Part 21

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 Assessor of the School of Mines, an office which we would call that of Assayer, 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 anticipated 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 canals for the government, and he set Holyoke an example by running the water back and forth in canals 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 passed, 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 association 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 accumulation 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 nobody 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 analyst, a man well past his grand climacteric, who imagined that the perpetuation of sexual "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 Mueller'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 God'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 Aucassin and Nicolete, Plutarch and Laura, Paola and Francesca, Abelard and Heloise, and they go to hell 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.