Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic/Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Physicist and Physiologist
IN Bishop Swedberg's house, a condensed Caprice called God was worshiped daily. In his son's Principia no deity called sinners to account by letting calves be born wearing French headdresses. As one of the first of his first principles Swedenborg laid down that "Nature operates in the world in a mechanical manner, and the phenomena which she presents to our senses are subject to their proper laws and rules." 1
For this book Swedenborg, the engineer, chemist, and astronomer, had made use of all the sciences he had not only studied but applied now for many years, as far as his epoch's limited powers of microscopy and measurements allowed. The occult doctrines of alchemy had no part in it; he criticized them sharply in his preface. He based his work, he asserted, on Experience, Geometry, and Reason. Translated into modern terms: on experiments, mathematics, and the resulting hypotheses.
His fundamental ideas were not all original. Descartes and Leibnitz had helped. Even before the eighteenth century nearly everything had been guessed at, but there had been at least as many bad guesses as good ones. Swedenborg chose mainly the good ones, showing what has been called his uncanny ability to put things together correctly, not only from his own but from other people's observations.
The Principia, however, belongs largely to the pure realm of mathematics. The nonphysicist is lost in this world of bloodless energies, this "geometrical" world of gyres and vortices and magnetic fields. Here it is for scientists to appraise Swedenborg's work.
Part of it at least has been dealt with by Svante Arrhenius,2 Swedish Nobel Prize winner. When the Royal Swedish Academy rediscovered that Swedenborg was one of its cofounders and began publishing his scientific works at the beginning of this century, eminent scientists wrote the introductions. Arrhenius wrote the one for the cosmological part of the Principia. His conclusions were as follows:
If we briefly summarize the ideas which were first given expression by Swedenborg, and afterwards, though usually in a much modified form—consciously or unconsciously—taken up by other authors in cosmology, we find them to be:
The planets of our solar system originate from the solar matter—taken up by Buffon, Kant, Laplace, and others.
The earth and the other planets have gradually removed themselves from the sun and received a gradually lengthened time of revolution, a view again expressed by G. H. Darwin.
The earth's time of rotation, that is to say the day's length, has been gradually increased, a view again expressed by G. H. Darwin. The suns are arranged around the milky way, taken up by Wright, Kant, and Lambert.
There are still greater systems, in which the milky ways are arranged, taken up by Lambert.
(Another list could be made, and a much more extensive one, of the creative writers and artists who have used, or praised, or acknowledged their debt to Swedenborg's ideas: such as, for instance, William Blake, Goethe, Heine, Balzac, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry James, Sr., Oliver Wendell Holmes, Tennyson, the Brownings, Thoreau, Coventry Patmore, and many others.)
Arrhenius was not so interested in Swedenborg's account of the origin of matter, which seemed to him largely "philosophical," but in these days, since the "indivisible" atom has been dissolved into energy, Swedenborg's views on physics are of great interest.
Modern scientists tell us, for instance, that, in the world of relativity, matter is no longer considered "material" in the old sense, but as a local characteristic of a geometrical field of motion.3 In the Principia Swedenborg wrote: "Although pure motion does not necessarily require anything substantial as the basis of its existence, there still pertain to it both form and space, which are attributes of motion." 4
Swedenborg's framework of first principles began with positing an Infinite and Indefinable Something beyond our space and time. It might be called Unmanifested Energy. To manifest itself, to start in space-time on the voyage to becoming matter, the " mathematical point" was supposed—an abstraction on which Euclid based geometry, the point "which has position but no magnitude." This was the seed, as it were, which contained the latent energy of the universe. According to Swedenborg it was a particle consisting of pure "urge—to-motion" (conatus), a point of latent force.
The rapid movements of these points of force (which would now be called the wave aspect of the point) eventually produced all the qualities of solid matter. They did this by means of two forms of force, which he called finites and actives, and their primary combinations resulted in the four constituents of the cosmos. These he called the four "atmospheres," or "auras," or, sometimes, the "elements."
The function of the first, or "universal," was gravitation. The function of the second, or "magnetic," was magnetism. The function of the third, or "ether," was to carry light, heat and electricity, while the function of the fourth, or the air, was to carry sound waves.
As for gravitation, modern science still sees it as in a class by itself, "steadily refusing to show any kinship to other physical phenomena." 5 That is, gravitation is universal in its sphere of operation.
As for magnetism, "though closely related with electricity, magnetism is yet distinct," its velocity has not been measured, and it permeates glass, a nonconductor of electricity. Sir W. F. Barrett, in his preface to Swedenborg's Principia (London, 1912) mentions Swedenborg's "remarkable prevision of the molecular structure of a magnet," and the latter believed that in a magnetic field lay the inception of all other forces known to science.6
As for the ether, Swedenborg's idea of it was the same as that of modern scientists until Einstein, but the fact that electricity, heat, and light have the same velocity has been cited as evidence for supposing "a common cause, plane or atmosphere from or in which they act." 7
Swedenborg seems to have thought of each of these four elementary atmospheres or forces as being within each other in a causal relationship, even as the atoms are within the molecule, the proton, electron, etc. within the atom, and still lesser units within these, like a Chinese egg.
