and organism in the heavens. On all these and sympathy with humanity, he passed subjects, this Part of the Outlines is at once through Denmark, Hanover, and Holland, and plain and profound, and brilliantly suggestive; arrived at Rotterdam during the Fair. Here especially on the doctrine of physical limits, he pauses a while in admiration of its Repubor ends, and their correspondence to ends lican Institutions, in which he says, he "disproperly so called, its instructions are worth covers the surest guaranty of civil and relitaking; also on the correspondence of the gious liberty, and a form of government better body with the mundane system, of the element-pleasing in the sight of God, than an absolute al contiguum with the human contiguum, for Monarchy. In a Republic," he continues, the "corporeal space of man," plenitude of "no veneration or worship is paid to any limits or ends, is a complete respondent to the man; but the highest and lowest think themuniversal space of nature, and the membranes selves equal to kings and emperors: the only are exactly and geometrically formed for the Being they venerate is GOD; and when He reception of the motions of the elements. alone is worshipped, and men are not adored 92. To pursue further this very inviting in His place, it is most acceptable to Him. book, is impossible; suffice it to say, that it None are slaves, but all are lords and masters, displays a noble liberty of thinking, and claims under the government of the Most High God; the right to philosophize on the deepest sub- and the consequence is, that they do not lower jects; and itself plants positive conceptions in themselves, under the influence of shame and some of the dimmest regions of inquiry, dis- fear, but always preserve a firm and sound carding metaphysics as a mere simulation of mind, in a sound body; and with a free spirit method and knowledge, and leaning on the and an erect countenance, commit themselves sciences, as the needful step between common sense and Universal Philosophy. Like all the rest of Swedenborg's works, it insists, or implies, that the human mind has no innate ideas, but that man begins. from total ignorance, and has every thing to learn; and that all knowledge may properly be questioned, which is not capable of being carried on by stages and series, from less to more, and involving greater multiplicity of details, as well as increased unity of principles: thus those intuitions, which are supposed to arrive at once at completeness, may safely be thrown into the retort of the receiver, to be distilled into other and more tractable forms; for progress is a law at once most general and particular.*

93. The publication of the " Principia and the Philosophy of the Infinite and Finite," gave Swedenborg a European reputation, as a scientific man, and a Christian Philosopher, and his correspondence was eagerly sought by such learned men as Wolff, Flamstead, Delahire, Varignon, Lavater, &c., &c., and in December of 1734, the Imperial Academy of Sciences, at Petersburg, appointed him a corresponding member. At this time, he was a diligent student of Wolff's philosophy; and whoever compares the works of those two men, will find that those of our Author's are immeasurably superior.

Travels, and Remarks on Political and
Religious Institutions.

94. From 1734 to 1736, at the ages of fortysix and forty-eight, he remained at home; during which time he conceived the project of his great Physiological Works: and in July 1736, he again obtained from the King leave of absence in order to execute his plans, which involved a tour of three or four years' duration. Impelled by the same law of knowledge *This work is translated into English, and sells in London for $1.50; but it has been stereotyped in Boston, and printed in excellent style, on fine paper, and sells for 25 cents, single, and $12 per hundred copies.

and their concerns to God, who alone ought to govern all things and beings. It is not so in Absolute Monarchies, where men are educated to simulation and dissimulation; where they learn to have one thing concealed in the breast, and bring forth another on the tongue; and where the minds of men, by long custom, become so false and counterfeit, that even in Divine worship, they say one thing and think another, and then palm off upon God their adulation and hypocrisy." Are not those great thoughts, to come from a man whom the people have been taught by sectarians, to calumniate and despise? The ardent love of freedom, that breathes in every word, was the result of no short-lived impulse; for years afterwards the same ideas are presented in his Memorials to the assembled Nobles of Sweden, of which notice will be taken in the proper place.

95. In his journey from Antwerp to Brussels, he seems to have paid great attention to the condition and ordinances of the Popish church, and deeply felt the destitutions of those times. He could not help observing how fat, lazy, and sensual a large portion of the priests were, giving nothing to the poor but fine words and blessings; while they rapaciously helped themselves to all the good things of this life. He says

"The monks are fat and corpulent, and do nothing; an army of such fellows might be banished without loss to the State." And did not the Revolution that took place half a century afterwards, furnish ample evidence of the deplorable influence of that whole religious institution? Thus Swedenborg was unconsciously preparing himself, in 1738, to comprehend the spiritual conditions of Christendom in 1745, and the subsequent years.

