discussion of the 
 question. 
 
 We cannot quit the Conjugal Love without noticing to 
 the reader the author’s penetration upon a subject where 
 a studious old bachelor might be expected to have no expe- 
 rience. It is an instance of the sympathy of genius, which 
 can place itself in the position of its object, and look out- 
 ward from the hearts of alien things. Thus it was that 
 Swedenborg analysed the male and the female soul, and 
 their faculties of conjunctivity ; thus that he dived into the 
 recesses of wedded life, and laid down a science and a series 
 
l.d. 17G8.] 
 
 THE MAURIAGE SCIENCES. 
 
 171 
 
 of its agreements and disagreements; that he examined 
 its love, its friendship, and its favor, at the different periods 
 of life ; that he described to the life, but in formal pro- 
 positions, the jealousies of the state, “its burning fire 
 against those that infest wedded love, and its horrid fear 
 for the loss of that love;” and finally thus that he depicted 
 the love of children, the spiritual offspring of conjugal 
 love, in its successive derivations ; and childless himself, 
 appreciated the circulation of innocence and peace, that 
 the hearts of the young establish in the home. Much, 
 however, that he has said belongs to his peculiar seership : 
 much of the psychology is of more than earthly fineness ; 
 the distinctions are those of spiritual light, and the delicacy 
 of the affections is that of spiritual heat; which is not sur- 
 prizing, for the wives of heaven had been communicative 
 to our author. 
 
 We shall here give a “memorable relation” from the 
 work, which will at once serve as a specimen of these nar- 
 ratives, and illustrate and conclude the subject of which 
 we have been speaking. 
 
 “ While I was in meditation,” says Swedenborg, “ con- 
 cerning the secrets of conjugal love stored up with wives, 
 there* again appeared the golden shower described above ; 
 and I recollect that it fell over a hall in the east where 
 there lived three conjugal loves, that is, three married 
 pairs, who loved each other tenderly. On seeing it, as if 
 invited by the sweetness of meditation on that love, I 
 hastened towards it, and as I approached, the shower from 
 golden became purple, afterwards scarlet, and when I came 
 near, it was sparkling like dew. I knocked at the door, 
 and when it was opened, I said to the attendant, ‘Tell 
 
 * In this relation Swedenborg refers to others that had gone before, 
 and which the reader may consult. We advise him particularly to 
 peruse the beautiful spu-itual narratives which are interspersed through 
 this work. They distance the poets /aciVt passu. 
 
 I 2 
 
172 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 the husbands, that the person who before came with an 
 angel, is come again, and begs the favor of being admitted 
 into their company.’ Presently the attendant returned 
 with a message of assent from the husbands, and I en- 
 tered. The three husbands with their wives were together 
 in an open gallery, aud as I paid my respects to them 
 they returned the compliment. I then asked the wives. 
 Whether the white dove in the window afterwards appeared ? 
 They said, ‘Yes; aud to-day also, and it likewise e.v 
 panded its wings ; from which we concluded that you W'ere 
 near at hand, and were desirous of having one other 
 secret discovered to you concerning conjugal love.’ I 
 inquired, ‘ Why do you say one secret, when I am 
 come hither to learn several V They replied, ‘ They are 
 secrets, and some of them transcend your wisdom to such 
 a degree, that the understanding of your thought cannot 
 comprehend them. You glory over us on account of your 
 wisdom ; but we do not glory over you on account of ours ; 
 and yet ours is eminently distinguished above yours, be- 
 cause it enters your inclinations and affections, and sees, 
 perceives, and is sensible of them. You know nothing at 
 all of the inclinations and affections of your own love ; and 
 yet these are the principles from and according to which, 
 your understanding thinks, consequently from and according 
 to which, you are wise; and yet wives are so well ac- 
 quainted with those principles in their husbands, that they 
 see them in their faces, and hear them from the tone of 
 their voices in discourse, yea, they feel them on their 
 breasts, their arms, and their cheeks : but we, from the 
 zeal of our love for your happiness, and at the same time 
 for our own, pretend not to know them, and yet we govern 
 them so prudently, that wherever the fancy, good pleasure 
 and will of our husbands leads, we follow by permitting 
 and suffering ; only bending the direction thereof when it 
 is possible, but in no case forcing it.’ I asked, ‘ Whence 
 
..D. 1768.] 
 
 THE WIVES OF HEAVEN. 
 
 173 
 
 have you this wisdom?’ They replied, ‘It is implanted 
 in us from creation, and consequently from birth. Our 
 husbands compare it to instinct ; but we say that it is of 
 the divine providence, in order that the men may be ren- 
 dered happy by their wives. We have heard from our 
 husbands, that the Lord wills that the male man should 
 act from a free principle according to reason; and that 
 on this account the Lord himself governs from within 
 his free principle, so far as respects the inclinations and 
 affections, and governs it from without by means of his 
 wife; and that thus he forms a man with his wife into 
 an angel of heaven ; and moreover love changes its essence, 
 and does not become conjugal love, if it be compelled. 
 But we w'ill be more explicit on this subject ; we are moved 
 thereto, that is, to prudence in governing the inclinations 
 and affections of our husbands, so that they may seem to 
 themselves to act from a free principle according to their 
 reason, from this motive, because we are delighted with 
 the love of them ; and we love nothing more than that 
 they should be delighted with our delights, which, in case 
 of their being lightly esteemed by our husbands, become 
 insipid also to us.’ Having spoken these words, one of 
 the wives entered her bed-chamber, and on her return said, 
 ‘ My dove still flutters its wings, which is a sign that we 
 may communicate further secrets :’ and they said, ‘ We 
 have observed various changes of the inclinations and 
 affections of the men ; as that they grow cold towards 
 their wives, while the husbands entertain vain thoughts 
 against the Lord and the church ; that they grow cold 
 while they are conceited of their own intelligence; that 
 they grow cold while they look at the wives of others from 
 a principle of concupiscence ; that they grow cold while 
 their love is adverted to by their wives ; not to mention 
 other occasions ; and that the degrees of their coldness are 
 various ; this we discover from a drawing back of the sense 
 
1/4 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 from their eyes, ears, and bodies, on the presence of our 
 senses. From these few observations you may see, that 
 we know better than the men, whether it be well or ill 
 with them ; if they are cold towards their wives, it is ill 
 with them, butyf they are warm towards their wives, it 
 is well with them ; wherefore the wives are continually 
 devising means whereby the men may become warm and 
 not cold towards them ; and these means they devise with 
 a sagacity inscrutable to the men.’ As they said this, the 
 dove was heard to make a sort of moaning; and imme- 
 diately the wives said, ‘This is a token to us, that we 
 have a wish to communicate greater secrets, but that it is 
 not allowable : probably you will reveal to the men what 
 you have heard.’ I replied, ‘ I intend to do so : what harm 
 can come of it?’ Hereupon the wives discoursed among 
 themselves on the subject, and then said, ‘ Reveal it if you 
 please. We are well aware of the power of persuasion 
 which wives possess. They will say to their husbands. 
 The man is not in earnest ; he tells idle tales ; he is but 
 joking from appearances, and from strange fancies usual 
 with men. Do not believe him, but believe us : we know 
 that ye are loves, and that we are obedienees. Therefore 
 reveal it if you please ; but still the husbands will place 
 no dependence on w'hat comes from your lips, but on what 
 comes from the lips of their wives which they kiss.’ ” 
 Swedenborg remained in Amsterdam during the winter 
 of 1768-69, and early in the spring of the latter year pub- 
 lished his Brief Exposition of the Doctrine of the New 
 Church, “ in which work,” as he says, “ are fully shewn 
 the errors of the existing doctrines of justification by faith 
 alone, and of the imputation of the righteousness or merits 
 of Jesus Christ,” which doctrines, he expected, might 
 probably be extirpated by this book. He circulated it 
 freely throughout Holland and Germany ; but, on second 
 thoughts, sent only one copy to Sweden, to Dr. Beyer, re- 
 
ekebom’s attack. 
 
 175 
 
 questing him to keep it to himself. For “ true divinity in 
 Sweden was in a wintry state ; and in general, towards the 
 North Pole there is a greater length of spiritual night than 
 in the southern parts ; and those who stand in that dark- 
 ness may be supposed to kick and stumble more than 
 others against everything in the New Church which is the 
 produce of an unprejudiced reason and understanding; 
 yet we are to admit some exceptions to this observation in 
 the ecclesiastical order.” 
 
 Swedenborg’s anticipations with regard to his native 
 country were not falsihed by the event, for already on the 
 22nd of March, 1769, Dr. Ekebom, dean of the theological 
 faculty of Gottenburg, had delivered to the Consistory there 
 a deposition of objections against Swedenborg’s theological 
 writings, laden with untruth, and full of personal reproaches. 
 The dean branded his doctrine “ as in the highest degree 
 heretical, and on points the most tender to every Christian, 
 Socinian;” yet stated further, that he did “not know As- 
 sessor Swedenborg’s religious system, and should take no 
 pains to come at the knowledge of it.” As for Swedenborg’s 
 chief works, he “ did not possess them, and had neither 
 read nor seen them.” “ Is not this,” says Swedenborg in 
 reply, “ to be blind in the forehead, and to have eyes be- 
 hind, and even those covered with a Elm ? To see and 
 decide upon writings in such a manner, can any secular or 
 ecclesiastical judge regard otherwise than as criminal ?” 
 For the rest our author’s reply consisted in a citation of 
 some of the leading doctrines in his works, those particu- 
 larly on the divine trinity, the holiness of Scripture, the 
 unity of charity and faith, and the direction of faith to- 
 wards one person, namely, our Saviour Jesus Christ ; and 
 he denied that his doctrine was heretical according to judg- 
 ments pronounced by the chief ecclesiastical bodies in 
 Sweden. The tenor of Scripture, the Apostolic Creed, 
 and whatever was not self-contradictory in the orthodoxy 
 
LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 of the churches, he claimed to have upon his own side. 
 He requested of Dr. Beyer that his reply might be com- 
 municated to the bishop and the Consistory, and intended 
 afterwards to publish both sides, and possibly to found an 
 action at law upon the proceedings, unless the dean should 
 retract his scandal. 
 
 At the end of May or the beginning of June, Swedenborg 
 left Amsterdam en route for Paris, “ with a design,” as he 
 said, “ which beforehand must not be made public.” It 
 appears from this that he anticipated some difficulty with 
 regard to the object of his mission. This was no other 
 than the publication of another little work, viz., the Inter- 
 course between the Soul and the Body, which he designed 
 to give to the world in the French capital. He had spoken 
 well in his theological works of “the noble French nation,” 
 had taken care to communicate his works to' public bodies 
 and select individuals in France, where also they had been 
 in considerable request, and now he desired to issue some- 
 thing from the French press. It is probable that had his 
 present plan succeeded, he intended also to publish in Paris 
 that great summary of his doctrines which he was then 
 about to write, and which was his last performance. 
 
 Arrived in Paris he submitted his tract to M. Chevreuil, 
 Censor Royal and Doctor of the Sorbonne, who after having 
 read it, informed him that a tacit permission to publish 
 would be granted him, on condition, “ as was customary 
 in such cases,” that the title should say, “ printed at 
 London,” or “ at Amsterdam.” Swedenborg would not 
 consent to this, and the work therefore was not printed at 
 Paris. Hereupon a calumnious letter was circulated in 
 Gottenburg, which alleged that he had been ordered to 
 quit Paris, which he denied as “ a direct falsehood,” and 
 appealed for the truth of the case to M. Creutz, the Swedish 
 ambassador to France. 
 
 Rumor has been busy with him upon this journey. The 
 
A.D. 1769 .] 
 
 PARIS AND LONDON. 
 
 177 
 
 French Biogruphie Universelle connects him with an artist 
 named Elie, who it is alleged supplied him with money, 
 and furthered his presumed designs. Indeed he has been 
 accused of a league with the illuminh, and with a certain 
 politico-theological freemasonry, centuries old but always 
 invisible, which was to overturn society, and foster revolu- 
 tions all over the world. We can only say, that our re- 
 searches have not elicited these particulars, and that every 
 authentic document shews that Swedenborg stood always 
 upon his own basis, accepted money from no one, and was 
 just what he appeared — a theological missionary, and no- 
 thing more. Still as there is generally a grain of truth in 
 even the most preposterous lies, we shall be glad to look 
 out in this direction for biographical materials. Whatever 
 else they be, they shall at least be welcome. 
 
 In the autumn of this year (1769), Swedenborg had left 
 Paris, and was in London, where he published his little 
 brochure on The Intercourse between the Soul and the Body. 
 It was during this sojourn of two or three months that the 
 most intimate of his English friends. Dr. Hartley, Rector 
 of Winwick, in Northamptonshire, drew from him a short 
 account of himself, as a means of refuting any calumnies 
 that might be promulgated after his departure. Dr. Hartley 
 had thought that Swedenborg was hardly safe in his own 
 country, and that possibly he was pressed for money. In 
 the course of this mild and modest document, Swedenborg 
 set him right on these topics. “ I live,” says he, “ on 
 terms of familiarity and fftendship with all the bishops of 
 my country, who are ten in number ; as also with the six- 
 teen senators, and the rest of the nobility ; for they know 
 that I am in fellowship with angels. The king and queen 
 also, and the three princes their sons, shew me much favor : 
 I was once invited by the king and queen to dine at their 
 table — an honor which is in general granted only to the 
 nobility of the highest rank ; and likewise, since, with the 
 
 1 3 
 
178 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 hereditary prince. They all Vish for my return home : 
 so far am I from being in any danger of persecution in my 
 own country, as you seem to apprehend, and so kindly 
 wish to provide against ; and should anything of the kind 
 befal me elsewhere, it cannot hurt me. ... I am a Fellow, 
 by invitation, of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Stock- 
 holm, but I never sought admission into any other literary 
 society, as I belong to an angelic society, wherein things 
 relating to heaven and the soul are the only subjects of 
 discourse and entertainment, whereas the things that occupy 
 the attention of our literary societies are such as relate to 
 the world and the body. ... As to this world’s wealth, I 
 have what is sufficient, and more I neither seek nor wish 
 for.” 
 
 We presume that Swedenborg lodged with Shearsmith 
 in Cold Bath Fields during this short sojourn in London. 
 
 On his departure from England, he had requested his 
 friend. Dr. Messiter, to transmit certain of his works to 
 the Divinity Professors of the Universities of Edinburgh, 
 Glasgow, and Aberdeen, and the letters which passed upon 
 this occasion furnish a testimony to his personal character 
 from one who knew him well. Dr. Hartley, Dr. Messiter 
 (M.D.), and Dr. Hampb, who was preceptor to George I., 
 were his chief English friends. 
 
 In September he quitted London, and returned to Stock- 
 holm, arriving in the latter capital at the beginning of 
 October. On his arrival he was kindly received by all 
 classes of people, and at once incited by their royal high- 
 nesses the hereditary prince and his sister, with both of 
 whom he conversed. He also dined with several of the 
 senators, and talked with the first members of the Diet, 
 and with the bishops there present, who all behaved very 
 kindly to him, excepting his nephew. Bishop Filenius. 
 A storm, however, had been brewing during his absence, 
 and he now had to meet it. Dr. Hartley’s fears were jus- 
 
A. D. 1769 .] CATHOLIC AND PROTESTANT. 179 
 
 tified by the facts, though not by the ultimate event. But 
 before we turn to this new page of his life, we must give 
 some account of the works that he had just published 
 abroad. 
 
 The Brief Exposition is the forerunner of the True 
 Christian BeUgion, to be noticed presently. It is a criti- 
 cism on the doctrines of the Catholic and Protestant 
 churches, from the point of view of the New' Church. 
 The author premises a statement of the doctrinal views of 
 the three churches, for the sake of comparison between 
 them. The Catholic doctrinal s are excerpted from the re- 
 cords of the Council of Trent ; the Protestant, from the 
 Formula Concordice composed by persons attached to the 
 Augsburg Confession. These churches indeed dissent upon 
 various points, but are agreed as to the fundamentals, of a 
 trinity of persons, of original sin, of the imputation of 
 Christ’s merits, and of justification by faith alone. Re- 
 specting the latter tenet, however, the Catholics conjoin 
 the faith with charity or good works, while the leading 
 Reformers, in order to effect a full severance from the Romish 
 communion as to the very essentials of the church which 
 are faith and charity, separated between the two. Never- 
 theless the Reformers adjoin good works, and even conjoin 
 them, to their faith, but in man as a passive subject, 
 whereas the Roman Catholics conjoin them in man as an 
 active subject. The whole system of theology in Christen- 
 dom is founded upon an idea of three Gods, arising from 
 the doctrine of a trinity of persons, and falls when that 
 doctrine is rejected, after which saving faith is possible. 
 The faith of the present day has separated religion from 
 the church, since religion consists in the acknowledgment 
 of one God, and in the worship of Him from faith grounded 
 in charity. The doctrine of the present church is inter- 
 woven with paradoxes, to be embraced by faith ; hence its 
 tenets gain admission into the memory only, and into no 
 
180 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 part of the understanding above the memory, but merely 
 into confirmations below it. They cannot be learnt, or 
 retained, without difficulty, nor be preached or taught 
 without using great care to conceal their nakedness, because 
 sound reason neither discerns nor perceives them. They 
 ascribe to God human properties in the worst sense of the 
 term. The heresies of all ages have sprung from the doc- 
 trine founded on the idea of three Gods. This has deso- 
 lated the church, and brought it to its consummation. 
 The Catholic laity, however, have for the most part ceased 
 to know anything of the essential doctrinals of their church, 
 these being lost for them in the numerous formalities of 
 that religion, and hence, if they recede in part from their 
 outward forms, and approach God the Saviour immediately, 
 taking the Sacrament in both kinds, they may be brought 
 into the New Church more easily than the Reformed com- 
 munities. 
 
 These are a few of the propositions of this little treatise, 
 which for its destructive logic, is unequalled among Swe- 
 denborg’s works. If rational assault could have carried 
 the outworks of the existing creeds, this work would have 
 had the effect; and Swedenborg would have been justified 
 in his hope, that the errors of the churches might be “ ex- 
 tirpated” by a book. But an error whose first condition 
 lies in the prostration of the understanding, is good, so 
 far, against rational attacks. Dialectics make no impression 
 on whoever believes that man is a spiritual fool, doomed 
 by his constitution to believe in nonsense and absurdity ; 
 that is to say, in what would he such if he dared to judge 
 it by his reason. This fortress, viz., the denial of the 
 mind itself by both churches, is therefore yet unstormed 
 by our author’s artillery ; and it is evident that more real 
 and terrible means must gather to battle around it, before 
 it will capitulate. At the same time, the longer it holds 
 out, the more is the laity separated from the clergy ; the 
 
A. D. 1769.] CHURCHES REASON-PROOF. 18* 
 
 more the sciences and positive knowledge claim the earth 
 to its very walls ; the more the clerical garrison is starved 
 in the sight of the abundance of natural truth; and in the 
 end, the more likely it is that some convulsion, either 
 mental or worldly, will sweep away the strong offence, 
 and substitute a people’s church upon its desert site. 
 
 Swedenborg describes experimentally the future lot of 
 those who maintain “ the faith of the dragon,” which 
 is “ signified by the pit of the abyss, because,” as he says, 
 “ a description from ocular demonstration may be relied 
 on.” We insert his graphic account. 
 
 “ ‘ That pit, which is like the mouth of a furnace, ap- 
 pears in the southern quarter ; and the abyss beneath it is 
 of great extent towards the east ; they have light even 
 there, but if light from heaven be let in, there is immediate 
 darkness ; wherefore the pit is closed at the top. There 
 appear in the abyss huts constructed of brick, which are 
 divided into distinct cells, in each of which is a table, 
 whereon lie papers, with some books. There sits at his 
 own table, every one who in this world had confirmed justi- 
 fication and salvation by faith alone, making charity a 
 merely natural and moral act, and the works thereof only 
 works of civil life whereby men may reap advantage in the 
 world, but if done for the sake of salvation, they condemn 
 them, and some even rigorously, because human reason 
 and will are in them. All who are in this abyss, have been 
 scholars and learned men in the world ; and among them 
 are some metaphysicians and scholastic divines, who are 
 there esteemed above the rest. But their lot is as follows : 
 when first they come thither, they take their seats in the 
 first cells, but as they confirm faith by excluding the works 
 of charity, they leave the first seats, and enter into cells 
 nearer the east, and thus successively till they come to- 
 wards the end, where those are who confirm these tenets 
 from the Word ; and because they then cannot but falsify 
 
182 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 the Word, their huts vanish, and they find themselves in 
 a desert. There is also an abyss beneath that abyss, where 
 those are who in like manner have confirmed justification 
 and salvation by faith alone, but who in their spirits have 
 denied the existence of a God, and in their hearts have 
 made a jest of the holy things of the church ; there they 
 do nothing but quarrel, tear their garments, get upon the 
 tables, stamp with their feet, and assail each other with 
 reproaches ; and because it is not permitted them to hurt 
 any one, they use threatening words and shake their fists 
 at each other.’ 
 
 “ That I might also be assured and convinced, that 
 they who have confirmed themselves in the present justi- 
 fying faith, are meant by the dragon, it was given me to 
 see many thousands of them assembled together, and they 
 then appeared at a distance like a dragon with a long tail, 
 whieh seemed beset with spikes like thorns, which signified 
 falsities.” 
 
 The Intercourse between the Soul and the Body is a work 
 in which the author brings his spiritual sight to bear upon 
 the solution of that old problem. In this world, the soul 
 is unseen, excepting through the body ; and though con- 
 sciousness affirms its existence, yet philosophy giv^s it no 
 qualities that warrant us to say what it is. In short, phi- 
 losophy crushes the question, and insists that there is no 
 what in the case. The consequence is, that we too often 
 regard the soul as a floating and indeterminate entity of no 
 weight to counterbalance the world and the senses. This 
 gives rise to the doctrine of Physieal Influx, which means 
 in brief the omnipotence of outward objects and of sense, 
 in controlling and filling the inward faculties, and even 
 according to many in creating them. The contrary view is 
 that of spiritual influx, in which the soul, whatever it be, 
 is seated upon the throne of the human powers, takes from 
 the senses whatever it wills, and acts according to circum- 
 
A.D. 1769 .] 
 
 CREED-MAKING IN THE PIT. 
 
 183 
 
 stances from its own wisdom. There is a third system, 
 that of Leibnitz, named 'preestablished harmony, wherein 
 neither sonl nor body acts upon the other, but each concurs 
 with the other, and does what the other does ; much as 
 two men might move their arms or legs to time under some 
 ordering common to both. The theory of spiritual influx 
 is that which Swedenborg adopts ; and which he fills with 
 his experience. 
 
