Part 7

In the summer of 1721, Swedenborg started again on his travels, his object this time being to study the mines and manufactories of other countries, so that he might be in a position to render greater services to his own in the office to which he had been appointed. On this occasion he visited all the mines in Saxony and the Hartz mountains, and was royally entertained by Duke Ludvic Rudolf of Brunswick-Lüneburg, who showed him a generosity which he doubtless appreciated after his father’s parsimony. Meanwhile his pen was by no means idle. He published a treatise at Amsterdam on Chemistry and Physics; some observations on Iron and Fire; and a work on the construction of Docks and Dykes; and later on, at Leipzig, some miscellaneous observations on Geology and Mineralogy. On his return home he settled down again for a period to his work at the Board of Mines, in the meantime gathering matter for further publications which followed in due course. The most important of these were his _Opera Philosophia Mineralia_, and a treatise on _The Infinite_. The former work met with a very favourable reception, and between one publication and another Swedenborg soon won for himself a European reputation. The Academy of Sciences at St Petersburg nominated him a corresponding member, while he was one of the first to be elected for the newly established Royal Academy of Sciences in his own country.

Everything thus seemed to open out for Swedenborg a career of great scientific and practical utility. He became, however, gradually led by his philosophical speculations to an investigation of the nature of the soul and its operation in the body, and the mutual relations of the two. This study was the subject of two important works, entitled respectively _The Economy of the Animal Kingdom considered Anatomically and Philosophically_, and _The Animal Kingdom considered Anatomically, Physically, and Philosophically_. By the “animal kingdom” must be understood the kingdom presided over by the soul. In the first of these books Swedenborg deals with the composition of the blood and its circulation, with the heart, arteries, and veins, and with the brain and its cortices. In this book Swedenborg attaches “great importance to the blood, for, as he says, nothing exists in the body that has not previously existed in the blood.” He describes it again as “a vital and most spirituous fluid, which has an immediate connection with the soul.” In the _Animal Kingdom_ Swedenborg describes in full detail all the organs of the body and their uses, the object being in the end to track the soul home and to describe its activities. “For as yet,” he tells us, “her modes of being and her nature are absolutely unknown.” Naturally he recognises that this will be regarded by the philosophers of his day as a vain and useless quest. But he is prepared to meet their objections with the following pertinent remarks, which, now that the materialistic hypothesis has been finally discarded by the advance guard of modern Science, are likely to find a sympathetic echo in scientific as well as philosophic circles.

Inasmuch [he says] as the soul is the model, the idea, the first form, the substance, the force, and the principle of her organic body, and of all its forces and powers, or what amounts to the same thing, as the organic body is the image and type of its soul conformed and principled to the whole nature of the soul’s efficiency, it follows that the one is represented in the other.... Thus by the body we are instructed respecting the soul, by the soul respecting the body, and by both respecting the truth of the whole.

Emerson describes the _Animal Kingdom_ as “an anatomist’s account of the human body in the highest style of poetry,” and its object as to “put science and the soul, long estranged from each other, at one again.” It was while continuing his pursuit of this apparently visionary aim that Swedenborg quite unexpectedly found himself, as he believed, in touch with another than the physical world. In writing of this extraordinary development in his life history in the Introduction to the _Arcana Cœlestia_, the first volume of which appeared in 1749, he gives his own account of his relationship with the spiritual realm in justification of the remarkably dogmatic statements contained in the book in question.

“It is,” he says, “expedient here to premise that of the Lord’s divine mercy it has been granted me now for several years to be constantly and uninterruptedly in company with spirits and angels, hearing them converse with each other and conversing with them. Hence it has been permitted me to hear and see things in another life which are astonishing, and which have never before come to the knowledge of any man nor entered into his imagination. I have thus been instructed concerning different kinds of spirits and the state of souls after death—concerning Hell, or the lamentable state of the unfaithful—concerning Heaven, or the most happy state of the faithful—and particularly concerning the doctrine of Faith, which is acknowledged throughout all Heaven, on which subjects, by the divine mercy of the Lord, more will be said in the following pages.” With regard to the extraordinary transformation which these experiences brought about in his life’s work, he explains to a friend that the Lord has elected him for this work, and “for revealing the spiritual meaning of the Sacred Scriptures which he had promised to the Prophets and in the Book of Revelation.” “My purpose previously,” he adds, “had been to explore Nature, chemistry, and the sciences of mining and anatomy.”

