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ted from the centre of its path. The rotation energy of the central
body is thus changed into potential energy in the planet. Thus the
planet’s time of revolution is increased. In the same way the moon
has been lifted up from its central body the earth, whose speed of
rotation has thus been decreased, so that the length of a day has much
increased. The tides have therefore had the double influence of
lengthen-ing the day as well as the year.
These two statements are found to be already strongly advanced by
Swedenborg, altliough he did not know that the influence of the tides
could be adduced as a cause.
Between the times when Descartes and Swedenborg appeared upon
the scene falls the period in which Newton made his remarkable
disco-very of the universal gravitation (1686). This led to the admission that space
is empty, since it does not offer any resistance to the movements of the
planets and moons. Another consequence was this, that it is now
generally supposed that bodies act upon each other at a distance by gravity.
This conclusion, however, was something so antagonistic to the
concep-tions of the time as inherited from the old philosophers, tbat Newton
himself sharply expressed his opposition to it. This no doubt occasioned
that Newton’s views, notwithstanding their surpassing advantages, were
for a long time unable to make themselves valid outside of England, to
Voltaire being due the honor of having obtained for tliem an entrance
into France and on the continent as a wdiole (1730). It is rather likely
that also Swedenborg was for the above mentioned reason deterred from
employing Newton’s law as the basis for his cosmological reflections.
This was reserved for the great scientist Buffon (the well-matched rival
of Linnaeus).
Kant’s attempts, however, made after those of Buffon, show far
greater kinship witli Swedenborg’s. Kant’s attempt was finally succeeded
by Laplace’s celebrated nebular hypothesis, in its turn also suffering
from essential defects which later times have attempted to remedy.
There is also another cosmological speculation in Swedenborg’s work
which is of importance. The Pythagoreans of antiquity taught that the
expanse of heaven has a similar extension in all directions and
conse-quently is spherical. The middle point of the sphere is occupied by the
central fire, an hypothetical heavenly body, in many respects
correspon-ding to the sun, which also later replaced the central fire as the middle
point of the world. Notwithstanding that this view of the sun’s central
position was the prevailing one, and is for example accepted by
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