Biography of Swedenborg. 303 



fourth, being ether, and the fifth air, and " in a state of still 

 closer compression, water." Water, he thought, according to 

 the erroneous belief of the time, to have no elasticity, and, 

 therefore, he did not regard it as belonging to the elemental 

 kingdom. He says, " It is purely the first material finite. In 

 a globule of water is contained all that had previously existed 

 from the point downwards, like box within box." With these 

 " points" as materials, it was easy to develope a cosmogony, 

 and show how the sun and the planets were produced, and 

 something like the nebulous theory seems to lurk in the ex- 

 pressions cited by Mr. White. 



A fundamental doctrine of Swedenborg is that " matter is 

 everywhere the same in great as in little." This he applied in 

 all his cosmical and chemical speculations, and also made it 

 the foundation of his theories concerning spiritual worlds, 

 which he conceived to correspond in almost all their facts and 

 conditions with the lower world of matter and mortal life. 



Anatomy and physiology occupied much of Swedenborg' s 

 time, and he thought to find the soul in the finest and most 

 subtle tissues of the body. The red blood he supposed to be 

 divided into a purer blood, and a purest, which he called " spi- 

 rituous fluid," and he described the blood as the most com- 

 plex of all things, and asserted that it contained " salts of every 

 kind, both fixed and volatile, and oils, spirits, and aqueous 

 elements ; in fine, whatever is created and produced by the 

 three kingdoms of the world — the animal, the vegetable, and 

 the mineral." He fancied red blood globules to be composed 

 of white globules, aggregated in sixes round cubes of common 

 salt, and inside the ultimate globules he placed the " animal 

 spirits," imaginary entities generally believed in at that date. 

 From common salt, by truncation of its angles, and various 

 arrangements of its particles, he thought acids and alkalies were 

 formed. 



The animal spirits were in his philosophy the vesture or 

 body of the soul, and the soul itself was " a fluid most abso- 

 lute." Respiration he conceived to be a mode of feeding upon 

 aerial food, in which the lungs sucked ether from the air, and 

 converted it into white blood. 



Looking to Swedenborg's scientific attainments, no one 

 can doubt that he was a man of remarkable talent, knowledge, 

 and ingenuity ; but there is a wide difference ^between an in- 

 ventive man, well stored with the current facts and processes 

 of his day, and a great original thinker and observer in science. 

 Those who claim the latter position for Swedenborg seem to 

 us to exaggerate the merit of his lucky guesses, and.to over- 

 look his palpable blunders and absurdities. Although he 

 professed the doctrine that experience was the basis of know- 



