Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/68

54 and wills from his own freedom. That the love of the sex follows this beginning of his own understanding, and progresses according to the vigor of it, is known. . ."

Again he pleaded that it was wisdom to restrain the fornication that might follow the natural "love of the sex," but that this restraint ought finally to be based on a man's own reasoning power rather than on memorized principles, such as it necessarily was in the young. He had no great trust in those. "For a boy at the age of puberty has no thought that adulteries and debaucheries are other than fornications . . . nor has he reasoned knowledge to withstand the enticements of some of the sex who have carefully studied the arts of the courtesans; but in pellicacy, which is a more regulated and saner fornication, he may learn to see the distinctions."

A little one-sided and masculine, it might be said. The old man finished off with a warning, "But it is better that the torch of love of the sex be first lighted with a wife."

The "love" of which he had spoken as inciting the youth to think for himself was no doubt that which he sometimes referred to as a man's "ruling love" or chief interest, or, it might be said in the Jungian sense, his "libido," the psychic energy available. That interest with the young Emanuel was the direct pursuit of science, and fame through science. The Oxford idyl was over after about six months of it. In spite of Halley's "oral admission" that Swedberg's way of finding the longitude by means of the moon was conceivable, the young Swede had at last become discouraged. Not with his method, indeed—if only there were proper lunar tables, he wrote to Benzelius in August, 1712—no other projected method could be better than his, but there was another trouble. "Since here in England with this politely arrogant people I have not found great encouragement, I have laid it aside for other lands."

Emanuel packed most of his books and instruments and sent them home to Sweden. He begged Benzelius in quaint English (having specialized in mathematics) that he would help persuade his father to send him what would be necessary for a "yourney," and "what wil give me new spirits to make further steps in what my business is." Where to? Regardless of the Bishop's warnings