96. In 1738, at the age of fifty, he arrived in Paris, where he spent more than a year. Of this city he says, "That pleasure, or more properly speaking, sensuality, appears

to be carried to its highest possible summit. not find words to express his admiration; and It is found," he continues, "that the tax, which his Journal breaks off abruptly in Genoa, and they term the tenths, yields one hundred and leaves him admiring the Portrait of Christofifty millions of dollars; and that the Parisi-pher Columbus, the discoverer of a New ans spend two thirds of this amount over their World. His visit to Rome is remarkable for own city. In the remote Provinces, the tax bringing the church of the Past, and that of the is not in general fairly paid, because the peo- Future, the dead and the living, into a singuple make false returns. One fifth of the lar connection with each other. ROME, in the whole possessions of the French kingdom, is still atmosphere and fading light of Autumn, in the hands of the ecclesiastical order; and with all its trophies of Roman and Christian if this condition of things lasts long, the ruin Art, and its hoary traditions; and Swedenof the empire will be speedy." Who will not borg, the predestined Seer of the Last Ages, think of the most terrible page of modern whose eye was just kindling with the light of history, as he reads these quiet and sagacious Inspiration. Sadolet, Bishop of Corpentras, words of Swedenborg? When it is remem- once said, "I know not how nature has created bered that we are writing of one, whose deep me, but I cannot hate a person because he thoughts live in the hearts of thousands, and does not agree with me in opinions;" and soon will of millions, whose life marks an Swedenborg, ardently as he loved PROGRESS epoch, and whose character was formed under and LIBERTY, could not hate Rome for its disProvidence, to qualify him for his great mis-sent on these momentous subjects. It was no sion, no circumstances should be regarded as more possible, so deeply was he impressed unimportant for they make us better ac- with a passion for the Beautiful, and a love of quainted with the man and the author, and, to Antiquity, to detect a pestilence in the air of know that he visited every place that usually Italy, and crime in its regal sumptuousness, as attracts a stranger in a great city, to follow Luther had done, than to have followed the him to the Catholic Churches and Monasteries, earlier examples of this Reformer, and fallen the Hotels, Palaces, Public Gardens, Galleries, on his knees, in adoration of its sanctity. At and even the Theatres of Paris, is to be satis- this period, Swedenborg does not seem to have fied that he was an experienced observer of had any more than an ordinary consciousness human life, that he was not a secluded vis- of spiritual things, and perhaps no one had ionary, moralizing on things of which he had less personal feeling, or troubled his head less no knowledge, but was qualified to speak from about points of faith and doctrine, than he what he had heard and seen in our world. At- did. He was only one of the favored sons of tention is called to these facts, because it has Learning, whose highest ambition was to perbeen objected, that Swedenborg was wanting fect a philosophy of the soul while inwardly, in that eminent sanctity and retirement, which and deeper than his own consciousness, God it is supposed, should distinguish an apostolic was maturing him to evangelize the Church. mind; an objection which has been made by And whoever would comprehend our author, those who admit at the same time, the probity and must begin by understanding how necessary innocence of his character, from the beginning it was, before the New Ages could be anto the end of his long and eventful life. As nounced, to Christianize Science and Philosothe objection implies, that the "gifts of the phy, at least in the mind of one man, before spirit" can be imparted only to those who they could become universally, the stepping possess an ascetic contempt for society and its stones to Heaven. duties, it really pays an involuntary tribute to his honesty, and recommends his case on the grounds of common sense and intelligence. Indeed, his whole life answers the purport of the Savior's prayer, that his Disciples might not be taken out of the world, but that they might be kept from the evil.

Economy of the Animal Kingdom.

99. Swedenborg nowhere informs us what the work was he went abroad to publish at one time, we find him meditating a Treatise, to prove that "The Soul of Wisdom has in it the knowledge and acknowledgment of the 97. As characteristic of our author's genius, Deity:" It is reported that while at Rome, we find the following item in his note book, he published, "Two Dissertations on the Nermade during his sojourn in Paris. After re-vous Fibre and the Nervous Fluid;" and cording a visit to the Tuileries gardens, he another "On Intermittent Fever:" and one adds, "My walk was exceedingly pleasant to- on "Thoughts on the Origin of the Soul, and day; I was meditating on the forms of the Hereditary Evil." During his stay at Venice, particles in the atmospheres."

98. Leaving Paris in 1739, our author directed his steps towards Italy, crossed the Alps, and passed through Turin, Venice, Verona, Mantua, Milan, Genoa, Florence and Pisa, and entered Rome in the fall of the year. Of the works of Art which he saw, he could

he says in his Diary, that he "had completed his work:" which is supposed to be his "ECONOMY OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM," published at Amsterdam, in 1740 and 1741.