 The problem of this link had dwelt with his understand- 
 ing from his earlier days, and he had given a keen refuta- 
 tion of Leibnitz when writing his anatomical works ; for 
 he saw that that great genius was not solving the question 
 by his hypothesis, but only rendering it insuperable, by- 
 propounding as a solution a statement still more knotty ; 
 since his preestablished harmony required in point of fact 
 a second soul to move two bodies instead of one. For the 
 drill effecting the harmony of course proceeded from some 
 word of command ; in short, from a more inscrutable soul. 
 Preestablished harmony was therefore to Swedenborg but 
 another name for methodical darkness, which terminated 
 the thought that it professed to extend. 
 
 Now here we see the value of spiritual sight on a difficult 
 point. While the soul was unknown, its manner of com- 
 munication with the body was necessarily occnlt, but when 
 it was actually seen as the man himself, with all his looks, 
 members and garments about him, then the matter took a 
 practical form, and he, the sonl, was united to the body, 
 because he wanted it to supply his sensations from, and do 
 his work in, the world. The error lay in thinking of the 
 soul as not a body, and not a man ; the power of the truth 
 in looking from humanity as the way of answering the 
 question. The soul, in this new view, is the complete 
 mau ; the body is his fit natural garment. The latter he 
 pnts on, by a divine necessity, to clothe the spiritual es- 
 sence from the rudeness of this world, and to enable him 
 
184 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 to work amid its inclemencies, and to gather its fruits of 
 wisdom, for a convenient season. In this case there are 
 all the common motives for the union of the soul-man with 
 the body-man, that there are for our union with our clothes, 
 with our houses, and with every circumstance that we draw 
 around us to extend our lives and build up our state. This 
 once seen, analogy points out a thousand links between 
 the spiritual and the natural man, every one of which is 
 practical, and of daily force. 
 
 We may illustrate this by man and his ostensible con- 
 nexions with this world. Now man we see, and the manner 
 in which he lays hold upon his objects, which is chiefly 
 typified by his actual handling of certain things. But 
 suppose for a moment that we were some other being, and 
 that man was invisible to us, and that still the objects were 
 moved from place to place with an apparent design. In 
 this case we should have the type of what the motions and 
 actions of the body are to an abstract philosopher. It 
 would be a kind of ghostly and fearful galvanism, and the 
 existence of something to be called man, though what 
 could never be known, would be the last induction of philo- 
 sophy, from the strange events which were taking place 
 around. Place the seer there, however, — the person who 
 can see the powerful and actual man who is creating them, 
 and sight itself, without a strained faculty, will account 
 for the whole connexion of events. We see them produced, 
 and we see the agent. Such is the native and substantial 
 function of eyes, whether those of the spirit or the body, 
 exerted in their proper sphere. The man who can see the 
 soul, has done with its philosophy. 
 
 The spiritual world is united to the natural by answerable 
 links to the above. So long as the spiritual is kept by the 
 philosophers, and consists of intuition and mathematical 
 point, we may well wonder if it is united with nature ; for 
 what love can consist between the starry firmament on the 
 
A.D. 1769.] 
 
 MAN AND HIS BODY HOUSE. 
 
 185 
 
 one hand and blank being on the other 1 there is freezing 
 indifference on either side, and of course no union. The 
 addition of an abstract idea to the world, is the world un- 
 altered, though a little blurred ; the sinking of the world 
 in the idea, is on the other hand idealism or destruction of 
 thought. There is every reason for “ civil war between the 
 soul and the body,” and discord between the two worlds, 
 under circumstances in which one party to the agreement 
 is essentially unknown. But, thanks be to God, spiritual 
 sight has again saved us here. 
 
 As the soul is the essential human body, so is the spi- 
 ritual world the essential outward world. It is a living 
 world, because it is a continuation of life ; it consists in 
 its extense of the inferior members of a vast humanity 
 which is alive. This makes it living. But there is all in 
 it that exists in nature, and in the same forms ; only all 
 moves instead of stands. The spiritual sun, which is pure 
 love, is at one with the natural sim, which is pure fire, 
 because fire is dead love, and does love’s same work in the 
 dead world. There must be passive as well as active, or 
 action would be dissipated. There must be a world of 
 passives as well as a world of actives, or spirit would be 
 uncontained. That which is a law in one sphere, is itself 
 a sphere in some purer plan. 
 
 This existence of chains of mutual creations, each cor- 
 responding with each, because each in its own place is 
 each, is the condition by which the Word pervades the 
 world which it first created. It is no impulse that carries 
 the divine unity through the worlds, but the still small 
 voice of God above and between all things. Each superior 
 thing is a revelation and a man to the inferior ; the lower 
 hearkens to the higher, and assumes the image and like- 
 ness of its state. Reception and obedience are the passive 
 gifts of God to all the kingdoms, and the informing Word 
 directs their changes from age to age. Speech or command, 
 
186 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 as we said before (p. 45), is an archetype of communica- 
 tion ; it is audible correspondence ; and worlds are but an 
 assembly swayed hither and thither by its ancient songs 
 and prophet voices. 
 
 The intercourse of soul with body, and of spirit with 
 nature, lies then in the similarity of each with each : it 
 depends upon a scale of divine wants, by which spirit must 
 come down into nature, and soul into body, for the purpose 
 of carrying life throughout the possible forms of the crea- 
 tion. It is the easiest of things as well as doctrines; be- 
 cause for its existence in those unopposing depths where 
 union lives, only harmony is wanted, and for its explana- 
 tion, the demonstration of the harmony. 
 
 While speaking of influx, we may mention the doctrine 
 of spheres, which are those effluences or radiations that 
 created subjects put forth upon other things about them. 
 Nothing in the worlds is naked, or shorn to its outline, but 
 it has a peculiar space around it, an estate which it culti- 
 vates, and in which it oscillates and exists. This space is 
 filled with its emanations, which are always in the image 
 and likeness of the being that inhabits and sheds them. 
 The planet has its sphere in tl^e air, the clouds, the aromas 
 of the vegetable world, the breaths and transpirations of 
 the animal, and a thousand subtle influences from the 
 mineral. If our senses were grosser than they are, we 
 should miss out all these, and the earth would be sphere- 
 less. We do omit them all from the lesser cases, and hence 
 man, the most ubiquitous of presences, is shut up, as we 
 suppose, within the cordon of his skin. The truth, how- 
 ever, is otherwise ; for creation is throughout dynamical. 
 An appropriate Word goes forth incessantly from all things 
 to all things. Each creature has its sphere, because each 
 reflects the Creator, whose immediate sphere is the spiritual 
 sun, and his ultimate sphere the universe itself in its roundest 
 wisdom. Especially is man ensphered, and uses his rays 
 
A.D. 1769 .] the roundness of all things. 
 
 187 
 
 for influence and communication, printing off" editions of 
 himself upon the volume of the world. This is palpable 
 to every sense in the spiritual kingdoms. Swedenborg, 
 as a scientific man, had already seen the law of spheres 
 afar oflF in the doctrine of modifications (p. 45 above). 
 But when he visited the inner world, the matter came under 
 conditions suited to experimental science. He now touched 
 the reality of spheres. The scents, colors and forces en- 
 vironing humanity struck his opened senses, and he was 
 amazed at their tidal power. As every spirit belongs to 
 some province of the Grand Man, his presence excites 
 correspondently that part of the human body to which he 
 answers. When a liver spirit approached to Swedenborg, 
 he felt the influx, sometimes before the spirit came in view, 
 in his own hepatic region, and he knew the quality of the 
 spirit from his operant sphere. When one of the eye men 
 or of the heart men came near him, his own eyes or heart, 
 sympathetically affected, told him at once whither the new 
 comer belonged. When evil spirits sought him, the mala- 
 dies or pains to which they answered were excited for the 
 time in his system ; he knew therefore that spiritually these 
 messengers were even such diseases. Hypocrites gave him 
 a pain in the teeth, because hypocrisy is spiritual toothache. 
 Moreover each spirit appeared in the plane of the part 
 whereto he corresponded ; for the cosmogony of the spi- 
 ritual world is human, and hence the human body is the 
 pivot round which it plays. Nay, the body has its human 
 form from the circumpressure of the human spiritual world, 
 which, so to speak, deposits and maintains it, much as each 
 cell of the material body is laid and preserved by the plan 
 and pressure of the whole. 
 
 We have mentioned already that in this year (1769) 
 Swedenborg had found, on his return to Sweden, that his 
 peaceful life was to be interrupted by misrepresentation 
 and persecution. It is surpriziug that he had proceeded 
 
188 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 SO long in promulgating doctrines condemnatory of the 
 Lutheran creed, without drawing down upon himself the 
 vengeance of the clergy. Ilis works, however, were written 
 in Latin, and but little known in Sweden, which made it, 
 for a time, not worth while to notice them. But when 
 eminent persons, like Drs. Beyer and Rosen, as well as 
 others enjoying still higher dignity in the church, became 
 avowed disciples and propagators of their sentiments, the 
 matter became serious ; and the clergy, ever sensitive of 
 innovation, determined to crush the new doctrine in the 
 bud. Dean Ekebom at Gottenburg was the originator of 
 the movement. The clerical deputies from that town were 
 instructed to complain of Swedenborg and Dr. Beyer in the 
 Diet. The tactics of his adversaries were sufficiently cun- 
 ning ; he was to be put upon his trial, and examined ; and as, 
 when questioned, there was no doubt that he would assert 
 openly his divine commission and spiritual privileges, it 
 would then be easy to declare him insane, and consign him 
 to a madhouse. One of the senators, (it is said Count 
 llopken,) disclosed to him by letter this plot, and advised 
 him to quit the country. On receiving the information, 
 he was greatly affected, and retiring to his garden, fell 
 upon his knees, and prayed that the Lord would direct 
 him what to do. A response was immediately received 
 from an angel, that “ he might rest securely upon his arm in 
 the night, whereby is meant that night in which the world 
 is sunk in matters pertaining to the church.” Assured by 
 this comforting message, Swedenborg, who was not allowed 
 to be present at the debates on his cause, and knew no- 
 thing of the details of what happened, enjoyed the calm in 
 his chamber, and let the storm rage without as much as it 
 pleased. Clamor, indeed, he knew that there was among 
 a great part of the clerical body ; but “ clamor,” as he 
 wrote to Dr. Beyer, “does no harm, being like the ferment 
 in new wine, which precedes its purification ; for unless 
 
BISHOP FILENIUS. 
 
 189 
 
 what is wrong be winnowed, and rejected, the right cannot 
 be discerned or received.” For this reason (Dec. 29, 1/69) 
 he “ did not stir one step to defend his cause, knowing 
 that the Lord Himself, our Saviour, defends his church.” 
 It was finally concluded at the Diet and in the Council, 
 not to touch his person ; a resolution owing in great part 
 to the rank and character of the accused, and to his rela- 
 tionship to many noble families, both in and out of the 
 church. 
 
 But we must return to the beginning of this affair, to 
 give the details. The party in Gottenburg, headed by 
 Dean Ekebom, found a ready instrument at Stockholm in 
 Bishop Filenius, then president of the House of Clergy, 
 for carrying their complaint directly before the Diet. The 
 first obnoxious measure taken was the stoppage of a number 
 of copies of Swedenborg’s work on Conjugal Love at Nork- 
 joping, whither he had sent them from England, in an- 
 ticipation of his own arrival, intending, when he came to 
 Sweden, to make presents of them, as was his wont. They 
 were however detained for examination, according to a law 
 prohibiting the introduction of books reputed contrarj' to 
 the Lutheran faith. Swedenborg naturally turned to his 
 nephew. Bishop Filenius, requiring an explanation of the 
 affair, and requested the Bishop’s friendly offices to have 
 the box cleared. Filenius embraced and kissed him, and 
 cordially promised his assistance ; notwithstanding which 
 he did everything in his power to ensure the confiscation 
 of the books. When this became apparent, Swedenborg 
 expostulated with him, and he now insisted on the work 
 being revised, before it was given up. It was urged by 
 the author, that as his treatise was “ not theological, but 
 chiefly moral,” its revisal by clerical order was unnecessary, 
 and would be absurd ; and that the exercise of such a cen- 
 sorship would pave the way for a dark age in Sweden. 
 Filenius was inflexible, and his intentions manifest. Swe- 
 
190 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 deaborg, deeply aggrieved by the duplicity of the Bishop 
 his relation, likened him to Judas Iscariot, and said 
 pointedly, in allusion to the foregoing circumstances, that 
 “ he who spoke lies, lied also in his life.” In the mean- 
 time he took good care to distribute the work to those he 
 intended to receive it, bishops, senators, and members of 
 the royal family, from a number of copies that he had 
 himself brought home. 
 
 He was now determined to clear the matter up, and 
 made enquiries among others of the bishops, as to how 
 the case stood with his writings. They all told him that 
 they supposed the books had merely been taken care of 
 until his return ; that they knew nothing of any other de- 
 tention; that if such there were, Filenius had acted on 
 his own authority. He had indeed made a representation 
 on the subject in the Diet, but the clerical house had not 
 received his motion, had not even registered it among their 
 proceedings, and above all, had sanctioned no confiscation. 
 
 The proceedings in the Diet, as he afterwards learnt, 
 had been somewhat as follows. The Bishop Filenius, who 
 attacked Swedenborg “in the first instance from a secret 
 dislike, but afterwards out of inveteracy,” had gained over 
 some members of the clerical order to his own views. He 
 procured the appointment of a committee of the House 
 of Clergy on the Swedenborgian cause. Its deliberations 
 were kept secret. But though it consisted of bishops and 
 professors, this committee, after hearing evidence, ignored 
 the charges of Filenius, and terminated with a report in 
 Swedenborg's favor ; in the course of which they took 
 occasion to speak of him “very handsomely and reason- 
 ably.” Filenius, however, gained one point ; viz., that a 
 memorial should be presented to the King in Council, re- 
 questing the attention of the Chancellor of Justice to the 
 troubles at Gottenburg. This was intended to procure a 
 censure upon Drs. Beyer and Rosen, and indirectly upon 
 
A.D. 1769-70.] PERSECUTION AND DEFENCE. 
 
 191 
 
 Swedenborg also. In consequence, a letter was addressed 
 by the Chancellor to the Consistory, to desire its opinion 
 upon the affair ; which occasioned the subject to be again 
 agitated for two days in the Council, where the king pre- 
 sided. 
 
 When matters came to this pass, Swedenborg at once. 
 May 10, 1770, addressed his majesty in a bold and cha- 
 racteristic memorial. He complained that he had met 
 with usage the like of whieh had been offered to none since 
 the establishment of Christianity in Sweden, and much 
 less since there had existed liberty of conscience. He 
 recapitulated his grievances. He said that he had been 
 attacked, calumniated and menaced, without the oppor- 
 tunity of defending himself ; though truth itself had an- 
 swered for him. He reminded his majesty of an interview 
 that had passed between them. “ I have already informed 
 your majesty,” says he, “ and beseech you to recall it to 
 mind, that the Lord our Saviour manifested himself to me 
 in a sensible personal appearance ; that he has commanded 
 me to write what has been already done, and what I have 
 still to do ; that he was afterwards graciously pleased to 
 endow me with the privilege of conversing with angels and 
 spirits, and of being in fellowship with them. I have already 
 declared this more than once to your majesty in the pre- 
 sence of all the royal family, when they were graciously 
 pleased to invite me to their table with five senators, and 
 several other persons ; this was the only subject discoursed 
 of during the repast. Of this I also spoke afterwards to 
 several other senators ; and more openly to their excellen- 
 cies Count de Tessin, Count Bonde, and Count Hbpken, 
 who are still alive, and were satisfied with the truth of it. 
 I have declared the same in England, Holland, Germany, 
 Denmark, and at Paris, to kings, princes, and other par- 
 ticular persons, as well as to those in this kingdom. If the 
 common report is to be believed, the chancellor has declared. 
 
192 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 that what I have been reciting are untruths, although the 
 very truth. To say that they cannot believe and give 
 credit to such things, therein will I excuse them, for it is 
 not in my power to place others in the same state in which 
 God has placed me, so as to be able to convince them, by 
 their own eyes and ears, of the trnth of those deeds and 
 things I publicly have made known. I have no ability to 
 capacitate them to converse with angels and spirits, neither 
 to work miracles to dispose or force their understandings 
 to comprehend what I say. When my writings are read 
 with attention and cool reflection (in which many things 
 are to be met with heretofore unknown), it is easy enough 
 to conclude, that I could not come to such knowledge but 
 by a real vision, and by conversing with those who are in 
 the spiritual world. . . . This knowledge is given to me 
 from our Saviour, not for any private merit of mine, 
 but for the great concern of all Christians’ salvation and 
 happiness ; and as such, how can any one venture to assert 
 that it is false ? That these things may appear such as 
 many have had no conception of, and of consequence, that 
 they cannot easily credit, has nothing remarkable in it, for 
 scarcely anything is known respecting them.” 
 
 He concluded by throwing himself upon the king’s pro- 
 tection, and by requesting the monarch to command for him- 
 self the opinion of the reverend clergy on his case ; also 
 the production of the various documents that had passed 
 at Gottenburg and elsewhere; in order that he, and those 
 maligned along with him, might be heard in their defence, 
 this being their right and privilege. The only advice, he 
 ])rotested, that he had given to Drs. Beyer and Rosen, 
 was to address themselves to our Lord and Saviour, Jesus 
 Christ, as a means to heavenly good and blessedness, 
 for he only has all power in heaven and on earth, (Matt, 
 xxviii., 18.) 
 
 The latter point was in truth the core of the controversy 
 
A.D. 1770 .] 
 
 LETTER TO THE KING. 
 
 193 
 
 that was raging about hinij and was one which his writings 
 are calculated to provoke wherever they are disseminated. 
 Is prayer to be addressed to the Father, or to the Re- 
 deemer? to the invisible Being, or to God with us? to the 
 revealed Divine Face and Body, or to the unrevealed Divine 
 Soul? Have worship and prayer a definite object or not? 
 Swedenborg ably cited on his own side the text of scrip- 
 ture, the Augsburg Confession, the Formula Concordiae, 
 and the Liturgies of his own Communion; and shewed 
 that wherever the church had departed from vagueness and 
 mystery, its practices were accordant with his views. To 
 the Son of God, born in time, every son of time must 
 address himself, in order to find salvation. Were this 
 doctrine taken away, he averred that he would rather live 
 in Tartary than in Christendom. Did the persecution 
 against him succeed, it might amount to a prohibition from 
 the clergy against their flocks addressing prayer to the 
 personal Saviour: a dangerous issue which probably his 
 opponents foresaw, and were not prepared to accept. It 
 does not appear that throughout the dispute, his visions 
 were brought upon the carpet, otherwise than as furnishing 
 the general charge of unsounduess of mind, which, as we 
 have seen, certain members of the House of Clergy medi- 
 tated, but did not venture to bring forward. 
 
 King Adolphus Frederick had in the meantime already 
 commanded the members of the Consistory of Gottenburg 
 to send in an unequivocal representation of the light in 
 which the assessor’s principles were regarded by the Con- 
 sistory. On the 2nd of January, 1770, Dr. Beyer, as 
 one of the members, volunteered a declaration on the sub- 
 ject, in which he gave a manly testimony in favor of Swe- 
 denborg and his doctrines, citing his own experience about 
 them, and his views of their moral and spiritual tendency. 
 
 “ Convinced by e.xperience,” says he, “ I must in the first 
 place observe, that no man is competent to give a just and 
 
 K 
 
194 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 suitable judgment of those writings, who has not read 
 them, or who has read them only superficially, or with a 
 determination in his heart to reject them, after having 
 perused, without examination, some detached parts only : 
 neither is he competent who rejects them as soon as he 
 finds anything that militates against those doctrines which 
 he has long cherished and acknowledged as true, and of 
 which perhaps he is but too blindly enamored : nor is he 
 competent, who is an ardent, yet undiscriminating biblical 
 scholar, that, in explaining the meaning of the Scriptures, 
 confines his ideas to the literal expression or signification 
 only : and, lastly, neither is he competent, who has alto- 
 gether devoted himself to sensual indulgences, and the 
 love of the world.” He concluded his memorial as follows : 
 “In obedience, therefore, to your majesty’s most gracious 
 command, that I should deliver a full and positive ‘ decla- 
 ration’ respecting the writings of Swedenborg, I do ac- 
 knowledge it to be my duty to declare, in all humble con- 
 fidence, that as far as I have proceeded in the study of 
 them, and agreeably to the gift granted to me for investi- 
 gation and judgment, I have found in them nothing but 
 what closely coincides with the words of the Lord Himself, 
 and that they shine with a light truly divine.” 
 
 The Consistory, as a body, came to no report upon 
 Swedenborg’s writings; and a short time before he left 
 Sweden on his last voyage, being in the king’s company, 
 the latter said to him : “ The Consistory has been silent 
 on my letters and your works,” and putting his hand on 
 Swedenborg’s shoulder, he added: “We may conclude 
 that they have found nothing reprehensible in them, and 
 that you have written in conformity to the truth.” 
 
 Throughout this affair, his adversaries attempted in vain 
 to ruffle his calmness, by personal invective. He answered 
 them with honest vigor, but always from the facts of the 
 case. Against “ the indecent barkings of the Dean,” he 
 
A.D. 1770.] 
 
 FAVORABLE ISSUE. 
 
 195 
 
 told Dr. Beyer, in a private letter, “ they must not throw 
 stones to drive them away.” And he wrote to Mr. Wenn- 
 gren, a magistrate of Gottenburg, that as for certain 
 “ merciless slanderers” in the clerical party, their expres- 
 sions “had fallen on the ground like fire-balls from the 
 clouds, and had there gone out.” In the meantime Swe- 
 denborg persevered in his own course, with an elficacious 
 industry which neither this turmoil, nor his advanced 
 years, abated for a moment. 
 
 Here onr narrative of the afFair ceases. Swedenborg, 
 before his last departure from Sweden, addressed a letter 
 to the Universities of Upsal, Lund and Abo, asserting that 
 each of the estates of the kingdom ought to have its con- 
 sistory, and ought not to acknowledge the exclusive autho- 
 rity of that at Gottenburg. He declared (in another place) 
 that religious matters belong to others also besides the 
 priestly order. It appears that, notwithstanding the ter- 
 mination of the controversy in his favor, his adversaries 
 had succeeded in enforcing a strict prohibition against the 
 importation of his writings into Sweden, as he found out 
 the next year (1771). In consequence of this it was his 
 intention to send in a formal complaint to the States-General 
 against the Counsellor of State, the presumed instrument 
 of the prohibition ; but whether he fulfilled this purpose, 
 we do not know.* 
 
 At this period of his life Swedenborg made a last offering 
 to his old associates of the Royal Academy of Sciences of 
 Stockholm. This was couched in a letter, in which, after 
 explaining some of the correspondences of the Scripture, 
 he ended as follows : “ Inasmuch as the science of corre- 
 spondences was the science of sciences and the wisdom of 
 the ancients, it is important that some member of your 
 
 * The reader of Swedish will find additional particulars respecting 
 this affair in a History of the New Church in Sweden published at 
 Lund in 1847. (Nya Kirkan, forsta hiiftet.) 
 
