# Swedenborg, Harbinger of the New Age of the Christian Church/Chapter5

V
CONTINUED STUDY OF THE BODY IN SEARCH OF THE SOUL
What is our quest? A man fitted by birthright and by training of heart and mind to recognize the sign of the Son of Man in the clouds of perverted Scripture, that have darkened human reason and withdrawn the light of faith. And here we have Emanuel Swedenborg of such birthright, with devotion of his life to the advancement of mankind, led through severest mathematical, mechanical, and philosophical reasoning—without as yet any consciousness of special guidance or purpose—to absolute demonstration in his own mind of the necessity and the existence of the Divine Son of Man, to be sought and found by us in the Holy Scriptures. But let us wait. Scientific and philosophic studies are not yet completed. Twelve years more are to be devoted to them before the mission is Divinely signified to him of revealing this Son of Man in His Word.
The Economy of the Animal Kingdom, ​published in 1740, was an attempt to reach a philosophic view of the human organism as the abode and instrument of the soul. Of his method the author says—
"In the experimental knowledge of anatomy our way has been pointed out by men of the greatest and most cultivated talents, such as Eustachius [and nineteen others named], whose discoveries, far from consisting of fallacious, vague, and empty speculations, will forever continue to be of practical use to posterity. Assisted by the studies and elaborate writings of these illustrious men and fortified by their authority, I have resolved to commence and complete my design—that is to say, to open some part of those things which it is generally supposed that nature has involved in obscurity. Here and there I have taken the liberty to throw in the results of my own experience; but this only sparingly, for on deeply considering the matter I deemed it best to make use of the facts supplied by others. Indeed, there are some that seem born for experimental observation and endowed with a sharper insight than others, as if they possessed naturally a finer acumen. . . . There are others again who enjoy ​a natural faculty for contemplating facts already discovered, and eliciting their causes. Both are peculiar gifts and are seldom united in the same person. Besides, I found when intently occupied in exploring the secrets of the human body that as soon as I discovered anything which had not been observed before, I began, seduced probably by self-love, to grow blind to the most acute lucubrations and researches of others, and to originate the whole series of inductive arguments from my particular discovery alone. . . . Nay, when I essayed to form principles from these discoveries, I thought I could detect in various other phenomena much to confirm their truth, although in reality they were fairly susceptible of no construction of the kind. I therefore laid aside my instruments, and restraining my desire for making observations, determined rather to rely on the researches of others than to trust to my own."
After describing as from experience the faculty which some enjoy—who ever more than he?—of confining their attention to one thing and evolving with distinctness all that lies in it, of distributing their thoughts into classes ​seperating mixed topics into appropriate divisions, of skilfully subordinating the series thus divided, and of being never overwhelmed by the multiplicity of things, but continually enlightened more and more, he says of such as enjoy the faculty—
"The fictitious depresses them, the obscure pains them; but they are exhilarated by the truth, and in the presence of everything that is clear they too are clear and serene. When after a long course of reasoning they make a discovery of the truth, straightway there is a cheering light and joyful confirmatory brightness that plays around the sphere of their mind, and a kind of mysterious radiation—I know not whence it proceeds—that darts through some sacred temple in the brain. Thus a sort of rational instinct displays itself, and in a manner gives notice that the soul is called into a state of inward communion, and has returned at that moment into the golden age of its intellectual perfections. The mind that has known this pleasure is wholly carried away in pursuit of it; and in the kindling flame of its love despises in comparison, as external pastimes, all merely corporeal pleasures; and though it recognizes them as means for exciting the animal mind ​and the purer blood, it on no account follows them as ends. Persons of this cast regard the arts and sciences only as aids to wisdom, and learn them as helps to its attainment, not that they may be reputed wise for possessing them. They modestly restrain all tendency to inflated ideas of themselves, knowing that the sciences are an ocean of which they can catch but a few drops. They look on no one with a scornful brow or supercilious air, nor arrogate any praise to themselves. They ascribe all to the Deity, and regard Him as the source from which all true wisdom descends. In the promotion of His glory they place the end and object of their own."