But, as Sir James Jeans has said, "A mechanical model or picture must represent things as happening in space and time, while it has recently become clear that the ultimate processes of nature neither occur in, nor admit of representation in, space and time." 8
That would have pleased Swedenborg. It would have seemed to him that we were back at the mathematical or, as he often called it, "the natural" point.
To his father, Bishop Swedberg, it must have seemed a very fine point indeed, if he noticed it. About 1722, when Emanuel had gone abroad in search of improved mining methods, his father wrote to a kinsman about him: "Would to God that he succeed with his many experiments and discoveries and that experience may prove their value." 9 The tone implied that his son ought to be making good in some tangible way, and when he saw the three big volumes of the Opera Philosophica et Mineralia that Emanuel had brought back from abroad in 1734, the father may have been impressed, at least by their having been ducally sponsored.
But probably Bishop Swedberg did no more than glance at the tomes before he returned to his favorite occupation, the revision of his autobiography to show how his various predictions had come true—how the grievous sin of sabbath-breaking had indeed brought pestilence and war on the country, and how God had preferred and upheld him, Jesper Swedberg, in every way. He was perfectly serene about the reception that awaited him in the world to come. In heaven, according to him, the "saved" sat at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, waited on by holy angels; or, if especially distinguished, such as he, they sat on thrones wearing crowns. He noted that on one of those occasions when his colleagues in the Diet had so maliciously misunderstood his motives, he had informed them as follows: "At least I know that God will order my angel to have a crown ready which is to be set on my head in God's triumphant Kingdom. While I go to my seat of honor, which after this I shall continue, with the aid of God, to adorn with still greater courage, renown and honor." 10
His second wife, Sara Bergia, Emanuel's kind stepmother, had died in 1720 when the Bishop was sixty-eight. He praised her death for being as "quiet, as she herself was quiet and gentle and pious." Most of her handsome fortune, he noted, she left to enable him to publish his works. (There had been a little pushing here; as mentioned before, Sara Bergia wanted to leave all to Emanuel, but the Bishop persuaded her not to, he said the other children ought to share as well as himself.)
Within a year or so the Bishop had married again, another well-to-do lady, not for his own sake, only for the household, of course. The lady, Christina Arhusia, survived him, but first she had fifteen years of household management. Bishop Swedberg died in 1735, aged eighty-one.
He left nothing to chance, not even the eulogy to be read at his burial. He wrote it himself. It was a not-too-brief abbreviation of his autobiography, with all his virtues and the consequent wonders and favors with which God had showered him. He gave minute instructions for the funeral ceremonies, pointing out the spirit of Christian humility in which he did it.
In 1736, about long enough after his father's death for the inheritance to have been distributed, Emanuel Swedenborg applied for leave of absence from the Board of Mines. He had done this before but never for so long a time. It was to be for a journey abroad that might take three or four years. He did not go into details except that it was for the purpose of "elaborating a useful work" vaguely described as having some connection with the preceding one and to be on "some new principles in philosophy."
He offered to take only half his salary while absent. The King and the Board granted the application. Being a state official, Assessor Swedenborg took solemn leave of Their Majesties at an audience where they were both "very gracious"; of the Privy Council; of the Members of the Board of Mines; of his friends and, probably unknown to them and even to himself, of his old life. On July 10, 1736, he left the city of Stockholm for the city of Paris, where he meant to study anatomy under Winsløv, the famous Danish anatomist.11
Whether the family knew of his intention is not clear, but probably Unge, his thrifty brother-in-law, expressed the general sentiment of family and friends when he wrote to Swedenborg, "As much as I was pleased with your former letter in which you wrote me that your journey abroad was given up, so much the more disappointed was I at your last letter in which you say the French journey is again determined upon." 12
Unge was a man who liked to have a relative in an influential position, and there is no denying that Emanuel was now apparently throwing worldly prudence overboard. At forty-eight, with an assured and envied position, he was taking three or four years off—and for what?
'For what, indeed! The family, if not the Board of Mines, must have suspected that there was very little trace of metallurgy in his plans. Even the connection with philosophy must have seemed tenuous if it were known that he intended to study anatomy.
A mining engineer, chemist, physicist, to leave his country to study anatomy, a science so disreputable that it couldn't be studied properly in respectable Sweden, a study with the whiff of body-snatching about it. To leave not only his country but his good secure job with heaven knows what machinations likely to go on against him in his absence—it was in truth a very strange project. He did not intend to be a doctor.
If Swedenborg's contemporaries had known what we know, as perhaps some of them did; if they had known that this voyage to France was taken in obedience to a religious impulse, then they might have asked much the same questions that our contemporaries do when they hear that someone who doesn't "need to" has endangered his worldly prospects for the sake of "God."
