to his scientific career, he tells us that he saw its purpose, that "he had been introduced by the Lord first into the natural sciences, and prepared from 1710 to 1744, when heaven was opened to him; the reason why he, a philosopher, had been chosen to this office, being, that spiritual knowledge, which is revealed at this day, might be reasonably learned and naturally understood; because spiritual truths answer to natural truths, which originate, flow from, and answer as a foundation for them." When he had run the circuit of the sciences, he was introduced to a new world of facts and laws, by the opening of his spiritual senses; and thus to a spiritual science and philosophy which could never have been discovered without these facts, and can never be understood apart from them.
The importance of this experience is finely shown by Dr. Wilkinson in his biography of Swedenborg, when speaking of the intercourse between the soul and the body, and the inability of philosophy to give the soul qualities that warrant us to say what it is, he remarks that "here we see the value of sight on a difficult point. While the soul was unknown, its manner of communication
