Page:The Philosophy of Creation.djvu/92

 he will be carried on with sure and rational footing to the end. But if he can not accept the necessity of revelation as a starting point, if he continues to insist upon seeing spiritual things with material eyes, if he demands ocular demonstration of the invisible, or sensual evidence of the imponderable, if he will not use the things of science with enlightened reason, he must remain in utter ignorance of all things above the sensual plane, though they are easily within the reach of the rational, philosophical, and perceptive.

During Swedenborg's earlier life he wrote much of a scientific character. But later, after the commencement of his theological works, he makes no pretense to formulating science. He claims his mission to be to expound the Sacred Scriptures. Throughout his theological works he makes assertion of facts of a scientific character, and enunciates the principles of philosophy which should govern science and arrange its facts. He maintains that correct views of nature and of science depend upon the revelation of fundamental, interior causes and laws, which it was his mission to make known. From the starting point of these interior causes and laws, nature unfolds, and her otherwise impenetrable secrets are laid open.