Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers Part 12

Then we find the mother of the boy getting alarmed, and peremptorily putting her foot down and ordering her husband to cease all celestial excursions.

Emanuel was set to work at his books and in the garden, and no more rappings was he to hear, nor strange white lights to see, until he was fifty-six years old.

Sweden is the least illiterate country on the globe, and has been for three hundred years. Her climate is eminently fitted to produce one fine product--men. The winter's cold does not subdue nor suppress, but tends to that earnest industry which improves the pa.s.sing hours. The Scandinavians make hay while the sun shines; but in countries where the sun shines all the time men make no hay. In Florida, where flowers bloom the whole year through, even the bees quit work and say, "What's the use?"

Emanuel Swedenborg climbed the mountains with his father, fished in the fjords, collected the mosses on the rocks, and wrote out at length all of their amateur discoveries. The boy grew strong in body, lithe of limb, clear of eye--n.o.ble and manly.

His affection for his parents was perfect. When fifteen he addressed to them letters of apostrophe, all in studied words of deference and curious compliment, like, say, the letters of Columbus to Ferdinand and Isabella. His purity of purpose was sublime, and the jewel of his soul was integrity.

At college he easily stood at the head of his cla.s.s. He reduced calculus to its simplest forms, and made abstractions plain. Even his tutors could not follow him. Once the King's actuary was called upon to verify some of his calculations. This brought him to the notice of the King, and thereafter he was always on easy and familiar terms with royalty.

There is no hallucination in mathematics--figures do not lie, although mathematicians may, but this one never did.

We look in vain for college pranks, and some of those absurd and foolish things in which young men delight. We wish he could unbend, and be indiscreet, or even impolite, just to show us his humanity. But no, he is always grave, earnest, dignified, and rebukingly handsome. The college "grind" with bulging forehead, round shoulders, myopic vision and shambling gait is well known in every college, and serves as the b.u.t.t of innumerable practical jokes. But no one took liberties with Emanuel Swedenborg either in boyhood or in after-life. His countenance was stern, yet not forbidding; his form tall, manly and muscular, and his persistent mountain-climbing and outdoor prospecting and botanizing gave him a glow of health which the typical grubber after facts very seldom has.

Thus we find Emanuel Swedenborg walking with stately tread through college, taking all the honors, looked upon by teachers and professors with a sort of awe, and pointed out by his fellow students in subdued wonder. His physical strength became a byword, yet we do not find he ever exercised it in contests; but it served as a protection, and commanded respect from all the underlings.

At twenty we find him falling violently in love, the one sole love-affair of his lone life. Instead of going to the girl he placed the matter before her father, and secured from him a written warrant for the damsel, returnable in three years' time. This doc.u.ment he carried with him, pored over it, slept with it under his pillow. As for the girl, timid, sensitive, aged fifteen, she fled on his approach, and shook with fear if he looked at her. He made his love plain by logical formulas and proved his pa.s.sion by geometrical permutations--by charts and diagrams.

A seasoned widow might have broken up the icy fastness of his soul and melted his forbidding nature in the crucible of feeling, but this poor girl just wanted some one to hold her little hand and say peace to her fluttering heart. How could she go plump herself in his lap, pull his ears and tell him he was a fool? Finally, the girl's brother, seeing her distress, stole the precious warrant from Swedenborg's coat, tore it up, and Swedenborg knew his case was hopeless. He brought calculus to bear, and proved by the law of averages that there were just as good fish in the sea as ever were caught.

At twenty-one Swedenborg graduated at the University of Upsala. He took the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, and was sent on a tour of the European capitals to complete his education. He visited Hamburg, Paris, Vienna and then went to London, where he remained a year. He bore letters from the King of Sweden that admitted him readily into the best society, and as far as we know he carried himself with dignity, filled with a zeal to know and to become.

One prime object in his travel was to learn the language of the country that he was in, and so we hear of his writing home, "In Hamburg I speak only German; at Paris I talk and think in French; in London no one doubts but that I am an Englishman." This not only reveals the young man's accomplishments, but shows that sublime confidence in himself which never forsook him.

The desire of his father was that he should enter the diplomatic service of the government, and the interest the King took in his welfare shows that the way was opening in that direction. But in the various cities where he traveled he merely used his consular letters to reach the men in each place who knew most of mathematics, anatomy, geology, astronomy and physics. He hunted out the thinkers and the doers, and it seems he had enough specific gravity of soul so he was never turned away.

When big men meet for the first time, they try conclusions just as surely as do the patriarchs of the herds. Instantly there is a mental duel, before scarcely a word is spoken, and the psychic measurements then and there taken are usually about correct.

The very silence of a superior person is impressive. And knowing this, we do not wonder that Swedenborg would sometimes call unannounced on men in high station, and forgetting his letters, would ask for an interview.

The audacity of the request would break down the barriers, and his calm, quiet self-possession would do the rest. The man wanted nothing but knowledge. Returning home at twenty-seven, he wrote out two voluminous reports of his travels, one for his father and one for the King. These reports were so complete, so learned, so full of allusion, suggestion and advice, that it is probable they were never read.

