Page:The Other Life.djvu/276

 love of truth, the love of beauty and the love of goodness.

All our advances in knowledge come necessarily from the love of knowing, of comparing, of analyzing and of understanding. The delight in the acquisition of truth is a primal and necessary delight in the human mind. The pursuit of truth is frequently prosecuted from selfish ends—the love of glory, the love of power or the love of wealth. The truths acquired are also perverted or sectarianized so as to be accommodated to the state of the affections. But there is such a thing as a love of truth for the sake of the truth, without regard to its source or associations.

This affection of knowing, comparing, analyzing, understanding and believing or disbelieving is not only fundamental but it is irrepressible. It will finally lead men to examine Swedenborg and his doctrines. They will not be contented with hearsay. They will not be influenced by prejudice. They will be animated by that purer, superior, abstract love of truth, which precedes and will finally dominate the inferior and concrete loves of sensual and external things, of traditions and dogmas and churches. Swedenborg will be studied as a phenomenon; explored as a new continent;