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185 RELIGIOUS ENCYCLOPEDIA 9wedenbora

degrees. In his introduction to the Principia he conceives the " true philosopher " as that primitive perfect soul which responds by a perfect innate intelligence to every tremulation of the universe. For sensation is but a succession of vibrations communicated from without through the series of subtle receptacles even to the sensqry of the brain. Here action is produced by a similar series of motions reversed, originating primarily in the will and taking form in the thought and in the action of the nervous and muscular systems. As early as in 1719, he had outlined his doctrine of tremulations in a dissertation submitted to the Royal Medical College on The Anatomy of our most Subtle Nature, Showing that our Moving and Living Force Consists of Tremulations.

The " Economy of the Animal Kingdom "treats in part I. of the circulation of the blood and of the fetal life and in part II. of the motion of the brain, the cortical substance, and the human 3. Psycho- soul. It affords a complete system of Physiology;

Corre- psycho-physiology. The human anat spondences. omy and organic life are treated as the theater of the soul's activity; conse quently in their normal, living play of forces and mechanism. Their mechanism is so complete as to seem almost to exclude the free action of the soul and the influx of the Infinite; but the reconcilia tion is found in the involution of the wisdom of the Infinite in the least finite forms of motion, and this is what gives the human soul a finite sense of its own freedom. In the " Animal Kingdom," the pub lication of which is still incomplete, the doctrine of correspondences, forms, series, and degrees is out lined and the theory set forth that the physical world is purely symbolical of the spiritual world. But even the spiritual world in the philosophical period had a certain continuity of degree with mat ter, its distinction from matter being that of prior ity of form and simplicity of structure. It was not until Swedenborg's later experience of " things heard and seen" in the spiritual world that he learned actually the discreteness between matter and spiritual substance. His doctrine of forms and order he derived in part from Wolf, the disciple of Leibnitz, even as in his vortical theories and his doctrine of the first atomic shapes he somewhat resembles Descartes. It is not until after his illu mination or alleged intromission into the spiritual world as an actual witness and participant that he sets forth in all its fulness the great doctrine of the three discrete degrees, projected now beyond nature into the vast scale that embraces God as end, spirit or the plane of conscious relation as cause, and na ture as effect, and that in its assertion of two co existent and correspondential worlds, the spiritual and the natural as given in the minor treatise, De Commercio Animce et Corporis (" On Influx ") seems to have given Kant (who had interested himself in Swedenborg's two-world experiences and had de clared his doctrine strangely like his own) the sug gestion of his inaugural discourse at Konigsberg, 1770, De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma. The vast and profound researches on the structure and function of the brain, its respiratory motion, the location of its several sensories, etc., are only

just beginning to receive due appreciation among Europe's most learned physiologists (cf. the address of Prof. Gustav Retzius of the Royal Swedish Academy before the Congress of Anatomists in Heidelberg, 1902).

Further portions of this vast work, notably on the fibers, the generative organs, on the senses, on the soul or rational psychology, and on the brain have been posthumously published and translated into English. The De Anima (" The Soul, or Rational Psychology ") is in method not unlike Aristotle's Peri Psyche, treating of the mind in its successive planes as animus, mens, and anima (the sensitive or imaginative mind and memory; the rational mind and the pure intellect; and the soul and its state after death). The chief and permanent interest of the Rational Psychology lies in the subtle analysis of the process of the conversion of sensation into idea and then of ideas into thoughts and of these again back into words or motions, all in accordance with the great universal doctrine of tremulation and of series, orders, and degrees. All the remaining manuscripts of this and other works of Swedenborg are now in process of translation and publication by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences under the editorship of Professors Retzius, Arrhenius, Nathorst, and other eminent scholars.

The De cultu et amore Dei (" Worship and Love of God ") forms the bridge between the philosophical and theological periods and is a work unique

in literature for the boldness of its 4. Transi- speculation and the sublimity of its

tion to conceptions. It traces the process of

Theology. the creation of this planet out of the sun's nebula, the evolution of its seasons and temperatures, and of the kingdoms successively from mineral through vegetable up to man, and views the human soul as a little world of intelligences and forces by which the created universe renders up its adoration to its creator. This work is written in a style of great elegance and contains passages of poetic beauty and sublimity. In it, at the same time, the author takes leave, as it were, of his career of personal authorship and ambition to devote himself henceforward to being the simple recorder of things " revealed " and the humble proclaimer of the " second coming of the Lord."

Parts I. and II. of the " Animal Kingdom " were published in 1744, and the " Worship and Love of God " in 1745. At this point there is a sudden and strange interruption of Swedenborg's scientific

quest. He experiences, as he avers, a 5- Call as direct divine call to enter upon the a Seer. higher mission of a seer and revelator of the things of the spiritual world, and simultaneously of the spiritual truth and doctrine which underlie the literal and symbolic sense of the sacred Scriptures. During the period from 1743 to 1749 (in which year he began to publish the Arcana Ccelestia, containing the spiritual sense of Genesis and Exodus) he had not only been experiencing visions and dreams of an extraordinary character, accompanied by temptations and struggles of soul of the severest kind, a conflict between the flesh and the spirit and between intbllectual ambition and the authority of a divine voice within, but he had re-