He was made a.s.sessor of the School of Mines, an office which we would call that of a.s.sayer, and his business was to give scientific advice as to the value of ores and the best ways to mine and smelt them.

About this time we hear of Swedenborg writing to his brother explaining that he was working on the model of a boat that would navigate below the surface of the sea, and do great damage to the enemy; a gun that would discharge a thousand bullets a minute; a flying machine that would sail the air like a gull; a mechanical chariot that would go twenty miles an hour on a smooth road without horses; and a plan of mathematics which would quickly and simply enable us to compute and express fractions. We also hear of his inventing a treadmill chariot, which carried the horse on board the vehicle, but the horse once ran away and attained such a velocity in the streets of Stockholm that people declared the whole thing was a diabolical invention, and in deference to popular clamor Swedenborg discontinued his experiments along this line.

One is amazed that this man in the early days of the Eighteenth Century should have antic.i.p.ated the submarine boat, and guessed what could be done by the expansion of steam; prophesied a Gatling gun, and made a motor-car that carried the horse, working on a treadmill and propelling the vehicle faster than the horse could go on the ground; and if the inventor had had the gasoline he surely would have made an automobile.

His diversity of inventive genius was finally focalized on building sluiceways and ca.n.a.ls for the government, and he set Holyoke an example by running the water back and forth in ca.n.a.ls and utilizing the power over and over again.

Later he was called upon to break a blockade by transferring ships overland a distance of fourteen miles. This he successfully did by the use of a roller railway, and as a reward for the feat was duly knighted by the King.

The one idea that he worked out in detail and gave to the world, and which the world has not improved upon, is our present decimal system.

As the years pa.s.sed, Swedenborg became rich. He lived well, but not lavishly. We hear of his having his private carriages and being attended by servants on his travels.

He lectured at various universities, and on account of his close a.s.sociation with royalty, as well as on account of his own high character and strong personality, he was a commanding figure wherever he went. His life was full to the brim.

And we naturally expect that a man of wealth, with all the honors belonging to any one person, should take on a comforting acc.u.mulation of adipose, and encyst himself in the conventionalities of church, state and society.

And this was what the man himself saw in store, for at forty-six he wrote a book on science, setting forth his ideas and making accurate prophecies as to what would yet be brought about. He regrets that a multiplicity of duties and failing health forbid his carrying out his plans, and further adds, "As this is probably the last book I shall ever write, I desire here to make known to posterity these thoughts which so far as I know have never been explained before."

The real fact was that at this time Swedenborg's career had not really begun, and if he had then died, his fame would not have extended beyond the country of his birth.

Mr. Poultney Bigelow, happening to be in Brighton, England, a few years ago, was entertained at the home of a worthy London broker. The family was prosperous and intelligent, but clung closely to all conventional and churchly lines. As happens often in English homes, the man does most of the thinking and sets metes and bounds to all conversation as well as reading. The mother refers to him as "He," and the children and servants look up to him and make mental obeisance when he speaks.

"I hear Herbert Spencer lives in Brighton--do you ever see him?"

ventured the guest of the hostess, in a vain reaching 'round for a topic of mutual interest. "Spencer--Spencer? Who is Herbert Spencer?" asked the good mother.

But "He" caught the run of the talk and came to the rescue: "Oh, Mother, Spencer is n.o.body you are interested in--just a writer of infidelic books!"

The next day Bigelow called on Spencer and saw upon his table a copy of "Science and Health," which some one had sent him. He smiled when the American referred to the book, and in answer to a question said: "It is surely interesting, and I find many pleasing maxims scattered through it. But we can hardly call it scientific, any more than we can call Swedenborg's 'Conjugal Love' scientific." And the author of "First Principles" showed he had read Mrs. Eddy's book, for he turned to the chapter on "Marriage," calling attention to the statement that marriage in its present status is a permitted condition--a matter of expediency--and children will yet be begotten by telepathic correspondence. "The unintelligibility of the book recommends it to many and accounts for its vogue. Swedenborg's immortality is largely owing to the same reason," and the man who once loved George Eliot smiled not unkindly, and the conversation drifted to other themes.

This comparison of Swedenborg with Mary Baker Eddy is not straining a point. No one can read "Science and Health" intelligently unless his mind is first prepared for it by some one whose mind has been prepared for it by some one else. It requires a deal of explanation; and like the Plan of Salvation, no one would ever know anything about it if it wasn't elucidated by an educated person.

Books strong in abstraction are a convenient rag-bag for your mental odds and ends. Swedenborg's philosophy is "Science and Health"

multiplied by forty. He lays down propositions and proves them in a thousand pages.

Yet this must be confessed: The Swedenborgians and the Christian Scientists as sects rank above most other denominations in point of intellectual worth. In speaking of the artist Thompson, Nathaniel Hawthorne once wrote: "This artist is a man of thought, and with no mean idea of art, a Swedenborgian, or, as he prefers to call it, a member of the New Church. I have generally found something marked in men who adopt that faith. He seems to me to possess truth in himself, and to aim at it is his artistic endeavor."

