Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/206

190 of the testimonies to Swedenborg's psychic powers were put on paper until long after his death, a fact which has induced some scrupulous researchers to rule them out.

On this score, however, some testimonies cannot be ruled out—even if for some of the cases one must, as previously mentioned, fall back on Swedenborg's truthfulness, the analogy of modern cases, and experimental work. J. C. Cuno (see pp. 339–340) seems to have recorded his stories of Swedenborg's alleged clairvoyance at the time he heard them from him and approximately at the time that they occurred, but we have one contemporary recorder at least in that very Count Tessin who at first felt so skeptical.

He recorded the story which first had drawn Kant's attention to Swedenborg's supposed powers, that of the Queen of Sweden's secret. Kant, it will be remembered, paid attention to it because it had been reported by an ambassador, and in his letter to his friend about Swedenborg he affirmed that through his own "special investigations" (through the Englishman Green) he had found out that the ambassador's account was correct.22

The story, only published in our own day, which Count Tessin put in his private diary involved Queen Louisa Ulrica of Sweden, sister of Frederick the Great of Prussia, and herself a woman of strong intelligence. (Kant said of her that she was "a princess whose great understanding and penetration ought to have made an attempt at imposition almost impossible") She herself said haughtily that she was "hard to fool," when someone hinted that she might have been fooled in this matter of Swedenborg.

Count Tessin wrote in his diary for November 18, 1761:23 "A remarkable report is being circulated which has caused me to ask Assessor Swedenborg himself about the connection of the matter. This is his own account: About three weeks ago he was engaged in a long conversation with their Majesties at the Palace, on which occasion he also requested gracious permission to present copies of his published books; during the conversation he related many things which are not particularly in place here except as confirming his system of angels and heavens, etc. Her Majesty ended by requesting him, in case he saw her brother, the Prince of Prussia, to tell her something from him.

"Three days ago, which was last Sunday, he again presented