Remarking now how sensual and worldly cares impair this noble faculty, he says, "Nothing super-induces more darkness on the human mind than the interference of its own fancied providence in matters that properly belong to the Divine providence." And then he goes on to say, still as from experience—
"This faculty, however, is chiefly impaired by the thirst for glory and the love of self. I know not what darkness overspreads the rational faculties when the mind begins to swell with pride, ​or when our intuition of objects calls up in the objects themselves the image and glory of our own selfhood. It is like pouring a liquor upon some exquisite wine, which throws it into a froth, sullies its purity, and clouds its translucence. It is as if the animal spirits were stirred into waves, and a tempest drove the grosser blood into insurgent motion, by which the organs of internal sensation or perception becoming swollen, the powers of thought are dulled, and the whole scene of action in their theatre changed. In those who experience these disorderly states, the rational faculty is crippled and brought to a standstill; or rather its movements become retrograde instead of progressive. A limit is put to its operations, which its possessor imagines to be the limit of all human capacity, because he himself is unable to overstep it. He sees little or nothing in the most studied researches of others, but everything—oh, how vain-glorious!—in his own. Nor can he return to correct conceptions until his elated thoughts have subsided to their proper level. 'There are many,' says Seneca, 'who might have attained wisdom, had they not fancied they had attained it already.' The Muses love a tranquil ​mind; and there is nothing but humility, contempt of self, and simple love of truth, that can prevent or remedy the evils we have described.
"But how often does a man labor in vain to divest himself of his own nature! How often, when ignorant or unmindful of the love that creeps upon him, will he betray a partiality to himself and the offspring of his own genius! If an author therefore desires that his studies should give birth to anything of sterling value, let him be advised, when he has committed to paper what he considers to be of particular merit and is fond of frequently perusing, to lay it aside for a while, and after the lapse of months to return to it as to something he had forgotten, and as the production not of himself but of some other writer. Let him repeat this practice three or four times in the year. . . . Should his writings then often raise a blush upon his countenance, should he no longer feel an overweening confidence with regard to the lines which had received the latest polish from his hands, let him be assured that he has made some little progress in wisdom."
At the conclusion of Part First, Swedenborg gives a chapter which he styles An Introduction ​to Rational Psychology, regarding this as the first and last of those sciences which lead to the knowledge of the animal economy. "But whereas the soul," he goes on to say, "lives withdrawn so far within that she cannot be exposed to view until the coverings under which she is hidden are unfolded and removed in order, it hence becomes necessary that we ascend to her by the same steps or degrees and the same ladder by which her nature in the formation of the things of her kingdom descends into her body. By way therefore of an Introduction to Rational Psychology, I will premise the Doctrine of Series and Degrees—a doctrine of which in the preceding chapters I have made such frequent mention, the design of which is to teach the nature of order and its rules as observed and prescribed in the succession of things."
The first chapter of Part Second is devoted to the motion of the brain, the second to the cortical substance of the brain, and the third to the human soul. Confessing the difficulties in the search for the soul and his frequent disappointments, he says—
At length I awoke as from a deep sleep when I discovered that nothing is farther removed from ​the human understanding than what at the same time is really present to it; and that nothing is more present to it than what is universal, prior, and superior, since this enters into every particular and into everything posterior and inferior. What is more omnipresent than the Deity—in whom we live and move and have our being—and yet what is more remote from the sphere of the understanding?
"The more any one is perfected in judgment, and the better he discerns the distinctions of things, the more clearly will he perceive that there is an order in things, that there are degrees of order, and that it is by these alone he can progress, and this step by step from the lowest sphere to the highest, or from the outermost to the innermost. For as often as Nature ascends away from external phenomena, or betakes herself inward, she seems to have separated from us, and to have left us altogether in the dark as to what direction she has taken. We have need therefore of some science to serve as our guide in tracing out her steps, to arrange all things into series, to distinguish these series into degrees, and to contemplate the order of each thing in the order of ​the whole. The science which does this I call the Doctrine of Series and Degrees, or the Doctrine of Order . . . [which] teaches the distinction and relation between things superior and inferior, or prior and posterior. . .
"I am strongly persuaded that the essence and nature of the soul, its influx into the body, and the reciprocal action of the body can never come to demonstration without these doctrines, combined with a knowledge of anatomy, pathology, and psychology; nay, even of physics, and especially of the auras of the world. . . . This and no other is the reason that with diligent study and intense application I have investigated the anatomy of the body, and principally the human, so far as it is known from experience; and that I have followed the anatomy of all its parts, in the same manner as I have here investigated the cortical substance."
The soul itself and a society of souls he finds to be the final purpose of all creation, and then he concludes—
"If there be a society of souls, must not the City of God on the universal earth be the seminary of it? The most universal law of its citizens ​is, that they love their neighbor as themselves, and God more than themselves. All other things are means, and are good in proportion as they lead directly to this end. Now as everything in the universe is created as a means to this end, it follows that the application of the means, and a true regard of the end in the means, are the sole constituents of a citizen [of the Holy City]. The Holy Scripture is the code of rules for obtaining the end by the means.