 K 2 
 
196 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 Academy should direct his attention to that science. He 
 may begin, if he pleases, with the correspondences disco- 
 vered in the Apocalypse Revealed, and proved from the 
 Word. If it be desired, I am willing to unfold and publish 
 the Egyptian hieroglyphics, which are nothing else than 
 correspondences ; a task that no other person can accom- 
 plish.” How fixedly Swedenborg must have dwelt in the 
 inward, to imagine that the Royal Academy would under- 
 take such an enquiry, or that a purely spiritual explanation 
 of the hieroglyphics would satisfy the men of that age ! 
 So far as hieroglyphical interpretation has gone, the sense 
 elicited is anything but spiritual; and the less spiritual, the 
 more acceptable to the scientific man. Nevertheless the 
 existing interpretations do not exclude a deeper significance 
 lying at the roots of the symbols; an interpretation of them 
 not as parts of language, but as cyphers of nature. But 
 the time has not yet arrived for such an enquiry. One 
 cannot help recalling what Swedenborg said to Hartley, 
 that he sought admission into no literary society, because 
 he belonged to an angelic society, wherein things relating 
 to heaven and the soul were the only subjects of entertain- 
 ment. The Royal Academy of Stockholm was not an 
 angelic society. Whether this communication was pre- 
 sented to the Academy, and if so, how it was received, 
 we are not aware: Swedenborg also sent it to Dr. Hartley, 
 with a request that his circle of friends would investigate 
 the subject. It has since been published as an appendix 
 to the White Horse. 
 
 From the beginning of October, 1769, until August, 
 1770, he resided at his house in the environs of Stockholm. 
 On the 23rd of July, in the latter year, on the eve of de- 
 parting for Amsterdam, he took his leave by letter of Dr. 
 Beyer, “hoping that our Saviour would support him in 
 good health, keep him from further violence, and bless his 
 thoughts.” On the day that he quitted Stockholm, he 
 
A.D. 1770 .] 
 
 HE PASSES FROM SWEDEN. 
 
 19; 
 
 called upon M. Robsahm in the Bank of Sweden, of which 
 that gentleman was a director, and lodged in his hands a 
 protest against any judicial examination of his writings 
 during his absence. M. Robsahm asked him, as before 
 the other journey, whether they would ever meet again ? 
 He answered in a gentle and affectionate manner, “Whether 
 I shall return, I do not know, but of this you may be 
 certain, for the Lord has informed me of it, that I shall 
 not die until the book that I have just finished is printed. 
 Should we not see each other again in this world, we shall 
 meet in the presence of the Lord if we have kept his com- 
 mandments.” “He then,” says Robsahm, “took leave 
 of me in as lively and cheerful a way as if he had been a 
 man of middle age.” And so he passed from his father- 
 land. 
 
 On the voyage to Amsterdam, the ship that carried him 
 was detained for several days by contrary winds off Elsinore, 
 and General Tuxen, hearing that Swedenborg was in the 
 offing, determined to improve their acquaintance, and taking 
 a boat, went off to see him. He was introduced by the 
 Captain, who opened the cabin door, and shutting it after 
 him, left him alone with Swedenborg. The Assessor was 
 seated in an undress, his elbows on the table, and his hands 
 supporting his face, which was turned towards the door ; 
 his eyes open, and much elevated. The General at once 
 addressed him. At this he recovered himself, (for he had 
 been in a trance or ecstacy, as his posture shewed,) rose 
 with some confusion, advanced a few steps from the table 
 in visible uncertainty, and bid him welcome, asking from 
 whence he came. Tuxen replied that he had come with 
 an invitation from his wife and himself, to request him to 
 favor them with his company at their house ; to which he 
 immediately consented, and dressed himself alertly. The 
 General’s wife, who was indisposed, received him in the 
 house, and requested his excuse if in any respect she should 
 
198 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 fall short of her wishes to entertain him ; adding that for 
 30 years she had been afflicted with a painful disease. He 
 politely kissed her hand, and answered, “ Oh ! dear, of 
 this we will not speak ; only acquiesce in the will of God, 
 it will pass away, and you will return to the same health 
 and beauty as when you were fifteen years old.” The lady 
 made some reply, to which he rejoined, “ Yes, in a few 
 weeks.” From which they concluded him to mean, that 
 diseases which have their foundation in the mind, and are 
 supported by the infirmities of the body, do not disappear 
 immediately after death. 
 
 We have hitherto had little opportunity of being intro- 
 duced to Swedenborg in private life ; we have seen him at 
 the mines, at his offlce, at his desk, and in the Diet ; let 
 us now spend a portion of an evening with him at General 
 Tuxen’s. Even if it illustrates no doctrine, yet it is always 
 coveted to enjoy the familiar presence of extraordinary per- 
 sons, and to find that their habiliments and corporeal mould 
 are like our own. The brotherliness of mankind is gratified 
 by these near occasions, even as more sublime but not 
 dearer emotions, by the aspect of genius on its public days. 
 
 “ Being then together,” says General Tuxen, “ in com- 
 pany with my wife, my now deceased daughter, and three 
 or four young ladies, my relations, he entertained them 
 very politely and with much attention on indifferent sub- 
 jects, on favorite dogs and cats that were in the room, 
 which caressed him and jumped on his knee, shewing their 
 little tricks. During these trifling discourses, mixed with 
 singular questions, to all of which he obligingly answered, 
 whether they concerned this or the other world, I took occa- 
 sion to say, that I was sorry I had no better company 
 to amuse him than a sickly wife and her young girls : 
 he replied, ‘ And is not this very good company ? I was 
 always very partial to the ladies’ society.’ . . . After some 
 little pause he cast his eyes on a harpsichord, and asked 
 
A.D. 1770.] an evening at Copenhagen. 199 
 
 whether we were lovers of music, and who played upon it. 
 I told him, we were all lovers of it, and that my wife in 
 her youth had practised, as she had a fine voice, perhaps 
 better than any in Denmark, as several persons of distinc- 
 tion, who had heard the best singers in France, England, 
 and Italy, had assured her ; and that my daughter also 
 played with pretty good taste. On this Swedenborg desired 
 her to play. She then performed a difficult and celebrated 
 sonata, to which he beat the measure with his foot on the 
 sofa on which he sat ; and when finished, he said, ‘ bravo ! 
 very fine.’ She then played another by Ruttini; and when 
 she had played a few minutes, he said, ‘ this is by an Italian, 
 but the first was not.’ This finished, he said, ‘bravo! you 
 play very well. Do you not also sing?’ She answered, ‘ I 
 sing, but have not a very good voice, though fond of singing, 
 and would sing if my mother would accompany me.’ He 
 requested my wife to join, to which she assented, and they 
 sang a few Italian duettos, and some French airs, each in 
 their respective taste, to which he beat time, and afterwards 
 paid many compliments to my wife, on account of her taste 
 and fine voice, which she had preserved notwithstanding 
 so long an illness. I took the liberty of saying to him, 
 that since in his writings he always declared, that at all 
 times there were good and evil spirits of the other world 
 present with every man ; might I then make bold to ask, 
 whether now, while my wife and daughter were singing, 
 there had been any from the other world present with us ? 
 To this he answered, ‘ Yes, certainly ;’ and on my enquiring 
 who they were, and whether I had known them, he said, 
 that it was the Danish royal family, and he mentioned 
 Christian VI., Sophia Magdalena, and Frederick V., who 
 through his eyes and ears had seen and heard it. I do not 
 positively recollect whether he also mentioned the late be- 
 loved Queen Louisa among them. After this he retired.” 
 During this visit to General Tuxen, in the course of other 
 
200 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 conversation, Tuxen produced the autobiographical letter 
 that Swedenborg had written to Hartley (above, p. 177), 
 and which begins, “ I was born . . in the year 1 689.” 
 Swedenborg told him that he was not born in that year, as 
 mentioned, but in the preceding. Tuxen asked him whether 
 this was an error of the press, but he said. No ; and added. 
 You may remember in reading my writings to have seen it 
 stated in many parts, that every cypher or number has in 
 the spiritual sense a certain correspondence or signification. 
 “ Now,” said he, “ when I put the true year in that letter, 
 an angel present told me to write the year 1769, as much 
 more suitable to myself thau the other ; ‘ and you observe,’ 
 answered the angel, ‘ that with us time and space are 
 nothing.’ ” 
 
 We have here a reason for that modification of events ac- 
 cording to a context, of which the Gospel histories, so often 
 discrepant from each other, furnish numerous instances. 
 Thus five baskets full in the one evangelist are twelve in 
 another ; not to mention other cases about which unsuc- 
 cessful harmonists of the letter have written at large. 
 Manifestly it is the plan of the context which regards the 
 events from its own point of view, and paints the narrative 
 in its ow n colors. It is what all historians do in a lesser 
 way, bending the history to ideas, or shaping it with an 
 artistic force. Taking a certain larger block of time as a 
 j)eriod of birth, it is hieroglyphically truthful to play down 
 upon any date contained in the block, according to the sub- 
 ject and the signification. There are many kinds of truth 
 besides black and white ; and generally, figurative truths 
 require latitude of phrase. At the same time it must be 
 confessed, that one would like to know when tlie writing 
 is pure history, and when it is a base of history made use 
 of for symbolical purposes, and touched in part by spirit. 
 Literal people are apt to be offended otherwise, and we 
 sympathize with them. 
 
A.D. 1770.] THE LETTER BENDS TO THE SPIRIT. 201 
 
 Swedenborg arrived at Amsterdam probably about the 
 beginning of September, carrying with him the manuscript 
 of his last work, the True Christian Religion. Jung Stil- 
 ling supplies us with an anecdote of him at this period. 
 An intimate friend of Stilling’s, a merchant of Elberfeld, 
 had occasion to take a journey to Amsterdam, and having 
 heard much of “this strange individual” (Swedenborg), 
 desired to become acquainted with him. He called upon 
 him, and found a venerable friendly old man, who desired 
 him to be seated. The Elberfeld merchant. Stilling says, 
 was “ a strict mystic in the purest sense. He spoke little, 
 but what he said was like golden fruit on a salver of silver. 
 He would not have dared for all the world to tell an un- 
 truth.” He explained to Swedenborg that he was ac- 
 quainted with his writings, and had heard the relations of 
 the fire of Stockholm, and the affair of the Queen of 
 Sweden’s brother, but that he wished for a proof of a 
 similar kind for himself. Swedenborg was willing to gratify 
 him. The merchant then said, “ ‘I had formerly a friend 
 who studied divinity at Duisburg, where he fell into a con- 
 sumption, of which he died. I visited this friend a short 
 time before his decease ; we conversed together on an im- 
 portant topic : could you learn from him what was the 
 subject of our discourse?’ ‘We will see. What was the 
 name of your friend?’ The merchant told him his name. 
 ‘How long do you remain here?’ ‘About eight or ten 
 days.’ ‘ Call upon me again in a few days. I will see 
 if I can find your friend.’ The merchant took his leave 
 and despatched his business. Some days after, he went 
 again to Sw'edenborg, in anxious expectation. The old gen- 
 tleman met him with a smile, and said, ‘ I have spoken 
 with your friend ; the subject of your discourse was, the^ 
 restitution of all things' He then related to the merchant, 
 with the greatest precision, what he, and what his deceased 
 friend, had maintained. My friend turned pale ; for this 
 
 K 3 
 
202 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 proof was powerful and invincible. He enquired further, 
 
 ‘ How fares it with ray friend ? Is he in a state of blessed- 
 ness?’ Swedenborg answered, ‘No, he is not yet in heaven; 
 he is still in Hades, and torments himself continually with 
 the idea of the restitution of all things.’ This answer 
 caused my friend the greatest astonishment. He ejaculated, 
 ‘My God! what, in the other world?’ Swedenborg re- 
 plied, ‘ Certainly ; a man takes with him his favorite incli- 
 nations and opinions ; and it is very difficult to be divested 
 of them. We ought, therefore, to lay them aside here.’ 
 My friend took his leave of this remarkable man, perfectly 
 convinced, and returned back to Elberfeld.” 
 
 In June, 1771, Swedenborg published at Amsterdam the 
 True Christian Religion ; containing the Universal Theology 
 of the New Church.* He had been employed upon this 
 large work for at least two years, and when he arrived at 
 Amsterdam, he commenced the printing of it, always exhi- 
 biting an assiduity which surprized those with whom he 
 came into contact. It will be remembered that he was now 
 in his 84th year. We have a few particulars of his life 
 during this residence in Holland, from David Paulus ab 
 Indagine, “ a respectable and learned individual,” who cul- 
 tivated his acquaintance, first by letter, and afterwards per- 
 sonally. Ab Indagine, “ in his open manner, could not 
 conceal his astonishment that Swedenborg had put himself 
 upon the title-page as ‘ Servant of the Lord Jesus Christ.’ ” 
 But Swedenborg replied, “ I have asked, and have not only 
 received permission, but have been ordered to do so.” (It 
 appears that it was owing to Dr. Hartley’s remonstrance 
 with him that he was in the first instance induced to depart 
 from his course of publishing anonymously, and to prefix 
 
 * The True Christian Religion ; containing the Universal Theology 
 of the New Church, foretold by the Lord in Daniel vii., 13, 14, and 
 in the Apocalypse xxi., 1, 2. By Emanuel Swedenborg, Servant of 
 the Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
I.D. 1770 - 71 .] THE FAMILIAR SPIRIT. 
 
 203 
 
 his name to any of his works.) Ab Indagine continues, 
 in a letter to a correspondent (Jan 26, 1771): “It is won- 
 derful with what confidence the old gentleman speaks of 
 the spiritual world, of the angels, and of God himself. . . . 
 I know not what to make of him ; he is a problem that I 
 cannot solve. I sincerely wish that the upright men whom 
 God has placed as watchmen upon Zion’s walls, had some 
 time since occupied themselves with this man.” In another 
 letter (March 5, 1771) he furnishes more anecdotes. “I 
 cannot forbear,” says he, “to tell you something new about 
 Swedenborg. Last Thursday I paid him a visit, and found 
 him, as usual, writing. He told me, ‘ that he had been 
 in conversation that same morning, for three hours, with 
 the deceased king of Sweden. He had seen him already 
 on the Wednesday ; but, as he observed that he was deeply 
 engaged in conversation with the queen, who is still living, 
 he would not disturb him.’ I allowed him to continue, 
 but at length asked him, how it was possible for a person 
 who is still in the land of the living, to be met with in the 
 world of spirits ? He replied, ‘ that it was not the queen 
 herself, but her spiritus familiaris, or her familiar spirit.’ 
 I asked him what that might be? for I had neither heard 
 from him anything respecting appearances of that kind, 
 nor had I read anything about them. He then informed 
 me, ‘ that every man has either his good or bad spirit, 
 who is not constantly with him, but sometimes a little 
 removed from him, and appears in the world of spirits. 
 But of this the man still living knows nothing ; the spirit, 
 however, knows everything. This familiar spirit has every- 
 thing in accordance with his companion upon earth; he 
 has, in the world of spirits, the same figure, the same 
 countenance, and the same tone of voice, and wears also 
 similar garments ; in a word, this familiar spirit of the 
 queen,’ says Swedenborg, ‘ appeared exactly as he had so 
 often seen the queen herself at Stockholm, and had heard 
 
204 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 her speak.’ In order to allay my astonishment, he added, 
 
 ‘ that Dr. Ernesti, of Leipsic, had appeared to him in a 
 similar manner in the world of spirits, and that he had 
 held a long disputation with him.’ ... I have often won- 
 dered at myself, how I could refrain from laughing, when 
 I was hearing such extraordinary things from him. And 
 what is more, I have often heard him relate the same things 
 in a numerous company of ladies and gentlemen, when I 
 well knew that there were mockers amongst them ; but, to 
 ray great astonishment, not a single person even thought 
 of laughing. Whilst he is speaking, it is as though every 
 person who hears him were charmed, and compelled to be- 
 lieve him. He is by no means reserved and recluse, but 
 open hearted, and accessible to all. Whoever invites him 
 as his guest, may expect to see him. A certain young 
 gentleman invited him last week to be his guest, and al- 
 though he was not acquainted with him, he appeared at 
 his table, where he met Jewish and Portuguese gentlemen, 
 with whom he freely conversed, without distinction. Who- 
 ever is curious to see him has no difficulty; it is only neces- 
 sary to go to his house, and he allows anybody to approach 
 him. It may easily be conceived, however, that the nu- 
 merous visits to which he is liable, deprive him of much 
 time.” 
 
 At this time the Landgrave of Hesse Darmstadt wrote a 
 letter to Swedenborg, desiring information on important 
 points. Swedenborg at first did not answer it, being doubt- 
 ful of its genuineness ; but h.‘s misgivings were set aside 
 by a visit from M. Venator, the minister of that prince. 
 In his reply to the Landgrave, he says : “ The Lord our 
 Saviour had foretold that He would come again into the 
 world, and that He would establish there a New Church. 
 He has given this prediction in the Apocalypse xxi. and 
 xxii., and also in several places in the Evangelists. But 
 as he cannot come again into the world in person, it was 
 
A.D. 1771.] SPIRIT SEEING NO MIRACLE. 205 
 
 necessary that He should do it by means of a man, who 
 should not only receive the doctrine of this New Church 
 in his understanding, but also publish it by printing ; and 
 as the Lord had prepared me for this office from my infancy. 
 He has manifested Himself in person before me. His ser- 
 vant, and sent me to fill it,” 
 
 The Landgrave again wrote to Swedenborg, enquiring 
 about the “miracle” of his intercourse with the Queen of 
 Sweden’s brother, and Swedenborg answered (July 15, 
 1771), that the story was true, but “not a miracle.” He 
 also wrote to M. Venator, that such matters ought by no 
 means to be considered miracles : they are “ only testimo- 
 nies,” says he, “ that I have been introduced by the Lord 
 into the spiritual world, and that I have been in associa- 
 tion with angels and spirits, in order that the church, which 
 until now had remained in ignorance concerning that world, 
 may know that heaven and hell exist in reality, and that 
 man lives after death, a man, as before ; and that thns there 
 may be no more doubt as to his immortality. Deign, I 
 pray you, to satisfy his highness, that these are not mira- 
 cles, but only testimonies that I converse with angels and 
 spirits. You may see in the True Christian Religion that 
 there are no more miracles, at this time ; and the reason 
 why. It is, that they who do not believe because they see 
 no miracles, might easily, by them, be led into fanaticism.” 
 Respecting this subject of miracles Swedenborg observes 
 in one of his works: “Instead of miracles there has taken 
 place at the present day an open manifestation of the Lord 
 himself, an intromission into the spiritual world, and with 
 it, illumination by immediate light from the Lord in what- 
 ever relates to the interior things of the church, but prin- 
 cipally an opening of the spiritual sense of the Word, in 
 whieh the Lord is present in his own divine light. These 
 revelations are not miracles, because every man as to his 
 spirit is in the spiritual world, without separation from his 
 
206 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 body in the natural world. As to myself, indeed, my pre- 
 sence in the spiritual world is attended with a certain sepa- 
 ration, but only as to the intellectual part of my mind, not 
 as to the will part. This manifestation of the Lord, and 
 intromission into the spiritual world, is more excellent than 
 all miracles ; but it has not been granted to any one since 
 the creation of the world as it has been to me. The men 
 of the golden age indeed conversed with angels ; but it was 
 not granted to them to be in any other light than what is 
 natural. To me, however, it has been granted to be in 
 both spiritual and natural light at the same time; and 
 hereby I have been privileged to see the wonderful things 
 of heaven, to be in company with angels, just as I am 
 with men, and at the same time to pursue truths in the 
 light of truth, and thus to perceive and be gifted with them, 
 consequently to be led by the Lord.” 
 
 The True Christian Religion, (making 815 close pages 
 in the eighth English edition,) contains the author’s 
 “ body of divinity.” The whole of his theological works, 
 hermeneutical, visional, philosophical, dogmatic, and moral, 
 are summed up and represented in this deliberate system. 
 There is none of his treatises so plain, or so well brought 
 home to apprehension ; none in which the yield of doc- 
 trine is so turned into daily bread, the food of practical 
 religion. Viewed as a digest, it shows a presence of mind, 
 an administration of materials, and a faculty of handling, 
 of an extraordinary kind. There is old age in it in the 
 sense of ripeness. If the intellectualist misses there some- 
 what of the range of discourse, it is compensated by a 
 certain triteness of wisdom. As a polemic, not only against 
 the errors of the churches, but against the evil lives and 
 self-excusings of Christians, the work is unrivalled. The 
 criticisms of doctrine with which it abounds, are mas- 
 terly in the extreme ; and were it compared with any 
 similar body of theology, we feel no doubt that the palm 
 
A.D. 1771.] the true CHRISTIAN RELIGION. 
 
 207 
 
 of coherency, vigor, and comprehensiveness would easily 
 fall to Swedenborg, upon the verdict of judges of whatever 
 church. 
 
 It will not be necessary to enter at large upon its con- 
 tents, as we have dwelt upon them already in reviewing the 
 author’s previous writings. The following summary, how- 
 ever, of the chapters will shew the scope of the work. 
 I. God the Creator. II. The Lord the Redeemer. III. 
 The Holy Spirit and the divine operation. IV. The Holy 
 Scripture or the Word of the Lord. V. The Ten Com- 
 mandments in their external and internal senses. VI. 
 Faith. VII. Charity, or love towards our neighbor and 
 good works. VIII. Free-determiuation. IX. Repentance. 
 X. Reformation and Regeneration. XL Imputation. XII. 
 Baptism. XIII. The Holy Supper. XIV. The Consum- 
 mation of the Age, the Coming of the Lord, and the 
 New Heaven and the New Church. Besides these subjects, 
 the work contains no less than 76 Memorable Relations 
 from the spiritual world, interspersed between and among 
 the chapters : for Swedenborg always addresses the reader 
 as already a member of two worlds. 
 
