Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic

Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic (1948)
by Signe Toksvig
2130001Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic1948Signe Toksvig

EMANUEL
SWEDENBORG

SCIENTIST AND MYSTIC



BY

SIGNE TOKSVIG







NEW HAVEN
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
1948



Copyright, 1948, by Signe Toksvig


Printed in the United States of America


All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form (except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers.



To

SOPHY CARR STANTON

IN EVER-LIVING FRIENDSHIP



“There are marvelous things occurring in the human mind, so marvelous indeed that they cannot be expressed. In number they are indefinitely more than all the things contained in the human body, in the threefold kingdom of nature, and in the universal world, visible and invisible. The sciences have drawn out only a few of them, and these are mere rivulets emanating from an ocean."

Swedenborg



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

It is a pleasure to thank the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation for the grant of a fellowship which made this study possible.

Especial thanks are due to the Library of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Stockholm, to the Library of Yale University, and to the Library of the Academy of the New Church, Bryn Athyn, Pa., for the facilities offered by them, and to Cyriel Odhner Sigstedt, also of Bryn Athyn, for her generosity in lending the writer new material which she herself had found in Sweden.

The editor of the Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research, Mrs. Laura Abbott Dale, has been unfailingly helpful. The late Whately Carington, of Sennen Cove, Cornwall, England, was good enough to read and discuss the chapters largely based on his theories, while Professor Gardner Murphy, The City College of New York, must accept thanks for his great kindness in reading the whole book in manuscript.



Contents

Acknowledgments v
List of Illustrations ix
I. Why Swedenborg 1
II. Stockholm Shocked 7
III. Parent Extraordinary 14
IV. Undergraduate at Upsala 30
V. Discovery of England 43
VI. Engineer and Mining Expert 59
VII. Physicist and Physiologist 71
VIII. Dissecting Rooms Abroad 80
IX. Anatomy of the Mind and Body 96
X. Anatomy of Soul 112
XI. Strange Dreams and "Temptations" 124
XII. The Great Vision 136
XIII. Swedenborg's Sanity 156
XIV. Psychical Research 168
XV. Swedenborg's Clairvoyance 180
XVI. Automatic Writing 201
XVII. "What is a Spirit?" 217
XVIII. "Arcana Celestia" 230
XIX. Space, Time and Memory 250
XX. Speech, Odors, Auras 262
XXI. Gardener, Statesman, Author 271
XXII. Interworld "Correspondence" 285
XXIII. Stories from Beyond 302
XXIV. Marriages in Heaven 314
XXV. Swedenborg in Daily Life 325
XXVI. Amsterdam Report 336
XXVII. Balm in England 344
XXVIII. Swedenborg's Religion 352
XXIX. A Happy End 360
General Sources 364
Notes and References 365
Index 383



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