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{{EB1911
|volume = 26
|previous = Sweden
|next = Sweetbread
|contributor=Alexander James Grieve
|wikipedia = Emanuel Swedenborg
|other_projects = the [[Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition/Swedenborg, Emanuel|9th edition]]
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[[Category:EB1911:People:Individuals:Europe:Sweden|Swedenborg]]
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'''SWEDENBORG''' (or {{small-caps|Swedberg}}), '''EMANUEL''' (1688-1772),
Swedish scientist, philosopher and mystic, was born at Stockholm
on the 29th of January 1688. His father, Dr Jesper
Swedberg, subsequently professor of theology at Upsala and
bishop of Skara, was a pious and learned man, who did not
escape the charge of heterodoxy, seeing that he placed more
emphasis on the cardinal virtues of faith, love and communion
with God than on the current dogmas of the Lutheran Church.
Having completed his university course at Upsala, in 1710,
Swedenborg undertook a European tour, visiting England,
Holland, France and Germany, studying especially natural
philosophy and writing Latin verses, a collection of which he
published in 1710. In 1715 he returned to Upsala, and devoted
himself to natural science and various engineering works.
From 1716 to 1718 he published a scientific periodical, called
''Daedalus hyperboreus'', a record of mechanical and mathematical
inventions and discoveries. In 1716 he was introduced to
Charles XII., who appointed him assessor-extraordinary on the
Swedish board of mines. His reports on smelting and assaying
were remarkable for their detail and for the comparisons drawn
between Swedish and other methods. Two years later he
distinguished himself at the king's siege of Frederikshall by
the invention of machines for the transport of boats and galleys
overland from Stromstadt to Iddefjord, a distance of 14 m.
The same year he published various mathematical and mechanical
works. At the death of Charles XII. Queen Ulrica elevated
him and his family to the rank of nobility, by which his name
was changed from Swedberg to Swedenborg, the “en”
corresponding to the German “von.” In the Swedish House of
Nobles his contributions to political discussion had great
influence, and he dealt with such subjects as the currency, the
decimal system, the balance of trade and the liquor laws (where
he was the pioneer of the Gothenburg system) with marked
ability. He strongly opposed a bill for increasing the power
of the crown. The next years were devoted to the duties and
studies connected with his office, which involved the visitation
of the Swedish, Saxon, Bohemian and Austrian mines. In
1724 he was offered the chair of mathematics in the university
of Upsala, which he declined, on the ground that it was a
mistake for mathematicians to be limited to theory. His
inquiring and philosophical mind gradually led him to wider studies.
As early as 1721 he was seeking to lay the foundation of a
scientific explanation of the universe, when he published his
''Prodromus principiorum rerum naturalium'', and had already
written his ''Principia'' in its first form. In 1734 appeared in
three volumes (''Opera philosophica et mineralia'', the first volume
of which (his ''Principia'') contained his view of the first principles
of the universe, a curious mechanical and geometrical theory
of the origin of things. The other volumes dealt with (''a'') iron
and steel, (''b'') copper and brass, their smelting, conversion and
assaying, and chemical experiments thereon.
 
There is no doubt that Swedenborg anticipated many scientific
facts and positions that are usually regarded as of much more
modern date. It was only towards the end of the 19th century
that his voluminous writings began to be properly collected and
examined, with the result of proving that there was hardly one
department of scientific activity in which he was not far ahead of
<!-- p. 222 -->
his time. His work on palaeontology shows him the predecessor
of all the Scandinavian geologists, and his contributions in this
field alone would have been sufficient to perpetuate his fame. He
was also a great physicist and had arrived at the nebular
hypothesis theory of the formation of the planets and the sun long
before Kant and Laplace. His theory of light and theory of the
cosmic atoms were equally astonishing. He wrote a lucid account
of the phenomena of phosphorescence, and adduced a molecular
magnetic theory which anticipated some of the chief features of
the hypothesis of to-day. The great French chemist, Dumas,
gives him the credit for the first attempt to establish a system
of crystallography. He was the first to employ mercury for the
air-pump, and devised a method of determining longitude at sea
by observations of the moon among the stars. He suggested
the use of experimental tanks for testing the powers of ship
models, invented an ear-trumpet for the deaf, improved the
common house-stove of his native land, cured smoky chimneys,
took a lively interest in machine-guns and even sketched a
flying machine.
 
