Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/53

IV ] ." "He who loves what he is suspicious of is a waking man asleep." "The wrath of a lover is placated by tears." "Love like a torch burns brighter by being agitated." To meet the contention that "An adulterer is a more passionate lover of his own wife" he quoted from Plutarch that concupiscence was not love. Nor would he let woman as such be slandered. To the thrust that "When woman is openly bad then she's good," he remarked that actors had to say outrageous and witty things to get applause, but that in general expressed hatred was the less dangerous. When Publilius said that "Woman either hates or loves, she knows no middle way," Emanuel, while admitting that woman was a creature of extremes, maintained that so were her critics—"not a few of them prove it by their own manners."

The heart of all friendship, he said, was in the saying "Friendship is either between equals or makes them so," otherwise adulation crept in. "Friendship is always helpful, love can be injurious." Or, as Seneca had put it, "He who is a friend loves; he who loves is not always a friend." He was sure that "To injure a friend even in jest is not permissible," in fact he consigned to the devil "those jocular wranglings, that eloquence vomiting baneful poison with which certain men of the utmost urbanity exercise their biting and pointed wit—and seek friendship." Seneca came to his aid again: "To be malignant is not funny."

The young intellectual agreed that "Tension breaks the bow, want of it the mind." He noted that "He who fights with a drunken man fights with one who is absent," and that "He sleeps well who does not know how ill he sleeps"—here Emanuel paused to praise sleep on grass in the forest. The grieving mind, he agreed, was not a credible witness on anything, nor was the desire-dominated mind, see Sallust. And "The memory of wrath is itself a brief moment of anger"; "A good mind is more seriously angry when outraged than a poor one," because, Emanuel said, it does not get angry except for just cause.

"Feigned goodness in speech is worse than malice"—this touched a string in him that vibrated throughout life at the idea of hypocrisy. "Let our lips be consonant with our minds," he exclaimed, in his own words, "not slyly speaking, insidious; let them be unrouged, unveiled, unplastered, not imitating goodness by words!"