sists of a series of perfectly organised atoms-the lungs, e. g. of innumerable microscopic lungs, the heart of numerous smallest hearts, and so forth with all the other organs.

Having gone through the regions of physiology, Swedenborg came to the confines of the province of Spirit itself. Often, he tells us, had he searched for some light upon the nature of the soul, but as often had been disappointed, until at length he got upon the right track, and entered the sacred chamber.' To gaze upon the soul by the senses was manifestly impossible; but was it not possible to reason up from the material to the immaterial, and from the facts of the one to see into the nature of the other? The validity of such a process was grounded upon the doctrine of degrees; a doctrine, he says, which is necessary "to enable us to follow in the steps of nature; since to attempt without it to approach and visit her in her sublime abode, would be to attempt to climb heaven by the Tower of Babel; for the highest step must be approached by the intermediate." The doctrine of decrees, accordingly, is that which teaches us, that there is a relation or parallelism between all things in nature, from the lowest sphere in which it exists, to the highest. Thus the brain contains potentially the whole body, and what is essentially true of the body, is true of

See his "Economy of the Animal Kingdom," chap. iii., on the Soul; at the commencement of which we have his own account of the method he had pursued.

' Ibid., chap. iii. sec. 210.

it. Again, the animal spirits which flow through the nerves, in a higher and more ethereal sphere, perfectly represent the more gross and obdurate human organisation; so also the soul itself, in a still higher region, must be a perfect type, or rather co-ordinate archetype, of the body. Accordingly, all nature by these degrees ascends from the lowest to the highest, and descends from the highest to the lowest; so that by the aid of this philosophical formula, we can study the spiritual world by means of the knowledge we possess of the material.'

Even in the spirit itself there are degrees. The lowest is that which is only cognisant of sensations; the next above this is the animus, whose office is to imagine and desire; thirdly, there is the mind, which understands and wills; and lastly, there is the soul, whose office is to represent the universe, and have intuition of ends. Such is man, so far as the form of his being is concerned; but where is the life, which is to animate him? The body is dead matter, but it is vivified by the animal spirits and other imponderable agents; these agents again are vivified by the soul-but whence the life of the soul? It is the love of God. God, according to Swedenborg, is perfect man. The essence and form of God are respectively perfect love and perfect wisdom; the former is represented in the human will, the latter in the human understanding.

This is an application of the doctrine of Correspondences. * Economy of Animal Kingdom, chap. iii. sec. 6.

Angelic Wisdom, part i.

Having thus traced the philosophy of Swedenborg to its highest point, we may look back for a moment upon his whole method of procedure. Evidently it is the inductive and synthetic method combined. Commencing by observation, his mind seized upon certain high philosophical axioms, and from them reasoned downwards to the nature and uses of particular objects. Perhaps it is the only attempt the world has seen (with exception of the unsuccessful effort of Comte) at rising upwards to purely philosophical ideas from positive and concrete facts.

Having attained thus to the highest region of philosophy, Swedenborg enters the world of theological truth. For gazing upon the spiritual world, he conceives we have purely spiritual senses, and a spiritual understanding. To most men the spiritual world is closed, because, absorbed in the lower or sensual life, they have no intuition of it. To many, moreover, who do obtain spiritual intuitions, there exists not an enlightened spiritual understanding to interpret what the inward eye beholds. Spiritual or theological truth only becomes clear where both these requisites unite; where the purely moralised or unsensualised soul gazes upon the higher world, and where the spiritual understanding can comprehend what is seen.

Wrapt in his own deep reveries, Swedenborg could not resist the idea, that God, by a special act of his providence, had brought the scenery of the spiritual world, and the relations of spiritual truth, before his own mental vision, and within the sphere of his

intellection. With a mind fraught with long study upon nature and her works-with a soul habituated to deep meditation upon spiritual things—with a vivid imagination that could trace the analogies of higher truth in the dark windings of material forms -with a moral nature purified to virtue, and an exquisite sensibility of the whole system, he lost himself in the visions of his own inmost soul. Sometimes he seemed transported out of the body—then anon he would wake up to the world around him; sometimes he pursued his high imaginings, unconscious of the lapse of time; and then he wrote down that he had seen a vision of angels; and thus the high truth, that man, when his nature is elevated, can converse with the spiritual world through the medium of religious faith, became transformed into a special revelation, that was to usher in the purified Church, and the latter-day glory. Swedenborg was assuredly a great intellectual phenomenon. Seldom, perhaps never, have so many systems concentrated in a single mind. He began a simple observer— a Baconian analyist; from that he raised himself to the region of rational and ideal truth; and ended a mystic-the favoured channel of a new dispensation to mankind. In him, sensationalism, idealism, mysticism, were united-the only phase through which he never passed was that of scepticism. Had he been fortunate enough to complete the cycle, had a tinge of wholesome scepticism curbed his credulity, we might have had a great philosopher, and an active Christian reformer, unmarred by the

enthusiasm that dared to claim the title and the honours of a divine and apostolic messenger.'

These phenomena, then, which we have just enumerated, may be viewed as the various waves of scepticism and mysticism, which, having been first raised by the storms of controversy, in which the idealism of Descartes and the sensationalism of Gassendi were so long engaged, propagated themselves in different degrees of intensity for many years over several parts of the Continent of Europe. In the mean time the phases of idealistic and sensational philosophy themselves had altogether changed. The philosophy of Descartes had passed through the hands of Malebranche and Spinoza, had been remodelled by Leibnitz, and had come forth in a new dogmatic form under the auspices of Wolf. That of Gassendi, on the other hand, had given place to the more profound, and, at the same time, more popular sensationalism of Locke and his expounder Condillac; so that the effects of the old Cartesian controversy had hardly expended themselves, before the fresh struggles of these remodelled systems were throwing in the seeds of a new scepticism and a new mysticism, which were

1 One of the best expositions of the Swedenborgian philosophy is given in the "Foreign Aids to Self-reflection," by J. A. Heraud, Esq. (Monthly Mag. No. 29.) The Swedenborgian Society is now in course of translating and publishing his works complete. The "Principia," the "Economy of the Animal Kingdom," with an admirable introduction by J. J. G. Wilkinson, Esq., and the "Animal Kingdom," have already appeared; others are forthcoming.