the more courteous epithet of Mystic. In vain will you ransack the archives of his family or personal history for a trace of insanity. Equally fruitless will be your endeavour to trace any symptoms of incoherence or raving in his methodical pages. If he must needs be mad, there is a rare method in his madness; and if the world insists on his being a visionary, it must admit that his visions are something anomalous in their systematic and mathematical form. But we have yet to learn that visionaries and dreamers can write a cool business-like style, and pen dry and well-digested folios; nor is it a common thing to find a madman deficient in sallies of imagination, and remarkable for strong common sense. Such is the problem and anomaly presented by this remarkable man, whose gift of seership is attested by such characters as Kant and the sister of the great Frederic.1 The solution we leave to the skill of the gentle reader, as it does not fall within our province.

His Philosophy.

Swedenborg's principal philosophical and theological works are: SWEDENBORGII Opera philosophica et mineralia, Dresd. 1734, 3 vols.

folio.

Economia Regni Animalis, 2 vols. 4to. Lond. 1740--41; Amst. 1742. Regnum animale, anatomice, physice, et philosophice perlustratum, Hag. Com. 1744-5, 3 vols. 4to. The same, translated, with remarks, &c., by J. J. G. WILKINSON, 2 vols. 8vo.

Arcana Coelestia quæ in Genesi et Exodo sunt detecta, Lond. 1749-56, 8 vols. 4to.

De nova Hierosolyma et ejus doctrina cœlesti, 4to. Lond. 1758. Doctrina novæ Hierosolymæ de Domino, Lond. 1758; Amst. 1763-4. Apocalypsis Revelata, Amst. 1766.

Vera Religio Christiana, seu universalis theologia, Amst. 1771, 4to.; Lond. 1780.

Most of his works have been translated into English, and published by or under the patronage of the Swedenborgian Society.

373. Swedenborg's Philosophy, as developed in his scientific as well as theological works, may be characterized as a very decided system of Empirical Realism, distinguished for an almost diaphanic introvision into the human heart, for consummate simplicity, and consistency. He regards the

1 See the account of Swedenborg's vision of the Fire of Stockholm, as recorded by Em. Kant; and that of his disclosures to the Queen of Sweden respecting her deceased brother. Emanuel Swedenborg: a Biography; by J. J. G. WILKINSON, 8vo. p. 121, 126, and 158.

science of Correspondence as the Key of Knowledge, a Divine Philosophy unlocking the treasures of the Spiritual as well as Natural worlds, and sending Thought at a bound from the Zoophyte to the Seraphim. The material world is the ultimate and pedestal of the universe, filled with various creations, corresponding to others in the higher-ascending Spheres of the Universe. Thus Nature is in truth a Revelation and a Divine Book, whose letters, the Groves, Hills, and Rivers, the Firmament and the Lamps of Heaven, are hieroglyphic representatives of corresponding spiritual Realities.

The doctrine of Degrees forms a pendant to the science of Correspondence in Swedenborg's Philosophy. Degrees, which he classes in two series, i. e., Continuous and Discrete, carry the mind by the Patriarch's Ladder, from Earth to Heaven; and, scaling the Empyrean, conduct us from 0 to the Throne of God. The Continuous Degrees are evident and familiar to all, whereof an obvious example is presented in the ascending series of organic vitality, from the plant to Man. Discrete Degrees constitute a series of a different description. They are the same things mirrored or reechoed on different platforms through the medium of Correspondencies. Thus God is the Sun of the Spiritual World, whose Heat and Light are Love and Wisdom.

The Psychological Analysis of Swedenborg is remarkable for its agreement with the conscience and experience of all who reflect on what transpires in the chambers of their own heart. His remarks, indeed, are alarmingly searching, and seem to proceed from one who united to a profound knowledge of mankind, a natural kind of clairvoyance that penetrated into the inmost recesses of men's thoughts and motives. His philosophy savours much more of Life than of the Lamp. He divides the Mind into Will and Understanding; the seats of the Affections and of Thought. It is the former that constitutes the character; man being what his loves are, according to the elevation or depression of his affections, a little lower than the Angels, or crawling worm-like in the dust. Man, regarded as a psycho-physiological being, consists of three parts: 1st, The Spirit, which is essentially the man; 2nd, Its inner garment, or spiritual body, identical with the Soul of St. Paul's Epistles, and

which constitutes the medium of union between the Spirit; and 3rdly, its outer garment or material body. The latter is woven around it by the Spirit through the law of Correspondences. Hence a perfect analogy exists between the mental faculties and the bodily organs.

Death, according to Swedenborg, is nothing more than the casting off an outer skin, or the shelling of the mature and ripened spirit within.

