not only enabled him to outstrip his contemporaries in the sciences in general, but to discover other particulars in the relationship subsisting between the three kingdoms of nature, and between the parts of each kingdom separately, so as to invent a new doctrine, which he entitled the Doctrine of Series and Degrees*; and still more, to introduce into the world the long lost Science of Correspondences, the first sketches of which occur in the last of his philosophical works. Scarcely bad he arrived at the threshold of this Science of Correspondence, or of the Analogy between natural things and spiritual, to which, doubtless, he was conducted by the secret leadings of the Lord, but which he never could have perfected had he not been admitted to an open communication with the spiritual world, than he was chosen as the fittest instrument for communicating to man such knowledges and truths as were suited to his newly improved and enlarged mental condition: such as declare and make manifest the unity of God, the trinity existing in that unity, and the Divine Person in which this trinity subsists. These being the fundamentals of all knowledge and of all truth, the very soul of all theology and of all science; and this same individual having thus been admitted into the holy of holies, the inmost sanctuary of the temple, as it were; he could thenceforth enjoy the liberty of examining its various chambers and courts, and so bring down to his fellow-men instruction of the most important kind; or the doctrines of heaven itself, as deduced from the Holy Word seen under divine illumination;-doctrines, pure and uncontaminated, because free from the perversions, erroneous interpretations and vain traditions of men;-doctrines imperishable, immutable, and incontrovertible. To all of our readers I am sure it has appeared most evident and most undeniable, that the doctrines of the New Church are worthy of their high origin, consistent with right reason, and such as could only be communicated through the instrumentality of an individual duly qualified for the purpose. Evidence of this kind, of the author's authority, and claims upon our attention, amply sufficient for every mind, even though it might be gifted but with a small proportion of the love of truth,—could easily be produced: but we have evidence of another kind also, which may * Delivered in his Introduction to Rational Psychology, a translation of which is commenced in our present number. No. VIII.-VOL. I. 4 interest your readers (though not increase their conviction, for this is impossible);-evidence which demonstrates how eminently Swedenborg was prepared for the high commission which he received, and which is calculated to lead those whose minds are inaccessible, in the first instance, by purely theological considerations, to listen with respect to the still sublimer truths, which afterwards, by virtue of that commission, he was made the instrument of promulgating to mankind. The evidence to which I allude is that which is afforded us in his philosophical works: wherefore it is my design, in these disquisitions, to select certain parts of these works, and certain views therein contained, and to adapt them as much as possible to the general reader, by giving familiar illustrations, and plain confirmations, of the truth of the doctrines he delivers on the various subjects and departments of nature; that it may be seen that his philosophy bears the mark and stamp of truth, and is capable of illustrating and corroborating much of what he has advanced in his theological writings. I wish it to be understood, however, that I do not mean to confine myself to the systematic order in which the author himself has treated the various subjects of science; but merely to select some doctrine in particular, in one department of science or another, which involves much that is inexplicable by the present mode of reasoning, or which gives occasion for different, nay for opposite opinions, among mankind. J. S. ON THE MOVING POWERS OF NATURE. IN the work entitled, the Economy of the Animal Kingdom, printed anno 1740, where treating of the arteries, veins, and circulation of the blood, our author enters into a short disquisition on the different kinds of motion of which the substances of the world are susceptible, and to which by their formation they are adapted; wherefore, in conformity with our plan, we have selected this highly interesting topic as the first to engage our attention; because being of so general a nature, and consequently applicable to innumerable particulars, it will, we trust, prove eminently serviceable, not only in assisting us to form just ideas con cerning the influence of the various substances of nature upon, and their mutual relationships with, each other, but also concerning the limits of these influences and relationships, and their derivative existence from, and momentary dependance on, an active and living force, which though it be inherent in nature and apparently a part of it, belongs nevertheless to a world differing as much from this, as what is active and living differs from what is passive and dead. In all motion there is present conatus or effort, for this is the moving power of nature; in like manner as, in all voluntary action, will is present; for will is truly an effort of the human mind towards action. This conatus or effort is essential to motion, the latter ceasing when the former ceases; but conatus may exist without motion, in the same way as will may without action. These things we have premised as axioms, to the truth of which the mind readily assents, that we may discern, how, throughout all nature, or wheresoever nature has the appearance of being active, or, is, in reality, in motion, all its activity, and all its motion, have inherent therein conatus or effort, as the origin, the essence, and the cause, of its action or motions, whether these are manifested in the revolutions of the earth and the planets round the sun, or round their own axis,—or in the subordinate and more particular substances and elements which enter into