"These rules are not so dark or obscure as the philosophy of the mind and the love of self and of the world would make them; nor so deep and hidden but that any sincere soul which permits the Spirit of God to govern it may draw them from this pure fountain—pure enough for the use and service of the members of the City of God all over the world—without violating any form of ecclesiastical government. It is foretold that the kingdom of God shall come; that at last the guests shall be assembled at the marriage supper; that the wolf shall lie down with the lamb, the leopard with the kid, the lion with the ox; that the young child shall play with the asp; that the mountain of God shall rise above all other ​mountains, and that the Gentile and the stranger shall come to it to pay their worship."
To quote more from this remarkable work of the Economy of the Animal Kingdom would exceed the proper limits of this small volume. Of the literary merits of the work S. T. Coleridge said—"I remember nothing in Lord Bacon superior, few passages equal, either in depth of thought, or in richness, dignity, and felicity of diction, or in the weightiness of the truths contained." And Dr. Spurgin, formerly President of the Royal College of Physicians in London, pronounced the Part on the Soul " a production unparalleled for excellence in the whole compass of human philosophy."
But with the preparation and printing of the Economy of the Animal Kingdom in 1740 and 1741, Swedenborg's studies in this direction were by no means at an end. Though he returned to his duties in the Royal College in November, 1740, fulfilling these duties anew for two years and a half, he had already prescribed for himself a ​definite series of continued studies, year by year, to be completed in 1747 with that of "The City of God." These studies had been pursued with such diligence that in June, 1743, he petitioned the King and the Royal College for a new leave of absence, that he might go abroad and complete and see through the press a new work of not less than five hundred sheets. Leave having been obtained, Swedenborg repaired to Holland to consult the chief libraries and then to print a portion of what he had prepared, in two quarto volumes of 438 and 486 pages, entitled Regnum Animale—The Animal Kingdom. In his Prologue to the first volume he said—
"Not very long since I published the Economy of the Animal Kingdom . . . and before traversing the whole field in detail, I made a rapid passage to the soul and put forth an essay respecting it. But on considering the matter more deeply, I found that I had directed my course thither both too hastily and too fast—after having explored the blood only and its peculiar organs. I took the step impelled by an ardent desire for knowledge."
Now he proposes to traverse the whole kingdom of the body, hoping that by bending his ​course inward continually he may open all the doors that lead to her and at length by the Divine permission contemplate the soul herself. But he supposes the objection made that "all those things which transcend our present state are matters for faith and not for intellect;" that the intellect should be "contented with this its lot, and not aspire to higher things which, inasmuch as they are sanctuaries and matters of Revelation, exist to faith only. . . . Where there is faith what need is there of demonstration? . . . Faith is above all demonstration because it is above all the philosophy of the human mind." His reply is, "I grant this; nor would I persuade any one who comprehends these high truths by faith, to attempt to comprehend them by his intellect: let him abstain from my books. Whoso believes Revelation implicitly, without consulting the intellect, is the happiest of mortals, the nearest to heaven, and at once a native of both worlds. But these pages of mine are written with a view to those only who never believe anything but what they can receive with the intellect; consequently who boldly invalidate and are fain to deny the existence of all supereminent things, sublimer than themselves— ​as the soul itself, and what follows therefrom; its life, immortality, heaven, etc. . . . Consequently they honor and worship nature, the world, and themselves; in other respects they compare themselves to brutes, and think that they shall die in the same manner as brutes, and their souls exhale and evaporate: thus they rush fearlessly into wickedness. For these persons only I am anxious; and, as I said before, for them I indite and to them I dedicate my work. For when I shall have demonstrated truths themselves by the analytic method, I hope that those debasing shadows or material clouds which darken the sacred temple of the mind will be dispersed; and that thus at last under the favor of God, who is the Sun of Wisdom, an access will be opened and a way laid down to faith. My ardent desire and zeal for this end is what urges and animates me."
