Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/46

34 probably it was a good thing for the students, far from home in those ox-cart days. In any case, the university, which had long fought their establishment, finally had to give up. There were twenty-two "nations" at Upsala in Emanuel's time. He was inscribed in the Vestmanland Dala Nation, of which his father was the Inspector or "faculty adviser." 8

Official evidence shows that Emanuel, far from being a shrinking introvert, took such eager part in the "national" life that he once had to be slightly discouraged. The chief events in the life of these fraternities were not athletics but intellectual contests called "disputations," in Latin of course. Emanuel's nation had been choosing its subject for debate in exalted realms. In 1704 he had been opponent in a debate on "God's Providence," in 1706 in one on the duties of married people, and later in the same year in one on the duties of parents and children. This seems to have overstimulated him because on the same day he offered to preside at the next disputation which was to be on Natural Law. His offer was praised but rejected. "His Magnificence," that is, the university rector who was faculty adviser of the nation at the time, asked the members if a Junior had ever been known to preside. They answered that it had occurred once or twice although the Seniors, whose privilege it was, never liked it. Such a novelty "might conceivably lead to disorder." Where would the Juniors stop? "So nothing further was done." 9

The occasional slight stutter which people later noted in the mature Swedenborg was evidently not much of a handicap to him, perhaps not even in existence then. Or perhaps this was the very time he cultivated a stutter, consciously or unconsciously, because with such a handicap he could not enter the church, the only obvious career for Bishop Swedberg's bright son, who even at the age of seven had been given a Hebrew grammar. 10 At any rate, though he studied most of the subjects offered by the university, he does not seem to have taken theology or law.

It is known from his letters that he studied with zest under the professors of mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. The curriculum was not as complicated as at a modern school. 11 A single folio sheet, printed in double columns, held not only the list of courses for the whole year, but each professor's description of what he proposed to do. A look at these sheets for the years during which