Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/364

346 the spiritual world, which if good was, of course, originally from God. The body received its influence from God through the "natural world."

Swedenborg saw it as his duty to make known these things. He said so, in this book, with an attitude reminiscent of his position long ago in regard to trade secrets—that there ought to be none.

"Now, because I have been permitted to be in the spiritual world and in the natural world at the same time, I am obliged by my conscience to make known these things; for what is the use of knowing, unless what is known to one be also known to others?"

He said he did not mean to be spiritually avaricious, and when he left Amsterdam with the manuscript of this book it was, probably, to have it published in Paris. Perhaps he saw that Cuno was right and that the Dutch might catch on to the fact that they had a dangerous heretic in their midst.

One did not fly to Paris in those days. It must have taken the venerable man a good week to arrive there by canalboat and stage-coach. And when he arrived in the still royal city he was told by the royal censor that his book might indeed be published in Paris, but only on one condition. This was that "the title-page, as was usual, declared that the book was printed either in London or in Amsterdam." 3

Swedenborg would not consent to this polite lie, and he packed his two suits together again and took the stagecoaches and the channel-boat for England, arriving in London early in the summer.

That summer was undoubtedly balm to him after his association with the kind but openly incredulous Cuno, for here in London he met people who made no difficulties about accepting the truth of what he said about his "mission."

He had met only silence when he sent his books to the English bishops, the House of Lords, the Royal Society, or the great universities, but now he found other Englishmen, at least he found two of them—the Reverend Thos. Hartley, and Dr. Messiter.4

England was not only the country of the almost openly atheistic, it was also the land of almost every shade of religious credulity. Not that Hartley and Messiter belonged to the class of ignorant fanatics, or to the simple who could be stirred by revivalists. Hartley was a clergyman of the Church of England, which has held so many