 Some time before his last publication Dr. Eruesti attacked 
 him in his Bibliotheca Theologica (p. 784), and before he 
 left Holland, Swedenborg issued a single leaf in reply to 
 his opponent. It is a short deprecation of controversy 
 characteristic of the peaceful and busy old man. “ I have 
 read,” says he, “ what Dr. Ernesti has written about me. 
 It consists of mere personalities. I do not observe in it a 
 grain of reason against anything in my writings. As it is 
 against the laws of honesty to assail any one with such 
 poisoned weapons, I think it beneath me to bandy words 
 with that illustrious man. I will not cast back calumnies 
 by calumnies. To do this, I should be even with the dogs, 
 which bark and bite, or with the lowest drabs, which throw- 
 street mud in each other’s faces in their brawls. Read if 
 
208 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 you will . . . what I have written in my books, and after- 
 wards conclude, but from reason, respecting my revelation.” 
 Severe words these, if not controversial ! 
 
 Our enumeration of Swedenborg’s theological publications 
 is now ended. Unapparent as his person is throughout them, 
 we feel that it is almost profane to dwell upon his genius. 
 In reading them we rather think of a gifted pen than of a 
 great man. Originality and competitive questions are far 
 in the background. The words mine and thine have not 
 laid their paws upon these estates. Still the genius reverts 
 the mightier for its unselfishness. The method of thought 
 is the same in his theology as in his philosophy ; his theo- 
 logy is his latest philosophy explaining his walks and expe- 
 riences in the spiritual world. The active mental power is 
 greater in his latter than in his former life ; and would be 
 more manifestly so, had he not always practically disclaimed 
 his own gifts in favor of the Giver; a course that offends 
 “ the pride of self-derived intelligence,” which misses the 
 brilliancy of its earthly fire in his low speech and self-absent 
 periods. But assuredly his knowledge of man is more ex- 
 ceeding than his knowledge of nature; his plainness is more 
 picturesque than his imagination ; and his spiritual cosmo- 
 gony and humanity will survive the ingenuity of his Prin- 
 cipia, and the natural beauty of his Physiology. 
 
 In Part I. of this biography, we have devoted a few 
 words to the author’s philosophical style ; we shall now 
 say somewhat on his theological. In the former case, we 
 noted with surprize that the dress of his books became 
 more and more imaginative, as his mind matured. The 
 ornament, it is true, was a part of the subject, as a flower 
 is a part of a plant. In his theological works, he dis- 
 carded this vesture, and began not from the flower, but 
 from the seeds of his philosophy. The difference between 
 The Worship and Love of God and the Arcana Coeleslia, 
 is immense in point of style ; the rhetoric of the former 
 
i.D. 1771 .] 
 
 HIS GENIUS AND STYLE. 
 
 209 
 
 is shorn into level speech in the latter. But it is a second 
 time to be observed, that his mind took the course from 
 plainness to luxuriance, and that in his later theology, 
 copious illustration gave fruitiness to his style. Orna- 
 mental it cannot be called, but full and abounding. In- 
 stead of the beauties of color, he proffers gratifications 
 for many senses, in solid paragraphs of analogies. If his 
 old age is specially discernible in his True Christian Re- 
 ligion, it is in the wealth of the comparisons, which succeed 
 each other with childlike volubility, though it must be 
 confessed also with felicity. The child learns by com- 
 parison ; the adult, more alive to intellectual beauty, decks 
 his mind in colored garments, and sets forth his theory as 
 a captivation ; the elder teaches, as the child learns, by 
 comparisons again. There is nothing like them for power ; 
 they cleave to the mind in its youngest and still joyous 
 parts ; and are to abstractions what gold coin is to doubtful 
 promises in air or upon paper. By them the good old men 
 prattle to the young, who are the seed of the state, and 
 the inheritors of the future. It was Swedenborg’s last 
 and most loving mode of speech, to familiarize difficult 
 things by telling us what their case is most like in the 
 world about us : a method which he followed particularly 
 in the True Christian Religion. 
 
 “There are five kinds of reception,” says Swedenborg, 
 {Diary, n. 2955,) speaking of the reception of his own 
 writings by the world. “ First, there are those who reject 
 them utterly, either because they are in a different persua- 
 sion, or are enemies of the faith : they cannot be received 
 by these, whose minds are impenetrable. The second genus 
 receives them as scientifics, and in this point of view, and 
 as curiosities, they are delighted with them. The third 
 genus receives them intellectually, and with readiness, but 
 their lives remain unaltered by them . The fourth receives 
 them persuasively, allowing them to penetrate to amend- 
 
210 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 ment of life ; to this class they occur in certain states, and 
 do good service. The fifth genus consists of those who re- 
 ceive them with joy, and are built up in them.” 
 
 In August 1771, Swedenborg came from Amsterdam to 
 London, and took up his abode for the second time with 
 one Shearsmith, peruke maker, at 26, Great Bath Street, 
 Coldbath Fields. Notwithstanding his advanced age, he 
 still continued indefatigable with his pen, and, after fin- 
 isliing his True Christian Religion, he proceeded to the 
 execution of another work, a supplement to the former, 
 treating in detail of the various churches which have ex- 
 isted upon the earth. This treatise he either did not com- 
 plete, or the end of it is missing. He now renewed his 
 intercourse with his friends in London, who have handed 
 down some interesting accounts of the closing scenes of his 
 life. 
 
 Towards the end of the year. Dr. Hartley and IMr. 
 Cookworthy visited him at his lodgings in Clerkenwell. 
 The details of the interview are not given, only that it was 
 impossible to avoid noticing his innocence and simplicity, 
 and how, on inviting him to dine with them, he politely 
 excused himself, adding that his dinner was already pre- 
 pared, which proved to be a meal of bread and milk. 
 
 On Christmas eve a stroke of apoplexy deprived him of 
 his speech, and he lay afterwards in a lethargic state for 
 more than three weeks, taking no sustenance beyond a little 
 tea without milk, and cold water occasionally, and once a 
 little currant jelly. At the end of that time he recovered 
 his speech and health somewhat, and ate and drank as 
 usual. It does not appear that he had any medical advice 
 in his sickness. Dr. Hartley now again visited him, in 
 company with Dr. Messiter, and asked him if he was com- 
 forted with the society of angels as before, and he answered 
 that he was. Furthermore, they besought him to declare 
 whether all that he had written was strictly true, or whether 
 
A.D. 1771 - 72 .] 
 
 APOPLEXY. 
 
 211 
 
 any part, or parts, were to be excepted. “ I have written,” 
 answered Swedenborg, with a degree of warmth, “ nothing 
 but the truth, as you will havp more and more confirmed 
 to you all the days of your life, provided you keep close 
 to the Lord, and faithfully serve Him alone, by shunning 
 evils of all kinds as sins against him, and diligently search- 
 ing his Word, which from beginning to end bears incon- 
 testible witness to the truth of the doctrines I have de- 
 livered to the world.” Dr. H. after this returned home, 
 about a day’s journey from London, (to East Mailing, in 
 Kent,) and heard soon after that Swedenborg was near his 
 departure, and expressed a desire to see him ; “ but some 
 hindrances to the visit,” says he, “ happening at the time, 
 I did not embrace the opportunity as I should have done ; 
 for those hindrances might have been surmounted. My 
 neglect on this occasion appears to me without excuse, and 
 lies very heavy on my mind to this day.” 
 
 From the time of his seizure till his death he was visited 
 by but few friends, and always appeared unwilling to see 
 company. Nevertheless we meet with him once again in 
 a semi-public character. Towards the end of February, 
 1772, the Rev. John Wesley is in conclave with some of 
 his preachers, who are taking instructions, and assisting 
 him in preparations for a circuit he is shortly to make, 
 w'hen a Latin note is put into his hand, which causes him 
 evident astonishment. The substance is as follows : — 
 
 “ Great Bath Street, Coldbath Fields, 
 “February, 1772. 
 
 “Sir, — I have been informed in the world of spirits that 
 you have a strong desire to converse with me. I shall be 
 happy to see you, if you will favor me with a visit. 
 
 “ I am. Sir, your humble servant, 
 
 “ Emanuel Swedenborg.” 
 Wesley frankly acknowledged to the company that he 
 
212 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 had been strongly impressed with a desire to see and con- 
 verse with Swedenborg, and said that he had not men- 
 tioned the desire to any one.. He wrote for answer that he 
 was then occupied in preparing for a six month’s journey, 
 but would wait upon Swedenborg on his return to London. 
 Swedenborg wrote in reply, that the proposed visit would 
 be too late, as he, Swedenborg, should go into the world 
 of spirits on the 29th day of the next month, never more 
 to return. The result was, that these two celebrated per- 
 sons did not meet.* 
 
 Two or three weeks before his decease he was visited by 
 his old friend, Mr. Springer, the Swedish Consul in London. 
 Mr. S. asked him when he believed that the New Jerusalem 
 would be manifested, and if the manifestation would take 
 place in the four quarters of the world. His answer was, 
 that “ no mortal could tell the time, no nor even the highest 
 angels, but God only. Read,” said he, “ the Revelations 
 
 * It is certain that Wesley was at this time attracted to Swedenborg. 
 Besides other proofs, we have one in a letter written to Wesley by 
 the Rev. Francis Okely, a Moravian minister. This gentleman visited 
 Swedenborg, probably between August and December, 1771, and 
 wrote to Wesley upon the interview. His letter, (Arminian Magazine, 
 vol. viii., p. 553: 1785,) dated Upton, Dec. 10, 1772, is somewhat 
 interesting. 
 
 “ Swedenborg is to me a riddle, — certainly, as you [Wesley] say, 
 he speaks many great and important truths ; and eis certainly seems 
 to me to contradict Scripture in other places. But, as he told me, I 
 could not understand his True Christian Religion without divine illu- 
 mination ; and I am obliged to confess, that I have not yet a sufficiency 
 of it for that purpose. I am thankful my present course does not 
 seem absolutely to require it. We conversed in the high Dutch, and 
 notwithstanding the impediment in his speech, I understood him well. 
 He spoke with aU the coolness and deliberation you might expect from 
 any, the most sober and rational man. Yet what he said was out of 
 my sphere of intelligence, when he related his sight of, and daily con- 
 versation in, the world of spirits, with which he declared himself 
 better acquainted than with this. 
 
A.n. 1772.] 
 
 JOHN WESLEY. 
 
 213 
 
 (xxi., 2) and Zechariah (xiv., 9), and you will find past 
 doubt that the New Jerusalem of the Apocalypse, which 
 
 “ I heartily wish, that all the real designs which an omnipotent 
 and omniscient God of Love might have, either by him, or by any 
 other of his sincere servants, of whatsoever sort or kind, may be 
 truly obtained. ... I thought proper to express thus much in answer 
 to your’s, [the italics are our own,] without desiring you to adopt 
 any of my sentiments.” 
 
 It is amusing to read what Okely says of his difficulty about Swe- 
 denborg’s sight and conversation in the spiritual world. 'Vi'hat arti- 
 ficial stupidity ! A rustic would have taken it at once. We here 
 recal a little narrative in Swedenborg’s Diary (n. 5997). He had 
 been writing upon the Apocalypse, and had treated of the threefold 
 man, celestial, spiritual, and natural, and of goods and truths in their 
 series, and coming to an inn with his mind on the subject, he opened 
 it to the good wife who was the landlady, Tisula Bodama her name. 
 “ She was a person of simple-hearted faith. She understood clearly 
 all 1 said ; but there was a learned man present who did not understand 
 it, nay, could not understand it. And so the case is with many other 
 things.” The Lord has hidden them from the wise and prudent, and 
 reveaded them unto babes. 
 
 While speaking of Okely, who was the author of a Life of Belimen, 
 we take the opportunity of stating, that too close a parallel is often 
 made between Behmen and Swedenborg. There are indeed truths 
 common to both, and no man who values an extraordinary brother 
 would say a word in disparagement of deep-thoughted Jacob Behmen. 
 But his want of education and utterance ; his identification of the spi- 
 ritual with the subjective for man upon earth ; his failure of seership, 
 and consequently of real experience ; and above all, his inapprehen- 
 sion of the sole divinity of Christ, which scattered through his theology 
 the darkness inevitable upon an attempted approach to the thus unap- 
 proachable Father — a darkness the more virulent as the genius is more 
 intense ; — these great vacancies, and a host of other things, such as 
 his doctrine of the bi-sexual Adam, establish between him and Swe- 
 denborg a gulf not to be overpassed. Swedenborg had indeed never 
 read his works, as he told Dr. Beyer in answer to a question upon 
 the subject, and it is impossible to affiliate his own works in any sense 
 upon Behmen’s. The admirers of Behmen are aware of this, and 
 Mr. Law has shewn it by violent stamping against Swedenborg. 
 
214 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 denotes a new and purer state of the Christian church, will 
 manifest itself to all the earth.” About this time Mr. 
 Springer relates, what Sw'edenborg himself told him, that 
 his spiritual sight was withdrawn, after he had been favored 
 with it for so long a course of years. This, of which the 
 world knows nothing, and for which it cares nothing, it 
 was the greatest tribulation to him to lose. He could not 
 endure the blindness, but cried out repeatedly, “ Oh ! my 
 God, hast thou then forsaken thy servant at last ?” He 
 continued for several days in this deplorable condition ; it 
 was the last of his trials : but at length he recovered that 
 precious sight, which made him completely happy. 
 
 Mr. Bergstrom, the landlord of the King’s Arms tavern 
 in Wellclose Square, at whose house he had once lodged 
 for ten weeks, called to see him during his last days. Swe- 
 denborg told him, that since it had pleased God to take 
 away the use of his arm by a palsy, his body was good for 
 nothing but to be put into the ground. Mr. B. asked him 
 whether he would take the Sacrament ? Somebody present 
 at the time proposed sending for the Rev. Mr. Mathesius, 
 the officiating minister of the Swedish church. Swedenborg 
 declined taking the Sacrament from this gentleman, who 
 had previously set abroad a report that he was out of his 
 senses : and he sent for the Rev. Arvid Ferelius, another 
 Swedish clergyman with whom he was on the best terms, 
 and who had visited him frequently in his illness. Ferelius 
 soon returned with Bergstrom to Swedenborg’s bedside. On 
 every previous visit Ferelius had asked him whether or no 
 he was about to die, to which he always answered in the 
 affirmative. On this occasion the priest observed to him, 
 “ that as many persons thought that he had endeavored 
 only to make himself a name by his new theological system 
 (which object he had indeed attained), he would do well 
 now to publish the truth to the world, and to recant either 
 the whole or a part of what he had advanced, since he had 
 
l.d.1772.] 
 
 THE SACRAMENT. 
 
 215 
 
 now nothing more to expect from the world, which he was 
 so soon about to leave for ever.” Upon hearing these words, 
 Swedenborg raised himself half upright in bed, and placing 
 his sound hand upon his breast, said with great zeal and 
 emphasis : “ As true as you see me before you, so true is 
 everything that I have written. I could have said more 
 had I been permitted. When you come into eternity, you 
 will see all things as I have stated and described them, and 
 we shall have much to discourse about them with each 
 other.” Ferelius then asked whether he would take the 
 Lord’s Holy Supper? He replied with thankfulness, that 
 the olfer was well meant ; but that being a member of the 
 other world, he did not need it. He would, however, gladly 
 take it, in order to shew the connexion and union between 
 the church in heaven and the church on earth. He then 
 asked the priest if he had read his views on the Sacrament ? 
 He also told him to consecrate the elements, and leave the 
 rest of the form to him, as he well knew what it was and 
 meant. Before administering the Sacrament, Ferelius en- 
 quired of him whether he confessed himself to be a sinner ? 
 “Certainly,” said he, “so long as I carry about with me 
 this sinful body.” With deep and affecting devotion, with 
 folded hands and with head uncovered, he confessed his 
 own unworthiness, and received the Holy Supper. After 
 which, he said that all had been properly done, and pre- 
 sented the minister in gratitude with one of the few re- 
 maining copies of his great work, the Arcana Ccelestia. 
 He was quite clear in his mind throughout the ceremony. 
 This was two or three weeks before his death. 
 
 He had told the people of the house what day he should 
 die, and as Shearsmith’s servant-maid reported : “ He was 
 as pleased ! And she made a comparison that the pleasure 
 was such as if she herself were going to have a holiday, to 
 go to some merrymaking.” In Sandel’s more accomplished 
 but not deeper language: “ He was satisfied with his sojourn 
 
216 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 upon earth, and delighted with the prospect of his heavenly 
 metamorphosis.” 
 
 His faculties were clear to the last. On Sunday, the 
 29th day of March, 1772, hearing the clock strike, he 
 asked his landlady and her maid, who were both sitting 
 at his bedside, what it was o’clock, and upon being an- 
 swered it was five o’clock, he said, “It is well; I thank 
 you ; God bless you and then, in a little moment after, 
 he gently gave up the ghost. 
 
 After his deeease, his body was carried to the house of 
 Mr. Burkhardt, an undertaker, and former elerk to the 
 Swedish church in London, where he was laid in state, 
 and buried from thence on the 5th day of April, in three 
 coffins, in the vault of the above church, in Prince’s Square, 
 Radcliffe Highway, with all the ceremonies of the Lutheran 
 religion ; the service being performed on the oceasion by 
 the Rev. Arvid Ferelius — the last service which he per- 
 formed in England. In 1785, Swedenborg’s coffin was side 
 by side with Dr. Solander’s. To this day not a stone or an 
 inscription commemorates the dust of the wonderful Norse- 
 man. 
 
 During the later career of Swedenborg, his country had 
 looked on not without interest, directed both to his cha- 
 racter, his pretensions, and his labors. No sooner was he 
 dead, than the House of Clergy, through their President, 
 requested Ferelius to give such an account of him in writing 
 as his experience would warrant, which he did, but the 
 document is unfortunately missing. On October 7, 1772, 
 M. Sandel, Counsellor of the Board of Mines, pronounced 
 his eulogium in the Hall of the House of Nobles, in the 
 name of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Stockholm. 
 Sandel was no follower of his, but his discourse, take it 
 for all and all, is the finest resumption that we have of the 
 name and character of Swedenborg. We give the opening 
 of the document to shew what a scientific man in such an 
 
A. D. 1772 .] death, burial, and eulogy. 21 / 
 
 Assembly dared say of Swedenborg, notwithstanding his 
 spirit-seeing. 
 
 “Permit me,” says he, “to entertain you this day 
 upon a subject, which is not of an abstracted or remote 
 nature, but is intended to revive the agreeable remembrance 
 of a man celebrated for his virtues and his knowledge, one 
 of the oldest members of this Academy, and one whom we 
 all knew and loved. 
 
 “The sentiments of esteem and friendship with which 
 we all regarded the late ]\I. Emanuel Swedenborg, assure 
 me of the pleasure with which you will listen to me while 
 he is the subject of my discourse: happy should I be could 
 I answer your expectations, and draw his eulogium in the 
 manner it deserves ! But if there are some countenances 
 of which, as the painters assure us, it is extremely difficult 
 to give an exact likeness, how difficult then must it be 
 to delineate that of a vast and sublime genius, who never 
 knew either repose or fatigue ; who occupied with sciences 
 the most profound, was long engaged with researches into 
 the secrets of nature, and who, in his latter years, applied 
 all his efforts to unveil the greatest mysteries ; who to 
 arrive at certain branches of knowledge, opened for himself 
 a way of his own, without ever straying from sound morals 
 and true piety ; who being endowed with a strength of 
 faculties truly extraordinary, in the decline of his age, 
 boldly elevated his thoughts still further, and soared to 
 the greatest heights to which the intellectual faculty can 
 rise ; and who, finally, has given occasion to form respecting 
 him a multitude of opinions, differing as much from each 
 other as do the minds of the different men hy whom they 
 are formed !” 
 
 When a life is past, we speak with right of the health 
 and happiness of the departed. On these points a few 
 words express what is known of Swedenborg. “ He always,” 
 says Sandel, “ enjoyed most excellent health, having scarcely 
 
 L 
 
218 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 ever experienced the slightest indisposition.” “ He was 
 never ill,” says Robsahm, “except when in states of temp- 
 tation.” Once he had a grievous toothache for many days. 
 Robsahm recommended him some common remedy. But 
 he refused it, and said : “ My pain proceeds not from the 
 nerve of the tooth, but from the influx of hypocritical 
 spirits that beset me, and by correspondence cause this 
 plague, which will soon leave me.” Like other studious 
 sedentary persons, his stomach was weak, particularly 
 during the last fourteen years of his life, which caused 
 him to be somewhat singular in his diet. Not less, how- 
 ever, from the concurrent testimony of those who knew 
 him best, than from the works that he executed, we know 
 that he enjoyed a fine constitution. Health is the ground 
 which great persons cultivate, whereby they exchange the 
 light flying hours into golden usage. To them it is industry 
 represented in its power ; the human riches of time. The 
 minute glass runs willingly sand of centuries when great 
 ideas are in the healthful moments. So it was with Swe- 
 denborg. The powers of his mind were matched with an 
 extraordinary strength of body, which pain and passion 
 seem scarcely to have touched, and hence the crowd of 
 his works, and his broad apparent leisure. The day of such 
 a man is full of commerce and transactions; the reciproca- 
 tion is nnwearied from health to genius ; the able-bodied 
 hours cultivate his life to uncommon productiveness, and 
 stretch out the points and patches of his time towards the 
 largeness of their eternal source. 
 
 Health in its whole sense is happiness. Here again 
 Saudel says of Swedenborg : “ Content within himself and 
 with his situation, his life was in all respects one of the 
 happiest that ever fell to the lot of man, until the very 
 moment of its close.” “ His inward serenity and compla- 
 cency of mind,” says Hartley, “ were manifest in the 
 sweetness of his looks and his outward demeanor.” His 
 
..D. 1688-1772.] health and happiness. 
 
 219 
 
 own testimony corroborates that of Sandel. In a passage 
 in his Diary (n. .3623), where he treats of the proposition, 
 that “ the enjoyments and pleasures of life are never denied 
 to us,” he says : " To this I can bear witness, that they 
 have never been denied to me, but granted, and not only 
 the pleasures of the body and the senses as to others of 
 the living, but I have had joys and happiness such as no 
 others I suppose have felt in the universal world, and these, 
 both more and more exquisite that any mortal can imagine 
 or believe.” 
 
 Swedenborg’s works furnish one continued proof of these 
 assertions. Who does not know that peace and power are 
 one; that triinquillity is the main circumstance of the best 
 life times? No matter to this whether the sky be calm, 
 or the soul unassaulted; it is the preservation of the balance, 
 and the firm-footedness of the man, under whatever trials, 
 that constitute the repose of which we speak. Sweden- 
 borg’s works, we repeat, from beginning to end, are on a 
 high level of peace; their even flow is as of a sea inclining 
 only to the constellations. No cursory moon regulates its 
 tides from nearer attractions, but they move to the vault, 
 and though they change, it is not by months, but with 
 ages. 
 
 L 2 
 
PART III. 
 