[[Category:EB1911:People:Individuals:Europe:Sweden|Swedenborg]]
{{EB1911 Fine Print|This flying machine consisted of a light frame covered with
strong canvas and provided with two large oars or wings moving
on a horizontal axis, and so arranged that the upstroke met with no
resistance while the downstroke provided the lifting power. Swedenborg
knew that the machine would not fly, but suggested it as a
start and was confident that the problem would be solved. He
said “It seems easier to talk of such a machine than to put it into
actuality, for it requires greater force and less weight than exists
in a human body. The science of mechanics might perhaps suggest
a means, namely, a strong spiral spring. If these advantages and
requisites are observed, perhaps in time to come some one might
know how better to utilize our sketch and cause some addition
to be made so as to accomplish that which we can only suggest. Yet
there are sufficient proofs and examples from nature that such
flights can take place without danger, although when the first trials
are made you may have to pay for the experience, and not mind
an arm or leg.”}}
 
In 1734 he also published ''Prodromus philosophiae''
''ratiocinantis de infinito et causa finali creationis'', which treats
of the relation of the finite to the infinite, and of the soul to
the body, seeking to establish a nexus in each case as a means
of overcoming the difficulty of their relation. From this time
he applied himself to the problem of discovering the nature of
soul and spirit by means of anatomical studies. In all his
researches he acknowledged and contended for the existence
and the supremacy of the spiritual and the divine. He travelled
in Germany, France and Italy, in quest of the most eminent
teachers and the best books dealing with the human frame,
and published, as the results of his inquiries among other works,
his ''Oeconomia regni animalis'' (London, 1740-1741) and ''Regnum''
''animale'' (the Hague, 1744-1745; London, 1745). In no field were
Swedenborg's researches more noteworthy than in those of
physiological science. In 1901, Professor Max Neuberger of Vienna
called attention to certain anticipations of modern views made
by Swedenborg in relation to the functions of the brain. The
university of Vienna appealed to the Royal Swedish Academy
for a complete issue of the scientific treatises, and this resulted
in the formation of a committee of experts who have been
entrusted with the task. It is clear that Swedenborg showed
(150 years before any other scientist) that the motion of the
brain was synchronous with the respiration and not with the
action of the heart and the circulation of the blood, a discovery
the full bearings of which are still far from being realized. He
had arrived at the modern conception of the activity of the
brain as the combined activity of its individual cells. The
cerebral cortex, and, more definitely, the cortical elements (nerve
cells), formed the seat of the activity of the soul, and were ordered
into departments according to various functions. His views
as to the physiological functions of the spinal cord are also
in agreement with recent research, and he anticipated many
of the pre-eminent offices of the ductless glands which students
of the present time are only beginning to discover.
 
Up to middle age Swedenborg's position was that of a scholar,
a scientist, a practical administrator, a legislator, and a man of
affairs. But a profound change was coming over him, which
led him to leave the domain of physical research for that of
<!-- column 2 -->
psychical and spiritual inquiry. Neither by geometrical, nor
physical, nor metaphysical principles had he succeeded in reaching
and grasping the infinite and the spiritual, or in elucidating
their relation to man and man's organism, though he had caught
glimpses of facts and methods which he thought only required
confirmation and development. Late in life he wrote to Oetinger
that “he was introduced by the Lord first into the natural
sciences, and thus prepared, and, indeed, from the year 1710
to 1745, when heaven was opened to him.” This latter great
event is described by him in a letter to Thomas Hartley, rector
of Winwick, as “the opening of his spiritual sight,” “the
manifestation of the Lord to him in person,” “his introduction
into the spiritual world.” Before his illumination he had been
instructed by dreams, and enjoyed extraordinary visions, and
heard mysterious conversations. According to his own account,
the Lord filled him with His spirit to teach the doctrines of the
New Church by the word from Himself; He commissioned him
to do this work, opened the sight of his spirit, and so let him
into the spiritual world, permitting him to see the heavens and
the hells, and to converse with angels and spirits for years;
but he never received anything relating to the doctrines of the
church from any angel but from the Lord alone while he was
reading the word (''True Christian Religion'', No. 779). He
elsewhere speaks of his office as principally an opening of the
spiritual sense of the word. His friend Robsahm reports, from
Swedenborg's own account to him, the circumstances of the
first extraordinary revelation of the Lord, when He appeared
to him and said, “I am God the Lord, the Creator and Redeemer
of the world. I have chosen thee to unfold the spiritual sense
of the Holy Scripture. I will Myself dictate to thee what thou
shall write.” From that time he gave up all worldly learning
and laboured solely to expound spiritual things. In the year
1747, to the great regret of his colleagues, he resigned his post of
assessor of the board of mines that he might devote himself
to his higher vocation, requesting only to be allowed to receive
as a pension the half of his salary. He took up afresh his study
of Hebrew, and began his voluminous works on the interpretation
of the Scriptures. His life from 1747 was spent alternately in
Sweden, Holland and London, in the composition of his works
and their publication, till his death, which took place in London
on the 29th of March 1772. He was buried in the Swedish
church in Princes Square, in the parish of St George's-in-the-East,
and on the 7th of April 1908 his remains were removed
at the request of the Swedish government to Stockholm.
 