The basis of Swedenborg’s teaching which, of course, under the circumstances he did not claim in any way as original, was that the Bible must be accepted absolutely as a divinely inspired book, but must be taken in an allegorical sense. Thus where historical events are recorded they are not recorded for the sake of history, for the object of the Scriptures is to treat not of the kingdoms of the earth, but of the Kingdom of God. In other parts of the Bible, as in Genesis, there is no truth in the story from the historical point of view. The record is merely an allegory of the soul.

His doctrine of Correspondences was merely the recognition of this allegorical relationship of the spiritual and material. The universe, according to Swedenborg, is symbolical throughout, All material things are derived from their spiritual archetypes, and are representations of these. The bodily form represents the spiritual character, for the spirit forms the body in its own likeness. A man’s acts are thus the outcome of his inward nature, and there is consequently a similar correspondence between them and the inward man. The basis of these ideas is, of course, the ancient occult teaching that the universe is the macrocosm, and man the microcosm. Thus Swedenborg tells us that as there is a material sun, moon, and stars, so each of these heavenly bodies has its mental and spiritual counterpart.

Swedenborg’s doctrine of Degrees appears to follow from his doctrine of Correspondences. The three degrees of the human mind correspond to the three kingdoms of Nature: animal, vegetable, and mineral, corresponding to spirit, soul, and body. “Degrees,” Swedenborg tells us, “are of two kinds, discrete and continuous.” “All things, from least to greatest, in both the spiritual and natural worlds, co-exist at once from discrete and continuous degrees. In respect of discrete degrees there can be no intercourse between either by continuity.” It follows, therefore, with regard to the degrees of the human mind, the celestial, spiritual, and the natural, that they cannot communicate under normal conditions one with another. Thus, too, men on earth can have no sensible communication with the spiritual world or see things of that world without a special opening of the spiritual sight. Elsewhere Swedenborg tells us “to the intent that anything may be perfect it must be distinguished into three degrees. The ground and reason of this is because there must be end, cause, and effect.” Another doctrine of Swedenborg’s was that of regeneration. In order to be partaker of the higher life, man, he held, must be born again, but this regeneration was not a special occurrence of any particular date, but a continuous process. One of the orthodox doctrines which Swedenborg attacked was that of the Trinity. He denied that Jesus Christ was merely the Second Person of a Divine Trinity. He cites St Paul’s statement that “in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily,” and maintains that the whole Trinity is centred in his Person. “In consequence,” he says, “of separating the Divine Trinity into Three Persons each of which is declared to be God and Lord, a sort of frenzy has infected the whole system of theology as well as the Christian Church so called from its Divine Founder.... That a trinity of gods occupies the minds of Christians, although they deny it from shame, is very evident from the ingenuity of many who contrive methods to prove that three are one, and one three, by geometry, arithmetic, and physics.... Others have trifled with the Divine Trinity as jugglers play one with another. Their juggling on this subject may be compared to those sick of a fever who see a single object, such as a man, a table, or a candle, as three; or three as one.”

The basis of this orthodox Christian teaching with regard to the Trinity is, of course, the Athanasian Creed, which attempts to explain the matter by the absurd method of a juxtaposition of contradictions. It is well to bear in mind, in view of the enormous amount of theological twaddle that has been talked on this subject, that the Athanasian Creed was in the nature of a political concordat to meet the exigencies of a time of acute religious difficulty, and in no sense an exposition of spiritual truth.

As the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity was false, argued Swedenborg, and there were no three Persons, as supposed, it was, of course, impossible for one of them, the Son, to offer Himself as sacrifice to appease the wrath of another, the Father. The doctrine of the atonement, therefore, as taught by the Church, had no basis in fact. God needed no reconciliation to His creatures. It was they who needed to be reconciled to Him before they could be fitted to appear in His presence. Christ took upon Himself human nature that He might conquer mankind’s spiritual enemies which were keeping him in bondage and estranged from his Divine Source.

One of Swedenborg’s most astounding statements had reference to the Last Judgment. This was not, maintained Swedenborg, as the orthodox generally hold, the final consummation of all things. The event was an occurrence in the spiritual sphere which actually took place in the year 1757! It appears from this amazing account that in the Intermediate State so many undesirable and evil spiritual entities had accumulated that they were threatening the whole world with imminent catastrophe. It may be remembered, in this connection, that in Swedenborg’s time scepticism was everywhere rampant, and that religious life had reached its lowest ebb. This was the case not only on the Continent, but pre-eminently in England, where the movement headed by John Wesley led to such remarkable scenes in connection with the great spiritual revival which followed this period of religious apathy. To avert the catastrophe threatened to the world according to Swedenborg’s theory, a general judgment was executed upon the spirits who were in revolt and were imperilling the divine order. These powers of evil were at that date placed under restraint, so that an influx of new spiritual forces among men might be made possible. Swedenborg actually goes so far as to affirm that he himself was permitted to witness this judgment in fulfilment of the prophecies made in the Gospels and in the Book of Revelation.