 Having followed Swedenborg through his life and labors, 
 it remains to gather up any personal particulars that remain 
 unappropriated, and also to place before the reader what 
 testimonies exist, to the public and private character of 
 Swedenborg. We begin with the latter 6rst. If the record 
 savor of eulogy, it is from no partiality of ours, but because 
 history chooses. 
 
 Sandel says : “ If his love of knowledge went too far, 
 it at least evinced in him an ardent desire to obtain infor- 
 mation himself, and convey it to others ; for you never find 
 in him any mark of pride or conceit, of rashness, or of 
 intention to deceive. If he is not to be numbered among 
 the doctors of the church, he at least holds an honorable 
 rank among sublime moralists, and deserves to be instanced 
 as a pattern of virtue and of respect for his Creator. He 
 never allowed himself to have recourse to dissimulation. . . . 
 A sincere friend of mankind, in his examination of the cha- 
 racter of others, he was particularly desirous to discover in 
 them this virtue, which he regarded as an infallible proof 
 of the presence of many more. He was cheerful and agree- 
 able in society. By way of relaxation from his important 
 labors, he sought and frequented the company of persons 
 of information, by whom he was always well received. He 
 knew how to check opportunely, and with great address, 
 that speeies of wit which would indulge itself at the expense 
 of serious things. As a public functionary, he was upright 
 
PERSONAL TESTIMONIES. 
 
 221 
 
 and just ; while he diseharged his duties with great exact- 
 ness, he neglected nothing hut his own advancement. . . . 
 In the Diet his conduct was such as to secure him both 
 from the reproaches of his own conscience and from those 
 of others. He lived under the reigns of many of onr 
 sovereigns, and enjoyed the particular favor and kindness 
 of them all. ... It may truly be said that he was solitary, 
 but never sad.” 
 
 Count Hopken remarks : “ I have not only known him 
 these two and forty years, but also some time since daily 
 frequented his company. . . I do not recollect to have known 
 any man of more uniformly virtuous character; always con- 
 tented, never fretful or morose ; he was a true philosopher, 
 and lived like one. He labored diligently, and lived fru- 
 gally, without sordidness. ... He possessed a sound judg- 
 ment upon all occasions, saw everything clearly, and ex- 
 pressed himself well on every subject. . . . He detested me- 
 taphysics.* ... He was certainly a pattern of sincerity, 
 virtue and piety, and at the same time, in my opinion, 
 the most learned man in this kingdom.”f 
 
 * Count Hopken is borne out in this by Swedenborg’s writings. 
 We might cite hundreds of passages to demonstrate his repugnance to 
 verbal metaphysics, but in truth the tenor of his works is one bold 
 counter-trial to all such philosophy. He is the head of the positive or 
 scientific school, but unlike others of that school, takes in spiritual 
 and divine facts as well as natural. For facts are the only possible 
 things, and God and the spiritual man are the chiefest among them. 
 To justify Hopken we quote one instance, which may serve as a 
 specimen of his mode of speech on this subject. It occurs in his 
 Adversaria on Isaiah. “The more any one,” says he, “is imbued 
 with philosophy, the greater his blindness and darkness ; the blindness 
 increases in quantity with the philosophy ; as might be proved by 
 many things.” The Latin is so short, that we give it also : 
 
 “ Quo magis aliquis philosophia imbuitur, eo magis coecitas et umbra, 
 augetur secundum copiam, quod multis demonstrari potest.” 
 
 t Count Hopken says in a letter to a friend; “ I have sometimes 
 told the king, that if ever a new colony were to be formed, no re- 
 
222 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 Robsahm says: “How he was looked upon in foreign 
 lands I do not know, but in Stockholm even those who 
 could not read his writings were always pleased to meet 
 him in company, and paid respectful attention to whatever 
 he said.” 
 
 “He affects no honor,” says Hartley, “but declines 
 it ; pursues no worldly interest ; . . and is so far from the 
 ambition of heading a sect, that wherever he resides on his 
 travels, he is a mere solitary.” And after Swedenborg’s 
 death. Hartley again writes : “ The great Swedenborg was 
 a man of uncommon humility. He was of a catholic spirit, 
 and loved all good men of every church, making at the 
 same time candid allowance for the innocence of involun- 
 tary error. However self-denying in his own person as to 
 gratifications and indulgences, even within the bounds of 
 moderation, yet nothing severe, nothing of the precisian 
 appeared in him.” 
 
 And lastly Ferelius remarks: “Many may suppose that 
 Assessor Swedenborg was a singular and eccentric person ; 
 this was not the case. On the contrary, he was very agree- 
 able and complaisant in company ; he entered into conver- 
 sation on every topic, and accommodated himself to the 
 ideas of the party; and he never mentioned his own writings 
 and doctrines but when he was asked some question about 
 them, when he always spoke as freely as he had written. 
 
 ligion could be better, as the prevailing and established one, than 
 that developed by Swedenborg from the Sacred Scriptures, and this 
 on the two following accounts : 1st. This religion, in preference to, 
 and in a higher degree than, any other, must produce the most honest 
 and industrious subjects ; for this religion places properly the worship 
 of God in uses. 2dly. It causes the least fear of death, as this re- 
 ligion regards death merely as a transition from one state into another, 
 from a worse to a better situation ; nay, upon his principles, I look 
 upon death as being of hardly any greater moment than drinking a 
 glass of water.” 
 
PERSONAL TESTIMONIES. 
 
 223 
 
 If, however, he observed that any persons asked imper- 
 tinent questions, or attempted to ridicule him, he gave 
 them answers that quickly silenced them, without making 
 them any the wiser.” 
 
 The persons in whose houses he lodged, bear concurrent 
 testimony. Mr. Brockmer (who lived in Fetter Lane) says, 
 that “if he believed Swedenborg’s conversation with angels 
 and spirits to be true, he should not wonder at anything 
 he said or did; but should rather wonder that surprize and 
 astonishment did not betray him into more unguarded ex- 
 pressions than were ever known to escape him : for he did 
 and said nothing but what he (Brockmer) could easily ac- 
 count for in his own mind, if he really believed what Swe- 
 denborg declares in his writings to be true. ... He was of 
 a most placid and serene disposition.” Brockmer however 
 avers that “ Swedenborg once called himself the Messiah,”* 
 which we do not profess to understand, as it is unlike 
 any other passage in his life or writings; but as we find it, 
 so we leave it, having no right to use one part of Brockmer’s 
 evidence and not the rest. 
 
 Bergstrom says : “ lie once lived ten weeks with me in 
 my house, during which time I observed nothing in him 
 but what was very reasonable, and bespoke the gentleman. 
 For my part I think he was a reasonable, sensible and good 
 man : he was very kind to all, and generous to me. As 
 for his peculiar sentiments, I do not meddle with them.” 
 
 Mr. Shearsmith declared, “ That from the first day of 
 his coming to reside at his house, to the last day of his life, 
 he always conducted himself in the most rational, prudent, 
 pious and Christian-like manner.” And Shearsmith’s maid- 
 servant commemorated that “ he was a good-natured man, 
 a blessing to the house ; and while he stayed there, they 
 had harmony and good business. She said that before he 
 
 Magazine of Knowledge, vol. ii., p. 93. 
 
224 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 came to their house he was offered another lodging in the 
 neighbourhood ; hut he told the mistress there wanted har- 
 mony in the house, which she acknowledged; and recom- 
 mended him to Shearsmith’s.” 
 
 Mrs. Hart, his printer’s wife, said that “he was of such 
 a nature that he could impose on no one ; that he always 
 spoke the truth on every little matter, and would not have 
 made an evasion though his life had been at stake.” 
 
 The homeliness of some of these testimonies does not 
 exclude them from our pages, because, diving as they do 
 into Swedenborg’s privacy, they are just what we want, to 
 fortify our knowledge of one whose interior life was so dif- 
 ferent from other men’s. Swedenborg’s biography is a 
 conrt in which such witnesses are precisely those whose 
 depositions will first be taken by the mass of the public. 
 If the testimony is trivial in so great a case, it is the cross 
 questioning of this age which elicits it. 
 
 His friends and domestics had occasional opportunities 
 of observing his deportment when in his trances. Some of 
 these we have already narrated, but the following also merit 
 a place. 
 
 On one occasion Ferelius visited him during his sickness, 
 and as the former was going up stairs, he heard Sweden- 
 borg speaking with energy, as though addressing a com- 
 pany. Reaching the antechamber where his female atten- 
 dant was sitting, he asked her who was with the Assessor ? 
 She said, “Nobody, and that he had been speaking in 
 that manner for three days and nights.” As the reverend 
 gentleman entered the chamber, Swedenborg greeted him 
 tranquilly, and asked him to take a seat. He told him 
 that he had been tempted and plagued for ten days by evil 
 spirits, and that he had never before been tempted by such 
 wicked ones ; but that he now again enjoyed the company 
 of good spirits. 
 
 One day, while he was in health, Ferelius visited him 
 
PHENOMENA OF SPIRITUAL INTERCOURSE. 
 
 225 
 
 in company with a Danish clergyman. They found him 
 sitting in tlie middle of the room at a round table, writing. 
 The Hebrew Bible, which appeared to constitute his whole 
 library, lay before him. After he had greeted them, he 
 pointed to the opposite side of the table, and said: “Just 
 now the apostle Peter was here, and stood there ; and it 
 is not long since all the apostles were with me: indeed they 
 often visit me.” “ In this manner,” says Ferelius, “ he 
 spoke without reserve ; but he never sought to make pro- 
 selytes.” They asked him why nobody but himself enjoyed 
 such spiritual privileges 1 He said, that “ every man might 
 at the present day have them, as well as in the times of 
 the Old Testament ; but that the true hindrance now is, 
 the sensual state into which mankind has fallen.” Robsahm 
 also once questioned him, whether it would be possible for 
 others to enjoy the same spiritual light as himself. He 
 answered, “ Take good heed upon that point : a man lays 
 himself open to grievous errors who tries by barely natural 
 powers to explore spiritual things.” He further said, that 
 to guard against this the Lord had taught us to pray, lead 
 us not into temptation : meaning that we are not allowed, 
 in the pride of our natural understandings, to doubt of the 
 divine truths of revelation. “You know,” said he, “how 
 often students, especially theologians, who have gone far 
 in useless knowledge, have become insane.” 
 
 The reason of the danger of man, as at present consti- 
 tuted, speaking with spirits, is, that we are all in associa- 
 tion with our likes, and being full of evil, these similar 
 spirits, could we face them, would but confirm us in our 
 own state and views, and lend an authority from whose 
 persuasiveness we could hardly escape, to our actual evils 
 and falsities. Hence, for freedom’s sake, the strict parti- 
 tion between the worlds. The case was otherwise before 
 hell was necessary to man’s life. 
 
 Shearsmith used to be frightened when he first had Swe- 
 
 L 3 
 
226 
 
 LIFK OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 denborg for a lodger, by reason of his talking at all hours, 
 the night as well as the day. He would sometimes be 
 writing, says this informant, and then stand talking in the 
 door-stead of his room, as if holding a conversation with 
 several persons ; but as he spoke in a language that Shear- 
 smith did not understand, he could make nothing of it. 
 
 His faithful domestics, the old gardener and his wife, 
 who kept his house near Stockholm, told Robsahm with 
 much tenderness, that they had frequently overheard his 
 strong agony of mind vented in ejaculatory prayer during 
 his temptations. He often prayed to God that the temp- 
 tations might leave him, crying out with tears, “Lord God, 
 help me ; my God, forsake me not.” When the temptation 
 was over, and they enquired of him the cause of his distress, 
 he answered, “ God be praised, it is all removed. Be not 
 uneasy on my account ; all that happens to me, happens 
 with God’s permission, and he will suffer nothing that he 
 sees I am unable to bear.” After one of his trials he went 
 to bed, and remained there many days and nights without 
 rising. His servants expected that he had died of fright. 
 They debated whether they should not summon his rela- 
 tives, and force open the door. At length the gardener 
 climbed up to a window, and looking in, to his great joy 
 saw his master turn in bed. The following day he rang 
 the bell. The wife went to his room, and told him how 
 anxious they had been about him ; to which he replied, 
 with a benignant look, that he was well, and had wanted 
 for nothing. One day after dinner the same domestic went 
 into his room, and saw his eyes shining with an appearance 
 as of clear fire. She started back, and exclaimed: “For 
 God’s sake what is the matter ? You look fearfully !” 
 “How then do I look?” said he. She told him what she 
 saw. “Well, well,” said he, “fear not! The Lord has 
 opened my bodily eyes, so that spirits see through them 
 into the world. I shall soon be out of this state, which 
 
ILLUMINATED EYES. 
 
 227 
 
 will not hurt me.” In about half an hour the shining ap- 
 pearance left his eyes. His old servant professed to know 
 when he had conversed with heavenly spirits, from the 
 pleasure and calm satisfaction in his countenance, whereas 
 when he had been infested by wicked spirits, he had a 
 sorrowful face. 
 
 What is here related of his eyes has reason to support 
 it. Animation plays upon the eye, and shews that there 
 are fire channels laid down in the tissues of that organ, or 
 how could the brilliance permeate it ? There is a fund of 
 optics in common life that science has not observed, for the 
 eye, prior to the hand, is the power that commands the 
 world. The eye is of Protean possibilities : the soul shoots 
 through it, and the look is either snaky, or angelic. Each I 
 passion has its proper rays. This, of the individual eye. 
 
 But if one soul can make an eye lustrous, two or more 
 looking through the same eye will project a larger flame. 
 
 We notice a peculiar appearance in Swedenborg’s portrait, 
 what our friend Dr. Elliotson deems that of an “ amiable — 
 lunatic certainly the common objects appear to claim / 
 but little of its attention, but if there is a vacancy, it is 
 only a space for spirits, and when it was filled by them, 
 Swedenborg would no doubt shine from the borrowed souls I 
 to those who saw him. ' 
 
 We have already spoken (p. 153) of one of his voyages to 
 Sweden; we will complete this set of anecdotes, with the 
 stories told of Swedenborg by two other English ship cap- 
 tains. He sailed from Sweden on a certain occasion with 
 one Captain Harrison. During almost the whole voyage 
 he kept his berth, but was often heard speaking, as if in 
 conversation. The steward and cabin-boy came to the 
 captain, and told him that Swedenborg seemed out of his 
 head. “Out of his head or not,” said the captain, “so 
 long as he is quiet I have no power over him. He is 
 always reasonable with me, and I have the best of weather 
 
228 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 ) when he is on board.” Harrison told Rohsahm laughingly, 
 that Swedenborg might sail with him gratis whenever he 
 pleased; for never since he was a mariner had he such 
 voyages as with him. 
 
 The same luck went with Captain Browell, who carried 
 him from London to Dalaron in eight days, during the 
 most of which, as in the former instances, he lay in his 
 berth and talked. Captain Hodson also, another of his car- 
 riers, was but seven days on the voyage, and found Sweden- 
 borg’s company so agreeable, that he was much delighted 
 and taken with him : as he confessed to Bergstrom. 
 
 In this context we introduce what Springer says of Swe- 
 denborg’s clear seeing as regarded himself. “All that he 
 has related to me respecting my deceased acquaintances, 
 both friends and enemies, and the secrets that were between 
 us, almost surpasses belief. He explained to me in what 
 manner the peace was concluded between Sweden and the 
 king of Prussia; and he praised my conduct on that occa- 
 sion: he even told me who were the three great personages 
 of whom I made use in that affair; which, nevertheless, 
 was an entire secret between them and me. I asked him 
 how he could be informed of such particulars, and who had 
 discovered them to him. He rejoined, ‘Who informed 
 me of your affair with Count Ekeblad? You cannot deny 
 the truth of what I have told you. Continue,’ he added, 
 ‘ to deserve his reproaches : turn not aside, either for 
 riches or honors, from the path of rectitude, but on the 
 contrary, keep steadily in it, as you have done; and you 
 will prosper.’ ” In the affair alluded to. Count Ekeblad, 
 in a political altercation, had provoked Springer to draw 
 his sword upon him ; but they had afterwards composed 
 the quarrel, and promised never to mention it while both 
 parties were alive. On another occasion the Count had 
 attempted to bribe Springer with a purse of 10,000 rix 
 dollars, which sum and circumstances Swedenborg particu- 
 
anecdotes. 
 
 229 
 
 larly mentioned to the latter, saying that he had them 
 from the Count, just then deeeased. 
 
 In his Biarij Swedenborg has spoken at great length of 
 the fates in the other life of many celebrated persons with 
 whom he had been acquainted in the world; nor has his 
 pen been withheld from similar particulars about his own 
 relations. On this account, the work could not have been 
 printed in his own day, without giving offence to the sur- 
 vivors of those whom he has thus described. Sometimes 
 his unreserve led him to announcements which must have 
 been grating to his auditors. An instance of this kind 
 occurred on his voyage from Gottenburg to London in 
 1 747. The vessel in which he was a passenger stopped at 
 Oresound, and M. Kryger, the Swedish Consul, invited the 
 officers of the custom-house, together with several of the 
 first people of the town, all anxious to see and know Swe- 
 denborg, to dine with him at his house. Being all seated 
 at table, and none of chem taking the liberty of addressing 
 Swedenborg, who was likewise silent, the Swedish consul 
 thought it incumbent on him to break silence, for which pur- 
 pose he took occasion from the death of the Danish king 
 ChristianVI., which happened the preceding year, (1746,) to 
 enquire of Swedenborg, as he could see and speak with the 
 dead, whether he had also seen Christian VI. after his 
 decease. To this Swedenborg replied in the affirmative, 
 adding, that when he saw him the first time, he was accom- 
 panied by a bishop, or other prelate, who humbly begged the 
 king’s pardon for the many errors into which he had led 
 him by his counsels. A son of the said deceased prelate 
 happened to be present at the table : the consul M. Kryger 
 therefore fearing that Swedenborg might say something 
 further to the disadvantage of the father, interrupted him, 
 saying. Sir, this is his son ! Swedenborg replied, it may 
 be, but what I am saying is true. 
 
 As to those in the other life with whom he could cou- 
 
230 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 verse, the privilege had its limitatious. When the Queen 
 of Sweden asked whether his spiritual intercourse was a 
 science or art that could be communicated to others, he 
 said No, that it was a gift of the Lord. “ Can you then,” 
 said she, “ speak with every one deceased, or only with 
 certain persons? He answered, I cannot converse with all, 
 but with such as I have known in this world, with all 
 royal and princely persons, with all renowned heroes, or 
 great and learned men, whom I have known, either per- 
 sonally, or from their actions or writings; consequently, 
 with all, of whom I could form an idea; for it may be sup- 
 posed that a person whom I never knew, and of whom I 
 could form no idea, I neither could nor would wish to 
 speak with.” In further proof of this, we may cite an 
 anecdote related by Ferelius. “With other news,” says 
 he, “ which on one occasion I received from Sweden through 
 the post, was the announcement of the death of Sweden- 
 borg’s sister, the widow Sundstedt. I communicated this 
 information to a Swedish gentleman whose name was 
 Meier, who was travelling in England at that time, and 
 who happened to be at my house when the news came. 
 This person went immediately to Swedenborg, and con- 
 veyed the intelligence of the death of his sister. When he 
 returned he said, that he thought Swedenborg’s declara- 
 tion respecting his intercourse with the dead could not be 
 true, since he knew nothing of the death of his sister. The 
 next time I saw the old man I mentioned this to him, 
 when he said, ‘ that of such cases he had no knowledge, 
 since he did not desire to know them.’ ” 
 
 On one occasion he was applied to under the following 
 circumstances. A certain Minister of State flattered himself 
 that he could, through Swedenborg, obtain some particulars 
 of what had become of a prince of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeldt, 
 named John William, who disappeared in the year 1/45, 
 without any one knowing what had become of him. No- 
 
ANECDOTES. 
 
 231 
 
 thing was said either of his age, or his person. Swedenborg 
 made an answer which is preserved in the library of his 
 Excellency Lars von Engerstrom. He said among other 
 things that the prince, after being twenty-seven years in 
 the spiritual world, was in a society, into which he (Swe- 
 denborg) could not readily gain admission ; that the angels 
 had no knowledge of his state, and that the matter was 
 not important enough to warrant his asking the Lord 
 himself about it. 
 
 We here introduce an anecdote which has not before ap- 
 peared in English, to illustrate the genius of Klopstock. 
 “ Swedenborg,” says the poet of the Messiah, “ was once 
 at Copenhagen. Our ladies would not let me alone till I 
 visited him. I did not care to see him. He was no object 
 of curiosity to me. History is full of cases of those led 
 astray by pride, like Swedenborg. I fell into disgrace with 
 him at once, because I had no taste for buying his dear 
 quartos. I came directly to the point, and begged him to 
 talk with one of my deceased friends. He said with a tone 
 still more drawling than usual : ‘ If his Royal Majesty the 
 reigning King of Denmark, Frederic the Vth.’ — I am not 
 adding a syllable — ‘had most graciously ordered me to 
 speak with his deceased wife, her Majesty Queen Louisa.’ — 
 Here I interrupted him. ‘ It appears then,’ said I, ‘ that a 
 man who is not a prince, and whose friends may neverthe- 
 less be in the other world, is not worthy to be spoken for 
 by Mons''. Swedenborg.’ I went away, and he said while 
 I was going : ‘ when you are gone, I shall be again directly 
 in the company of the spirits.’ ‘ I was wrong,’ I answered, 
 ‘ not to have hurried away sooner, for you ought not to lose 
 a single moment on my account, of the time that you pass 
 in such good company.’ ” 
 
 Was errand ever so idle ? a man requiring to be certified 
 of the spiritual world, but prompted by “no curiosity.” 
 The ladies, always the sensible half of us, should have 
 
232 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 gone themselves, sooner than have, despatched such a mes- 
 senger. Swedenborg naturally sent him to his writings, 
 but Klopstock would not know them. He “came to the 
 point at once.” If the spiritual world had been a chest 
 of drawers, no one would have opened it for him on 
 such a shewing. There was not live motive enough to 
 command the opening of a peepshow. He never waited 
 for the completion of Swedenborg’s sentence, but has left 
 us to guess what it might have been. He had made up his 
 mind previously, and long before the visit, was running 
 over with acrid unbelief. The interview reminds us of our 
 own times. We might imagine, mutatis mutandis, that 
 Klopstock versus Swedenborg was an allegory of Mr. 
 Wakley sentencing the Okeys, or of the Athenaeum with 
 its thumb- screw upon Miss Martineau. And then pi'oh 
 pudor! the man was a poet! “Where there is no vision,” 
 saith the Scripture, “ the people perish.” At such a time 
 the poets are the first to gasp and die of the missing ether. 
 He should have known his craft better. 
 
