Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/128



F all the references with which The Economy of the Animal Kingdom is so liberal there are only four to the Bible. Two of those are in the last lines. They have no obvrous connection with what precedes them, but a man like Swedenborg did not finish a book of such importance to him without intending to convey the gist of the matter at its end.

The first reference is to the Second Epistle of Paul to Timothy, chapter 3, verses 1—10. Looking it up, one finds that Paul summarizes the vices of men living in the last "perilous times." Among other things such men are, the Apostle says, "without natural affection, truce-breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good . . . ever learning and never able to come to a knowledge of the truth."

Looking up the second reference, from the Acts of the Apostles, chapter 17, verses 18—20, one finds that it describes Paul's sermon to the Athenians about the Unknown God, at which some of the Athenians mocked, but among those "who clave unto him and believed" was one "Dionysius, the Areopagite."

The name of Dionysius was taken by or affixed to a writer of mystical theology, who was probably a Syrian monk of the fifth century AD. His writings were the chief Christian channel through which Neoplatonism flowed into Christianity. His religious philosophy, a modern scholar has said, "is in fact Neoplatonic philosophy slightly sprinkled with baptismal water from a Christian font." 1

To prove that Swedenborg knew Dionysius it is not necessary to point to a reference to him in the Economy.2 The whole trend of the book is that of Neoplatonism, down to specific details such as many Plotinian similes. Swedenborg had first met this philosophy when he was young, both in Sweden 3 and in England. In England, as already intimated, he met it through the so-called Cambridge