Page:Swedenborg, Harbinger of the New Age of the Christian Church.djvu/141

 of this Aristotle of the North. All the more strange is it, however, that the spirit of medical investigation elsewhere so lively in these times should have left untilled a field so rich as this in possibilities."

In an address to the Congress of Anatomists assembled at Heidelberg, May 29, 1903, its President, Prof. Dr. Gustaf Retzius, after describing some of Swedenborg's contributions to a knowledge of the anatomy and physiology of the brain, concludes—

"Emanuel Swedenborg, therefore, according to the standpoint of his time, not only had a thorough knowledge of the construction of the brain, but had also gone far ahead of his contemporaries in fundamental questions. The question arises—how was all this possible? The answer can hardly be other than that Swedenborg was not only a learned anatomist and a sharp-sighted observer, but also in many respects an unprejudiced, acute, and deep anatomical thinker. He towers in the history of the study of the brain as a unique, wonderful, phenomenal spirit—as an ideal seeker for truth, who advanced step by step to ever