world had lived like others, clothing themselves splendidly, faring sumptuously, trafficking for gain like others, attending dramatic performances, jesting about love affairs as if from lust, and other like things, and yet with some the angels accounted these as evils of sin, and with others accounted them not as evils; and these they declared innocent, but those guilty." 19 The difference, as he said it was explained to him, was all in the intention.
Within the man of the world, one might say, was the scientist-philosopher. About him the 1736—39 diary tells little except for its eloquent blankness for over a year in Paris and for almost the whole time in Venice, while he was studying and writing; yet there is a glimpse on October 4, 1736, when he notes that he walked in the Thyllerie:
"Next to the Thyllerie, on the other side of the river is the Hotel de la Duchesse, which is magnifique; there is a pleasant promenade, and I speculated on the form of the particles in the atmosphere."
One can see him in the golden haze of a Paris autumn day, near the gleaming Seine, wandering with an abstracted air among the animated French, Swedenborg the philosopher, there and yet not there—already, so to speak, "in the spiritual world."
There was in him too a man who looked at things more and more from a spiritual or ethical point of view. Like most Protestant Northerners, he had at first been charmed and impressed by the lavishness of gold and silver in Catholic churches as well as by the sensuous service. In the Brussels cathedral, among multitudes of burning silver lamps, he heard mass, reflecting that the main thing about it seemed to be the leading of thought to religion by exterior means, "for it is arranged with so much courtseying, bowing and kneeling devotion which charms the eye," while "beautiful music both instrumental and vocal fills the ear," and "there are fragrant spices for the nose." He allowed, benevolently, that human beings were usually led to reflect by way of the senses, but when he arrived in northern France he saw another side of the picture.
Driving through small towns he saw "magnifique convents, poor and wretched people." "In general, the convents, churches and monks are the richest and own most of the land, the monks are fat, puffed up and flourishing, a fine army might be recruited from
