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HIS DISCOVERIES IN SCIENCE- 201
well afford to waive for him the claim to specific discoveries, yet if it be the /acf that he
has announced even, in the most casual way, results in science which have been
subsequently reached and fully confirmed, it cannot be amiss to make it known to the
world. Of this character are doubtless the following. That they were the mere by-
play or incidental offshoots of his reasonings—side views, as it were, to the grand leads
of his inquiries—does not diminish their claims to an admiring notice.
" Of the discoveries which Swedenborg made in chemistry, astronomy, and
anatomy, it is impossible to speak in language too panegyrical. According to
the Marquis de Thome, who addressed some remarks to the commissioners ap-
pointed to inquire into the merits of animal magnetism by the king of France,
Swedenborg was the first who offered a theory on the magnet.
"It would appear, from the Marquis’ showing, that the first volume alone of
Swedenborg’s great work {Opera Philosophica et Min^ralia) is one of the most
complete and profound ever published. Swedenborg did not deal in generali-
ties. He argued on geometrical principles, remarking (as de Thome informs
us) at p. 184 of his first vol.—’ Unless our principles be geometrically and mechani-
cally connected with experience, they are mere hallucinations and idle dreams.*
De Thom6, a little after, says, that the theory of Swedenborg incontestably proves
the existence of the magnetic element; that it establishes, that the particles of
this element being spherical, the tendency of their motion, in consequence of this
form, is either spiral, or vertical, or circular : that as each of these motions* re-
quire a centre, whenever the particles meet with a body, which by the regulari-
ty of the pores, and the configuration and position of its parts, is adapted to
their motion, they avail themselves of it and form around it a magnetical vor-
tex ; that, consequently, every body that has such pores and such a configura-
tion and position of its parts may become the centre of such a vortex ; that’if
this body possesses an activity of its own, if its parts are flexible, and if its
motion is similar to that of the particles, it will be so much the more disposed
to admit them, &c., &c. Whence, says Thome, it follows, that magnetical sub-
stances are such merely by virtue of the element whose existence Swedenborg
has demonstrated, and thus that the magnetism of bodies depends, not on their
substance, but on their form ; a truth which is hinted at by the learned Alstedius
in his excellent Encyclopaedia, printed at Lyons, in 1649 ; to which, drawing a
comparison between electricity and magnetism, he says, Mvtiones electrica a
materia, magneticce vero a forma pendent.’*
" We must now take leave of the marquis, to whom we have been much
indebted for this resume of Swedenborg’s theory of magnetism, and refer to some
other discoveries, which were undoubtedly Swedenborg’s. And, first, of the
Foramen of Monro. The first person who publicly claimed the discovery of this
passage or communication between the right and left, or two lateral ventricles
of the cerebrum, was Dr. Monro, the second of Edinburgh. For a long time
many anatomists denied its existence, and a story is told, we think of one of the
* Mr. Faraday, in the first Friday evening Lecture of this season at the Royal Insti-
tution, touched very closely upon the opinion of Alstedius. See the Lecture referred
to. The magnetic theory of Swedenborg receives additional assistance, if not confirm-
ation, in father Boscovich’s Theory of Matter—if that learned Jesuit had not seen
Swedenborg’s Opera Philosophica et Mineralia, which was published in 1734. It is
likely he had, for his Theoria Philosophice Naturalis reducta ad unicam legem virium in.
NaturcL existentium, was not published till twenty-four years after, namely, in 1758.
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