In the Second Part he says—
"If we wish to invite real truths, whether natural or moral or spiritual—for they all make common cause by means of correspondence and representation—into the sphere of our rational minds, it is necessary that we extinguish the impure fires of the body and thereby our own ​delusive lights, and submit and allow our minds unmolested by the influences of the body to be illumined with the rays of the spiritual power: then for the first time truths flow in, for they all emanate from that power as their peculiar fountain. Nor when they are present, are there wanting a multitude of signs by which they attest themselves—namely, the varied forms of sweetness and delight attendant upon truth attained, and affecting the mind as the enjoyments that result from the harmonies of external objects affect the lower and sensitive faculties of the body: for as soon as ever a truth shines forth, such a mind exults and rejoices; and this joy is the ground of its first assent, and of its first delighted smile. But the actual confirmation of the truth proceeds from its accordance with numerous reasons, confirmed by experience by means of the sciences, and each point of which accordance receives a similar assent—the mind going onward the while with assiduous attention and pains by the analytic way, or from effects to causes. In addition to these delights there are still more universal signs, as the desire and the passion for attaining truth, and the love of the ​truth attained, not for the sake of our own advantage, but for that of the advantage of human society; and neither for the glory of ourselves or of society, but of the Supreme Divinity alone. This is the only way to truths: other things as means, which are infinite, God Omnipotent provides."
Inquiring then into the ends or purposes of the provision by which it is ordained that man should ascend from lowest and outermost to highest and innermost, he unfolds them comprehensively, concluding with these—"that in this ultimate circle of nature we may receive the wonders of the world, and as we ascend the steps and ladders of intelligence receive still greater wonders, in all their significance and with full vision; and that at length we may comprehend by faith those profound miracles that cannot be comprehended by the intellect; and from all these things, in the deep hush of awe and amazement, venerate and adore the omnipotence and providence of the Supreme Creator; and thus in the contemplation of Him regard as vanity everything that we leave behind us. . . . The last end, which also is the first, is that our minds, at length become ​forms of intelligence and innocence, may constitute a spiritual heaven, a kingdom of God, or a holy society, in which the end of creation may be regarded by God, and by which God may be regarded as the end of ends. From infinite wisdom, added to equal power, and this to equal providence, such perpetual end flows constantly from the first end to the last, and from the last to the first, through the intermediate ends, that declare the glory of the Divinity." To this he adds in a note, " I shall treat of these subjects, by the blessing of God, in the last of my analytic Parts. But as yet we are dwelling in the mere effects of the world, which exhibit the amazing and Divine circle of these ends before the contemplation of our very senses."
Of the high purposes and original method pursued in this treatise on The Animal Kingdom, the following extracts will give a good idea:—
"As the blood is continually making its circle of life, that is to say, is in a constant revolution of birth and death; as it dies in its old age and is regenerated or born anew; and as the veins solicitously gather together the whole of its corporeal part, and the lymphatics of its spirituous ​part, and successively bring it back, refect it with new chyle, and restore it to the pure and youthful blood; and as the kidneys constantly purge it of impurities, and restore its pure parts to the blood, so likewise man, who lives at once in body and spirit while he lives in the blood, must undergo the same fortunes generally, and in the progress of his regeneration must daily do the like. Such a perpetual symbolical representation is there of spiritual life in corporeal life; as likewise a perpetual typical representation of the soul in the body. In this consists the searching of the heart and the reins, which is a thing purely Divine.
"In our Doctrine of Representations and Correspondences, we shall treat of both these symbolical and typical representations, and of the astonishing things which occur, I will not say in the living body only, but throughout nature, and which correspond so entirely to supreme and spiritual things that one would swear that the physical world is purely symbolical of the spiritual world, insomuch that if we choose to express any natural truth in physical and definite vocal terms, and to convert these terms only into the corresponding spiritual terms, we shall by this means elicit a ​spiritual truth or theological dogma, in place of the physical truth or precept; although no mortal would have predicted that anything of the kind could possibly arise by bare literal transposition, inasmuch as the one precept, considered separately from the other, appears to have absolutely no relation to it.
"I intend hereafter to communicate a number of examples of such correspondences, together with a vocabulary containing the terms of spiritual things, as well as of the physical things for which they are to be substituted. This symbolism pervades the living body; and I have chosen simply to indicate it here, for the purpose of pointing out the spiritual meaning of searching the reins."