100. At the outset of these studies, he informs us that he had come to the "determination to penetrate from the very cradle to the ma

turity of Nature;" from the atoms of Chemis- with the TEMPLE OF OUR BODY; the most istry to the atoms of Astronomy; from the really finite of the pieces of physics, because smallest group to the largest; from the molec- it contains the gathered ends of all things. ular to the universal: and this determination, Here humanity is no longer perplexed by laws which had impelled along the varied line of and forces, apparently alien to itself, but final Physics, now took wings, and, combining causes, and the principle of the sufficient reawith a higher nature, carried him into the son, begin to bear absolute rule: accordingly, realms of Organization. He had touched in his fifty-second and fifty-third years, the upon this region many times, in the course of Economy of the Animal Kingdom is pubhis previous efforts, but quietly and modestly, lished; and though the range of thought is as it were, with pausing footsteps. In his loftier than heretofore, yet it comes more home Miscellaneous Observations, he had admired to our business and bosoms; it presents us the easy and graceful circulation of the blood in with more of sensation, and of understanding, the Capillaries, or hair-like vessels; in a man- and penetrates with a more rightful directness uscript work of about the same date, he went to our sympathies as men. In this most pre

into a discussion of the doctrines of the Mem-cise finite, we feel that the Infinite is nearer branes, and followed the same track as Dr. than in the world, separated only by that thinHartley afterwards, in his famous scheme of nest wall and membrane, which, in constitutvibrations. In the Principia, he had laid down ing our first ends or limits, also forms the the law, that the Human Frame is an organism ground of our peculiar life. respondent to the vibrations and powers of 103. Man as an individual body - as a all the earthly elements; that there is a mem- denizen of the universe man, therefore, as brane and a fluid in the body, beating time interpreted by anatomy, by the circle of the and keeping time, with the airs, and auras of physical sciences, by trite observation, and the the Universe; and that Man and Nature are whole breadth of common sense man as indicoördinate in the anatomical sphere; that the cated to himself by private and public history, body is one vast instinct, acting according to and human speech and action, (for always the circumstances of the external worlds. In "the substantial form coincides with the form his Philosophy of the Infinite, this Corre- of action,") — this is the man, and this the spondence is reasserted in a masterly style, and body, which our author undertook to investithe human body is opened, as a machine, gate. In such an inquiry, so defined, it is whose wisdom harmonizes with God alone, and leads rightly-disposed minds to Him: but in all these works, the author's deductions are close to facts, comparatively timid, and limited to the service of the particular argument in hand. Yet it is easy to see, from all, that he was laboriously wending his way from the first, to the temple of the body, at whose altar he expected to find the SOUL, as the priest of the Most High God.

obvious, that metaphysics is at once refunded into physics and the experimental and historical sciences, and disappears from the scene it has obscured, never to return. Without denying credit to other writers, or pretending that Swedenborg knew all our modern facts, or has in any way exhausted even his own method and subjects, still, we are bound in honesty to declare, that we know of no works like these, for giving the whole mind satisfaction on the 101. His studies, for compassing this grand doctrine of the body. And if there is one object, were of no common intensity: he made obligation which we owe to them, deeper than himself acquainted with the works of the best another, it is, that by filling the understandanatomists of his time, (and there were giants ing with accurate and cardinal instances of the in those days,) and formed from them a manu- Divine Wisdom and Love, in his living creascript Cyclopædia for his own use: it is said, tion, they leave no place for metaphysics; and that he attended the instructions of the great thus, without a frown or a blow, they achieve Boerhaave, at the same time as the elder an intellectual redemption from that great Munroe; and he informs us that he had prac- pestilence, which has oppressed the world for tised in the dissecting room, though he de- more than two millenniums that miasm of rived his principal knowledge from Plates and an inhuman theology, which nothing but a Books. Evidently, his vocation lay in the plemus of respirable truth could shut out of interpretation of facts, rather than in their per- our orb and they give us more order, law sonal collection; he received the raw materials, and life in the subjects of the lower sciences, and wrought them into the beautiful fabrics than the philosophers have been able to find of wisdom. or show, in the whole of "consciousness 102. And now, after full preparation after hitherto, and thereby fairly planted the foot having considered the indefinitely small sphere of even those lower sciences, upon the haughty and the indefinitely great, and laid down a neck of metaphysics; in short, they comply flooring of intelligible doctrine in the vague- with the conditions of the Baconian logic, proness of both, after having sailed in observa- ducing "not arguments but arts, not what agrees tion around the known shores of the external with principles, but principles themselves." world, we next find Swedenborg, face to face 104. The Economy of the Animal Kingdom