{{EB1911 Fine Print|Swedenborg was a man who won the respect, confidence and love
of all who came into contact with him. Though people might
disbelieve in his visions, they feared to ridicule them in his presence.
Those who talked with him felt that he was truth itself. He never
disputed on matters of religion, and if obliged to defend himself,
did it with gentleness and in a few words. His manner of life was
simple in the extreme; his diet consisted chiefly of bread and milk
and large quantities of coffee. He paid no attention to the distinction
of day and night, and sometimes lay for days together in a trance,
while his servants were often disturbed at night by hearing what he
called his conflicts with evil spirits. But his intercourse with
spirits was often perfectly calm, in broad daylight, and with all his
faculties awake. Three extraordinary instances are produced by
his friends and followers in proof of his seership and admission
into the unseen world. But there exists no account at first hand
of the exact facts, and Swedenborg's own reference to one of these
instances admits of another explanation than the supernatural
one. Immanuel Kant was struck by them in 1763, but in 1765,
after further inquiries, concluded that two of them had “no other
foundation than common report (''gemeine Sage'').” See Kehrbach's
edition of Kant's ''Träume eines Geistersehers'' (Leipzig, 1880).
 
As a theologian Swedenborg never attempted to preach or to
found a sect. He believed that members of all the churches could
belong to the New Church without forming a separate organization.
His theological writings roughly fall into four groups: (1) books of
spiritual philosophy, including ''The Divine Love and Wisdom'',
''The Divine Providence'', ''The Intercourse between the Soul and the''
''Body'', ''Conjugial Love''; (2) Expository, including ''Arcana Celestia''
(giving the spiritual sense of Genesis and Exodus), ''The Apocalypse''
''Revealed, The Apocalypse Explained''; (3) Doctrinal, including
''The New Jerusalem and its Heavenly Doctrines'', ''The Four Chief''
''Doctrines'', ''The Doctrine of Charity'', ''The True Christian Religion'',
''Canons of the New Church''; (4) Eschatological, including ''Heaven''
''and Hell'', and ''The Last Judgment''. About forty volumes are
available in English, and many have been translated into most
<!-- p. 223 -->
of the European languages as well as into Arabic, Hindi and
Japanese.
 
Swedenborg's theosophic system is most briefly and comprehensively
presented in his ''Divine Love and Wisdom''. The point
of view from which God must be regarded is that of His
being the Divine Man. His ''esse'' is infinite love; His manifestation,
form or body is infinite wisdom. Divine love is the self-subsisting
life of the universe. From God emanates a divine sphere, which
appears in the spiritual world as a sun, and from this spiritual sun
again proceeds the sun of the natural world. The spiritual sun is
the source of love and intelligence, or life, and the natural sun
the source of nature or the receptacles of life; the first is alive,
the second dead. The two worlds of nature and spirit are perfectly
distinct, but they are intimately related by analogous substances,
laws and forces. Each has its atmospheres, waters and earths,
but in the one they are natural and in the other spiritual. In God
there are three infinite and uncreated “degrees” of being, and in
man and all things corresponding three degrees, finite and created.
They are love, wisdom, use; or end, cause and effect. The final
ends of all things are in the Divine Mind, the causes of all things
in the spiritual world, and their effects in the natural world. By
a love of each degree man comes into conjunction with them and
the worlds of nature, spirit and God. The end of creation is that
man may have this conjunction and become the image of his Creator
and creation. In man are two receptacles for God — the will
for divine love and the understanding for divine wisdom — that
love and wisdom flowing into both so that they become human.
Before the fall this influx was free and unhindered, and the
conjunction of man with God and the creation complete, but from
that time the connexion was interrupted and God had to interpose
by successive dispensations. At last the power and influence
of the spirits of darkness, with whom man associates himself by
his sin, became so great that the existence of the human race was
threatened, and Jehovah was necessitated to descend into nature
to restore the connexion between Himself and man. He could
not come in His unveiled divinity, for the “hells” would have
then perished, whom he did not seek to destroy but only to subjugate.
Another purpose of Jehovah's incarnation was the manifestation
of His divine love more fully than ever before. Swedenborg wholly
rejects the orthodox doctrine of atonement; and the unity of God,
as opposed to his idea of the trinity of the church, is an essential
feature of his teaching. Another distinctive feature is that Jehovah
did not go back to heaven without leaving behind him a visible
representative of Himself in the word of the Scripture. This word
is an eternal incarnation, with its threefold sense — natural, spiritual,
celestial. And Swedenborg is the divinely commissioned expounder
of this threefold sense, of the word, and so the founder of the New
Church, the paraclete of the last dispensation. That he might
perceive and understand the spiritual and the celestial senses of
the word he enjoyed immediate revelation from the Lord, was
admitted into the angelic world, and had committed to him the key
of “correspondences ” with which to unlock the divine treasures
of wisdom. Swedenborg claimed also to have learnt by his admission
into the spiritual world the true states of men in the next life,
the scenery and occupations of heaven and hell, the true doctrine of
Providence, the origin of evil, the sanctity and perpetuity of marriage
and to have been a witness of the “last judgment,” or the second
coming of the Lord, which is a contemporary event. “All religion,”
he said, “has relation to life, and the life of religion is to do good.”
“The kingdom of Heaven is a kingdom of uses.” He exercised a
great influence over S. T. Coleridge, Robert and Elizabeth Browning,
Coventry Patmore, Henry Ward Beecher and Thomas Carlyle.
And the attention of modern psychologists is now being drawn to
his doctrine of the relation of the elements of the universe to the
membranes of the body.
 
