Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/217



HE "thousands of stories" about Swedenborg's commerce with the other world that so astonished some of his acquaintances, such as Baron Tilas, did not start circulating till after about 1760, when Swedenborg was seventy-two. For the demonstration of his supernormal powers interested him very little. What is known about them is mainly through the testimony of his contemporaries. Although he was willing to confirm some of the stories, branding others as obvious nonsense, he always insisted that such things were unimportant in comparison with what he felt was his real mission.

One cannot help pausing to reflect what a misfortune it was for the science of psychical research, as well as for a lofty ethical view of religion, that Emanuel Swedenborg happened to become entangled with an unscientific method of interpreting the Bible. In spite of the chaotic character of his last "worldly" book, Of the Worship and Love of God, it has passages of brilliant clarity about the very physics of the body-mind relationship; passages stimulating and suggestive on ethics, psychology, and religion; passages of great beauty, half symbolism, half "real," in that they suggest he is merely veiling actual psychic experiences under the form of allegories. If any book was ever written under the direct pressure of "inspiration" this one was, and one thinks with regret of what might have been written once Swedenborg had calmed down and begun to sort out and relate his impressions. All that can be done now, and it is not little, is to try to sift those from as objective a point of view as possible, given that no one ever can be objective.

The man who returned from London to Stockholm in August, 1745, was careful to keep his "mission" to himself. He worked hard when he rejoined the Board of Mines, and he must have worked well, or the offer of promotion would not have come to him. One wonders if it would have come had the members of the Board known what was occupying their affable, cosmopolitan colleague