Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/309

XXII ] mercy and peace prevail?" He also informed the angels that "when such spirits see masses of the slain scattered about, to the number of several thousands, and when they hear the miserable lamentations of the wounded and behold streams of blood covering their bodies, and also themselves and their own swords dipped in human blood, then they are rejoiced at heart and are proud in spirit, boasting and imagining themselves to be heroes; yea, at such a time they sing their Te Deums and nevertheless call themselves Christians."

He excepted from censure men "who defend themselves from their enemies, and wild animals who kill others for necessary food," but for those spirits, in or out of the body, whom he saw as belonging to the province of the colon, he had a few final lines of scorn in this diary entry:

"Men abhor executioners, whose office it is to punish criminals and those sentenced to death; but such as are described above, who are far worse than executioners—since they slay, burn and plunder the innocent without mercy and conscience—are praised, esteemed and raised to honor and dignities." 19

By this strange way of symbolism did Swedenborg return to his most dearly loved science, physiology, often in the greatest anatomical detail. He applied it also, as had other Kabbalah-influenced men before him, to his Bible exegesis, via this doctrine of the Grand Man, to whose cosmic body he tried to show that numerous references in Genesis and Exodus "corresponded."

It was part of the "occult" lore of the Grand Man that in his all-containing body the spirits from other planets also had their place. As early as in 1748, Swedenborg, the one-time student of astronomy, sought "permission" from the Lord to know "what kind of men they are who live in other planets." 20 He first made the acquaintance of the spirits from "Jupiter." Many entries in his diary, in his abnormal handwriting, are taken up by his descriptions of the appearance, customs, habits, etc. of the spirits from the different planets, as he claimed he observed them on his different visits. He makes it clear he did not believe he flitted bodily around the universe; his body stayed in his bed, he said, while his spirit went through several "changes of state" which enabled him to "travel"