Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/74

60 been sent to d:brother, from my heart I wish it were so, since it cost me work enough to set them down."

They were not found. Emanuel began again to work on a hoisting machine, but he dutifully begged Benzelius to keep him in mind if there should be an opening at the university. Barnacled though it was with long-lived professors, this seemed his only chance to function.

Far more to his taste was the effort to haul Sweden forward into line with other nations in regard to science. Why shouldn't Sweden have a Scientific Society? Why shouldn't Sweden have a scientific journal, and one not in Latin as usual but in the tongue of the people so that research might be encouraged among them? Did not Sweden have Christopher Polhem, the great inventor, and should not his inventions be published along with those of others, such as Emanuel's?

Benzelius agreed, but evidently the Bishop thought it a waste of time and money, for soon Emanuel was writing bitterly to his brother-in-law: "A single word to my father from you on my behalf will be worth more than twenty thousand remonstrances from me. Without making any recommendation you can advertise him of my project, of my solicitude for studies so that he will not imagine in the future that I would waste time and at the same time his money. One word from another will be worth more than a thousand from myself."

But this highly uncommercial venture turned out to be more practical than the Bishop suspected. Christopher Polhem became interested in Emanuel again. He had met the youth and noticed his genius for mechanics five years previously, and now he was more than touched that this young man wanted to publish an account of the Polhem inventions, and at his own expense.

The first number of Daedalus Hyperboreus, Emanuel's magazine, was published in January, 1716, the chief feature being the description of an ear-trumpet invented by Polhem.3

At this time there was no textbook of arithmetic in all of Sweden, so Emanuel persuaded Polhem to write one, and he promised to pay for that too, not knowing where the money was to come from. Luckily he inherited a little money from his mother's iron works and was able to pay for both the magazine and the arithmetic,