Page:Studies of a Biographer 4.djvu/156

 when he became a system-monger, and Emerson could condemn some of the results sharply enough. He was not the less grateful for the inspiration, because associated with absurdities, which might qualify the prophet for Bedlam. Swedenborg's leading thought, he says, is given in Milton's lines:—

Swedenborg, he thinks, was the first to give a scientific statement of the poetical doctrine of 'symbolism.' He had inverted the point of view of the 'poisonous' kind of science. The ideal world is the reality, and the material world should be regarded as merely a kind of 'picture language.' Emerson wonders that when this fruitful seed of thought was once sown men did not put by all other science to work out the results. Yet people continue to take more interest in examining every spider, or fossil, or fungus, than in trying to discover 'the meaning and upshot of the frame of things.' It may be, he thinks, that centuries will be required to elaborate so profound a conception.

The impression made upon Emerson by this doctrine appears both in his own teaching and in