The Swedenborgian teaching which has come in probably for most criticism is that with regard to Marriage. Swedenborg (thus far as it appears to me quite rightly) insisted that sex is a spiritual as well as a physical distinction. He denied the virtues of celibacy and declared that true chastity resides in the perfect marriage relation. Marriage, according to Swedenborg, is not a physical relationship till death part the united pair, but is eternal in its character. “Conjugial love” being the central and fundamental love of man’s life is also the source of his fullest joy. The delights of the true conjugial love exceed the delights of all other loves. All delights that are felt by man proceed from love, and it follows, therefore, that the principal happiness in the celestial life must have a similar source, and the highest joy of heaven must therefore be the spiritual counterpart of the conjugial life of earth. It does not, of course, necessarily follow from this that earthly marriages are perpetuated in heaven. If the feelings of the marriage partners towards one another are concordant and sympathetic, they continue indeed their married life; but if they are discordant and antipathetic, they dissolve it. For true conjugial love is the only possible form of marriage in heaven, and “as their love lasts to eternity, it follows that the wife becomes more and more a wife and the husband more and more a husband. The true reason of this is that in a marriage of truly conjugial love each married partner becomes continually a more interior man. For that love opens the interiors of their minds and in the proportion in which these are opened the man becomes more and more a man.”

Swedenborg has some very beautiful observations with regard to the rejuvenescence of those who have passed into the higher life. “All who come into heaven,” he says, “return into their vernal youth, and remain so to eternity. The more thousands of years they live the more beautiful and happy is the spring to which they attain.... In a word, to grow old in heaven is to grow young.... They who live in the chaste life of marriage are above all others in the order and form of Heaven after death. Their beauty, therefore, is surpassing, and the flower of their youth endures for ever.”

What are we to say of this man who propounded this amazing gospel as a direct message from the highest spheres? What are we to say of his communications and conversations with the unseen world? Of his _bona fides_ it is impossible to entertain a doubt. The ordinary hypothesis is that he suffered from hallucinations. It has been argued on the other hand, that for a man so sane and so shrewd in the ordinary affairs of the world, hallucinations of the kind were an impossibility. This, however, seems going rather too far. Some of the sanest men in the world have had special points on which they were not mentally sound. Monomania is a recognised form of mental aberration, and the man who suffers from it is as sane as his fellows on all matters except one.

This spiritual communion, however, was continuous in the case of Swedenborg for many years, and during those years occupied either in itself or in the activities that arose from it the larger portion of his life. In spite of this absorption, his relations with his fellow men continued as sane and responsible as those of any of his neighbours. Would this have been possible, one may ask, in the face of so absorbing an interest, had this interest merely been founded on a monomania? It would, I think, be difficult to parallel such a case. If, however, we decide to take Swedenborg’s relations with the other world at his own valuation, are we called upon to accept his gospel at his own valuation on that account? Certainly I think not. Swedenborg’s estimate of the status of the spiritual beings with whom he communicated, even if we accept their reality, need not be ours. Recent investigations and records of innumerable psychic experiences have tended to show what a miscellaneous crowd of spirits hover around the confines of this material world. Swedenborg’s mistake has been made by many spiritualists of the present day, and sometimes with disastrous results. Swedenborg had not before him the evidence which we now hold to warn him of the necessity of testing the quality of his spiritual communicants. The experiences encountered overwhelmed him by their unexpected and apparently miraculous character, and his naturally sane judgment was at fault for want of a criterion by which to estimate them.[12] Few of those who now accept the genuineness of psychical phenomena are prepared to question Swedenborg’s exceptional mediumistic powers. To allow them to their fullest extent is by no means to accept the doctrine which was preached through his mediumship.

Of Swedenborg’s psychic gifts there is indeed plenty of evidence quite outside the teachings of his celestial visitors. On one occasion he disclosed to the Queen of Sweden a secret that had existed between her and her deceased brother, the Crown Prince Augustus William of Prussia, which was unknown to any living person. On another he described to a whole company of people at Gothenburg a destructive fire which had broken out at that very moment in Stockholm. Again on another occasion he revealed to the widow of Monsieur de Marteville the hiding place of a missing receipt for money which had been paid by her husband, the Dutch Ambassador at Stockholm. These incidents are among the best authenticated of any extant historical records of a psychic character. The philosopher Kant, among others, made a searching investigation into the evidence on which they rested, and came away absolutely convinced of their truth. It is curious to note that John Wesley was not a little interested in the Swedenborgian propagandism. The great Methodist preacher was impressed with a strong desire to meet the Swedish seer—a desire to which, however, he had never given open expression. The Rev. Samuel Smith, one of Wesley’s preachers, records how, about the end of February 1772 he was in attendance upon John Wesley, when the latter received a communication as follows from Swedenborg, who was then in London, which he read aloud.