Swedenborg's essay on "Conjugal Love" contains four hundred thousand words and divides the theme into forty parts, each of these being subdivided into forty more. The delights of paradise are pictured in the perfect mating of the right man with the right woman. In order to explain what perfect marriage is, Swedenborg works by the process of elimination and reveals every possible condition of mismating. Every error, mistake, crime, wrong and fallacy is shown in order to get at the truth. Swedenborg tells us that he got his facts from four husbands and four wives in the Spirit Land, and so his statements are authentic.

Emerson disposes of Swedenborg's ideal marriage as it exists in heaven, as "merely an indefinite bridal-chamber," and intimates that it is the dream of one who had never been disillusioned by experience.

In Maudsley's fine book, "Body and Mind," the statement is made that during Swedenborg's stay in London his life was decidedly promiscuous.

Fortunately the innocence and ignorance of Swedenborg's speculations are proof in themselves that his entire life was absolutely above reproach.

Swedenborg's bridal-chamber is the dream of a school-girl, presented by a scientific a.n.a.lyst, a man well past his grand climacteric, who imagined that the perpetuation of s.e.xual "bliss" was a desirable thing.

Emerson hints that there is the taint of impurity in Swedenborg's matrimonial excursions, for "life and nature are right, but closet speculations are bound to be vicious when persisted in." Max Muller's little book, "A Story of German Love," showing the intellectual and spiritual uplift that comes from the natural and spontaneous friendship of a good man and woman, is worth all the weighty speculations of all the virtuous bachelors who ever lived and raked the stagnant ponds of their imagination for an ideal.

The love of a recluse is not G.o.d's kind--only running water is pure; the living love of a live man and woman absolves itself, refines, benefits, and blesses, though it be the love of Auca.s.sin and Nicolete, Plutarch and Laura, Paola and Francesca, Abelard and Heloise, and they go to h.e.l.l for it.

From his thirty-fourth year to his forty-sixth Swedenborg wrote nothing for publication. He lectured, traveled, and advised the government on questions of engineering and finance, and in various practical ways made himself useful. Then it was that he decided to break the silence and give the world the benefit of his studies, which he does in his great work, "Principia." Well does Emerson say that this work, purporting to explain the birth of worlds, places the man side by side with Aristotle, Leonardo, Bacon, Selden, Copernicus and Humboldt.

It is a book for giants, written by one. Although the man was a nominal Christian, yet to him, plainly, the Bible was only a book of fables and fairy-tales. The Mosaic account of Creation is simply waived, as we waive Jack the Giant-Killer when dealing with the question of capital punishment.

That Darwin read Swedenborg with minute care, there is no doubt. In the "Principia" is a chapter on mosses wherein it is explained how the first vestige of lichen catches the dust particles of disintegrating rock, and we get the first tokens of a coming forest. Darwin never made a point better; and the nebular hypothesis and the origin of species are worked out with conjectures, fanciful flights, queer conceits, poetic comparisons, far-reaching a.n.a.logies, and most astounding leaps of imagination.

The man was warming to his task--this was not to be his last book--the heavens were opening before him, and if he went astray it was light from heaven that dazzled him. No one could converse with him, because there was none who could understand him; none could refute him, because none could follow his winding logic, which led to heights where the air was too rarefied for mortals to breathe. He speculated on magnetism, chemistry, astronomy, anatomy, geology and spiritism. He believed a thing first and then set the mighty machinery of his learning to bear to prove it. This is the universal method of great minds--they divine things first. But no other scientist the world has ever known divined as much as this man. He reminds us of his own motor-car, with the horse inside running away with the machine and none to stop the beast in its mad flight. To his engine there is no governor, and he revolves like the screw of a steamship when the waves lift the craft out of the water.

There is no stimulant equal to expression. The more men write the more they know. Swedenborg continued to write, and following the "Principia"

came "The Animal Kingdom," "The Economy of the Universe," and more vast reaches into the realm of fact and fancy. His books were published at his own expense, and the work was done under his own supervision at Antwerp, Amsterdam, Venice, Vienna, London and Paris. In all these cities he worked to get the benefit of their libraries and museums.

Popularity was out of the question--only the learned attempted to follow his investigations, and these preferred to recommend his books rather than read them. And as for heresy, his disbelief in popular superst.i.tions was so veiled in scientific formulas that it went unchallenged. Had he simplified truth for the ma.s.ses his career would have been that of Erasmus. His safety lay in his unintelligibility. He was gracious, gentle, suave, with a calm self-confidence that routed every would-be antagonist.

It was in his fifty-sixth year that the supreme change came over him. He was in London, in his room, when a great light came to him. He was prostrated as was Saint Paul on the road to Damascus; he lost consciousness, and was awakened by a rea.s.suring voice. Christ came to him and talked with him face to face; he was told that he would be shown the inmost recesses of the Spirit World, and must write out the revelation for the benefit of humanity.