Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/303

XXII ] plants, were "appearances," or "mere correspondences of lusts that swarm out of their evil loves and present themselves in such forms before others." 2 Yet he believed, or came to believe, that these temporary, soul-stuff "phantasies" could become materialized—appear in solid earth—stuff—if they "which in themselves are spiritual meet with homogeneous or corresponding things in the earths for then are present both the spiritual that furnishes a soul and the material that furnishes a body." 3 Or, as he also put it, if those forms become filled with matters from the earth they become fixed or enduring. Luckily for man and for the growing of roses, the emotions of heaven could also be in this way materialized on earth.

Swedenborg worked this out in much dry detail, but to illustrate the doctrine he gave an incident "from experience," as he said, and undoubtedly meant. With the astounding casualness that often startles the reader into nearly believing that he really did loiter behind a heavenly huckleberry bush and overhear the inhabitants, he begins:

"I heard two presidents of the English Royal Society, Sir Hans Sloane and Martin Folkes, conversing together in the spiritual world about the existence of seeds and eggs, and about production from them in the earths."

(Note that Swedenborg was well acquainted with the Royal Society and had undoubtedly seen both of these gentlemen and may have known them personally.)

Sir Hans Sloane contended that nature by itself produced seeds and eggs by means of the sun's heat, but Mr. Folkes (his real name was Ffoulkes) said that the force for this came into nature unceasingly from God, the Creator.

"To settle the discussion, a beautiful bird appeared to Sir Hans Sloane, and he was asked to examine it to see whether it differed in the smallest particle from a similar bird on earth. He held it in his hand, examined it, and declared that there was no difference. He knew indeed that it was nothing but an affection of some angel represented outside the angel as a bird, and that it would vanish or cease with its affection. And this came to pass."

"By this experience," Swedenborg says, "Sir Hans Sloane was convinced that nature contributes nothing whatever to the production of plants and animals, that they are produced solely by what