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THE VISIONS OF EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
By Scaife, Hazel Lewis, 1872-1939
IN mid April of the memorable year 1745,
two men, hastening through a busy Lon-
don thoroughfare, paused for a moment to
follow with their eyes a third, whom they had
greeted but who had passed without so much
as a glance in their direction. The face of
one betrayed chagrin; but the other smiled
amusedly.
"You must not mind, dear fellow," said
he; "that is only Swedenborg's way, as you
will discover when you know him better.
His feet are on the earth; but for the moment
his mind is in the clouds, pondering some
solution to the wonderful problems he has
set himself, marvelous man that he is."
"Yet," objected the other, "he seems such
a thorough man of the world, so finely dressed,
so courtly as a rule in speech and manner."
"He is a man of the world, a true cosmo-
politan," was the quick response. "I war-
rant few are so widely and so favorably known.
He is as much at home in London, Paris,
Berlin, Dresden, Amsterdam, or Copenhagen
as in his native city of Stockholm. Kings and
Queens, grand dames and gallant wits, states-
men and soldiers, scientists and philosophers,
find pleasure in his society. He can meet all
on their own ground, and to all he has some-
thing fresh and interesting to say. But he is
nevertheless, and above everything else, a
dreamer."
"A dreamer?"
"Aye. They tell me that he will not rest
content until he has found the seat of the soul
in man. Up through mathematics, mechanics,
mineralogy, astronomy, chemistry, even phys-
iology, has he gone, mastering every science,
in turn, until he is now perhaps the most
'* learned man in Europe. But his learning
satisfies him not a whit, since the soul still
eludes him, and eludes him, mark you,
despite month upon month of toil in the dis-
secting room. If the study of anatomy fail
him, I know not where he will next turn. For
my part, I fancy he need not look beyond
the stomach. The wonder is that his own
stomach has not given him the clue ere this;
for, metaphysician though he be, he enjoys
the good things of earth. Let me tell you a
story "
Thus, chatting and laughing, the friends
continued on their way, every step taking
them farther from the unwitting subject of
their words. He, for his part, absorbed in
thought, pressed steadily forward to his desti-
nation, a quiet inn in a sequestered quarter
of the city. The familiar sounds of eighteenth-
century London the bawling of appren-
tices shouting their masters' wares, the crying
of fishwives, the quarreling of drunkards, the
barking of curs, the bellowing of cattle on
their way to market and slaughter house
broke unheeded about him.
He was, as the gossip had put it, in the
clouds, intent on the riddles his learning had
rendered only the more complex, riddles
having to do with the nature of the universe
and with man's place in the universe. Nor
did he rouse himself from his meditations
until the door of the inn had closed behind
him and he found himself in its common
room. Then he became the Emanuel Sweden-
borg of benignity, geniality, and courtesy, the
Swedenborg whom all men loved.
"I am going to my room," said he to the
innkeeper, in charming, broken English, "and
I wish to be served there. I find I am very
hungry; so see that you spare not."
While he is standing at the window, waiting
for his dinner, and gazing abstractedly into
the ill-paved, muddy street illumined by a
transitory gleam of April sunshine, let us try
to gain a closer view of him than that afforded
by the brief account of his unrecognized
acquaintance. The attempt will be worth
while; for at this very moment he has, all
unconsciously, reached the great crisis of his
life, and is about to leave behind him the
achievements of his earlier years, setting him-
self instead to tasks of a very different nature.
We see him, then, a man nearing the age of
sixty, of rather more than average height,
smooth shaven, bewigged, bespectacled, and
scrupulously dressed according to the fashion
of the day. Time in its passing has dealt
gently with him. There is no stoop to his
shoulders, no tremor in the fingers that play
restlessly on the window-pane. Not a wrinkle
mars the placid features.
Well may he feel at peace with the world.
His whole career has been a steady progress,
his record that of one who has attempted
many things and failed in few. Before he
was twenty-one his learning had gained for
him a doctorate in philosophy. Then, en-
thusiastic, open-minded, and open-eyed, he
had hurried abroad, to pursue in England, Hol-
land, France, and Germany his chosen studies
of mathematics, mechanics, and astronomy.
Returning to Sweden to assume the duties of
assessor of mines, he speedily proved that he
was no mere theorizer, his inventive genius
enabling the warlike Charles XII. to trans-
port overland galleys and sloops for the siege
of Frederikshald, sea passage being barred
by hostile fleets. Ennobled for this feat,
he plunged with ardor into the complicated
problems of statecraft, problems rendered the
more difficult by the economic distress in
which Charles's wars had involved his King-
dom. Here again he attained distinction.