considered Anatomically, Physiologically, and now revert to the mode by which the cerebrum Philosophically, consists of Three Parts, the attracts its blood, or, according to the theorem, First on the Blood, Blood Vessels and Heart, subtracts that quantity which the ratio of its with an introduction to Rational Psychology; state requires. If now these arteries, veins, the Second, on the Animation of the Brain and sinus are dilated by reason of the anima synchronous with the Respiration of the Lungs; tion of the cerebrum, it follows, that there on the Cortical Substance of the Brain, and must necessarily flow into them thus expanded, on the Human Soul; the Third treats princi- a portion of fresh blood, and that indeed by pally of the Human Fibres, and expounds the continuity from the carotid artery, and its torvarious manner, in which the beams and tuous duct in the cavernous receptacles, and timbers of the body are laid; especially the into this by continuity from the antecedent construction of the Frame, somewhat as the expanded and circumflexed cavities of the Principia unfolds the elementary construction same artery; consequently from the external of the Universe. It also considers the dif- (or common) carotid, and thence from the ferent kinds of fibres; the form of their fluxion, aorta and the heart; nearly similar to a bladand the Doctrine of Forms generally; and der or syphon full of water, one end of which lastly, in a most masterly style, and with a is immersed in the fluid; if its sides be dilated, power of observation and analysis new in or its surface stretched out, and more especialmedicine, the Diseases of the Fibres. In the ly if its length be shortened, an entirely fresh weightiness of its truths, in sustained order of portion of the fluid flows into the space thus exposition, in felicity of phrase, and in finish emptied by the enlargement; and this experiand completeness, it is not surpassed by any ence can demonstrate to ocular satisfaction. scientific work that the author published: and Now this is the beneficial result of a natural it contains so much that is peculiar, as to form equation, by which nature, in order to avoid a an indispensable addition to his other volumes. vacuum, in which state she would perish, or 105. We here introduce a notice of some dis- be annihilated, is in the constant tendency coveries, in this work, which were afterwards towards an equilibrium, according to laws attributed to others. The coincidences were purely physical. This mode of action of the noticed and published by Mr. C. A. Tulk, of brains, and their arterial impletion, may justly London, a gentleman who has paid much at- be called physical attraction; not that it is attention to Swedenborg's philosophical words. traction in the proper signification of the In a work entitled, "The Institutions of term, but that it is a filling of the vessels from Physiology," by Blumenbach, treating of the a dilation or shortening of the coats, or a brain, he says, "that after birth it undergoes species of suction such as exist in pumps and a constant and gentle motion correspondent syringes. A like mode of physical attraction with respiration; so that when the lungs obtains in every part of the body; as in the shrink in expiration, the brain rises a little, muscles, which having forcibly expelled their but when the chest expands, it again subsides." blood, instantly require a reimpletion of their In the note he adds, that Daniel Schlichting vessels." In another part, 458, he says, first accurately described this phenomenon in "There exists a great similitude between the 1744. Now it does so happen that Sweden-vessels of the heart, and the vessels of the borg had fully demonstrated, and accurately brains, so much so, that the latter cannot be described, this correspondent action, in that more appropriately compared with any other. chapter of the Economia Regni Animalis, 4. The vessels of the cerebrum perform their which treats of the coincidence of motion be- diastole, when the cerebrum is in its constrictween the brain and lungs. In another part tion, and vice versa; so also the vessels of the of the same "Institutions of Physiology," heart. 5. In the vessels of the cerebrum when speaking of the causes for the motion of there is a species of physical attraction or tho blood, Blumenbach has the following re- suction, such as that of water in a syringe; mark: "When the blood is expelled from the and this too is the case with the vessels of contracted cavities, a vacuum takes place, into the heart, for in these, by being expanded and which, according to the common laws of deri- at the same time shortened, the blood necesvation, the neighboring blood must rush, being sarily flows, and that into the space thus enprevented, by means of the valves, from re-larged." Swedenborg says also, "that it is gurgitating." In the notes, this discovery is this constant endeavor to establish a general attributed to Dr. Wilson, the author of An equilibrium throughout the body, which deterInquiry into the Moving Powers employed in mines its various fluids to every part, whether the Circulation of the Blood. But it appears that the same principle was known long before to Swedenborg; and is applied by him to account for the motion of the blood, in the Economia Regni Animalis. For in the section on the circulation of blood in the foetus, and on the foramen ovale, he says, "Let us

viscus or member, and which being produced by exhaustion, the effect is such a determination of the blood, or other fiuid, as the peculiar state of the part requires."

