Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/151

XI ] God have been granted an abundance of all that I need temporally; I could live well on my income alone and carry out what I have in mind and still have money left over; therefore I can bear witness that the sadness or melancholy which comes from lack of means is of a lower and a physical kind and in no way equal to the other." 29

Why was he so melancholy? In his book The Fibre he wrote at length about the causes of melancholy, and, consulting Swedenborg on Swedenborg, one may find that the "spiritual cause," the "supreme cause," of melancholy is due to an "evil conscience," otherwise "temptations." Such a disease of the soul, he says, descending into the mind and then into the lower mind and from this into the blood, "perturbs, inverts and robs the whole animal organism." 30

Now what did he mean by "temptations"?