The mind may be again subdivided into three parts: 1st, The inmost or Celestial-Spiritual principle, by which man communicates directly with God, angels, and heaven. 2nd, The Rational and Internal, which constitutes the intellectual and scientific principle; and the External, natural, or sensuous, which brings man into connection with the material world. The metaphysical reader will easily trace an analogy between Swedenborg's Celestial-Spiritual, Rational, and Sensuous principles, and the Intuitive Reason, the Logical Understanding, and the Sensational Perception (Anschauung) of Transcendental Philosophy. There is, however, one broad distinction between them: Swedenborg's Celestial-Spiritual Principle grasps an objectivelyreal and substantial world of Spirits; and his Sensuous Principle grapples with the solid reality of an objective world of matter, whilst the Transcendentalist, both in his Intuition and his Sensation, hobbles in a world of subjective ideas and representations, that hold his mind in a strait-waistcoat.

On an impartial review of his system, it will be found to be characterized by that best of wisdom, which consists in its adaptation to the normal understanding, and its agreement with the most cherished instincts of the human heart.

Swedenborg's Position as a Psychological Phenomenon.

374. It is refreshing, in the eleventh hour of the eighteenth century, the age of Atheism, Libertinism, Freemasonry, and Rosicrucianism, to meet a man who united a healthy, plain, and practical view of Life, Man, and Nature, with the sublimest, and at the same time time, the most scientific handling and treatment of things spiritual and eternal.

In the eyes of an impartial and a discriminating posterity, Emanuel Swedenborg will obtain an elevated rank in the

illustrious brotherhood of the luminaries of the Church. A certain family likeness may be traced between all the members of this memorable group.

Benedict, St. Francis, and Loyola, were a union of contradictions; themselves living paradoxes. The first a burning Calabrian rhapsodist,' could descend from the sublimest extacies and the most rapturous trances, to draw up a legislative code, whose propriety, expediency, and sound practical sense, have astonished the world for above one thousand years.

St. Francis of Assisi was another instance of the blending of superior diplomatic acuteness with a grasp of Faith that revealed to his glowing vision those things that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive. The Franciscan Order still remains as a monument of the man, who was as wise as a serpent, and as harmless as a dove; and its history attests the giant arm that raised it.

*

Loyola, whose merits none can dispute, notwithstanding the sins of his Order, coupled the extreme of ascetic humiliations and apostolic devotion with a dry business-like style, and a deliberate shrewdness in his knowledge of mankind, and in the reading of the human heart. Similarly, Swedenborg, when treating of the sublimest realities, proceeds with the coolness and imperturbable deliberation of a man entering items in his ledger.

As previously observed, however, the revelation and commentaries of Swedenborg do not fall exactly within our province. Nevertheless, since his philosophical writings are considerably influenced and modified by his theology, we must consider the latter in order to estimate the former. On a general survey of his works it appears that he must

1 See Sir J. STEPHEN'S Article on the French Benedictines; and History of the Benedictine Order.

2 See the Article on St. Francis, in Sir J. STEPHEN'S Ecclesiastical Biography.

3 See the Article of Sir J. STEPHEN'S on the Founders of Jesuitism; and IFAAC TAYLOR'S Ignatius Loyola, or Jesuitism in its Rudiments.

* Lord Chesterfield and Voltaire call him a madman.. Thus one man's meat is another man's poison. Irving was said to look on one side of his face like an angel, and on the other like a devil.-Ed. 4 See LOYOLA's Spiritual Exercises.

be classed with Empirists, Supernaturalists, and perhaps with Mystics. Let not, however, the latter term be taken as a condemnation. Since the diffusion of Kantian and other Rationalisms, there has been an evident tendency to pronounce Supernaturalism identical with Mysticism; and Mysticism, hallucination. The impartiality and dignity of history require us to abstain from attaching a stigma to any honest and enlightened phase of thought and feeling, whether positive or negative.

EMPIRICAL SCEPTICISM.

I. Scepticism of Hume.

375. The spirit of Empiricism continued to retain its predominant influence in England. David Hartley, the physician, whose religious and moral character bore a considerable resemblance to that of Bonnet (§ 378), pursued the inquiries of Locke relative to the soul, on principles exclusively materialist. The Association of Ideas he made the foundation of all intellectual energy; and derived it from certain vibrations of the nerves. He allowed to man only a subordinate degree of free-will, asserting that the Deity is the original cause of all the operations of Nature, and that mankind are nothing more than his instruments, employed with reference to the final end of the Universe. The morality or immorality of actions is determined by their tendency to produce happiness or misery. Presently a much more acute genius pursued the path marked out by Locke, till he arrived at a more complete and decided Scepticism. The idealism of Berkeley (§ 349), which had never been popular, instead of checking, as its author had hoped, the spirit of Scepticism, contributed to encourage it. This was what David Hume did not fail to remark. He was born at Edinburgh in 1711, and early forsook the study of law for that of history and philosophy, to which he devoted the remainder

1 Born at Illingworth, 1704; died at Bath, 1757.

David Hartley, Observations on Man, his Frame, his Duty, and his Expectations; in two parts, Lond. 1749, 2 vols. 8vo. Theory of Human Mind, with Essays, by Jos. PRIESTLEY, Lond. 1775, 8vo.