Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/150

134 the mind, pretending to be the light of life, as he wrote in the second part of the new book.27

The book, the Animal Kingdom, had its two first parts nearly ready for the press, when Emanuel Swedenborg again applied to the Board of Mines for leave of absence to consult libraries abroad and publish his new work. He said he would have preferred to stay at home and attend to his little property and have pleasant times rather than go to so much trouble and expense by traveling "in these unquiet times," and this "with the probability of meeting in the end with more unfavorable than favorable judgments." Yet, he said, he wanted to produce something real in his lifetime, something which might be of use in the scientific world and to posterity, and which might even obtain some honor for his native country. He would as usual give up half his salary to a substitute, and he would even keep a journal to prove that his time wasn't being wasted! But that would not be necessary, for his own intention was to use all the diligence possible to finish his work, return to his country, and in "tranquillity and ease" continue his "larger work, the Regnum Minerale," and thus be "of actual use to the public at large . . ." 28

On July 21 Assessor Swedenborg left Stockholm for Amsterdam, traveling in a leisurely fashion and doing some strenuous sight-seeing on the way. He arrived toward the end of August, 1743.

But the change of scene did not dispel the dark mists that from time to time enveloped him. Most characteristic of the period of strife that now began for him is a little incident which he noted in his intimate diary on April 7, 1744.

He said, evidently referring to something that took place in a dining room, either public or private, that "I heard a man at the table ask his neighbor the question whether any one could be melancholy who had more than enough of money. I smiled inwardly and would have answered, if it had been proper to do so in that company or if I had been asked, that a man who has more than enough of everything may not only be subject to melancholy but to a still deeper kind which is that of the mind and the soul or of the spirit which effects it; I wondered that he brought it up. I can bear witness to this so much the more since I by the grace of