Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/109

VIII ] them without their being missed; most of them take it easy and try to get more and more under control; they give nothing to the poor except words and blessings, yet they are always wanting everything from the poor for nothing, of what use are these Capucin monks? Others again are slim, lean and supple, prefer walking to driving or riding, are sociable, like good living, are witty, etc."

A little later he collected some figures about the Church in France. "In France there are 14,777 convents, three or four hundred thousand religious. They possess 9,000 palaces or manors, 1,356 abbeys, 567 abbesses, 13,000 priors, 15,000 chaplains, 140,000 parishes, 18 archbishops, 112 bishops . . . 16 heads of orders . . ."

The signs that were to lead to French revolutionary enthronement of Reason were already clear, but it was not altogether from economic considerations that Emanuel Swedenborg condemned the fat friars. He saw them as he was beginning to see monarchies, not only as hard on the poor, but as inimical to true religion.

He had noted that Their Swedish Majesties were very gracious when he took leave of them, but he had a very strong feeling against monarchy, and this he now recorded in a diary entry where the innermost Swedenborg for a moment revealed himself, the man who had within the last three or four years acquired an emotional conviction of God's existence, and who did not feel he had to prove either God's or the soul's existence "mechanically" while he was alone with his own thoughts.

The entry was from his three days' stay in Amsterdam in September, 1736, and it expressed the feelings of mingled horror and affection in which he held the Netherlands, a country he already knew well from former visits. Arrived in Amsterdam, he noted that "the whole city breathed of nothing but gain," and later on, after being in Rotterdam, he wrote that he could not understand why it had pleased Our Lord to bless such an uncouth and avaricious people with so splendid a country. (He always appreciated politeness. An uncivil ship's captain depressed him, and he noted in Belgium what a relief it was to meet civilized manners after the Dutch lack of them.)

But why, he pondered, had the Lord protected the Dutch for so long, and let their commerce flourish mightily so that riches from everywhere flowed into their hands?