In addition to what Swedenborg himself published of The Animal Kingdom, several parts have been recently published in Germany and England, including three thick octavo volumes on "The Brain, Considered Anatomically, Physiologically, and Philosophically." That so much labor was given to the study of the brain was doubtless because the author found in it the seat ​of the soul, to knowledge of which he was aspiring. In the Animal Kingdom he says—
"The soul is properly the universal essence of its body. The soul is the only thing substantial and essential in its body. From it are derived and born all the substances and essences which are called composite and corporeal. For what can truly be unless it be from a thing prior, more simple, and more unique, which is the beginning of the rest? That which gives to others being and existence must itself be. It cannot be produced from modes, accidents, and qualities without a subject and form, and consequently without a real essence and substance. The soul also is peculiar or individual, and there is not one universal soul for all; so that the soul of one cannot belong to the body of another; for—which is to be demonstrated—the very form of the body is the result of its essential determination, or the body itself represents the soul as it were in an image. . . . The higher or highest universal essence is the soul, the lower is the animal spirit, and the third the blood. The highest essence imparts being, the power of acting and life, to the lower, and this imparts the same in like manner to ​the lowest; the lowest, consequently, exists and subsists from the first by means of the middle. . . . The determinations of the highest universal essence of the bodily system are those fibres which are the simplest of all, and which are like rays of the soul, and the first designations of forms. The determinations of the lower universal essence are those fibres which are derived from the most simple; but those of the lowest are the arterial and venous vessels. As the essences, so also the determinations are in turn derived from one another, the higher imparting being to the lower. From these determinations, or from these determining essences, all the organic viscera, and consequently the whole bodily system, is woven and formed."
"It is the cerebrum through which the intercourse between the soul and the body is established; for it is as it were the link and the uniting medium. From what follows it will appear that the soul is in the cerebrum as it were in its heaven and Olympus, though it is essentially everywhere and present in every individual part. In the cerebrum, however, is formed as it were its court and palace chamber, from which it looks around on ​all things belonging to it, and determines them into act in agreement with its intuition."
The thoroughness of this study of the brain with the intent to find the residence of the soul and the mode of its control over the body led to some remarkable discoveries, of which the learned world is now first becoming aware. Among these it is surprising to find the determination of the glandules of the cortical substance of the cerebrum, as the seat of the soul's sensation and control of the body. Even more surprising is Swedenborg's first general localization of the different functions of the several parts of the cerebrum. Many more observations and deductions are contained in these wonderful studies—published and unpublished—from which there is doubtless still much for students to learn. Dr. Max Newburger of Vienna in a recent essay says—
"The great physiological system set forth by Swedenborg in his two works—Œconomia Regni Animalis and Regnum Animale—contains such a number of successful anticipations of modern science that we do not wonder when we see how feebly his contemporaries grasped the true ​greatness of this Aristotle of the North. All the more strange is it, however, that the spirit of medical investigation elsewhere so lively in these times should have left untilled a field so rich as this in possibilities."
In an address to the Congress of Anatomists assembled at Heidelberg, May 29, 1903, its President, Prof. Dr. Gustaf Retzius, after describing some of Swedenborg's contributions to a knowledge of the anatomy and physiology of the brain, concludes—
"Emanuel Swedenborg, therefore, according to the standpoint of his time, not only had a thorough knowledge of the construction of the brain, but had also gone far ahead of his contemporaries in fundamental questions. The question arises—how was all this possible? The answer can hardly be other than that Swedenborg was not only a learned anatomist and a sharp-sighted observer, but also in many respects an unprejudiced, acute, and deep anatomical thinker. He towers in the history of the study of the brain as a unique, wonderful, phenomenal spirit—as an ideal seeker for truth, who advanced step by step to ever ​higher problems. One may more easily understand his life and labors when one places his achievements in Anatomy and Physiology in juxtaposition with those in Geology, Mechanics, Cosmogony, and Physics. With this as a background his whole endeavor becomes somewhat more intelligible. He sought to find the one principle of the universe and of life in the whole. He thought that he had found this original principle in the motion, the tremulation of the first particles. This fundamental view of things led him always further to an almost all-sided investigation and to a view of the fabric of Creation wonderfully deep for his time. With this view as a guide he gained knowledge and created theories which could be acknowledged and appreciated only in our own age."
Another section of the manuscript left by Swedenborg as a part of The Animal Kingdom, continues the study of the soul under the title of Rational Psychology:—
"All souls are purely spiritual forms. Thus all minds and their loves are purely spiritual, whether they are good or evil; for a spirit whether good or evil is still purely spirit, or purely mind, and ​has purely spiritual—that is, universal—loves, in which are contained the principles of lower and purely natural loves. A good angel, as also an evil angel or devil, is purely spirit; and the loves of each are purely spiritual, but with the difference that whatever a good spirit loves, the evil spirit hates and loves its opposite.
