Academies of science, at home and abroad, were
electing him to membership.
Conspicuous in Swedenborg's thought all along was the premise that
there is a God and the presupposition of that whole element in life
which we call the spiritual. As he pushed his studies into the fields
of physiology and psychology, this premised realm of the spirit became
the express goal of his researches. Some of his most valuable and most
startling discoveries came in these fields. Outstanding are a work on
_The Brain_ and two on the _Animal Kingdom_ (kingdom of the _anima_,
or soul). As his gaze sought the soul, however, in the light in which
he had more and more successfully beheld all his subjects for
fifty-five years, she eluded direct knowledge. He was increasingly
baffled, until a new light broke in on him. Then he was borne along,
in a profound humiliation of his intellectual ambitions, by another
way. For when the new light steadied, he had undergone a personal
religious experience, the rich journals of which he himself never
published. But what was of public concern, his consciousness was
opened into the world of the spirit, so that he could observe its
facts and laws as, for so long, he had observed those of the material
world, and in its own world could receive a revelation of the
doctrines of man's spiritual life.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25