Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/311

XXII ] not only their own but our world, and it seemed as if the time had come when there was no more "charity." Therefore Swedenborg, putting this together with his interpretations of the Apocalypse, believed that the time had come not when the visible world would be destroyed but when the "constructs," so to speak, of evil spirits in the other world would be thrown down.

Furthermore, he needed the Last Judgment. Too many people believed that the dead would not "rise again" until after the Judgment; how was he to convince them unless he could report that it had taken place? Not that Swedenborg for a moment would have consciously deceived anybody even for the most pious of motives, but he was a man who in the most literal sense seems to have been able to see what he wanted to. That is what makes it so extremely difficult to evaluate his experiences.

If the spirit of man can survive the death of the body—and modern psychical research offers some evidence which tends in that direction—then many of Swedenborg's reported experiences may have a basis in objective fact, but even so there may be others of his reports which have a basis only in his "phantasy" for various psychological reasons. The strange thing is that he was so fully aware of this trickery of the unconscious—in others, and those others he said were "spirits."

Again and again he cited cases where he had noticed spirits projecting their thoughts and fancies and seeing them, even suffering from them, as if they were real. A fine example is in a diary entry where he mentions seeing a man he had known, now a companion of Charles XII in the spirit world. This man, Swedenborg said, saw many things which he insisted were magnificent "when, nevertheless, there was not anything; for whatever occurs to his thought, this he sees as if it were real."

That this kind of fantasy could take place on a continued and large scale Swedenborg also admitted, for he said, in the same entry: "Afterwards Charles XII became like this; and he said that he sees all thoughts in forms, at one time armies and battles, at another other marvellous things, exactly according to the thought of his spirit; and that he took delight in them, just as he delighted in his thoughts, even filthy ones. It was also stated that others near him did not see anything." 24