GREAT BATH STREET, GREAT BATH FIELDS.

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 favour me with a visit. I am, sir, your humble servant,

EMANUEL SWEDENBORG.

Mr Wesley wrote in reply that he was then on the point of starting for a six months’ journey, but would be pleased to wait on Swedenborg after his return to London. Swedenborg replied to this, that the visit proposed by Wesley would be too late, as he, Swedenborg, would enter the world of spirits on the 29th day of the next month, never more to return, a prediction which proved perfectly correct.

Other men have written many books. It is Swedenborg’s unique distinction, if distinction it is, to be the one man in history who has written a library on his own account. The encyclopædic brain does not, as a rule, tend to perspicuity in style, and Swedenborg has suffered from neglect owing to the fact that the fertility of his genius was not sufficiently associated with the powers of selection and condensation. To search for the treasures of his knowledge among his published works is like looking, in the words of the hackneyed proverb, “for needles in a haystack.” Had he given us far less in volume the world would doubtless have profited more by the very valuable information contained in his writings.

There are times when one is inclined to regret (if also to feel thankfulness) that Swedenborg was side-tracked by his Celestials and that he did not complete his phenomenal career on the lines which he had marked out for himself. It is a vain, though a most alluring speculation, to consider how the destinies of nations might have evolved if certain incidents in a single life history had eventuated otherwise than they did. We may conceive of Swedenborg bringing to completion his schemes for the construction of flying machines and submarines, nearly two centuries earlier than was decreed by destiny, and ask ourselves, if we will, what use the great Napoleon might not have made of these formidable implements of destructive warfare, and how far the map of Europe, and indeed of the world, might have been changed through their employment by his formidable genius; or, again, to what extent the linking up of the New and Old Worlds might have been accelerated by such developments. Here at least we must admit was a phenomenon—a man who realised, in a measure undreamed of by his contemporaries, not only in the physical but also in the spiritual sphere, the stupendous possibilities of the Coming Time.

Footnote 10:

Church property being free from taxation.

Footnote 11:

See _Life of Emanuel Swedenborg_. By George Trobridge. London: Frederick Warne & Co. To which book I must acknowledge my great indebtedness.

Footnote 12:

There are not a few of the communications recorded, notably in the “Spiritual Diary,” which might be advanced to support the hypothesis of a disordered brain; and we must not lose sight of the fact that Swedenborg’s tireless activities taxed his intellectual faculties beyond the powers of any but the most exceptional human organism.

VI COUNT CAGLIOSTRO

Who has not heard of Cagliostro? And yet who but a few students have any real knowledge of that mysterious character, of whom it may be said, as it was of Melchizedek, that he had “neither beginning of life nor end of days.” Both, at least, like the king of Salem’s, are wrapped in uncertainty, and though popular tradition, repeated again and again by the uncritical historian, has identified Cagliostro’s early life with that of the Italian scoundrel Joseph Balsamo, the evidence is as near conclusive as presumptive evidence can well be, that the two had no connection whatever with one another, beyond having married Italian wives with the same surname[13]—and that by no means an uncommon one—and the fact that Balsamo is said to have had an uncle of the name of Cagliostro. From what we know of Balsamo it may fairly be said that two people more opposite in character than himself and Count Cagliostro would be difficult to discover, and the identification of the two would seem to involve the assumption that Cagliostro had discarded his first wife and taken a second, a supposition which would render worthless the argument based on the identity of their surnames.

Cagliostro’s whole career, as far as we know it, shows a character in which generosity is perpetually being carried to the verge of folly. His credulity was constantly making him the dupe of designing knaves, in whose honesty he placed a pathetic faith, and had he ever had the misfortune to encounter his alter ego, a common rogue of the most ordinary type, it is safe to predict that he would not have escaped from his clutches till he had been fleeced of the bulk of his possessions. As late as the date of his trial in the affair of the Diamond Necklace, no suggestion of the identity of the two characters was even mooted. The story owes its origin to the fertile brain of one of the greatest scoundrels of whom European history holds record, the notorious blackmailer, Theveneau de Morande.