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252 DOCUMENTS CONCERNING SWEDENBORG.
the great ; a principle which opens to the human mind
an infinite career, and puts us in the route which it is
necessary to take to arrive at all possible discoveries :
Natura enim, &c. Elementary nature (says he,) is a
motive power variously modified ; a motive power vari
ously modified, is a system of mechanism ; a system of
mechanism is geometry in action, for it must needs be
geometrical : geometry is the attribute of a certain sub
stance possessing figure and space : as, then, geometry is
the attribute of a substance, and thus is inseparable from
every substance, whether simple or compound, either in
motion or rest, and from motion itself, it accompanies
nature from its first origin and rudiments, from its least
form to its greatest, through the whole world : and as
geometry is the same in the greatest substances as in
the least, hence nature, being a motive and modified
power, being mechanical and geometrical, is exactly like
herself in each extreme, that is, towards each infinite of
smallness or greatness, &c.,’ p. 121. The question then
is, whether Swedenborg has proceeded according to these
principles ? This question all naturalists and geometri
cians are invited to determine : and when they have
agreed on their determination, which will certainly be in
conformity with what I have advanced, they will unani
mously admit, if I am not mistaken, that the theory of
the Swedish author is a true theory of the magnet and of
all magnetism ; that it proves incontestibly the existence
of the magnetic element ; that it proves further, that the
particles of this element being spherical, the tendency of
their motion, in consequence of this form, is either
spiral, or vortical, or circular ; that each of these motions
requiring a centre, whenever these particles meet with a
body, which, by the regularity of its pores, the configu
ration and the position of its parts, is adapted to their
motion, they avail themselves of it, and form around it a
magnetical vortex ; that, consequently, every body which
has such pores, and such a configuration and position of
its parts, may become the centre of such a vortex ; that
if this body has an activity of its own, if its parts are
flexible, and if its motion is similar to that of the par
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