 In the early part of this biography (p. 15) we narrated 
 the only love affair in which our author was engaged. 
 Sandel says on the general subject: “Swedenborg was 
 never married. This was not owing to any indifference to- 
 wards the sex ; for he esteemed the company of a fine and 
 intelligent woman as one of the most agreeable of pleasures ; 
 but his profound studies rendered expedient for him the 
 quiet of a single life.” General Tuxen also relates that, 
 “ He once jocosely asked him, whether he had ever been 
 married, or desirous of marrying ? Swedenborg answered, 
 
 ‘ That he had not been married ; but that once in his youth 
 he had been on the road to matrimony. King Charles the 
 Xllth having recommended the famous Polheim to give 
 him his daughter.’ Ou asking what obstacle had prevented 
 it, he said, ‘ She would not have me.’ . . The General 
 craved his pardon if he had been too inquisitive : he re- 
 
KLOPSTOCK. 
 
 233 
 
 plied, ‘Ask whatever question you please, I shall answer 
 it in truth.’ Tuxen then enquired whether in his youth 
 he could keep free from temptations with regard to the 
 sex ? Swedenborg replied, ‘ not altogether ; in my youth 
 I had a mistress in Italy.’ ” We doubt whether Italy 
 should stand here, for he was 52 years of age when in that 
 country. Robsahm* mentions the same thing, but with- 
 out any such specification. With regard to Emerentia 
 Polheim, Swedenborg in his old age, as Tiibeck relates, 
 assured the daughters and sons-in-law of the former object 
 of his affection, as they visited him in his garden, that 
 “ he could converse with their departed mother whenever 
 he pleased.” It was told us by the late Mr. Charles 
 Augustus Tulk, but we have no document for it, that our 
 author used to say that he had seen his allotted wife in 
 the spiritual world, who was waiting for him, and under 
 her mortal name had been a Countess Gyllenborg. If it 
 be true, it is a corroboration of Dante and Beatrice. 
 
 We have already dwelt at length upon the signs which 
 for some years preceded the opening of Swedenborg’s spi- 
 ritual sight. These indeed were of such a nature, that he 
 afterwards wondered that he had not previously arrived at 
 the persuasion that the Lord governs the universe by spi- 
 ritual agency. Nevertheless he was in a position to make 
 every allowanee for the scepticism of others, for he admits 
 that on one occasion, many months after he had spoken 
 with spirits, he perceived that if he were remitted into his 
 former state, he might still fall baek into the opinion that 
 all he had seen was phantasy. 
 
 In the former part of this work, we have had occasion 
 to notice some peculiarities that Swedenborg mentions of 
 himself, as predisposing him to spirit seeing. Did we 
 know more of his history, it is probable that these might 
 
 * Tafel’s Sammlung von Urkunden betreffend das Leben und den 
 Character Eman. Swedenborg’s. Abtheilung iii., p. 20. 
 
234 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 be greatly extended, for whatever may be thought of his 
 mission, it is certain that his case stands alone for the 
 completeness of his peculiar gift, and its uninterrupted 
 exercise. And as Deity operates by his own regular laws, 
 we are sure that in such a person, every natural provision 
 existed that the circumstances required. Hence Sweden- 
 borg’s case may be studied like any other object of science. 
 If it could, however, be shewn that his peculiarities were 
 physical, hereditary, or acquired, this would not settle 
 either way the question of his pretensions. Nay were it 
 sure that he was stark mad, it would not dispossess us of 
 one truth or vision in his writings : these would survive the 
 grave of his persoual reputation, and bring us back to the 
 ancient faith, that madness too has a divine side, and in 
 its natural heedlessness sparkles with wisdom and prophecy, 
 or even sometimes is interpolated with the directer oracles 
 of God.* 
 
 But we deem that his state was in part hereditary, phy- 
 sical and acquired. His father and mother were as ready 
 to believe in the angelic inspirations of his childhood, as he 
 himself to indulge in and asseverate similar intercourse in 
 after life. “ Several of Bishop Swedberg’s works,” says 
 Sandel, “ seem to shew a tendency to behold in certain 
 events a species of prophetic indications.” The bishop 
 was particularly pleased to inform himself of supernatural 
 appearances, one of which he recorded in his works, and 
 also wrote an account of itf to the Bishop of Bristol in 
 1710, wherein he said, that “its truth was certain,” and 
 
 * Coleridge says of Swedenborg: “O! nos terque quaterque felices, 
 si modo hujus saeculi doctis et docentibus datum fuerit eandem insaniam 
 insanire, dementiam scilicet coelestem et de menie divina effluentem !” 
 (S. T. C., Sept. 22nd, 1821, Higbgate.) Seethe Monthly Magazine, 
 Vol. V., p. 614, 1841. 
 
 t See the British Magazine, Sept. 1746, p. 252, 253 : also Swe- 
 denborg’s Animal Kingdom, Vol. 11., p. 428 in the notes. 
 
PREDISPOSITION TO SEERSHIP. 
 
 235 
 
 had been confirmed by the personal enquiries of Field Mar- 
 shal Count Steinbock. He ended his letter to the bishop 
 thus : “lam not inclined myself, and would be far from 
 persuading any one, to credulity and superstition. But 
 may not the all-wise God, in all ages, think it necessary, 
 by extraordinary instances, to fix upon the minds of man- 
 kind some signal impressions of his over-ruling power, and 
 of the truth of his holy Gospel?” More may come out 
 on this head, when Bishop Swedberg’s Autobiography is 
 published. In the meantime we further observe, on the 
 authority of Dr. Tafel, that spirit-seeing has recently ap- 
 peared in a youthful descendent of the Swedenborg family 
 now living in Sweden. And for the rest, Scandinavia itself 
 is a charmed magnetic land, native also in the narrow depths 
 of science, and peculiarly fitted for contributing to Europe 
 a mathematical seer, strong enough to overrun both mys- 
 tery and science from the tertium quid of his own profound 
 individuality. This is just what Swedenborg, with his first 
 adult lips, professed to do. 
 
 His coolness and tranquillity, and unselfish character, 
 were also circumstances essential to his higher gifts. We 
 know how vital they are to the prosecution of the sciences. 
 “The Lord,” he said, “had given him a love of spiritual 
 truth, that is to say, not with a view to honor or profit, 
 but merely for the sake of the truth itself.” No man of 
 that age was so uninterrupted in his mind, or so nakedly 
 devout to his objects as Swedenborg. “The elements 
 themselves,” said Saudel, “ would have striven in vain 
 to turn him from his course.” The competency also of 
 his fortune excluded one species of cares, which he seemed 
 only to taste occasionally, for the experiment of their 
 spiritual results. There is a passage in his Diary which 
 illustrates this. “I have now,” says he, “been for thirty- 
 three months in a state in which my mind is withdrawn 
 from bodily affairs ; and hence can be present in the so- 
 
236 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 cieties of the spiritual and the celestial. . . Yet whenever 
 I am intent upon worldly matters, or have cares and desires 
 about money, (such as caused me to write a letter to-day,) 
 I lapse into a bodily state ; and the spirits, as they inform 
 me, cannot speak with me, but say that they are in a manner 
 absent. . . . This shews me that spirits cannot speak with 
 a man who dwells upon worldly and bodily cares ; for the 
 things of the body draw down his ideas, and drown them 
 in the body. March 4, 1748.” It was however seldom 
 that Swedenborg experienced such distractions, and as for 
 his fame in the world, and the success of his books, these 
 were things that did not trouble him. When General Tuxen 
 asked him how many he thought there were in the world 
 who favored his doctrine, he replied, that “ there might 
 perhaps be fifty, and in proportion the same number in the 
 world of spirits.” But said he to Springer, “God knows 
 the time when his church ought to commence.” 
 
 His diet was a constant harmony and preparation of his 
 seership. “Eat not so much” (above, p. 75, 76) was 
 written over its portal, and the instruction was obeyed 
 throughout the curriculum of his experiences. The vermin 
 of gluttony are all those bodily lives that exceed the domi- 
 nion of spiritual ; and these he cast out and kept out, fining 
 down the body to the shapely strictness of the soul. We 
 read of one excess that he committed of so peculiar a nature, 
 that we tell it in his own words. It occurs in his Diary, 
 with the strong heading, “The stink of intemperance.” 
 “ One evening,” says he, “ I took a great meal of milk 
 and bread, more than the spirits considered good for me. 
 On this occasion they dwelt upon intemperance, and accused 
 me of it.” He then proceeds to say, that they made him 
 sensibly perceive the foulness which their ideas attributed 
 to him. If so infantine a debauch was thus reproved, we 
 may imagine how sensitive a thermometer of appetite his 
 daily spiritual relations furnished; how the spirits that 
 
IS DIET. 
 
 237 
 
 came to him opened a correspondence with the “ animal 
 spirits” that were embodied by his diet. Seership, as a 
 general rule, is coincident with abstemiousness, which is 
 the directest means of putting down the body, and by the 
 law of the balance, of lifting up the soul ; and where seer- 
 ship is thus produced, it will of itself lead to new demands 
 from the soul, or new exigences of temperance. We might 
 instance the Hindoo seers as examples of these remarks, 
 or we might support them by numerous cases occurring in 
 Europe, and even at the present time ; not to mention that 
 the germs of the experience are within every man’s know- 
 ledge. 
 
 As the man depends so much upon the dinner, and the 
 dinner upon the appetite and the self-control, it is interesting 
 to know what was the diet of a man so industrious, peace- 
 ful and deep-eyed as Swedenborg. For some time after his 
 spiritual intercourse commenced, his mode of living appears 
 to have been not unusual, excepting that the quantity was 
 moderate ; he occasionally drank one or two glasses of wine 
 after dinner, but never more ; and he took no supper. In 
 company, throughout his life, he followed the habit of the 
 table, and took wine, “but always very moderately.” During 
 the last fifteen years of his life he almost abandoned the 
 use of animal food, yet at times would eat a little fish, eels 
 particularly. His main stays were bread and butter, milk 
 and coffee, almonds and raisins, vegetables, biscuits, cakes 
 and gingerbread, which he used frequently to bring home 
 with him, and share with the children. He was a water- 
 drinker, but his chief beverage was coffee made very sweet, 
 and w'ithout milk. Collin is correct when he says that 
 pensive men generally are fond of coffee. At his house in 
 Stockholm he had a fire from winter to spring almost con- 
 stantly in his study, at which he made his own coffee, and 
 drank it often both in the day and the night. He took snuff 
 largely. It appears that he abstained from animal food 
 
238 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 from dietetic considerations. At the same time there dwelt 
 in his mind a vegetarian tendency, pointed towards the 
 future, or at least, what is the same thing, crying out from 
 the past. He writes on the subject in his Arcana as follows: 
 “ Considered apart, eating the flesh of animals is somewhat 
 profane. The most ancient people never on any account 
 eat the flesh of either beast or fowl, but lived entirely upon 
 grain, especially on wheaten bread, on fruit, vegetables 
 and herbs, various kinds of milk, butter, &c. It was 
 unlawful for them to kill animals, or to eat their flesh. 
 They looked upon it as bestial, and were content with the 
 uses and services that animals afforded them. But in pro- 
 cess of time, when men became as cruel as wild beasts, 
 yea, much more cruel, they began to slay animals, and eat 
 their flesh; and in consideration of this nature in man, 
 the killing and eating of animals was permitted, and con- 
 tinues to be so.” 
 
 Some of Swedenborg’s pursuers have alleged the whole 
 of his experiences to his coffee-drinking ; for coffee, acting 
 upon a pure temperament, will, they say, produce excita- 
 bility, sleeplessness, abnormal activity of mind and imagi- 
 nation, and fantastic visions ; also loquacity. We credit 
 these effects of coffee. But he is a medical pedant who 
 would try to pour the Arcana or the Biarium out of a coffee 
 pot. Nevertheless there is a truth in the allegation, for if 
 Swedenborg’s was a life providential for a certain end, then 
 the coffee might be a part of the providence, and lend its 
 import to the seer. We forget that if God makes the world, 
 he also makes everything in it, and a new world of things 
 through other things. If coffee will dispose to clear-seeing, 
 surely the means do not injure the end. No doubt seers 
 are as regular fabrics as crystals, and not a drug or berry 
 is omitted from their build, when it is wanted. Apart from 
 metaphysics, the time has gone by when anything is made 
 out of nothing. The question then is, not only how Swe- 
 
COFFEE. 
 
 239 
 
 denborg came to be a visionary, but also what are his visions 
 worth ? Let the revelations criticke the coffee, as well as 
 vice versd. The prophets of old, unless we are mistaken, 
 had their diet enjoined; but the diet which supported, would 
 be the last thing to contradict the prophecy. The truth is, 
 we do not yet know what diet ensures, or that it is the 
 stuff in the potter’s hands that makes us either porcelain 
 or common pot, either satin or cotton. 
 
 Swedenborg was peculiar in the matter of sleep ; in his 
 latter years he paid little attention to times and seasons ; 
 often labored through the whole night, and had no stated 
 periods of repose. “When I am sleepy,” said he, “I go 
 to bed.” He kept also little account of the days of the 
 week. As we have seen already, he sometimes continued 
 in bed for several days together, when enjoying his spiritual 
 trances. He desired Shearsmith never to disturb him at 
 such times; an injunction which was necessary, for the 
 look of his face was so peculiar on these occasions that 
 Shearsmith sometimes feared he was dead. At other times, 
 as soon as he awoke he went into his study (when in Stock- 
 holm), kindled the embers of his fire from a ready supply of 
 dry wood and birch bark, and immediately sat down to write. 
 
 He was not fluent in conversation; indeed he had 
 an impediment in his speech, which perhaps predisposed 
 him to the loss of it that he suffered from his apoplectic 
 seizure. It does not appear that he had a remarkable faci- 
 lity for acquiring languages, for we find that although he 
 resided so long in London, he could not hold a running 
 conversation in English. He was, however, sufficiently 
 acquainted with the modern languages, as well as with 
 Hebrew, Greek and Latin. All the authorities agree that 
 his speech, though not facile, was impressive. He spoke 
 with deliberation, and when his voice was heard, it was a 
 signal for silence in others, while the slowness of his deli- 
 very increased the curiosity of the listeners. He entered 
 
240 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 into no disputes on matters of religion, but when obliged 
 to defend himself, he did it mildly and briefly; and if any 
 one insisted upon argument, and became warm against him, 
 he retired, with a recommendation to them “ to read his 
 writings.” One day, when Mr. Cookworthy was with him 
 in Coldbath Fields, a person present objected to something 
 that he said, and argued the point in his own way ; but 
 Swedenborg only replied, “ I receive information from 
 angels upon such things a response of a forcible nature, 
 supposing it true, for how many problems introduction into 
 the spiritual world would answer : what a smiting criticism 
 for instance Polheim made, or rather was, upon the burial 
 service, just because he stood beyond the grave (p. 90). Mr. 
 Burckhardt relates, that on one occasion he was present 
 when Swedenborg dined in London with some of the Swedish 
 clergy; and a polemic arising between him and one of them 
 concerning the Lord, and the nature of our duty to Him, 
 Swedenborg “overthrew the tenets of his opponent, who 
 appeared but a child to him in knowledge.” We can believe 
 that there was a formidable power in his slow' utterances. 
 
 Were this the place we might say much upon the almost 
 invariable partition that takes place between the gifts of 
 speaking and of thoughtful writing ; so seldom united in 
 one person. The difference between the endowments lies 
 somewhat in mental velocities, the writer deploying his 
 forces with a slowness measured to the pen strokes ; the 
 orator rushing forth with his at voice-speed. The light and 
 heavy dragoons of intelligence fulfil different tactics in the 
 battles of the Word. Where impediment of speech takes 
 place, it is a sign of lacking commnnication between the 
 mind and the organs — of meanings in discourse coming 
 down flashwise; and in Swedenborg’s instance, it might 
 argue some predisposition for that separation and absence 
 of soul from body for which his life was otherwise remark- 
 able : if this be not too medical an opinion. 
 
PECULIARITIES. 
 
 241 
 
 When in Loudon he went occasionally to the Swedish 
 church, and afterwards dined with Ferelius or some other 
 of his countrymen ; but he told them that “ he had no 
 peace in the church on account of spirits, who contradicted 
 what the preacher said, especially when he spoke of three 
 persons in the Godhead, which amounted in reality to 
 three gods.” 
 
 During his latter years he became less and less attentive 
 to the concerns of this world : even when walking abroad 
 he seemed to be engaged in spiritual communion, and took 
 little notice of things and people in the streets. When he 
 went out in Stockholm without the observation of his do- 
 mestics, some singularity in his dress perchance would 
 betoken his abstraction. Once when he dined with Rob- 
 sahm’s father, he appeared with one shoe buckle of plain 
 silver, and the other set with precious stones ; greatly to 
 the amusement of the young ladies of the party. But a 
 man of 80 and upwards, a seer and an old bachelor besides, 
 might be pardoned for some inattentions. 
 
 In person, says Shearsmith, he was about 5 feet 9 inches 
 high, rather thin, and of a brovm complexion. His eyes 
 were of a brownish gray, nearly hazel, and rather small. 
 He had always a cheerful smile upon his countenance. 
 Mr. Servant6 remembered him as an old gentleman of a 
 dignified and venerable appearance, whose thoughtful yet 
 mildly expressive countenance, added to something very 
 unusual in his air, attracted his attention forcibly. When 
 Collin visited him he was thin and pale, but still retained 
 traces of beauty, and had something very pleasing in his 
 physiognomy, and a dignity in his erect stature. Ab 
 Indagine relates that his eyes were always smiling ; and 
 Robsahm, that his countenance was always illuminated 
 by the light of his uncommon genius. When he lodged 
 with Bergstrom he usually w'alked out after breakfast, 
 dressed neatly in velvet, and made a good appearance. 
 
 M 
 
242 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 His suit, according to Shearsmith, was made after an old 
 fashion, and he wore a full-bottomed wig, a pair of long 
 ruffles, and a curious hilted sword, and carried a gold-headed 
 cane. In Sweden his dress was simple, but neat and con- 
 venient : during the winter he was clad in a garment of 
 reindeer skins, and in summer, in a study gown, “ both 
 well worn,” — so Robsahm says, — “ as became a philo- 
 sopher.” Ferelius has an odd anecdote about him : “ that 
 he never washed his face or his hands, and never brushed 
 his clothes, but said that no dust or dirt would stick to 
 him.” Tafel considers this to be a calumny, which perhaps 
 it is, but Ferelius does not say so. We may remark that 
 at the time of which the reverend gentleman speaks, Sweden- 
 borg was in his 84th year. None of his other biographers 
 allude to this peculiarity. He would not tolerate linen 
 sheets on his bed, but lay between woollen blankets. 
 Wherever he lived, his habits were plain to the last degree ; 
 in Stockholm he required no services of his old gardener’s 
 wife, but to make his bed, and bring a large pitcher of water 
 daily to his study : for the rest, he waited upon himself. 
 His journeys were made with no parade, and few of the 
 cohveniences of travelling. He took no servant with him, 
 and rode in an open waggon from Stockholm to Gottenburg, 
 where he embarked for England or Holland, to have his 
 manuscripts printed. 
 
 In money matters Swedenborg was at once saving and 
 liberal. Those with whom he had affairs, spoke always of 
 his generosity. Provided with sufficient means, he admi- 
 nistered them strictly for public services. Whatever his 
 motives might be, it is certain that he would receive back 
 no proceeds from the sale of certain of his works, but 
 dedicated the whole to religious subscriptions.* Possibly 
 
 • It is probable, however, that he derived some valuable returns 
 from his scientific books, and particularly from his Philosophical and 
 Mineral works. See Robsahm. 
 
HIS HABITS AND MANNERS. 
 
 243 
 
 he deemed that as he was but an amanuensis of spiritual 
 powers, he had no right to keep a commercial account of 
 the results. Moreover, he sold his works at unremunerative 
 prices, and indeed gave a great portion of them away. 
 When Dr. Hartley offered to lend him money, he returned 
 for answer that “as to this world’s wealth he had what was 
 sufficient, and more he neither sought nor wished for.” 
 Count Hdpken says that “ he lived frugally without sordid- 
 ness, and that his travels cost him no more than when he 
 remained at home.” He was not remarkably in the habit 
 of almsgiving, for he used to say that “ most of those who 
 solicit alms are either lazy or vicious, and if from compas- 
 sion you give them money without examination, it is rather 
 an injury than a benefit.” He did not lend money, for 
 that, he said, is the way to lose it; and besides, he added, 
 “ I want my money to pay the expenses of travelling and 
 printing.” When Shearsmith, his landlord, presented his 
 bills, Swedenborg used to send him to his drawer to pay 
 himself; a careless-looking mode, but clairvoyant people 
 know of course with whom they have to deal. 
 
 His manners were those of a nobleman and gentleman 
 of the last century. He was somewhat reserved, but com- 
 plaisant ; accessible to all, and had something very loving 
 and taking in his demeanor. Personally he left good im- 
 pressions behind him wherever he appeared. 
 
 His labors during the sixty-three years of his authorship, 
 were of a surprizing magnitude: we may estimate that his 
 volumes would make about sixty octavos of 500 pages each 
 in English. About forty of these are already translated, 
 and many of them have gone through numerous editions in 
 England and America. When it is remembered that his 
 works consist almost entirely of the deepest analysis, or 
 treat upon the highest subjects, the quantity which issued 
 from his pen becomes still more astonishing. There is 
 indeed a vast amount of repetition in his books, for as be- 
 
 M 2 
 
244 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 seemed a teacher, he professed repetition, and was careless 
 of artistic eifect. But with all deductions, his quantity 
 does not greatly exceed his quality. 
 
 He made use of no amanuensis for his books, but was 
 self-helping as well as self-contained throughout. From 
 the beginning of his theological mission, he framed indexes 
 or rather digests of what he wrote, whereby he was enabled 
 to refer from part to part of his extensive manuscripts. 
 These indexes are models of compression and arrangement, 
 and are themselves large and readable volumes. They 
 shew at a glance what a crowd of “capital aphorisms”* 
 there is in his works, and how impossible it is to give an 
 exhaustive statement of them in a short compass. In his 
 latter years, the Biole in various languages, was his whole 
 library. 
 
