Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/12

2 with religion, claimed that Swedenborg foresaw even "the lines of development of science." Svante Arrhenius, Nobel Prize winner, vouched for his cosmology which surmised the nebular hypothesis and the existence of galactic universes. Anatomists said that Swedenborg was the first to localize the psychological functions of the brain in the cortex, and that he based this discovery not on vague theorizing, but on clinical and pathological observations, as well as on ingenious synthesis of material provided by others.

He had studied under some of the great anatomists of his day, and he says himself that he based much of his work on that of others. For this he gave a subtle reason: "I found, when intently occupied in exploring the secrets of the human body, that as soon as I discovered anything which had not been discovered before, I began—seduced probably by self-love—to grow blind to the most acute lucubrations of the researches of others, and to originate the whole series of inductive arguments from my particular discovery alone . . . Nay, when I tried to form principles from these discoveries, I thought I could detect much to confirm their truth in various other phenomena, although in reality they were fairly susceptible of no construction of the kind. I therefore laid aside my instruments, and, restraining my desire for making observations, determined rather to rely on the researches of others than to trust to my own." 3

Then he painted this picture of the true men of science:

"The fictitious depresses them, the obscure pains them; but they are exhilarated by the truth, and in the presence of everything that is clear they too are clear and serene. When, after a long course of reasoning, they make a discovery of the truth, straightway there is a certain cheering light and joyful confirmatory brightness that plays around the sphere of their mind; and a kind of mysterious radiation—I know not whence it proceeds—that darts through some sacred temple in the brain." 4

From time to time in this twentieth century a bold speculation throws this "confirmatory brightness" into our world. Then it often happens that something which had hitherto been merely another dark patch in Swedenborg's writings turns out to shine