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186 DOCUMENTS CONCERNING SWEDENBORG.
respiration of animals, their hunger, their thirst, their loves, the functions of their
absorbent and resorbent pores,—phenomena which, well analysed, would be so
many proofs of the existence of animal magnetism, and would evince that, in
reality, animals are nothing but living magnets,
" Let me not, however, for what I have here said, be suspected of being a dis-
ciple of the too celebrated Dr. Mesmer. Believing with him in animal magnet-
ism, the existence of which has long since been as evident to me as that of the
sun, if 1 intended to make use of it, it would be in a manner totally different
from his ; as I fmd in M. Mesmer’s mode many things that are not only vicious
in point of morals, but also very dangerous in a physical respect. For want of
knowing what Swedenborg has said respecting forms, series, degrees, corres-
pondences, and, above all, respecting the element of man and human spheres,
this physician has abandoned himself to a blind practice, the effects of which,
sometimes good, as often bad, and most frequently none at all, fully evince
either the incapacity of the practitioner, or the inefficacy of his remedy. But to
learn in what M. Mesmer is deficient, it will not suffice to have read the work
which I have just been describing, but it will also be necessary to be acquainted
with most of those which follow it: for the indefatigable Swede continued to
write upon the most difficult and abstract subjects, and, what is peculiar to him-
self, he always possessed the art of enabling all his readers to understand them,
by the method, precision, and clearness, with which he conducted the discus-
sion.
" Since an opportunity here offers to speak of his works, permit me, Gentle-
men, to avail myself of it, to disabuse the pubhc respecting the bad impressions
which have been attempted to be imposed on it concerning this great man.
Prior to his Opera Philosophica et Mmeralia, he had already written on almost all
the sciences. Amongst others was his work on algebra, entitled. The Art of the
Rules ; a new method to find the longitude by land and sea, by the aid of the moon
;
another for the trial of new ships, &c. &c. &c. ; not to mention some hterary pro-
ductions which were the first essays of a youth which had been employed in learn-
ing the principal living languages of Europe, and all the dead ones. He was so
well versed in the latter, particularly in Latin, and the Oriental languages, that
he was consulted by those who made the study of them their particular profes-
sion. Posterior to the year 1734, we have of his. The Animal Kingdom ^
The Economy of this Kingdom ; An Essay on the Infinite, the Final Cause of Creation,
and the Mechanism of the Operation of the Soul and Body ; with a poem on The Birth
of our Globe and that of the First Man ; works which are above all praise. But
what shall we say of his theosophical treatises, where the greatest secrets are
revealed without emblem or allegory ; where the science of correspondences,
which has been lost for near four thousand years, and of which the hierogly-
phics of Egypt were but useless monuments and relics, is again restored ? I
will say that a perusal can alone give any idea of them ; that the more the prin-
ciples, equally new and fertile, which are accumulated in these works, are re-
flected on, the more they are applied to nature, to ourselves, to everything that
can become an object of our thoughts and affections, the more clearly the truth
will shine, the more we shall be compelled to pay homage to the superiority of
illustration [lumi^res] which has given them birth, and to acknowledge in them
the evidences of a wisdom more than human.
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