"The first and supreme love of the spirit or soul, and the most universal, is the love of Being above itself, from which it has drawn and continually draws its essence; in which, through which, and on account of which it is and lives. This love is the first of all, because nothing can exist and subsist from itself except God, who exists in Himself, and alone is He who is. Because the soul feels this in itself, that supreme love is also inborn in it, and thus is the very Divine love within us. There is also given a love directly opposite to this, though also spiritual and supreme, which is hatred of any power or being above itself. This love is called diabolical; from it is known what the quality of good love is, and from the good what the quality of evil love is.
"The Divine providence takes especial care that individuals shall be distinct one from ​another, since it is the very end of creation that a most perfect society of souls may exist. . . . As then no soul is absolutely like another, but some difference or diversity of state exists between all, this has not obtained merely for the sake of distinguishing one from another, but to the end that the most perfect form of society might exist from the variety. And in such a form there must needs be not only a difference among all, but such a difference or variety as that all the individuals may come together in harmony, so as to form together a society in which nothing shall be wanting that is not found in some one. . . . This harmonic variety, however, does not consist in the outward variety of souls, but in their spiritual variety, of love toward God and toward their neighbor; for the state of the soul concerns only its spiritual state, how it may be nearest to its God. When any shade of variety is wanting, some place in heaven may be said to be as yet vacant; so that all the differences, or varieties, are to be filled up before the form can exist in full perfection.
"But whether there are to be many societies and as it were many heavens of which the ​universal society will consist, which is called the kingdom of God, we seem also able to conclude; for every variety, even spiritual, involves an order, with subordination and coordination. . . . For when the form of rule is most perfect, it is of necessity that all societies should produce a general harmony together, as the individual members produce a particular harmony in each society.
"This is called in heaven the kingdom of God, but on earth the seminary of that kingdom, the very city of God, which is not joined to any certain religion or church, but is distributed through the whole world; for God elects His members out of all, that is, of those who had actually loved God above themselves and their neighbors as themselves. For this is the law of all laws: in this culminate all laws, Divine and natural; all the rest are but means leading to this.
"Such a society cannot exist without its Head or Prince; that is to say, without Him who has been man, without blame and without offence, victor over all affections of the mind, virtue itself and piety itself, and the love of God above one's self, and the love of the companion and neighbor, and thus Divinity in Himself—in whom the ​whole society should be represented, and through whom the members of the society might come to His will. Without such a king of souls, the society might be gathered and exist in vain. This also follows necessarily from the conceded form of rule, from the difference of state of each member, and from the approach to God through love. For that form must be determined by the purer of every degree, consequently by the purest, who has been without sin, that is, by our Saviour and Preserver, Jesus Christ, in whom alone we can by faith and love draw near to the Divine throne."
We have followed Swedenborg in his search for the life and soul of the universe through the geometry and physics of the inanimate world, then through the living organism of the human body, the soul's home and body-servant, and lastly in the soul's reception of life from the Creator, in its duty to this Source of its life, and in its dependence on God-man, the Son of God, as the means of conjunction with the Divine Itself. The marked feature in all this study, that which gives its charm and inspiration, is its never-failing recognition of life, life from the Divine Life, as the cause, the essence, the form, and the activity of ​each minutest entity—the living activity being manifested in inconceivably minute and rapid vibrations, or tremulations—a theory wonderfully verified in our own day, though our physicists do not yet connect the life of matter with its Source.
Yet a notable recognition of similar import in our day is that of our greatest mathematician, Professor Benjamin Pierce, who stated in the introduction to his Analytic Mechanics—
"1. Motion is an essential element of all physical phenomena; and its introduction into the universe of matter was necessarily the preliminary act of creation. The earth must have remained forever 'without form, and void,' and eternal darkness must have been upon the face of the deep, if the spirit of God had not first 'moved upon the face of the waters.'
"2. Motion appears to be the simplest manifestation of power, and the idea of force seems to be primitively derived from the conscious effort which is required to produce motion. Force may, then, be regarded as having a spiritual origin, and when it is imparted to the physical world, motion is its usual form of mechanical exhibition.
​"3. Matter is purely inert. It is susceptive of receiving and containing any amount of mechanical force which may be communicated to it, but cannot originate new force, or in any way transform the force which it has received."
* ↑ Literary Remains, May 27, 1827.
* ↑ Wisdom, Intelligence, and Science the True Characteristics of Emanuel Swedenborg.
* ↑ James Spiers: London, 1882, 1887.
* ↑ The New Philosophy, October, 1903.