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three years, I cannot yet get into my head; althougli even our
atmos-phere itself seems to indicate a change in the temperature in respect to
summer and winter, and also in respect to the unusual nortli winds we
now have. With regard to the nature of motions, if an examination is
made of the degree in which they eitlier increase or decrease, tliey are
no doubt in duplicate ratio, and it appears that toward the end motion
de-creases more in one moment than before in 20; for instance, if anything
be whirled around, the revolution towards the end diminishes more in
one moment, than it did before in 20; yet this cannot, it would seem,
be applied to our planet. I should therefore like very much to obtain
more exact knowledge about this matter.»
We see from the above, and from many other places in
Sweden-borg’s early works and letters, that although a student of Newtons
»Principia», and a great admirer of his discoveries, Swedenborg did
not go further and also accept Newton’s doctrine of the vacuum. In
agreement with the older Cartesian pliilosophy, Swedenborg found vortices
of atmospheric particles necessary, and all his later explanations of the
planetary and lunar motions involve the vortical theory.
In still another direction Swedenborg is in agreement with Descartes
rather than with Newton. We refer to the general conceptions of the
origin, composition and interrelations of substantial and material particles.
While Descartes derives his series of particles from the Infinite, and
Newton also holds that God in the beginning created small, impenetrable
particles, by whose composition everything was formed, they differ in
that Descartes accepts no creation of particles in a vacuum, while for
Newton the vacuum is a postulate, even if he later on began to
specu-late as to the necessity of a communicating ether. In his Principia
Philosophiae Descartes expressly opposes the idea of a vacuum, but
Newton was possibly led to construct his impossible corpuscular theory of
light and colors just because he did accept a vacuum in his earlier work
the Principia, 1686, the Opticks not appearing until many years later,
in 1704.
Since the fundamental differences between those philosophies which
accept the principle of discrete spatial substances without postulating a
vacuum, and those which suppose that atoms occupying space are
con-tained and move in an infinite vacuum of which space is also predicated,
are very well illustrated by the various theories of light and color, it
will throw further light on Swedenborg’s relation tb Descartes and New-
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