Yet always the problems of science and
philosophy claimed his chief devotion. From
the study of stars and minerals he passed to
the contemplation of other marvels of nature
as revealed in man himself. And now behold
him turned chemist, anatomist, physiologist,
and psychologist, and repeating in these fields
of research his former triumphs. Still, in-
domitable man, he refused to stop. He would
press on, far beyond the confines of what his
generation held to be the knowable. "The
end of the senses," to quote his own words,
"is that God may be seen." He would peer
into the innermost recesses of man's being, to
discern the soul of man, mayhap to discern
God himself.
But, if he were scientist and metaphysician,
he was also human, and that pleasant April
afternoon the humanity in him bulked large
when he finally turned from the window and
took his seat at the bountifully heaped table.
He was, as he had told the innkeeper, very
hungry, and he ate with a zest that abundantly
confirmed his statement. How pleasant the
odors from this dish and that how agreeable
the flavor of everything! Surely he had never
enjoyed meal more, and surely he was no
longer "in the clouds"; but was instead recall-
ing pleasant reminiscences of his doings in one
and another of the gay capitals of Europe!
There would be not a little to bring a twinkle
of delight to his beaming eyes, not a little to
soften his scholastic lips into a gentle smile.
And so, in solitary state, he ate and drank,
with nothing to warn him of the impending
and momentous change that was to shape
anew his career and his view-point.
Conceive his astonishment, therefore, when,
his dinner still unfinished, he felt a strange
languor creeping over him and a mysterious
obscurity dimming his eyes. Conceive, further,
his horror at sight of the floor about him
covered with frogs and toads and snakes and
creeping things. And picture, finally, his
amazement when, the darkness that enveloped
him suddenly clearing, he beheld a man sit-
ting in the far corner of the room and eying
him, as it seemed, reproachfully, even dis-
dainfully.
In vain, he essayed to rise, to lift his hand,
to speak. Invisible bonds held him in his
chair, an unseen power kept him mute.
For an instant he fancied that he must be
dreaming; but the noises from outdoors and
the sight of the table and food before him
brought conviction that he was in full posses-
sion of his senses. Now his visitor spoke,
and spoke only four words, which astonished
no less than alarmed him. "Eat not so
much." Only this then utter silence.
Again the enveloping darkness frogs,
toads, snakes, faded in its depths and with
returning light Swedenborg was once more
alone in the room.
Small wonder that the remaining hours of
the day were spent in fruitless cogitation of
this weird and disagreeable experience which
far transcended metaphysician's normal ken.
Nor is it surprising to find him naively ad-
mitting that "this unexpected event hastened
my return home." Imagination can easily
round out the picture, the rising in terror,
the overturning of the chair, the seizing of
cocked hat and gold-headed cane, the few
explanatory words to the astonished inn-
keeper, the hurried departure, and the pro-
gress, perchance at a more rapid gait than
usual, to the sleeping quarters in another
section of the town. Arrived there, safe in
the refuge of his commodious bed -room, sage
argument would follow in the effort to attain
persuasion that the terrifying vision had been
but "the effect of accidental causes." Be
sure, though, that our philosopher, dreading
a return of the specter if he permitted food
to pass his lips, would go hungry to bed that
night.
That night more visions. To the wake-
ful, restless, perturbed Swedenborg the same
figure appeared, this time without snakes or
frogs or toads, and not in darkness, but in the
midst of a great white light that filled the bed
chamber with a wonderful radiance. Then
a voice spoke:
"I am God the Lord, the Creator and
Redeemer of the world. I have chosen thee
to lay before men the spiritual sense of the
Holy Word. I will teach thee what thou art
to write."
Slowly the light faded, the figure dis-
appeared. And now the astounded philoso-
pher, his amazement growing with each
passing moment, found himself transported as
it seemed to another world, the world of the
dead. Men and women of his acquaintance
greeted him as they had been wont to do when
on earth, pressed about him, eagerly ques-
tioned him. Their faces still wore the familiar
expressions of kindliness, anxiety, sincerity,
ill will, as the case might be. In every way
they appeared to be still numbered among the
living. They were clad in the clothes they
had been accustomed to wear, they ate and
drank, they lived in houses and towns. The
philosophers among them continued to dispute,
the clergy to admonish, the authors to write.
But, his perception enlarging, Swedenborg
presently discovered that this was in reality
only an intermediate state of existence; that
beyond it at the one end was heaven and at
the other hell, to one or the other of which
the dead ultimately gravitated according to
their desires and conduct. For, as he was to
learn later, the spiritual world was a world
of law and order fully as much as was the
natural world. Men were free to do as they
chose; but they must bear the consequences.
