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 altracts 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 spirit" can be imparted only to those who possess an ascetic contempt for society and its 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.

phy, at least in the mind of one man, before they could become universally, the stepping stones to Heaven.

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 adds, "My walk was exceedingly pleasant today; I was meditating on the forms of the 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

another "On Intermittent Fever:" and one on "Thoughts on the Origin of the Soul, and Hereditary Evil." During his stay at Venice, 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

loftier than heretofore, yet it comes more home
to our business and bosoms; it presents us
with more of sensation, and of understanding,
and penetrates with a more rightful directness
to our sympathies as men.
In this most pre-

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 rea-
with 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 pub-
his previous efforts, but quietly and modestly, lished; and though the range of thought is
as it were, with pausing footsteps. In his
Miscellaneous Observations, he had admired
the easy and graceful circulation of the blood in
the Capillaries, or hair-like vessels; in a man-
uscript work of about the same date, he went
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 thin-
Hartley afterwards, in his famous scheme of nest wall and membrane, which, in constitut-
vibrations. 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 indi-
coördinate in the anatomical sphere; that the cated to himself by private and public history,
body is one vast instinet, 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 investi-
the human body is opened, as a machine, gate. In such an inquiry, so defined, it is
whose wisdom harmonizes with God alone, obvious, that metaphysics is at once refunded
and leads rightly-disposed minds to Him: but into physics and the experimental and histori-
in all these works, the author's deductions are cal sciences, and disappears from the scene it
close to facts, comparatively timid, and limited has obscured, never to return. Without deny-
to the service of the particular argument in ing credit to other writers, or pretending that
hand. Yet it is easy to see, from all, that he Swedenborg knew all our modern facts, or has
was laboriously wending his way from the in any way exhausted even his own method
first, to the temple of the body, at whose altar and subjects, still, we are bound in honesty to
he expected to find the SOUL, as the priest of declare, that we know of no works like these,
the Most High God.
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 understand-
anatomists 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 crea-
script 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, pro-
ness 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 animasynchronous 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 an indispensable addition to his other volumes. 105. We here introduce a notice of some discoveries, in this work, which were afterwards attributed to others. The coincidences were noticed and published by Mr. C. A. Tulk, of London, a gentleman who has paid much attention to Swedenborg's philosophical words.

equation, by which nature, in order to avoid a vacuum, in which state she would perish, or be annihilated, is in the constant tendency towards an equilibrium, according to laws purely physical. This mode of action of the brains, and their arterial impletion, may justly be called physical attraction; not that it is attraction 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 viscus or member, and which being produced that the same principle was known long before by exhaustion, the effect is such a determinato Swedenborg; and is applied by him to ac- tion of the blood, or other fiuid, as the pecucount for the motion of the blood, in the liar state of the part requires." Economia Regni Animalis. For in the section on the circulation of blood in the foetus, and on the foramen ovale, he says, "Let us

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 be 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 highly interesting as showing the near approach, by gradual steps, of Swedenborg to his grand discovery.

110. "In the second degree, proceeding genetically, certain aromal, ethereal, or exceedingly volatile substances, are associated with this 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., afsome 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 from every separate gland. The globule of red blood and its composition of minute pellucid spherules, again, were subjects of recent observation; and similar remarks apply to the 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 ing through the sanguineous passages. It is them the basis of a Rational Psychology. obvious, also, that all the contingents of animal The materials were ready; the edifice was to be built.

108. "In the following summary it will be casy to discover the points where the application of Swedenborg's new doctrine has fairly entitled 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.

and by the instrumentality of the lungs; the open mouths or little lips of the veins sucking in the atmospherical salts which agree with them and which are drawn towards them by every inspiration.

