Page:Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic.djvu/93

VII ]  was faintly suspected of being "materialistic" and was in any case above the heads of the reviewers, but Swedenborg otherwise received great praise, among the rest, for his attitude on trade secrets. He had stated with engaging candor:

There are persons who love to hold knowledge for themselves alone, and to be reputed possessors and guardians of secrets. People of this kind grudge the public everything, and if any discovery by which art and science will be benefited comes to light they regard it askance with scowling visages and probably denounce the discoverer as a babbler who lets out mysteries. Why should real secrets be grudged to the public? Why withheld from this enlightened age? Whatever is worth knowing should by all means be brought into the great and common market of the world. Unless this is done we can neither grow wiser nor happier with time.14

Parts of the work dealing with the manufacture of iron and steel were reprinted separately and even translated from the Latin into French, and, later, into Swedish from the French! He had flattering inquiries from academies of science. Far from being a failure he had achieved a European reputation in his chosen field. The road to further fame was lying open before him. Yet he turned from it and into the unrewarding path of anatomy, not so much for its own sake as because through that study he hoped to acquire greater understanding of the body's relationship to the soul, and through this he hoped to come nearer to an understanding of the soul's relationship to God.

Had he failed in his human relationships? There is no evidence for that. His friendship with Eric Benzelius continued to be warm, and he was a generous uncle to young Eric. Some of his colleagues at the Board of Mines he liked very much. Swedenborg was never considered an unsociable man.

Why had he not married?

There is a tradition that when he was still Polhem's assistant he was in love with Emerentia, Polhem's younger daughter (aged fifteen and known as "Mrensa"), and to have been in such despair when she preferred another that he vowed never to marry.15

He may have been in love with Emerentia, but in 1726, two years after he became confirmed as assessor, a certain Pastor Steuchius