If they were evil-minded, it would be their
wish to consort with those of like mind, and
in time they must pass to the abode of the
wicked; if pure-minded, they would seek out
kindred spirits, and, when finally purged of
the dross of earth, be translated to the realm
of bliss. To heaven, then, voyaged Sweden-
borg, on a journey of discovery; and to hell
likewise. What he saw he has set down in
many bulky volumes, than which philosopher
has written none more strange.*
With the return of daylight it might seem
that he would be prompt to dismiss all memory
of these peculiar experiences as fantasies of
sleep. But he was satisfied that he had not
slept; that on the contrary he had been pre-
ternaturally conscious throughout the long,
eventful night. In solemn retrospect he re-
traced his past career. He remembered that
for some years he had had symbolic dreams
and symbolic hallucinations as of a golden
key, a tongue of flame, and voices which
had at the time baffled his understanding, but
which he now interpreted as premonitory
warnings that God had set him apart for a
great mission. He remembered too that when
still a child his mind had been engrossed by
thoughts of God, and that in talking with his
parents he had uttered words which caused
them to declare that the angels spoke through
his mouth. Remembering all these things,
he could no longer doubt that Divinity had
actually visited him in his humble London
boarding house, and he made up his mind
that he must bestir himself to carry out the
divine command of expounding to his fellow
men the hidden meaning of Holy Writ.
Forthwith, being still fired with the true
scientist's passion for original research, he
set himself to the task of learning Hebrew.
He was, it will be remembered, approaching
sixty, an age when the acquisition of a new
language is exceedingly difficult and rare.
Yet such progress did he make that within a
very few months he was writing notes in ex-
planation of the book of Genesis. And thus
he continued not for months but years,
patiently traversing the entire Bible, and at
the same time carefully committing to paper
everything "seen and heard" in the spiritual
world; for his London excursion beyond the
borderland which separates the here from the
hereafter had been only the first of similar
journeys taken not merely by night but in
broad daylight. To use his own phraseology:
"The Lord opened daily, very often, my
bodily eyes; so that in the middle of the day
I could see into the other world, and in a state
of perfect wakefulness converse with angels
and spirits."
His increasing absorption absent-
mindedness, his friends would call it his
habit of falling into trances, and his claim to
interworld communication, could not fail to
excite the surprise of all who had known
him as scientist and philosopher. But these
vagaries, as people deemed them, met the
greater toleration because of the evident fact
that they did not dim his intellectual powers
and did not interfere with his activities in
behalf of the public good. True, in 1747 he
resigned his office of assessor of mines in
order to have more leisure to prosecute his
adventures into the unknown; but as a mem-
ber of the Swedish Diet he continued to play
a prominent part in the affairs of the King-
dom, giving long and profound study to the
critical problems of administration, economics,
and finance with which the nation's leaders
were confronted during the third quarter of
the century. So that bearing in mind the
further fact that he was no blatant advocate
of his opinions it seems altogether likely
his spiritistic ideas would have gained no
great measure of attention, had it not been
for a series of singular occurrences that took
place between 1759 and 1762.
Toward the end of July in the first of these
years, Swedenborg (whose fondness for travel
ceased only with his death) arrived in Gotten-
burg homeward bound from England, and on
the invitation of a friend decided to break his
journey by spending a few days in that city.
Two hours after his arrival, while attending
a small reception given in his honor, he elec-
trified the company by abruptly declaring
that at that moment a dangerous fire had
broken out at Stockholm, three hundred miles
away, and was spreading rapidly. Becoming
excited, he rushed from the room, to reenter
with the news that the house of one of his
friends was in ashes, and that his own house
was threatened. Anxious moments passed,
while he restlessly paced up and down, in
and out. Then, with a cry of joy, he ex-
claimed, "Thank God the fire is out, the third
door from my house!"
Like wild the tidings spread through
Gottenburg, and the greatest commotion pre-
vailed. Some were inclined to give credence
to Swedenborg's statements; more, who did
not know the man, derided him as a sensation
monger. But all had to wait with what
patience they could, for those were the days
before steam engine and telegraph. Forty-
eight anxious hours passed. Then letters
were received confirming the philosopher's
announcement, and, we are assured, showing
that the fire had taken precisely the path
described by him, and had stopped where he
had indicated.