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

divided according to degrees, during its pro-and thus enters them in its pellucid state; gress through corresponding vessels, namely, and the pellucid blood, entering in its turn the those of a like order with itself, the capillary nervous canals and vessels of the third degree, tubes, and the fibres.

separates the ethereal elements, and enters 113. "If therefore we would lay open the them in its naked spirituous state. These nature of the globule, we must conceive that separations being effected by glands and vesithe spirituous fluid constitutes the first order cles of several kinds, is the reason of these or degree; the pellucid blood consisting of organs, so little understood by physiologists plano-oval spherules, the second order; and even of the present day,-being comprethe red blood, which thus enjoys, as it were, a hended by Swedenborg in his general doctrine triple maternity, the third. The latter is pre- of the circulation. After reaching the fibres, sumed to consist, for the most part, of six the blood continues its passage through them, plano-oval spherules, (the blood of the second returns into the vessels of the second and degree,) fitted into so many hollow sides of a third orders, and becomes again compounded single particle of fixed salt, and hence arises by passing through degrees similar to those the spherical figure of the whole, as clearly by which it had become divided. It is in this discerned by Leuwenhoek, and confirmed by returning circulation that the genial spirit of the most recent observations. Thus, given the nervous fibre infuses itself into the vesthe external structure of the blood globule, we sels, and constitutes itself the vital essence of find it resolvable into what may be called its the blood, in every point of the body, as obinternal structure; and Swedenborg has clear- served at the commencement of this abstract. ly demonstrated that the latter is the causal 115. It would be extending our sketch to form or latent order of the former. It is limits wholly incompatible with its design, equally remarkable that the fluxion itself indi- were we to transcribe, however briefly, the cated by the globule resolves into that indi- application of the Author's new doctrines to cated by the parts of the globule; for, the Miology, or the more purely mechanical part first principle of the spherical form is the per- of the circulation. Enough has been said to petually spherical or cubico-spiral, in which convince the reader that Swedenborg alone substances, while in their state of utmost ac- has taken up this great discovery at the point tivity, describe an ellipsis distinguished by its where it was left by the illustrious Harvey, poles and greater and lesser circles, according and harmonized it with the rest of the animal to the irrefragable laws of geometry;' (Econ- economy. It remains, however, to show in omy, 101.) This ellipsis is exactly repre- what measure the realization of the Author's sented by the plano-oval spherules observed great object, the knowledge of the human by Leuwenhoek, and designated the middle, or was promoted by this course of phipurer blood, or blood of the second degree, by our Author.

soul,

losophy.

66

116. "It was obvious to Swedenborg from 114. "Passing from the nature and compo- the moment he had conceived the doctrine sition of the blood itself to the circulation, we which we have contemplated in some of its enter the science of Angiology, or the doctrine of results, that animal life and animal functions the arteries and veins, which Swedenborg has were impossible without such degrees. If exextended — in view of his great unitary prin- terior structures and laws were not in correciples so as to include the doctrine of the spondence with a certain interior economy, fibres, or Neurology, that of the glands, and whence could the system derive its animation of the muscles. The arteries and veins and instincts, but from external impulses? themselves are regarded as determinations or And, as a necessary consequence, what other mechanisms of the blood; and as the latter is laws could be admitted in explanation of its of a threefold origin, degree, nature, compo- powers, but those of hydraulics and mechansition and name, so are the former. In other ics? The same, in fact, which are supposed words, the vessels are always accommodated to account for the flowing of the streams and to the fluid circulating in them. One simple membrane encloses and conveys the spirituous fluid; a reticulated membrane which may be considered as woven of the former answers in degree to the pellucid blood; and a strong muscular tunic forms what is commonly under- of an internal economy, and are willing to stood by the blood vessel. In conformity with these various degrees of vessels, and of the fluid which they convey, the circulation itself, - though it forms one universal system or circle of life, from the spirituous fluid to the gross blood, is subtriplicate, or divisible into three. The red blood, passing into vessels of the second degree, separates the saline, urinous, or sulphurous atoms at the place of ingress, monstrable to reason.

the waving of the grass. And what philosopher, short of the stark materialist, would presume to account in this way, even for the lowest forms of intelligence and feeling? On the other hand, those who admit the fact

regard it as the immediate cause of the external, can have no means of realizing their own thoughts separate from the doctrine of degrees, either expressed or understood; for the nearest cause is always a degree above the effect, and can never be ascertained to the satisfaction of Inductive Philosophy, except by the resolution of the latter, and that by a process fairly de