their composi tion. Seeing then that for the existence and continuation of motion, an active force or conatus is indispensable, we have next to inquire into the kinds of motion which this active force produces and maintains in nature. And the result of the inquiry is, that as all the substances of the world are the subjects of motion, being necessarily formed in motion, according to motion, and for motion; so the kinds of motion into which this constantly acting force is determined, depend upon the nature and kind of substances which are the subjects of motion; and, that as the substances of the world owe their form as well as their motion to this active force, so to the same cause is to be attributed their susceptibility or capability of manifesting three species or kinds of motion in general, to which, as to so many general principles, all the motions which can occur in nature and in her three kingdoms are referrible, and in which they are involved. Thus the substances of the world are the subjects, or are susceptible, if we may be allowed the expression, of, first, a LOCAL or TRANSLATORY motion, which consists in a translation of any given volume or mass from one place to another, or from one point of space to another; secondly, of an UNDULATORY or MODIFICATORY motion, consisting in a propagation of any local motion, in whatever way produced, from one point of space to a distant, nay to another most remote point of space, without any accompanying translation of the same volume or mass on which the local motion was at first impressed: and thirdly, of an AXILARY or CENTRAL motion, consisting in a revolution of any volume or mass round its own axis or centre. The first kind of motion is treated of and illustrated in many of the higher departments of science, more especially in the mathematical; a branch of science of wide spreading extent indeed; being distinguished into pure and speculative, which consider quantity abstractedly; and into mixed, which treat of magnitude as subsisting in material bodies. When the mind is furnished with these preliminary knowledges as so many fundamental principles or elements, it is enabled by their meaus to make extensive excursions into the field of nature, and, out of midnight darkuess, to bring the otherwise invisible planetary world, and even the suns of other planetary systems, to our knowledge; the particulars of which knowledge, when arranged into a due form and system, constitute the soul-elevating science of astronomy; wherein the motions, magnitudes, distances, and relative connections of the bodies which exist in the universe of nature, are described and explained. And not only is astronomy to be regarded as a science which owes its perfection to the mathematics, but there are many others also which are equally dependent upon them, though we do not think it necessary either to enumerate or describe them: suffice it to say, that they all regard motion, or have respect to that kind of motion more particularly, which we have called local or translatory. The laws of this kind of motion are the results of the modifications induced by the varying nature and ever varying circumstances of the substances themselves which are the subjects of motion. To illustrate this position, we may adduce the axiom, that were a moving body to meet with no resistance, it would move on uniformly for ever without change of velocity: but since matter is, of itself, inert and motionless, and is surrounded by matter under some form or state, and possessing, in a greater or less degree, according to its nature, a like property of inertness; we can perceive that the velocity with which a body moves depends upon the degree of impulse given to it, upon the nature of the medium through which it has to move, upon the state of that medium as to rarity or density, and upon many other circumstances; which compel the learned in mathematics and mechanics to qualify the axioms of their science, and thus tacitly to acknowledge, that the laws of motion, as this motion is manifested in bodies, are, in fact, no other than consequences of its modification by the body in motion itself, and by the peculiar circumstances under which it is placed. For the present we will only add, what will prove of no little importance towards a right understanding of the peculiar fitness and relationship, as well as the interdependance, subordination, and co-ordination, subsisting in all mundane things; namely, that all natural substances of whatever order or degree, whether existing in the form of suns, atmospheres, or globes, are of themselves inert, motionless, and passive, and that from this inertness and passivity, influenced as it is by what is living and active, results that equilibrium, whereon the preservation and continuation of all things depend. For it must be most evident, that these, as substances, are all subordinated and co-ordinated for this very purpose: the primary active force acting from an intelligence, which, though intent upon ends and final purposes, nevertheless fails not to establish the intermediate steps, as so many essential and integral parts of the vast whole; because upon the fit arrangement and permanence of these parts, depends the accomplishment and completion of the work intended. Howbeit, the sun, as the highest created natural substance, is only the highest, from being more eminently receptive of a truly active force, or from deriving therefrom, in the most eminent degree, all its activity and all its power, whereby, in relation to what is inferior to it, it becomes active, and so capable of communicating to this latter of its activity, and this again, in like manner, to substances inferior to it; till we behold all nature, or the great globes themselves, making their progressions and vast excursions through the regions of space, as though they were free from control and indifferent to any directing hand. But as is the instrument in the hand of the artificer, so is the world and all things therein in the hand of HIM, who is the Beginning and Ending of all action! the Source and the Ter |
