Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/196



N Swedenborg's work on the nervous system (The Fibre) there is evidence that he had not neglected the study of abnormal mental states. While he was writing this book, in 1741, he had a chance to apply his knowledge, since he was given charge of a case that came before the Board of Mines. It was that of Duseen, a copyist clerk, accused of drunkenness and violence. Many witnesses testified that Duseen was good, but weakminded. Many others swore he was the worst of drunkards. Swedenborg with remarkable breadth of mind for his time saw that he had to find out, as he told his fellow Assessors, whether the man was weakminded because of intoxication, or intoxicated because of being weakminded. He decided for the latter, after having most ably sifted all the evidence. But he urged caution in dismissing him, bad servant of the State though he was. "His negligence comes from his sickness, and such a course would put him in a miserable condition as to both body and soul." Duseen was allowed to retire on a pension.1

Two years later Swedenborg was going through his religious crisis, but in spite of the deep emotions that almost swept him away from his faith in rationality, he did study his own case, as is evident in the dream diary of 1743—44. He interpreted his dreams not according to their manifest content (or what they seemed superficially to mean) but as symbolic of the ambitions that were preoccupying him so intensely—his scientific work and his longing to be a wholly "spiritual" man, to be regenerated.2

He noticed a real split in his personality and very much wondered at it. "It was strange that I could be of two minds, quite separate at the same time . . . I did not know whither to flee, for I bore it within me." The two minds, the "double thoughts," as he literally called them, he saw of course as the carnal man striving with the spiritual man, but there was more than symbolism in it