No peace now for Swedenborg. His home
at Stockholm, with its quaint gambrel roof,
its summer houses, its neat flower beds, its
curious box trees, instantly became a Mecca
for the inquisitive, burning to see the man
who held converse with the dead and was
instructed by the latter in many portentous
secrets. Most of those who gained admission,
and through him sought to be put into touch
with departed friends, received a courteous
but firm refusal, accompanied by the explana-
tion: "God having for wise and good purposes
separated the world of spirits from ours, a
communication is never granted without
cogent reasons." When, however, his visitors
satisfied him that they were imbued with
something more than curiosity, he made an
effort to meet their wishes, and occasionally
with astonishing results.
It was thus in the case of Madam Marte-
ville, widow of the Dutch Ambassador to
Sweden. In 1761, some months after her
husband's death, a goldsmith demanded from
her payment for a silver service the Ambassa-
dor had bought from him. Feeling sure that
the bill had already been paid, she made
search for the receipt, but could find none.
The sum involved was large, and she sought
Swedenborg and asked him to seek her hus-
band in the world of spirits and ascertain
whether the debt had been settled. Three
days later, when she was entertaining some
friends, Swedenborg called, and in the most
matter of fact way stated that he had had a
conversation with Marteville, and had learned
from him that the debt had been canceled
seven months before his death, and that the
receipt would be found in a certain bureau.
"But I have searched all through it," pro-
tested Madam Marteville.
"Ah," was Swedenborg's rejoinder; "but
it has a secret drawer of which you know
nothing."
At once all present hurried to the bureau,
and there, in the private compartment which
he quickly located, lay the missing receipt.
In similar fashion did Swedenborg relate
to the Queen of Sweden, Louisa Ulrica, the
substance of the last interview between her
and her dead brother, the Crown Prince of
Prussia, an interview which had been strictly
private, and the subject of which, she affirmed,
was such that no third person could possibly
have known what passed between them.
More startling still was his declaration to a
merry company at Amsterdam that at that
same hour, in far away Russia, the Emperor
Peter III. was being foully done to death in
prison. Once more time proved that the
spirit seer, as Swedenborg was now popularly
known, had told the truth.
A decade more, and again we meet him in
London, his whole being, at eighty-four,
animated with the same energy and enthu-
siasm that had led him to seek and attain in
his earlier manhood such a vast store of
knowledge. And here, as Christmas drew
near, he found lodging with two old friends,
a wig maker and his wife. But ere Christmas
dawned he lay a helpless victim of that dread
disease paralysis. Not a word, not a move-
ment, for full three weeks.
Then, with returning consciousness, a call
for pen and paper. He would, he muttered
with thickened speech, send a note to inform
a certain John Wesley that the spirits had
made known to him Wesley's desire to meet
him, and that he would be glad to receive a
visit at any time. In reply came word that
the great evangelist had indeed wished to
make the great mystic's acquaintance, and
that after returning from a six months' circuit
he would give himself the pleasure of waiting
upon Swedenborg. "Too late," was the aged
philosopher's comment as the story goes,
"too late; for on the 29th of March I shall
be in the world of spirits never more to
return."
March came and wentf and with it went
his soul on the day predicted, if prediction
there were. They buried him in London, and
there in early season, out of his grave blos-
somed the religion that has preserved his
name, his fame, his doctrines. To the dead
Swedenborg succeeded the living Sweden-
borgianism.
But what shall those of us who are not
Swedenborgians think of the master? Shall
we accept at face value the story of his life as
gathered from the documents left behind him
and as set forth here; and, accepting it, believe
that he was in reality a man set apart by God
and granted the rare favor of insight into that
unknown world to which all of us must some
day go ?
The true explanation, it seems to me, can
be had only when we view Swedenborg in the
light of the marvelous discoveries made dur-
ing the last few years in the field of abnormal
psychology. Beginning in France, and con-
tinuing more recently in the United States
and other countries, investigations have been
set on foot resulting in the solution of many
human problems not unlike the riddle of
Swedenborg, and occasionally far more com-
plicated than that presented in his case. All
these solutions, in the last analysis, rest on
the basic discovery that human personality
is by no means the single indivisible entity
it is commonly supposed to be, but is instead
singularly unstable and singularly complex.
It has been found that under some unusual
stimulus such as an injury, an illness, or
the strain of an intense emotion there may
result a disintegration, or, as it is technically
termed, a dissociation, of personality, giving
rise it may be to hysteria, it may be to hallu-
cinations, it may even be to a complete dis-
appearance of the original personality and its
replacement by a new personality, sometimes
of radically different characteristics.*
It has also been found, by another group
of investigators working principally in Eng-
land, that side by side with the original, the
waking, personality of every-day life, there
coexists a hidden personality possessing facul-
ties far transcending those enjoyed by the
waking personality, but as a rule coming into
play only at moments of crisis, though by
some favored mortals invocable more fre-
quently. To this hidden personality, as dis-
tinguished from the secondary personality of
dissociation, has been given the name of the
subliminal self, and to its operation some
attribute alike the productions of men of
genius and the phenomena of clairvoyance
and thought transference that have puzzled
mankind from time immemorial.
