Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/291

XXI ] have happened in England and Holland to the detriment of justice and the public good, I believe I might fill a whole book with lamentations, when nevertheless those governments together with our own in Sweden are the very best in Europe, as every inhabitant, notwithstanding all the shortcomings which take place there, is safe in his life and property, and no one is a slave but they are all free men.

Considering that by this time, 1761, it had become known that he claimed to communicate with the other world, he was rather bold to continue as follows: "The honorable Houses of the Diet will allow me to go still higher: If there in this world should exist a heavenly government, consisting of men who had an angelic disposition, there would nevertheless be in it faults caused by weakness, together with other shortcomings; and if these were ferreted out, reported and exaggerated, this government too might be undermined by calumny and thereby gradually a desire might be raised among the well-disposed to change and destroy it." 10

The terse and cogent arguments for better government which the vigorous man of seventy-two expressed in his memorials grew out of a social philosophy which he had acquired in his long service of the state, and in which he had been confirmed by what he considered his observations in the other world. He had seen during his tenure of office men with petty souls and big voices who even while they claimed to be working for the common good were in reality working for their own profit, power, or renown. So to every action he applied one test: What is the end the man has in view? Did he desire the welfare of others for the sake of the common good, or was it for the sake of himself? 11

In Swedenborg's life there had been an overwhelming example of a man, perhaps self-deceived, whose loud trumpetings about his own piety, humility, and unselfishness were in reality blasts from as theatrical an ego as ever posed in a pulpit—his father, Bishop Swedberg. In his writings, Swedenborg often came back to the subject of how detested hypocrites were in the other world, not only the crude sort, but those who performed pious and useful actions. "If anyone should convert the whole world to Christianity, and the end be self-glory, self-reward and the like, he then obtains no reward therefor in the other life . . ." 12 He remarked that spirits did not