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8wedenbore THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG 184 of mines and gave him an apprenticeship with the celebrated royal engineer Polhem, in whose family he became a favorite inmate. He formed a love attachment with a daughter of Polhem, which was favored by the king, but failed of marriage by the daughter's refusal, and Swedenborg remained single the rest of his life. After the death of Charles XII. in 1718, Swedenborg took his seat as the oldest son of the now ennobled family, in the house of nobles in the Swedish diet. Declining a professorship in mathematics in the university and in pursuit of his studies as a royal assessor of mines, he undertook a series of journeys through the various countries of Europe especially for the study of mines and manufactures. In these journeys he enjoyed the patronage and friendship of princes and scholars, and his explorations took him not only into mines, furnaces, workshops, laboratories, and lecture-rooms, but also to museums, galleries, churches, theaters, army garrisons, palaces, everywhere where the life and civilization of his time could be observed and studied. His Itinerarium or " Diary of Travel " affords a picturesque view of the actual life of the important cities of France, Italy, Germany, Bel gium, and Holland at that period. veanwhile his treatises had been appearing from Z Me to time at home or abroad and his widely extended reputation as a metallurgist and anatomist brought him in vitations to membership in the academies of science at St. Petersburg, Paris, and Stockholm. His prac tical achievements at home in assisting Polhem in large engineering works for the kingdom, especially in transporting galleys for fourteen miles overland at the siege of Friedrickshall in 1718, show that his life was by no means satisfied with theorizing. Courted by princes, praised by scholars, a man of the world in a wide sense, his inner life may best be known by the simple rules drawn up by himself to govern his daily conduct. These were: (1) Often to read and meditate on the Word of God; (2) to submit everything to the will of divine providence; (3) to observe in everything a propriety of behavior and to keep the conscience clear; (4) to discharge with faithfulness the duties of my office and to ren der myself in all things useful to society.

II. Writings: The writings of Swedenborg may be divided into three classes: (1) material and scientific, including those in mathematics and literature; (2) philosophical; (3) theological.

1. Scientific: The works produced during the first (the literary and scientific) period of his life are as follows: Carmina Miscellanea; Camena Bores; Select& Sententim L. A. Senecv; Itinerarium; Prodromus principiorum naturalium (" Principles of Chemistry ") ; Nova Observata circa Ferrum et Ignem (" On Iron and Fire "); Artificia Nova Mechanica (" Construction of Docks and Dikes "); Miscellanea Observata (in geology, mineralogy, etc.); the treatises on metals and mines in the Opera philosophica; posthumous tracts on salt, on muds, and soils; on the height of water, etc., in Geologica et epistola, Royal Academy series no. 1.

2. Philosophical: It was in 1734 that, together with the small treatise, De infinito, the Opera philosophica et mineralia appeared in three volumes, the first part of which, Principia (Eng. trans]. by

Dr. J. J. G. Wilkinson, London, -1840), has become widely known as embodying Swedenborg's physical philosophy or cosmology. In 1740 appeared the (Economia regni animalis (" Economy of the Animal Kingdom "); in 1740, the first and second parts of the Regnum animate; and in 1745, the De cultu et amore Dei (" The Worship and Love of God ").

In this wide range of physical, physiological, and psychological studies, Swedenborg pursues what he

1. Philoso- avows to be his one quest-his " search

phy of for the soul." Where to find her, he Matter. arms, but in her own realm-the body ?

Hence came the term regnum animate -or " soul kingdom," applied to the human anatomy and physiology. In the " Chemistry " and the Principia he had sought the imponderable and invisible substances and forms which lie at the beginning of creation and which mark the entrance of life from the Infinite into the finite. Conceiving the origin of the universe as lying in a " conatus of motion in the Infinite," which assumes in the " natural point " an existence in time and space (in which " point " lie potentially all future forms and motions in their perfection), he traces the progress of the point through a series of finites in active and passive relation to the " elementaries " or primal auras, ethers, and atmospheres, and thence to the first forma of solid matter. These he conceives to be angular particles originating in the interstitial spaces between the spherical globules. The modern sciences of crystallography and stereo-chemistry are admitted by the best authorities to find their germ in Swedenborg's conception of elementary forms. Swedenborg conceives light as a form of ethereal motion. The series of forms, circular, spiral, and vortical, the nature and phenomena of magnetism, the evolution of the planets from a condensed ring thrown off by the central mass of the primal nebula, the position of the earth in the galaxy, are discussed in these works in lines which anticipate not only Kant, Buffon, and La Place, the supposed originators of the nebular theory, but even the most recent discoveries in radioactive and vibratory forces and motions. In method, Swedenborg proceeds inductively from experience but under the guidance of certain a priori principles. To experience and geometry there must be added the recognition of deity and the soul. Adopting Aristotle as his model rather than Plato, he, with this master, finds that intelligence can discover only what intelligence has devised, and that to all the sensitive faculties of man there descends a " somewhat from above " giving to the sensuous impressions a form and meaning.

With this survey of the material universe behind him, Swedenborg proceeds to explore the universe of mind or, as he terms it, the regnum animate, a term inadequately translated by " animal kingdom,"

meaning rather the kingdom of the 2. Mind rational soul presiding over the entire and "Tram-realm of matter, not only in her own

nlation." body, but in the universe as a kind of

indefinite extension of her body. The universe is a system of tremulationa moved by the divine life and communicated through recipient forms and substances in their various orders and