 Our narrative has shewn that Swedenborg resided in 
 London many times, and there published many of his 
 works. It may not be unpleasing to the English reader to 
 know what he says of our nation in the spiritual world. 
 His Bianj in particular abounds with passages about us, 
 but we can cite only one from the Continuation of the Last 
 Judgment : “ The more excellent of the English nation,” 
 says he, “ are in the centre of all Christians, and the rea- 
 son why they are in the centre is, because they have 
 interior intellectual light. This is not apparent to any one 
 in the natural world, yet it is conspicuously so in the spi- 
 ritual world. This light, they derive from the liberty they 
 enjoy of thinking, and thence of speaking and of writing. 
 Among the people of other nations, who have not such 
 liberty, intellectual light is buried, because it has no out- 
 let. This light, however, of itself, is not active, but is 
 rendered active by others, especially by men of reputation 
 
 • * “No person,” says Bacon, “ is equal to the forming of apho- 
 
 risms, or would ever think of them, if he did not find himself 
 copiously and solidly instructed for writing upon a subject.” 
 
ENGLISHMEN IN THE SPIRIT. 
 
 245 
 
 and authority among them. As soon as anything is said 
 by these men, or as soon as anything they approve, is 
 read, that light shines forth ; but seldom sooner. On this 
 account the English have governors placed over them in 
 the spiritual world, and priests of great name for learning 
 and powerful ability are given them, whose commands and 
 advice, from this their natural disposition, they cheer- 
 fully obeyed. 
 
 “ They rarely go out of their own society, because they 
 love it, even as in the world they love their country. 
 Moreover, there is a similarity of disposition among them, 
 in consequence of which, they contract intimacy with 
 friends of their own country, and seldom with others ; and 
 they mutually minister to each others wants, and love sin- 
 cerity.” May the best among us long stand as high in 
 both the worlds ! 
 
 The upper parts of Swedenborg’s character rose from the 
 groundwork of excellent citizenship and social qualities. 
 Naturally inoffensive and conservative, he was at one with 
 the general polity, and never dreamt of innovations that 
 should interfere with the moral basis of the state. Even 
 his theology was referable, in his view, to an existing 
 authority in the Bible, and in harmony with the earliest 
 creeds of the church, so far as they went. He lent himself 
 freely to his family ties, but never allowed them to inter- 
 rupt his justice. As a friend he was staunch and equally 
 independent. The sentiment of duty ruled him without 
 appeal in his public as in his private affairs : he had no 
 acquaintances but society and his country when iAetr inte- 
 rests were involved. In disseminating his religious ideas, 
 he was open and above board ; placed his books within the 
 reach of the Christian world, and there left them, to Pro- 
 vidence and the readers. By no trick did he ever seek to 
 force attention, and intrigue had no part in his character. 
 Notwithstanding his attachment to his first admirers, he 
 
246 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 kept his own space around him, and was not impeded by 
 any followers. Tender and amicable in his nature, he was 
 always distant enough to have that large arm’s-length that 
 so peculiar a workman required. Ambition he must have 
 had in some sense, but so transpierced and smitten with 
 zeal for his fellows, that we can only call it, public love. 
 The power of order and combination, is a main feature in 
 his capacious intellect ; those who open him as a visionary, 
 are struck with the masculine connexion which he every 
 where displays. His sensual nature was evidently an obe- 
 dient though a powerful vehicle to his mind. He was per- 
 fectly courageous in that kind that his mission needed ; 
 firm, but unobtrusive, in all courts and companies, and 
 ever bending whither his conscience prescribed. Religion 
 was the mild element that governed the rest, converting 
 them past their own natures by its lively flames, and he 
 walked with the constant sentiment of God between him 
 and his fellows, giving and receiving dignity among God’s 
 children. His life indeed is not heroic in the old fashion, 
 but take his own account of it, and he has travelled far 
 and perilled much : he has seen and been what would 
 bleach the lips of heroes. Whether you receive his account 
 or not, you must own that his structure was heroic, for 
 how otherwise could he have outlived those tremendous 
 “ fancies” of heaven and hell. But let that pass, and we 
 still claim him as a hero in the new campaign of peace. 
 The first Epic of the Study is the song that will celebrate 
 him. There are many simple problems, but how few dare 
 face them : it is more difiScult to be courageous there than 
 before batteries of cannon : it is more impossible to the 
 most to lead the forlorn hopes of thought, discouraged 
 since history began, to victory, than to mount the scaling 
 ladder in the imminent deadly breach. To do the one re- 
 quires only command of body ; to perform the other needs 
 courage over the brain itself ; fighting against organism and 
 
HIS CHARACTER. 
 
 247 
 
 Stupidity older and more terrifying than armies. Select 
 your problem, and ask the world round who will besiege 
 it until it cedes the truth, and you soon find that of all 
 the soldiers there is none who does not straightway shew 
 fatigue and sob impossible, which are cowardice under its 
 literary name. In these ages there has been no man who 
 stood up so manfully to his problems as Swedenborg, who 
 wielded his own brains so like a spirit, or knew so experi- 
 mentally that labor rises over death. Therefore we name 
 him Leader of the world’s free thought and free press; 
 the Captain of the heroes of the writing desk. 
 
PART IV. 
 
 It is extraordinary how well Swedenborg has answered the 
 children’s questions; those enquiries of little tongues that 
 the parents divert, but do not satisfy. If we wished to 
 give his theology an experiment, we should select for its 
 recipients children of from five to ten years of age, and 
 teach them nothing of it except in answer to their own en- 
 quiries. The whole scheme would be elicited presently by 
 the moving curiosity of almost infantine querists. As a 
 satisfaction to such like, including those simple adults 
 whose faculties are as those of children, there is a com- 
 pleteness in his revelations ; the first circle of intellectual 
 wants is gratified with parental forethought; the proffered 
 education, drawn forth by the pupil himself, is exact and 
 suitable; and the youthful mind runs no danger of subse- 
 quent complexity in the learning with which his easy 
 teacher provides him. The personal Maker of the world, 
 his name and abode; His quality as the best of men; the 
 purpose of all things for our use; the immortality not 
 of the soul but of the man, or rather not his immortality 
 but his straight continuance; the way in which people die 
 and rise again; the great pleasantness of heaven for the 
 good, and the pain of hell for the naughty; the men and 
 women living in each of the bright stars, and one day 
 to be our friends — these are things to satisfy babes of all 
 conditions and ages. We would back Swedenborg for com- 
 forting little ones weeping over a lost brother or sister. 
 
children’s aUESTIONS ANSWERED. 249 
 
 against all the clergy that ever preached. We would back 
 him at a marriage for throwing upon the wedding ring a 
 brighter shine of the skies. We should have confidence in 
 him for the real events and unguarded moments that hap- 
 pen to men through life. However this may be, he is the 
 first theologian with a voice that penetrates into the nurserj^ 
 and becomes part of the mother’s tale, or the governesses 
 explanations. Indeed he has answered none but children’s 
 questions, which are the first pure wants of knowledge. 
 Until these were met, no questions had been answered; 
 and so he began at the beginning. He is preeminently the 
 Gamaliel for the youngest faculties. 
 
 His own infantine acceptance of the Christian religion 
 enables him to converse with children’s wants. No learned 
 man is so free from dogmatic learning as Swedenborg. He 
 came to his Bible as though seventeen centuries of con- 
 troversy had been rescinded in his favor, with a fresh eye 
 and an unconscious understanding. He left off mending 
 his nets, and became a fisher of men. It shewed much 
 faculty of communication, that he should be spiritually 
 with the old fishermen, in spite of the impediment of learn- 
 ing, and of the intervention of ages. The brain must have 
 been permeable, from his own adult organism, to the un- 
 abolished infancy within it. The most of men forget their 
 babyhood; if they were introduced to themselves long back, 
 they would blush, and “ not have the pleasure” of knowing 
 themselves; the first-laid candid fibres of their souls have 
 been cowled over with rude red flesh, and are seldom 
 known to be extant within it. But so it was not with Swe- 
 denborg, who communicated from end to end of his expe- 
 rience in pleasant transits of clear-seeing and easy moving. 
 It was this that empowered him to go to the realms where 
 little children are. Once there, there is no difference of 
 ranks or ages, spirits or men, Christians or Turks; no dis- 
 tance between the sun and the eye ; impossibility is uu- 
 
 M 3 
 
250 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 known, and death unsuspected. A man who can without 
 knot or break receive the flashes of his childhood, is from 
 his rarity a marvellous character, and good may be expected 
 of him. 
 
 The truths of the connexion of things are those espe- 
 cially that he may declare. Coherent himself from first to 
 last, he will see coherency where others miss it, and es- 
 tablish it where it is wanting. He will in short be a link, 
 affectionate, doctrinal, or real. Swedenborg was such a 
 link, and he and his writings may be looked on, in one 
 point of view, as entirely an organ of communications. Let 
 us regard them in this light with respect to some cardinal 
 topics. 
 
 Truths, like the world itself which is one among them, 
 consist of two things, places and roads. The intellectual 
 globe lies round and colored as the material, consisting of 
 continents, countries and counties, or genera, classes and 
 species, and these are the places of the mind. Then be- 
 tween them, linking them in one, there are the truths of 
 connexion, or the analogies that run from subject to subject; 
 these are the roads of the mind. It is in knowledge so re- 
 garded that we now trace the presence of Swedenborg’s 
 genius. 
 
 This view distributes away much of the diffieulty that 
 hangs about him, and enables us to treat him in his three- 
 fold character of philosopher, seer, and subject of revela- 
 tions, without the one element impugning or annulling the 
 other two. The man who is open, is ipso facto an envoy 
 and ambassador living for amenities and reconciliations 
 which are not dreamt of until he appears. 
 
 A new religion is almost necessarily followed by new 
 communications established by mankind with various de- 
 partments of knowledge and existence; and Swedenborg 
 was the apostle of a new religion. His position of the 
 divine humanity as the sole, and only possible, object of 
 
OPEN MEN. 
 
 251 
 
 worship, and his identifying of Jesus Christ with that ob- 
 ject, amounts to a fresh link between God and man, in 
 other words, to a new religion. The quantity of truth — of 
 way and intercourse that is involved in that tenet, can 
 hardly be estimated. In the highest case it unites the 
 senses with the soul, spirituality with history, divinity with 
 humanity, the private heart and the humblest knowledge 
 and confidence with universal love and the sovereign justice 
 of the Lord. It compounds or realizes the highest truth, 
 and brings it into the world. It is the central at-one-ment, 
 and already puts sight upon faith, and faith into sight, 
 and abolishes miracle, by constituting it afresh as the order 
 of nature. This is the greatest contribution of Swedenborg’s 
 books to human weal — the seizure of the fact, and the de- 
 monstration of the necessity, of the incarnation, because 
 this makes God approachable through Him who is the Way, 
 and approachable for all alike, children or men, learned or 
 unlearned, sensual or subtle. This we term a new religion, 
 because it leads us to a new God, and through a way new 
 in its fidness, namely, all our human faculties together. 
 
 After this, in which God himself is known to the senses, 
 all other cases of communication and correspondence, being 
 of a lesser nature, are easy and intelligible. Mankind is 
 most estranged from the Most High; if this distance by 
 his mercy be shortened and abolished, the smaller gap that 
 separates man from any created thing, cannot be an essen- 
 tial bar to his brotherhood with it. If the space between 
 the Holy One that inhabiteth eternity, and the sensual 
 nature of mankind, be actually annulled, there is no space 
 left in the way of hindrance, but only as an organ of com- 
 munications. The world of truth in this wise is like the 
 great ocean covered with ships, it is all roads and highways, 
 one sublime plain, giving passage to every love, and fair 
 winds to all desirable knowledge. 
 
 There is no religion, if it be lively, but tends to open the 
 
252 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 other life, because every religion prepares us for the future, 
 keeps the spiritual as an end in view, and by consequence 
 realizes it before the mind so far as it is able. Perhaps 
 with the exception of Protestantism, there is not a faith 
 recorded in the world’s history but has leant upon super- 
 natural revelations; and these the more bright and frequent, 
 in proportion as we approach towards more primitive ages. 
 A religion that has not the key of the spiritual world, is to 
 this extent a failure, and enjoins its votaries to shoot at a 
 mark that is not put up. Swedenborg’s eyes, opened upon 
 the other life, are then nothing extraordinary; they are 
 eyes exercising that function that belongs to every justly 
 religious man, and which is but a minor department of his 
 prerogatives, included in his knowledge of God. It is the 
 order of creation that the ends of actions should be seen, in 
 order to the shaping of beginnings, and seen not by intui- 
 tion or philosophy, but by fair straightforward sight. The 
 current vision of the end guides and steers the means to- 
 wards their local fitness in the work. The first communi- 
 cation then which we signalize in Swedenborg, is that 
 between the natural and spiritual worlds, which after being 
 shamefully lost, is logically restored in this plain religious 
 man. 
 
 Concurrently with this he is the medium of proclaiming 
 the spirit of the Word, and reconciling it with the letter. 
 This is but part of the former case; or rather it is the 
 whole, because the Word is the divine truth in heaven as 
 upon earth. The spiritual world of the Word is the uni- 
 versal heaven : heavenly truth, heavenly space and heavenly 
 objects are one and the same thing in that sphere. The 
 unfolding of the inward or spiritual sense is then coincident 
 with the entrance of a prepared man into the spiritual 
 world. The science of correspondences arises under these 
 circumstances. The comparison between two harmonious 
 worlds necessarily gives birth to it. Apart from this com- 
 
SPIRITUAL OPENINGS. 
 
 253 
 
 parison, truth must be simple and superficial; the spiritual 
 deficient in weight, the natural devoid of fire : but let the 
 two worlds be seen concurrently, and along the harmonies 
 that subsist between them, the one will pass into the other, 
 and a complemental marriage ensue. The truths of har- 
 mony or connexion, the doctrine of correspondences, are 
 the legitimate fruits of that union. 
 
 Swedenborg’s function is therefore important because of 
 his experience : he had seen both soul and body, and knevv 
 their harmony or agreement, which no one could know un- 
 less he saw both. Some of his allegations founded upon 
 his compound experience may provoke incredulity. He 
 often says that he taught the angels of heaven many truths. 
 Philosophical shoulders shrug at the assertion. But why 
 so ? A man who lived in two worlds at once, would, by 
 his doubleness, learn and teach something that no single- 
 world denizen could suspect. The angels did not know, 
 until Swedenborg’s visit, what matter was, or that it was 
 distinct from spirit ; they had lost their experience of it in 
 gaining that of spirit ; and it was only when a man came, 
 who embraced at once matter aud spirit and the difference 
 between them, that an experience was given which taught 
 what the difference is. For positive experience is as need- 
 ful for angels and archangels, as for chemists, philoso- 
 phers, and mechanics. In fact, in all wisdom there is 
 no substance but fact, and nothing so divine as experience. 
 He that has it, no matter whether he be high lived or low 
 lived, upon his own subject, is a proper schoolmaster for 
 angels. 
 
 Swedenborg, then, as the correspondent between the 
 worlds, and between the soul and body of the Word, in 
 the exercise of his duplex sight and thought neeessarily 
 learns, in his own measure, the science of correspondences. 
 This science is the spirit of his communications, regarded 
 in their altitude. 
 
254 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 An open mind is at one with itself, and feels itself as a 
 harmony ; whatever it thinks, is a thought enriched ; what- 
 ever it does, is a marriage deed. It is a soul and a body 
 in all cogitation and operation. Its truths are worlds, and 
 its worlds are truths. It is a bundle of centres where the 
 plumb lines of spirit tie love knots with the superficial rays 
 of nature, and lay in colored, living mosaic the ground 
 floor of a solid man. Thenceforth, his doctrines, embodied 
 and illuminated, are sights and voices — things seen and 
 heard. His intelligence is clairvoyance ; what he thinks, that 
 he sees, and vice versa. Most of us are fragments and di- 
 vorces, — the products of some former violence or convulsion, 
 but such is not he, but rather a fair planet on which Eden 
 continues. Things to us the most irreconcileable, are his 
 sweet harmonies. He is most wilful when he is doing 
 God’s will. His human reason is most independent when 
 he is recipient of a divine revelation ; his truth and God’s 
 truth belong all the more severely to each because they are 
 the other’s. The efforts of his genius are his obedience to 
 a divine commission. He does not turn the tables upon 
 his Maker, and discourse of “ subject and object,” and 
 other illegitimate offspring of divorced soul and body ; but 
 he knows that he is something because God is something, 
 and that any preponderance given to himself will make him 
 shadowy and eccentric. Such a man, in his measure, was 
 Swedenborg, and, therefore, at a certain stage of his de- 
 velopment, that is to say, of his Divine preparation, his 
 mind became a spiritual eye ; his thoughts, experimental 
 travelling ; his doctrines, spiritual cities and scenery ; and 
 the deep movements of his sympathy, intercourse with de- 
 parted men and women belonging to all ages and to several 
 universes. The whole was fenced around by the solem- 
 nization of the union between religion and good works, 
 whose early divoree had so long precluded the Book of Life. 
 
 This is the middle of harmony, the region of self-corn- 
 
SPIRITUAL OPENINGS. 
 
 255 
 
 munications, where heart, and life, and doctrine, and sense, 
 advantage each other and are each other. This is the 
 flavor of humanity, when it is ripe in the hands of God : 
 the fruit hangs upon the tree, and yet is dead to the tree, 
 for the sun is now the tree on which its ripeness grows. 
 
 We see that in a harmonic man there is nothing abnor- 
 mal, but all that is natural, in supernatural pretensions. 
 Man is at once a natural and a preternatural being. It is 
 his own fault if he flings away his better half. Divine 
 commissions are intended to be common whenever men can 
 receive them. Worthy men and women departed are angels, 
 that is to say, God’s ministers. There is no hereditary 
 nobility in the skies, but the poorest goodness takes its 
 own place. Many of the last are first, and of the first are 
 last. We are not then offended with Swedenborg for claim- 
 ing a privilege which he asserts is the common privilege of 
 mankind. Every heart is meant to be a vessel of divine 
 sympathies ; every intellect, an instrument of divine com- 
 munications ; all senses are given that God and heaven may 
 be seen. The strangeness of this man’s life is only a criti- 
 cism upon his age. Had he lived before that flood which 
 drowned the calmest perceptions of the race, he might have 
 passed for a common-place man, too much addicted to 
 worldly sciences, and impeded by mortality. Now he is 
 bright and remarkable from the murkiness of our civilized 
 air. 
 
 We have not yet done with that opening or road-making 
 which radiates from his works as a centre. There is no 
 large space of thought that has not become more accessible, 
 and we will add, more loveable, in consequence of what he 
 wrote. Observe the broad access laid down in his works 
 between his own theology and other religious. The science 
 of correspondences, the link between the worlds, comes 
 easily into lower relations, and proclaims the original unity 
 of religious systems. The Hindoo and Grecian mythologies 
 
25G 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 are translated into a Christianity as old as the world, 
 through the restoration of that universal language whose 
 symbols are sun and moon, and the objects of creation. 
 The first manifested Word of God was the world itself ; 
 the meaning that lay in the world was what the first readers 
 understood. They wrote their mythologies, not in vowels 
 and consonants, but in hieroglyphical things. Those my- 
 thologies, at length, were ill and perversely written, and at 
 last the symbols overpowered the sense and occupied its 
 place. But still, whatever truth they have is to be attained 
 by hieroglyphic interpretation. What a field is here opened 
 for missionary enterprizes. The heathen may be led back 
 from the entanglement of their religions, to their own an- 
 cestral truths ; and then, by a readier passage, towards the 
 Christian centre. The church is the heart and lungs of 
 the world, and by such a missionary enterprize, its pulses 
 and attractions begin to permeate the Asiatic and ^laho- 
 metan remoteness, to discuss and eliminate the accretions of 
 time, and to raise the whole race, as a man, into warm- 
 blooded life. No evidences, or even examples, plastered 
 upon heathenism, will convert the barbarian, but heathenism 
 itself is the unwilling witness to the Christian faith. 
 
 There is something well fitted to the Asiatic in Sweden- 
 borg’s genius. His conception of the Grand Man, although 
 we believe scientifically original, is in singular harmony 
 with the large and spheral thought of the oriental religions. 
 Indeed, his scientific views are so similar to the Chinese 
 cosmogonies, that were it necessary to seek for the parentage 
 of the works of genius (which it never is), we might easily 
 build up the former out of the latter. There is, however, 
 an element in him which the East has not, a more than 
 European, perhaps a peculiarly Scandinavian activity, which 
 demands a material world as the stern proof-place of 
 thoughts and contemplations. There is also, by conse- 
 quence, a reliance on personal man, which tramples out 
 
OPENING OF RELIGIONS. 
 
 25 / 
 
 Pantheism, and will be satisfied with no perfection less 
 spirit-shaped than a personal God ; and this is a side of 
 life that the East has squandered and forgotten. 
 
 The Mahometan creed is not unnoticed by Swedenborg, 
 and he regards it differently from the Protestant divines. 
 With him it is a permitted, provisional religion, .midway 
 between Christianity and the ancient East, which availed 
 to extirpate the idolatries of many nations, and to declare 
 some important truths, — such as the unity of God, which 
 may in time be united to the Christian facts. Moreover, 
 Mahometanism — the old-world Protestantism — opened in 
 its way the spiritual world ; and Swedenborg has gone far 
 to shew that the visions of Mahomet, whether fantastic or 
 not, may have been actual representatives in the spiritual 
 atmospheres ; and he does not imitate Grotius and his suc- 
 cessors, in branding the Arabian prophet as an impostor. 
 Indeed he has given a clue to the legendary and fairy lore 
 of all nations, so that we hope in time to make it service- 
 able for the combined purposes of a spiritual and natural 
 anthropology. 
 
 As to the world’s superstitious sciences, they are so im- 
 portant a field, that we regret to have little space to devote 
 to them in their connexion with Swedenborg’s principles. 
 There is a truth lies in them all. They are founded seve- 
 rally upon certain large insights and thaumaturgic powers, 
 which are never alien to nature when harmonious man ap- 
 pears. Magic itself is but the evil application of the science 
 of correspondences ; the prevalence of magic was a reason 
 why that science was taken away from the earth. In our 
 own day, simultaneously with the appearance of Sweden- 
 borg, these lost arts and sciences are coming back, especi- 
 ally through mesmerism and its kindred progeny of truths. 
 We can only indicate that the student of these subjects will 
 find them amply treated from the spiritual side in Sweden- 
 borg’s writings, and above all, in his Diary, where it is 
 
258 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 shewn that they are matters most accredited in the spiritual 
 world. The wonders of that world are palpable enough. 
 Perhaps, however, until our own day, no one was suffi- 
 ciently aware of how wonderful nature herself is yoing to he, 
 when the ages are riper, or of how certainly the height of 
 the spiritual is the prophecy of the future of the natural. 
 To our Saviour, this world was as plastic as any world need 
 be ; and to his true disciples, he promised the like powers, 
 and the like obedience from the world. In short, he in- 
 augurated the miraculous as the order of nature, and the 
 realization of this we look upon as the outward measure 
 and standard of the human regeneration. In the meantime, 
 the despised and obscure truths, by which nature already 
 emulates the spiritual, may group themselves, where their 
 aims are good, round Swedenborg’s principles and corres- 
 pondences, as round a fortress sufficiently able to consohdate 
 and protect them. But as they value self-preservation, let 
 them resign their baser worldliness, and cease to lean upon 
 the corrupt impotence of materialism. 
 
