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Emanuel Swedenborg

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2018

Henry Maudsley
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Extract

Few are the readers, and we cannot boast to be of those few, who have been at the pains to toil through the many and voluminous writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. Indeed, it would not be far from the truth to say that there are very few persons who have thought it worth their while to study him at all seriously; he is commonly accounted a madman, who has had the singular fortune to persuade certain credulous persons that he was a seer. Nevertheless, whether lunatic or prophet, his character and his writings merit a serious and unbiased study. Madness, which makes its mark upon the world, and counts in its train many presumably sane people who see in it the highest wisdom, cannot justly be put aside contemptuously as undeserving a moment's grave thought. After all, there is no accident in madness; causality, not casualty, governs its appearance in the universe; and it is very far from being a good and sufficient practice to simply mark its phenomena, and straightway to pass on as if they belonged, not to an order, but to a disorder of events that called for no explanation. It is certain that there is in Swedenborg's revelations of the spiritual world a mass of absurdities sufficient to warrant the worst suspicions of his mental sanity; but, at the same time, it is not less certain that there are scattered in his writings conceptions of the highest philosophic reach, while throughout them is sensible an exalted tone of calm moral feeling which rises in many places to a real moral grandeur. These are the qualities which have gained him his best disciples, and they are qualites too uncommon in the world to be lightly despised, in whatever company they may be exhibited. I proceed then to give some account of Swedenborg, not purposing to make any review of his multitudinous publications, or any criticism of the doctrines announced in them with a matchless self-sufficiency; the immediate design being rather to present, by the help mainly of Mr. White's book, a sketch of the life and character of the man, and thus to obtain, and to endeavour to convey, some definite notion of what he was, what he did, and what should be concluded of him.*

Type
Part I.—Original Articles
Information
Journal of Mental Science , Volume 15 , Issue 70 , July 1869 , pp. 169 - 196
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1869 

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References

∗ Emanuel Swedenborg: His Life and Writings. By William White. In two volumes. 1867. As the present purpose is not to make any criticism of Mr. White's laborious and useful work, we shall not again refer specially to it, although making large use of the materials which it furnishes for a study of Swedenborg; we may once for all commend it to the attention of those who are interested in obtaining an impartial account of the life and works of the prophet of the New Jerusalem. Mr. White does not appear to have formed for himself any definite theory with regard to Swedenborg's pretensions, but is apt, after having told something remarkable of him, to break out into a sort of Carlylian foam of words, which, however, when it has subsided, leaves matters much as they were. Perhaps his book is none the worse for the absence of a special theory, as we get a fair and unbiased selection from Swedenborg's conversation and writings, and a candid account of the events of his life. At the same time it will obviously be necessary, sooner or later, that the world come to a definite conclusion with regard to his character and pretensions. If man can attain to a gift of seership, and has in him the faculty of becoming what Swedenborg claimed to be, it is surely time that some exact investigation should be made of the nature of the faculty, and that he should set himself diligently to work to discover the track of so remarkable a development.Google Scholar

∗ Wilkinson's, Garth Dr. Biography of Swedenborg, p. 27.Google Scholar

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