Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/195

XIV ] "dead," only that they had been wrong in supposing that their perception of sense data had been exclusively linked to their grosser physical mechanisms.

He did not always succeed in convincing them. Skeptics seemed to be numerous even "there," and determined ones, for Swedenborg also noted in his diary that one day when he wanted to "represent" a microscope in order to aid an argument, "the spirits resisted, and did not wish to allow it, saying they do not wish to admit those things which convince, for they fear to be convinced." 18

Absorbing from any point of view as is his account of that spirit world in and out of which he dropped with such ease, there is so far no way of proving that it was not entirely a subjective hallucination put on by a producer-level-of-genius in his personality, leaving him, as some worthy people of his time thought, brilliantly sane except in this respect.

There may never be any way of proving what his experience really was, but it is relevantly interesting to try to find out whether he had any of the abilities of the "gifted subjects" with whom psychical researchers get their star results; whether there is any evidence that he showed extrasensory perception in spontaneous cases; and whether he had the kind of "splittable" psychic constitution known to facilitate such states.

The last question would seem to bring us into the territory reserved, apparently, for psychiatry. Part of the object of this study is to show that in reality it also belongs to another and a different province, that of psychical research. The two may be contiguous, but they are not the same. For instance, a question that never could be asked of psychiatry can be asked of modern psychical research: How far can it bear out Swedenborg's stubborn claim that man survives the death of the body?