Swedenborgianism, as professed by Swedenborg's followers, is
based on the belief of Swedenborg's claims to have witnessed the
last judgment, or the second advent of the Lord, with the inauguration
of the New Church, through the new system of doctrine promulgated
by him and derived from the Scriptures, into the true sense of
which he was the first to be introduced. The “doctrines” of the
New Church as given in the Liturgy (which also contains the “Creed”
and “Articles of Faith”) are as follows:
 
1. That there is one God, in whom there is a Divine Trinity; and
that He is the Lord Jesus Christ.
 
2. That a saving faith is to believe on Him.
 
3. That evils are to be shunned, because they are of the devil and
from the devil.
 
4. That good actions are to be done, because they are of God and
from God.
 
5. That these are to be done by a man as from himself; but that
it ought to be believed that they are done from the Lord with him
and by him.
 
Swedenborgians now constitute a widely spread and considerable
society, with a regularly constituted ecclesiastical organization and a
zealous missionary activity (see {{EB1911 Article Link|New Jerusalem Church}}).}}
 
{{EB1911 Fine Print|See R. L. Tafel, ''Documents concerning the Life and Character of''
''Swedenborg'', collected, translated and annotated (3 vols., Swedenborg
Society, 1875-1877); J. Hyde, ''A Bibliography of the Works of''
''Emanuel Swedenborg'' (743 pp., Swedenborg Society). Of English
<!-- column 2 -->
lives the principal are those by J. J. G. Wilkinson (London, 1849);
E. Paxton Hood (London, 1854); William White (1856, rewritten
in 1867 and in 1868); G. Trobridge (London, 1907); also ''Emanuel''
''Swedenborg, the Spiritual Columbus, a Sketch'', by U. S. E. (2nd ed.,
London, 1877). Some of his writings, ''e.g.'' ''The Divine Providence and''
''Heaven and Hell'' have been published in popular editions. A useful
handbook of Swedenborg's theology is the ''Compendium of the''
''Theological Writings of Emanuel Swedenborg'' by the Rev. Samuel Warren
(London, 1885). Summaries of his system and writings are given in
all the above biographies, also in Edmund Swift, ''Manual of the''
''Doctrines of the New Church'' (London, 1885); and T. Parsons,
''Outlines of Swedenborg's Religion and Philosophy''. Important critiques
from independent points of view are “The Mystic,” in R. W.
Emerson's ''Representative Men'' (1850); Kant's ''Träume eines Geistersehers''
(1766; the best edition by Kehrbach, Leipzig, 1880); J. G.
Herder's “Emanuel Swedenborg,” in his ''Adrastea'' (''Werke zur Phil.''
''und Gesch.'', xii. 110-125); J. J. von Goerres's ''Emanuel Swedenborg,''
''seine Visionen und sein Verhältniss zur Kirche'' (1827); A. Dorner s
''Geschichte der protestantischen Theologie'', pp. 662-667 (Munich, 1867).
See also ''Transactions of the International Swedenborg Congress''
(London, 1910), summarized in ''The New Church Magazine''
(August, 1910).}} ([[Author:Alexander James Grieve|A. J. G.]])
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