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338 VII. TIME OF FREEDOM AND NEOLOGY.
In 1719 the Svedberg family was ennobled and took the
name of Swedenborg. The bishop died in 1735. His
son, who inherited some fortune from both his mother and
his stepmother, was able to live comfortably and to travel
largely and spend much money in printing books which did
not sell.
Shortly after his father s death Swedenborg began to
publish his great works on natural philosophy, in which
the critics see the influence of Descartes and Newton,
Leibnitz and John Christian Wolff (1679 1754).
The first of these was the collection called Opera
Philosophica et Mineralia in three folio volumes, pub
lished at Dresden and Leipzig (1738 1741). The first
and most important volume contained the Principia, or
cosmogony, the fundamental position of which is that the
groundwork of nature is the same as the groundwork of
geometry the point or infinitesimal atom. The most
perfect motion is that of the spiral, a thought apparently
borrowed from the
"
vortices
"
of Descartes. The other
volumes are of a more practical nature, and include
Swedenborg s personal experience of mining, smelting
and metallurgy.
His second great work was one on animate nature, the
Regnum Animale, which dealt with anatomy, physiology
and biology, the first two parts of which were published
at the Hague in 1744, the third in London, 1745 that is,
just at the time of his great change.
In these printed books and in the large mass of manu
script material, which contains corrections and develop
ments of great extent, scientific men of our own day have
noticed amidst much that is prolix, diffuse and fanciful, a
wonderful anticipation of later and modern theories and dis
coveries. For instance, Swedenborg gave currency to the
following notions :
(i) That the planets of our solar system
have their origin in the material of which the sun is made ;
reading. Emerson says of him :
"
Except Rabelais and Dean
Swift nobody ever had such science of filth and corruption."
Representative Men, p. 103 (Temple Classics).
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