 Nothing is more evident to-day, than that the men of 
 facts are afraid of a large number of important facts. All 
 the spiritual facts, of which there are plenty in every age, 
 are denounced as superstition. The best attested spirit 
 stories are not well received by that scientific courtesy, 
 which takes off its grave hat to a new beetle or a fresh 
 vegetable alkaloid. Large wigged science behaves worse to 
 our ancestors than to our vermin. Evidence on spiritual 
 subjects is regarded as an impertinence by the learned ; so 
 timorous are they, and so morbidly fearful of ghosts. If 
 they were not afraid, they would investigate ; but nature is 
 to them a churchyard, in which they must whistle their 
 dry tunes to keep up their courage. They should come to 
 Swedenborg, who has made ghosts themselves into a science. 
 As the matter stands, we are bold to say, that there is no 
 class that so little follows its own rules of uncaring experi- 
 
OPENING OF SUPERSTITIONS. 
 
 259 
 
 ment and induction, or has so little respect for facts, as 
 the hard headed scientific men. They are attentive enough 
 to a class of facts that nobody values, — to beetles, spiders, 
 and fossils, — but as to those dear facts that common men 
 and women, in all time and place, have found full of inter- 
 est, wonder, or importance, they shew them a deaf ear, 
 and a callous heart. Science, in this, neglects its mission, 
 which is to give us in knowledge a transcript of the world, 
 and primarily of that in the world which is nearest and 
 dearest to the soul. 
 
 Swedenborg has also conducted a railroad from the 1 9th 
 century to Eden; a sympathy from the historical to the 
 unhistorical ages. Of all histories there is none so desirable, 
 or so unattainable, as the narrative of that happy state 
 before history began. The day of no annals is the only 
 portion of human experience which deserves to be recorded. 
 The tables of goodness and happiness give the kings and 
 priests of the immemorial epoch. Paradise was its name. 
 The re-discovery of that time and country is due to Swe- 
 denborg’s Arcana, elicited from the simple record in Genesis. 
 All is written there, but till Swedenborg came, no man 
 could read it. The science of correspondences in union with 
 spiritual experience, has opened the path to those ancient 
 realms. What wings for the poor gravitating antiquary in 
 such disclosures as these! what a conversion of research 
 into a key to the lost and future happiness of the race. No 
 matter if at first the discoveries are of the spiritual kind; 
 they will lead without fail to the mundaue account of the 
 earliest people, and unite with the archaeological sciences 
 when reason holds them with a firmer hand. The strata of 
 the earth have been explored; Swedenborg has explored 
 also the strata of the heavens : geology and ouranology 
 are natural counterparts; and the science that lies between 
 them and unites them, will give the physical story and the 
 metaphysical education, of our progenitors. Thereafter 
 
260 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 we shall never travel by that road which lands civilization 
 back to savagery for its origin, or carries the savage to his 
 first Adam in the monkey, but we shall see in the primitive 
 man a creature and a power worthy to issue from the imme- 
 diate God, though committed to nature and progress for 
 his destined perfections. 
 
 Another synthesis effected by Swedenborg is that of 
 poetry with reason and science. Never were things more 
 separate than these for the last thousand years. It has 
 been a disastrous quarrel for both parties, but especially 
 for science. Poetry has that in it which can stand by itself; 
 of native right, it takes the milk and honey of every land, 
 and solidly appropriates the pictures and fruits of never- 
 failing nature. Yet apart from knowledge, it is a savage 
 maiden, beautiful only as the landscape, whereas its pro- 
 per loveliness is of the stars and the skies. Moreover in 
 the wild state it feeds upon terrors as well as delights, 
 upon good and evil alike, upon the monstrous equally with 
 the divine, until its food governs its inspirations, and the 
 bard becomes a charmer instead of a prophet. The science 
 of correspondences puts the truth of nature and revelation 
 into it, and sends an adequate criticism abroad with it in 
 its wildest flights. The poet may be doubly rapt when the 
 muse is sailing with creation. He is never so safe or so 
 wildly joyous as when in the convoy of the heavens. Ima- 
 gination is never so tasked as when it has to follow its 
 Maker. Subtlety, novelty, freedom, frenzy are all too little 
 nimble to keep pace with that infinite wisdom whose sport 
 and play is the world. Poetry by gaining a science of the 
 real, enters upon the only space where there is no limit, 
 but where imagination may tire its nervous wing, yet sleep 
 for refreshment when it will upon the humblest truths. 
 The science which emancipates poetry, is none other than 
 that of harmony, which we call, after Swedenborg, the 
 science of correspondences. 
 
OPENING OF HISTORY AND SCIENCE. 
 
 261 
 
 Science too has everything to gain from its union through 
 the same medium with poetry. Hitherto the literary class, 
 representing the beauty of knowledge, have been unac- 
 quainted with the scientific, contending for its severer 
 truth. Science has suffered from the exclusion. Poetry 
 has its admitted aristocracy — names for all climates, ages 
 and sexes : Homers, Shakespeares, and the like. Science 
 has no names to match them. The art of understanding 
 the world has enlisted none of the genius that has eagerly 
 run towards adorning life with song and beauty. The 
 structure of Iliads and Hamlets is more divine than any 
 structure of the universe that has been shewn by Newton 
 or Laplace. This is because poetry has not become the 
 soul of science, which in truth it should be. Whatever 
 grasp has been yet attained by scientific principles, has 
 issued from the imagination as a force; from some leak of 
 poetry that has run into science: we ought then to open a 
 ship canal between the two through this great middle 
 science of harmonies. Never till then can there be a science 
 of fire and beauty, and so long as this is wanting, science 
 is deprived of one clear half of its dominions. Nay, until 
 then she is not in possession of one single complete fact, 
 because everything in creation has its own peculiar beauty. ^ 
 The works of Swedenborg proclaim this marriage of the 
 rational with the imaginative powers. His works are the 
 first fruits of it. He shews by a series of wonderful ex- 
 amples that the highest imaginations are the merest scien- 
 tific truths. We could expect no other. It seems eminently 
 reasonable that the human powers at their full stretch and 
 in their lustiest life, should touch the facts that the living 
 God has made, more nearly and really then crawling and 
 commonplace sensualism can. If you want to understand 
 a beetle, look at it with all imagination through the glass 
 of the universe; translate it into a mineral, into a vege- 
 table, and into a man; run it along its own line of genera 
 
262 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 and species, and let it catch illnmination from them all ; 
 and when you have enlarged it from this associated em- 
 pire, its atomic theory will be palpable and distinct ; and 
 every habit, limb and entrail will be a self-evident proposi- 
 tion. At any rate the whole world will stand up for it. 
 Creation itself, in this science of correspondences, is the 
 method of study. The order of things gives the terms 
 of the mighty syllogism. The four seasons are laws of 
 thought that apply to everything; spring, summer, autumn 
 and winter are one formula that dissects it for you. A 
 stone or a man put fairly through their logic buds, blossoms, 
 fruits and winters. The mineral, the vegetable and the 
 animal are another of these formulas. Using them so, they 
 unlock another cabinet of truths in everything, for every- 
 thing contains them. The bones, for example, are the 
 mineral man; the organs are the vegetable; the nerves and 
 the muscles are the animal; the lungs the atmospheric; 
 and the brains are the solar; and so forth. These it is 
 true are analogies, and not correspondences, but analogies 
 are the direct offspring of correspondences. The scientific 
 world knows that truths of this kind have already made 
 natural history into a more living science; and we advertise 
 them that more potential harmonies still lie in that science 
 of correspondences which Swedenborg supplied; and whose 
 leading function it is, to extend analogies from the natural 
 to the spiritual, and to bring the light of a personal deity 
 working through all nature to a personal spirit in man, to 
 bear upon every form which variegates and constitutes the 
 world. 
 
 Swedenborg’s inseparable life and doctrine are then a 
 new conjugal force introduced into experience, recalling 
 to mind his own prediction, that marriage will be the re- 
 storer of the ages, and will lead down to the earth a still 
 youngest child of God, or a new celestial church. We 
 have seen that already a grand reconciliation is prepared. 
 
HARMONY OR VNION. 
 
 263 
 
 Through death an arrow of light is shot, and it quits the 
 tomb, and stands as the open gate between two worlds of 
 life. The letter of the Word has audibly communed with 
 the spirit, and man, in the twain voices, hears the har- 
 monies of God. The Bible has done what no book could do 
 for it, namely, proved its own divinity. The marriage of 
 the soul and the body has been solemnized in the conscious 
 spirit; human reason has become the mean of a super- 
 natural revelation; the senses and the soul have been at 
 one in a soul with spiritual senses; and a mortal has en- 
 tered the spiritual world, — has seen it by doctrine, and 
 understood it by sight. There is no apparent contrariety 
 so great but may henceforth be overcome. Orthodoxy and 
 oddity, reason and mystery, have met without confusion, 
 and have kissed each other in the streets. The eldest reli- 
 gious have been placed at the feet of the youngest. Science 
 and superstition, philosophy and reaUty, the golden age and 
 the iron, and many other natures seemingly as distant, 
 have been shewn the way of peace by the mission of Swe- 
 denborg; and more is yet to hope. It remains, after this 
 recapitulation, to shew, in a few words, that each existing 
 sphere already contained within itself a longing and an 
 earnest of the atonement which is thus individually begun, 
 and which the human race must carry forward. 
 
 But first we will set before the reader one topic of im- 
 portance in regard to Swedenborg, we mean, his often 
 alleged mysticism. Now he is called a mystic by some, 
 because he speaks of things of the other world, which 
 would be a reason, were it valid, for calling the angels 
 mystics. The phrase is occasionally founded also upon his 
 interpretation of the Scripture according to another sense 
 than that discoverable from the letter. But here again, if 
 the letter speaks to one set of faculties, and the spirit to 
 another, and if both discourses are distinct and divine, and 
 mutually harmonic, there is no mysticism, but mere reality. 
 
264 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 Swedenborg is the only theologian who is not mystical, the 
 only one who craves plain experience for every sphere, the 
 only one who insists that words shall answer to outward 
 facts, whether in this world or the next. There is nothing 
 more mystical in the sight of an angel, or of God himself, 
 than in the sight of any object of nature; nor are the in- 
 ductions founded upon either sight to be called mystical, if 
 those based upon the other are scientific. It would be 
 mystical if the sight were not sight, but some philosophical 
 intuition, but if good eyes are the seers, it is no matter 
 whether their optic nerves are of spiritual flesh-glass, or of 
 natural, — there is no mystery in the case. This is a view 
 which must commend Swedenborg to the countrymen of 
 Bacon and Locke, for so practically does he assent to the 
 inductive plan, as to extend its sphere to the highest of 
 beings; regarding God himself as unknowable unless he 
 shews himself in experience and history; for our Saviour’s 
 life upon earth is the base of theology, because it is the 
 natural history of God. Without this base of divine facts. 
 Deity might have been the God of the soul, but never the 
 God of the sciences, which are the new kingdom that will 
 absorb the earth. And so also without e.xperiment of the 
 spiritual world, the sciences must have been closed at the 
 top, whereas that experiment carries them up through a 
 tangible heaven to the same God who appeared in history, 
 and who is the Alpha and Omega of knowledge. It puts 
 us out of patience to hear the enterprising traveller to a far 
 country, termed a mystic, for giving a plain account of 
 things heard and seen, while Grub-street philosophers, who 
 never stir from their tripod stools, and make heavens out of 
 their own heads, claim the whole of daylight for themselves, 
 and even talk of their spiritual experiences, meaning only 
 their sedentary straining to find out facts without the trou- 
 ble of going to them. 
 
 We therefore now study the science of God, because 
 
THE PHILOSOPHERS ARE THE MYSTICS. 265 
 
 Jesus Christ has lived upon the earth, and Jesus Christ is 
 God; we study the spiritual world, because one of us has 
 been there, and reported it; and we study the natural 
 world, because it is given to us, and our senses are given 
 to it, in short, because we did not make it, but it is a 
 divine fact. Whatever we have made ourselves, we do not 
 study, which is a sufficient demolition of subjective know- 
 ledge. Thus from the spheres a blackness is departing. 
 Mystery, the mother of the abominations and harlots of 
 the earth, is unrolling from theology, philosophy and 
 science; and soon the practical, the only sublime, will be 
 all in all. For time will not wait long, after marrying the 
 mind to experience, before the importance of daily life will 
 not only suggest but allow or disallow every theory, upon 
 whatever subject put forth. 
 
 And to revert to the fact that the old world contains a 
 promise of the opening Swedenborg commenced, a slight 
 survey proves it. The lowest experience of all time is rife 
 in spiritual intercourse already ; man believes it in his fears 
 and hopes, even where his education is against it ; almost 
 every family has its legends, and nothing but the wanting 
 courage to divulge them keeps back this supernaturalism 
 from forming a library of itself. Yea, and every mourner 
 by a fresbly-opened grave, shoots with untameable love 
 towards departed friends, and bespeaks them, while the 
 genius of grief is on him, as persons of real and presentable 
 stuff. At such a clever time, burial services are but the 
 background on which the heart delineates its native skies. 
 This is the sense of universal mankind. 
 
 Science, too, is infected with these vulgar apprehensions ; 
 it cannot shake them off, though it cannot adopt them. 
 What would it not give to be rid of mesmerism, or even of 
 magic and astrology, which it has never known how to 
 exterminate? This is hopeless now. These griffins of 
 knowledge have bitten into its substance, and must either 
 
 N 
 
266 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 become sciences, or science dies of them. The positive 
 school is precisely that which can least resist the invasion 
 of supernaturalism. Many materialists already have fallen 
 before it, and sunk, as might be expected, into a peculiar 
 unreasoning superstition. Nothing can save them but 
 attention to spiritual experiences. Add to which, that the 
 scientific men, with their deep breaths and fixed objects, 
 are taking the path to seership in their own bodies ; they 
 are running after Swedenborg, and will ere long breathe in 
 the same place as he ; for science itself is the appointed 
 Seer of the Future. 
 
 “ Old experience doth attain 
 To something of prophetic strain.” 
 
 Again, if we turn to the arts, electric telegraphs make 
 spiritual presence between distant places : London and Edin- 
 burg commune in spaceless conversations. Another medium, 
 glowing hotter with world-friendships, will give mutual 
 sight to the ends of the earth. Only sink into the air-mine 
 of community, and India and England shall be permanent 
 natural apparitions to each other. The mirage is a true 
 sign-post of this consummation. Distance is dying, and 
 will be only represented in the altitude of the human per- 
 ceptions. Magnetism itself, in its instant rounds, derides 
 and despises it ; the very stones appear to each other by 
 its spiritual communications ; and shall men, who are one 
 in a nobler magnetism, be reproved by the friendships of 
 the ground ? 
 
 As for reason, and philosophy, its representative, it is 
 an ambidextrous power, and shifts either way at the bid- 
 ding of experience. Sound reason is affirmative already, 
 being the kindest of the sciences; but metaphysical reason 
 also turns to the rising sun, and will give superuaturalism 
 an exaggerated truth, when it comes as current coin from 
 the sciences. If there is little to hope from this philo- 
 
SWEDENBORG WANTED. 
 
 267 
 
 sophy, there is nothing to fear, for it is always the wind 
 of a more real power, the slave of sterner faculties than its 
 own. 
 
 Turn we again to poetry, where indeed the ground is 
 ready, and samples of the tillage are native to the soil. 
 Nothing but the greatest misfortune has kept the poets 
 from Swedenborg and the normal spiritual world. This 
 man is the luminous pier of all the bards that have arched 
 the ages with their rainbows. From blind Mseonides through 
 blind Milton, the last span of double-sighted poesy reposes 
 upon Swedenborg. Not one of the great ones but has 
 longed to see his day ; not one, but has visited the spirit 
 world, as the theme of themes aud the song of songs for 
 the progeny of Adam. This was the end of the earliest 
 voyages, and the last heroism of the ancient heroes. For 
 this Ulysses, emancipated from Circe, after so many mortal 
 wanderings, visited the shadowland of those dim times, 
 where yet immortal justice reigned, and gathered the per- 
 petuation of human passions in the stern gait of Ajax, and 
 from sorrowful words from the great Achilles. For this he 
 brought back the hieroglyphics of the spirit, in the waters of 
 Tantalus, the wheel of Ixion, and the sieve of the Dauaidee. 
 For this A3neas, Sybil-instructed, descended to Avernus, 
 and through the land beyond sleep and death, still found 
 imperishable mankind, and present with his ancestral spirits 
 in their tide of prophecy, beheld the line of Roman glories 
 issuing from the closed race of Troy. Oh! depth and 
 breadth and length unending of the life of our forefathers ! 
 From Virgil to Dante the arch of light again sits upon 
 the spiritual world ; earth has no top but the poet-seer on 
 which the eternal curve will lean. The Christian Hades 
 vaults back to the heathen through the stern Italian song ; 
 Dante and Virgil are fellow-travellers, all but through hea- 
 ven where Christ alone can reign. From Dante to Shakes- 
 pear and to Milton is the next gird of the baser flood. 
 
268 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 In Macbeth and Hamlet, the poet of civilization links the 
 worlds afresh, by the introduction of an infernal band of 
 ambition in the one case, by a reappearance of the dead in 
 the other ; if nothing more, he gives his mighty vote for 
 the supernatural life. The Paradise Lost is all seership ; 
 imagination shews again that there is no play room for the 
 highest efforts but the spiritual world. The personages, 
 professedly superhuman, are human after all. Milton, who 
 stamped the traditions of his church with the goldmark of 
 his own genius, and who proves how much can be at- 
 tempted, and how little can be done with the Protestant 
 imagination, at all events completed a poetic cycle of affir- 
 mations of the spiritual world. Not one high tuneful 
 voice is absent from our list ; the “ morning stars of song” 
 are strietly choral there. The lower world, well pleased, 
 sees them all attempt what Swedenborg accomplished. 
 Yet while he mounts above them, it is not by a greater 
 genius, but by finer harmony of character and circum- 
 stance with God, leading to an appreciation by the humblest 
 of realms unascended by song, and to a conjunction of this 
 world’s business with similar but sublimer industry in the 
 spiritual heavens. 
 
 For politics and morals are penetrated by the same spirit. 
 The associative temper of the epoch runs molten from that 
 other world where the union of the race is closer knit than 
 on this disunited earth. The spirit of work lifting the arm 
 with strokes incessant as the steam-engine’s, lives from a 
 faith in work as the last comfort of mankind ; it longs for a 
 heart of work in Swedenborg’s revelations ; it desires to be 
 certified that industry is divine and immortal ; that the week 
 days preponderate in heaven; that beyond the grave the 
 useless classes are vile ; that the angels, like good artizans, 
 
 \ eat because they labor. Luxurious ease, bodiless cherubs, 
 sky floatings, everlasting prayers or anthems, are an offence 
 to the great God of the six days work, and Swedenborg, a 
 
SWEDENBORG WANTED. 
 
 269 
 
 working man, has brought us the tidings. The horny hand 
 of the day springs opening to the messenger. 
 
 There is however a Sabbath in both the worlds — a day 
 with a sacred number — a workday of the religions. And 
 does not religion coalesce with Swedenborg’s informations ? 
 I marvel how any Christian man can deride revelations in 
 the abstract ; how he can deem that the day of wonders is 
 past, unless God be past ; how he dares use phrases against 
 Swedenborg, which applied more widely would shatter his 
 Bible from his hands. Let infidelity be consistent in tear- 
 ing away all revelations, let it number and compaginate 
 the graveyards of nature, and assiduously bind up the 
 book of death ; but let Christianity be equally true to itself, 
 and look for Christianity everywhere, for life and revela- 
 tions everywhere. Even heathenism glitters with a star- 
 light of immortality. But immortality and the spirit land 
 lie in golden lakes in the Word of God : they wait to be 
 explored by human adventure and experience. The Pro- 
 phets and the Apocalypse are proof and counterproof to 
 Swedenborg’s narrations: the visions of John walk the 
 waters with his ; the nineteenth century begins in him to 
 reap the harvest of supernatural intercourse of which Christ 
 Himself sowed the seeds in the first. All religion in its 
 spiritual day, in its own archives, and in its first founders, 
 stretches out the free right hand of fellowship to this last 
 seer. And here we conclude our examination of witnesses 
 to the character of Swedenborg’s revelations. 
 
 Are they final, or do we look for another ? A rational 
 revelation, we reply, is the first step to a more rational: a 
 religion given up to the human mind is a progressive reli- 
 gion. A seer whose intellect is in his eyes, will be suc- 
 ceeded b^ other seers with better optics because greater 
 intellects. Sights more improbable ever await to be uncur- 
 tained. It is God’s truth that eye hath not seen, nor ear 
 heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to con- 
 
370 
 
 LIFE OF SWEDENBORG. 
 
 ceive those things which God hath prepared for them that 
 love him. This truth is always ascending to God who 
 gave it. The better heaven is known, the more it recedes 
 into that uncomprehended love. The seeing eye disturbs 
 not the unseen: the hearing ear lists not the song of songs; 
 the heart’s conceptions are beggared by simple truth ; and 
 man, athwart all revelations, must wait upon his God. 
 
 Walton and Mitchell, Printers, Wardour Street, London. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 SwEDEXBORG left extensive manuscripts, both scientific and theolo- 
 gical. These were delivered on behalf of his heirs by E. Wenneborg 
 and C. Benzelstiema, to the Royal Academy of Sciences of Sweden, 
 “ for the purpose of being preserved in their library with that solidtude 
 which it is expected will be considoed due to the contents of these 
 documents, as well as to the reputation of the deceased, and the honor 
 of his &mily, both now and hereafter.” Through the generous per- 
 mission of the Academy, and mainly through the influence of the 
 illnstrious Berxelius, and the kind services of the Librarian, Dr. P. 
 E. Svedbom, many of these manuscripts have been entrusted to other 
 hands, and lately printed in Germany and England. We do not 
 recount them, because it would occupy much room, and afford for 
 the most part only a transcript of catalogues to be had gratuitously 
 from our Publisher. 
 
 We would, however, call attention to the translation of Swedenborg’s 
 Diary by ilr. Smithson and Professor Bush; and to Swedenborgs 
 work on Human Geuera/ioii. just about to issue from Dr. Tafel’s 
 press. The latter is, we believe, the largest treatise extant on the 
 subject, and probably the only theory yet attempted. Though left 
 in MS., it is a finished work. 
 
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