The Blood and the Spirituous Fluid. 106. As we wish to present the reader with

as full a view as possible, consistently with our ure every living point and corner of the body. mits, of the way in which Swedenborg wended The circulation of this fluid establishes a is way through matter to the soul, and of the communication between the fibres and the vesprofundity of his genius while laboring among sels, by means of which it enters into the the occult powers and substances of the human blood as its vital essence. Its principal stream, mechanism, we introduce here another extract likewise, descending through appropriate chanfrom "Rich's Sketch" concerning his doctrine nels from the brain, is poured into the subclaof the blood and the spirituous fluid. It will vian vein, and is there associated with the oe interesting at least to certain scientific men chyle of the Thoracic duct, and conveyed to and half-way materialists, or to those treading the heart, where it concurs in the formation of on the borders of the spirit world, but still the blood.

lingering amid a subtle materialism; and it is 110. "In the second degree, proceeding gehighly interesting as showing the near ap-netically, certain aromal, ethereal, or exceedingproach, by gradual steps, of Swedenborg to ly volatile substances, are associated with this his grand discovery. pure fluid and constitute a middle kind of 107. "All the separate elements of this doc-blood. The third degree arises from the furtrine had been extant, some for years, and ther accession of various salts, oils, etc., af30me for ages, before Swedenborg's time. The fording the means by which the second or fact of a spirituous or nervous fluid, for exam- purer blood coalesces with the body, and is ple, had always been entertained in the ortho- enabled to discharge the functions of the soul dox creed of physiology; its eminent subtilty, in the animal kingdom. The red globule is and active force being also, of necessity, re- also surrounded by a serum, which is the atcognized at the same time. Some mode of mosphere, so to speak, in which the blood reciprocation or mutual exchange of offices in flows, and from which it derives its elements, the Animal Economy, between this fluid and namely, the spirits, oils, and salts of every the red blood, had likewise been divined. To kind already alluded to, which are perpetually which may be added, the functions of the cor- conveyed to the serum through the medium of tical glands first observed by Malpighi, under the chyle, and in water as a vehicle. Similar the microscope, who remarked that the animal substances are also conveyed into the serum spirit was carried from them into the medulla by means of the air in which they are fluent, oblongata through little channels proceeding and by the instrumentality of the lungs; the from every separate gland. The globule of open mouths or little lips of the veins suckred blood and its composition of minute pel- ing in the atmospherical salts which agree lucid spherules, again, were subjects of recent with them and which are drawn towards them observation; and similar remarks apply to the by every inspiration. volatile and fixed salts; and also to the nature 111. "The blood therefore, is the storehouse of the serum. These things were subjects and seminary, the parent and nourisher, of all either of general or particular experience, the parts of the body, solid, soft, and fluid, in its but there were no philosophical doctrines own kingdom: for nothing can enter into the which bound them all together into a perfect texture of the general system, except by passsystem; and much less which proposed to make them the basis of a Rational Psychology. The materials were ready; the edifice was to be built.

108. "In the following summary it will be easy to discover the points where the application of Swedenborg's new doctrine has fairly ertitled him to the rank of a master builder in this branch of science. It must be admitted that the doctrine of degrees, which is the bond or cement of the whole, had been anticipated by Christian Wolff, and applied by him to the auras of the universe; but the history of the "Principia" affords sufficient proof that Swedenborg's discovery of its important laws was an independent one.

ing through the sanguineous passages. It is obvious, also, that all the contingents of animal life, are dependent on the constitution, determination, continuity, and quantity of the blood: and that in it we may reasonably look for the exciting causes which determine the quality and variation of state attributable to the life of the body.

112. "From an attentive consideration of all the elements which enter into the composition of the blood, and especially of the imponderable elements, the ether, etc., it is demonstrable that the spirituous fluid constitutes the essence of the life and activity proper to the blood; and that from this fluid, and by the medium of a copious volatile substance de109. "Commencing in the highest degree, rived from the ether, there exists a pellucid or we find that a certain fluid, transcending all middle blood. Lastly, through the medium of others in purity, which is interiorly conceived various salts employed in tempering the inin the cortical substance of the brain, the tense activity of the spirituous fluid, in promedulla oblongata, and medulla spinalis, and is moting the unity or consistence of the whole, thence emitted into all the medullary fibres or in the local determination of form, and in variorigins of the nerves, runs through the most ous ministrations to animal life, there emerges diminutive and attenuate vessels, stamina and the red and heavy blood. Into these origifibrules, and traverses and supplies with moist-nal principles the latter suffers itself to be