Now, arguing by analogy from the cases
scattered through the writings of Janet, Sidis,
Prince, Myers, Gurney, and many others
whose works the reader may consult for
himself in any good public library, it is
my belief that in Swedenborg we have a
preeminent illustration both of dissociation
and of subliminal action, and that it is
therefore equally unnecessary to stigmatize
him as insane or to adopt the spiritistic hy-
pothesis in explanation of his utterances.
The records show that from his father he in-
herited a tendency to hallucinations, checked
for a time by the nature of his studies, but
fostered as these expanded into pursuit of
the absolute and the infinite. They further
show that for a long time before the London
visions he was in a disturbed state of health,
his nervous system unstrung, his whole being
so unhinged that at times he suffered from
attacks of what was probably hystero-epi-
lepsy.
It seems altogether likely, then, that in Lon-
don the process of dissociation, after this
period of gradual growth, suddenly leaped
into activity. Thereafter his hallucinations,
from being sporadic and vague, became
habitual and definite, his hystero-epileptic
attacks more frequent. But, happily for him,
the dissociation never became complete. He
was left in command of his original personality,
his mental powers continued unabated; and
he was still able to adjust himself to the en-
vironment of the world about him.
But, it may be objected, how explain his
revelations in the matter of the fire at Stock-
holm, the missing receipt, the message to
Queen Ulrica, and the death of Peter III. ?
This brings us to the question of subliminal
action. Swedenborg himself, far in advance
of his generation in this as in much else, ap-
pears to have realized that there was no need
of invoking spirits to account for such transac-
tions. "I need not mention," he once wrote,
"the manifest sympathies acknowledged to
exist in this lower world, and which are too
many to be recounted; so great being the
sympathy and magnetism of man that com-
munication often takes place between those
who are miles apart."
Here, in language that admits of no mis-
interpretation, we see stated the doctrine of
telepathy, which is only now beginning to find
acceptance among scientific men, but which,
as I view it, has been amply demonstrated by
the experiments of recent years and by the
thousands of cases of spontaneous occur-
rence recorded in such publications as the
"Proceedings of the Society for Psychical
Research." And if these experiments and
spontaneous instances prove anything, they
prove that telepathy is distinctively a faculty
of the subliminal self; and that a greater or
less degree of dissociation is essential, not to
the receipt, but to the objective realization,
of telepathic messages. Thus, the entranced
"medium" of modern days extracts from the
depths of his sitter's subconsciousness facts
which the sitter has consciously forgotten,
facts even of which he may never have been
consciously aware, but which have been
transmitted telepathically to his subliminal
self by the subliminal self of some third
person.*
So with Swedenborg. Admitting the au-
thenticity of the afore-mentioned anecdotes
none of which, it is as well to point out,
reaches us supported by first-hand evidence
it is quite unnecessary to appeal to spirits
as his purveyors of knowledge. In every in-
stance telepathy or clairvoyance, which is
after all explicable itself only by telepathy
will suffice. In the Marteville affair, for ex-
ample, it is not unreasonable to assume that
before his death the Ambassador telepathically
told his devoted wife of the existence of the
secret drawer and its contents ; if, indeed, she
had not known and forgotten. It would then
be an exceedingly simple matter for the dis-
sociated Swedenborg to acquire the desired
information from the wife's subconsciousness.
Nor does this reflect on his honesty. Doubt-
less he believed, as he represented, that he
had actually had a conversation with the dead
Marteville, and had learned from him the
whereabouts of the missing receipt. In the
form his dissociation took he could no more
escape such a hallucination than can the
twentieth-century medium avoid the belief
that he is a veritable intermediary between the
visible and the invisible world.
Not that I would put Swedenborg on a par
with the ordinary medium. He was un-
questionably a man of gigantic intellect, and
he was unquestionably inspired, if by inspira-
tion be understood the gift of combining sub-
liminal with supraliminal powers to a degree
granted to few of those whom the world counts
truly great. If his fanciful and fantastic
pictures of life in heaven and hell and in our
neighboring planets welled up from the depths
of his inmost mind, far more did the noble
truths to which he gave expression. It is by
these he should be judged; it is in these, not
in his hallucinations nor in his telepathic ex-
hibitions, that lies the secret of the command-
ing, if not always recognized, influence he
has exercised on the thought of posterity. A
solitary figure? True: but a grand figure,
even in his saddest moment of delusion.
Finish