Page:Swedenborg, Harbinger of the New Age of the Christian Church.djvu/89

 The two Latin treatises, the publication of which is here briefly mentioned, have been translated and published in London under the respective titles of "Some Specimens of a Work on the Principles of Chemistry," and "Miscellaneous Observations connected with the Physical Sciences." In the first-named volume are included also three other publications of Swedenborg, of the same year, New Observations and Discoveries respecting Iron and Fire; A New Method of Finding the Longitudes of Places; and A New Method of Constructing Docks and Dykes. These essays give a fair specimen of Swedenborg's manner of treating scientific subjects. He first collects the observations and experiments of others, adding a few of his own, and then, with geometry for a guide, searches for the hidden causes and operations of nature. His theory of matter, as well summarized by one of his ablest translators, Dr. J. J. Garth Wilkinson, is "that roundness is the form adapted to motion; that the particles of fluids, and specifically of water, are round, hollow spherules, with a subtile matter, identical with ether or caloric, in their interiors and interstices; that the crust, or crustal portion, of each particle is itself formed