Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/172



0 far there was little in Swedenborg's published works that would have been thought anything except slightly fanciful, but even so he seems to have been careful about their circulation at home, although they were in Latin. When he heard of someone who had read Of the Worship and Love of God, he offered to lend him one of the physiological works, because, he said, in it "the intellectual mind and soul are here and there treated of. The copies which I have of this work are freely at the service of those who possess understanding and are interested in such subjects." 1

But he does not seem to have depended on anyone's understanding in regard to his double life among men and "spirits." In 1746, after a year's social experience with spirits, he noted privately that, "in company with other men, I spoke just as any other man, so that no one was able to distinguish me either from myself as I had been formerly, or from any other man; and, nevertheless, in the midst of company I sometimes spoke with spirits and with those who were around me; and perhaps they might have gathered something from this circumstance. However, I do not know whether anyone noticed anything from the fact that the internal senses were sometimes withdrawn from the external, though not in any such way that anyone could make a judgment from it; for at such times they could judge no other than that I was occupied with thoughts." 2

He added that the actual speech was not heard by anyone save himself and the spirits, although at times "the speech is as clear and distinct as the human voice, though not so high or with so rough a sound as when coming through one's lips. So much is this the case that sometimes even angels and spirits were afraid they would be heard by those who were present in the world."

Their fears seem to have been unfounded. If anyone had noticed anything it was at any rate not Swedenborg's colleagues in the Board of Mines, for they unanimously recommended him to the