Was he successful in his work?
There is no evidence to show that he wasn't. He functioned well in the kind of work he had himself chosen; he had the feeling that he was useful to the country, and, though he had annoyances due to envious or stupid colleagues, they were no more than any very intelligent man experiences in the business of working with other men, especially if they are bureaucrats.
Was he unsuccessful as an author? Had the great Opera Philosophica et Mineralia been a failure?
This was far from being the case. From scientific journals of the highest standing in Europe came long and grateful reviews, especially of the tomes on iron and copper.13 The physics of the ' Principia was faintly suspected of being "materialistic" and was in any case above the heads of the reviewers, but Swedenborg otherwise received great praise, among the rest, for his attitude on trade secrets. He had stated with engaging candor:
There are persons who love to hold knowledge for themselves alone, and to be reputed possessors and guardians of secrets. People of this kind grudge the public everything, and if any discovery by which art and science will be benefited comes to light they regard it askance with scowling visages and probably denounce the discoverer as a babbler who lets out mysteries. Why should real secrets be grudged to the public? Why withheld from this enlightened age? Whatever is worth knowing should by all means be brought into the great and common market of the world. Unless this is done we can neither grow wiser nor happier with time.14
Parts of the work dealing with the manufacture of iron and steel were reprinted separately and even translated from the Latin into French, and, later, into Swedish from the French! He had flattering inquiries from academies of science. Far from being a failure he had achieved a European reputation in his chosen field. The road to further fame was lying open before him. Yet he turned from it and into the unrewarding path of anatomy, not so much for its own sake as because through that study he hoped to acquire greater understanding of the body's relationship to the soul, and through this he hoped to come nearer to an understanding of the soul's relationship to God.
Had he failed in his human relationships? There is no evidence for that. His friendship with Eric Benzelius continued to be warm, and he was a generous uncle to young Eric. Some of his colleagues at the Board of Mines he liked very much. Swedenborg was never considered an unsociable man.
Why had he not married?
There is a tradition that when he was still Polhem's assistant he was in love with Emerentia, Polhem's younger daughter (aged fifteen and known as "Mrensa"), and to have been in such despair when she preferred another that he vowed never to marry.15
He may have been in love with Emerentia, but in 1726, two years after he became confirmed as assessor, a certain Pastor Steuchius noted in his diary that this day Swedenborg had asked for the hand of his daughter, Stina Maja, but she preferred a court chamberlain.16 There may have been other attempts which are not known, still his family thought of him as a hardened bachelor. In 1729 Ionas Unge (his rather unsympathetic brother—in-law) was giving him family advice in a letter:
"Why in the matter of marriage does d:brother let all the good chances go by?" And Unge recommended a pretty girl with a good dowry. She was only eleven, to be sure, but why did Emanuel not put in an application? Yet, though Unge buttressed his exhortation with a long Latin saw about the perils of delay, Emanuel did nothing about the matter.
Why did he let all the good chances slip by?
He neither needed nor wanted to marry for money, and, in eighteenth-century Stockholm, he did not have to marry for sex. His friend Robsahm has recorded that he had a mistress when he was young, whom he left because she was unfaithful to him, and to Tuxen he spoke of having had a mistress in Italy. In a diary, he wrote, no doubt exaggerating, that women were his chief passion. But even there he was careful not to cite names or incidents connected with real people. Very little is known directly about his emotional affairs. But it is known that, far from being a libertine, he grieved deeply over "wandering lust" and longed for a harmonious marriage with an intelligent woman.
It is possible that he did not marry because he had met and fallen in love with a woman who already was married.
An English Member of Parliament, C. A. Tulk, who revered Swedenborg's teachings and whose father had known him in London, said that "Swedenborg was in the habit of saying that he had seen in the spiritual world his future wife who was waiting for him there, and that she had been known in the world as a Countess Gyllenborg." 17
This Countess Elizabeth Stierncrona Gyllenborg, whom Swedenborg seems to have met in his early thirties, is reported to have been both attractive and fervently religious. Swedenborg was a friend of her brother and her husband, though later on, in his notes from the Beyond, he gives the husband a very bad name indeed. But not enough is known about the pious Elizabeth, herself a writer, to make her seem accountable for Swedenborg's remaining a bachelor.
That he was a handsome man his portraits attest, and that he was vital and magnetic even in old age is asserted by several people who knew him. In 1734, when he was forty-five, the printer of his Opera in Leipzig was so impressed by his appearance that he begged leave to have his picture engraved for the book, a picture which those who knew him at eighty declared to be still like him.
This shows him not only in the grandeur of full-bottomed wig and aldermanic splendor of official robes but as keen, determined, and robust, with a hint of the slight corpulence he had in middle age. It is decidedly a clear, strong face, no meagerness in it, no obvious and haunted schizoid elongation.
And still Emanuel Swedenborg was a haunted man.