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214 DOCUMENTS CONCERNING SWEDENBORG.
AN ESTIMATE OF SWEDENBORG
AS THE EXPOUNDER
OF THE GOOD, THE TRUE, AND THE BEAUTIFUL.
{From a Swedish periodical entitled Mimer.) .
The following ably drawn sketch of Swedenborg as standing in relation to the higher
departments of literature and as having struck to previously unknown depths in the
development of the Beautiful in Nature and Art, though it appeared originally in a
Swedish periodical, as indicated ’ above, yet it was transferred from thence into the
German and inserted by Dr. Tafel in his Magazine for the True Christian Religion, and
from that translated into English and brought out in the Intellectual Repository of
June, 1841.
" Three celebrated men in Sweden have distmguished themselves by writing
sublimely and beautifully on the beautiful ; Swedenborg, to whom Love was
everything, as well as the relation established by love, between the True and the
Good ; Thorild, to whom Nature was everything, as well as the relation established
by nature between Power and Harmony ; Ehrenstdrd, to whom Art was everything
as well as the relation established by art between Genius and the Ideal. In the
paper before us, the theosopher Swedenborg is considered chiefly as a thinker
and writer on the beautiful. The esthetic* views of Ehrensvard and Thorild are
easily accessible, partly from their own writings, and partly from extracts and
expositions, which have lately appeared. But Swedenborg’s views are not so
easily accessible : the cause is to be found in a two-fold difficulty ; first, because
his sBsthetic view of the world cannot be properly seen, before we have become
acquainted with his views in general ; and, secondly, because he has not devoted
a particular work or section to the subject. From a multitude of extensive
works, written in Latin, we must bring together what he has said on this sub-
ject. His ideas on this topic are scattered in his treatises on his principal doc-
trines, especially concerning Life as being Love ; on God and his unity, as being
the original, prototypal, one only divine Man, from whom all finite created men
derive that which constitutes them men ; on the creation of all beings and sub-
stances, as receptacles of Life and Love, and on the destination of man, who,
created with a will for the reception of the Divine love, and with an understanding
for the reception of the Divine wisdom, has a finite esse and existere, corresponding,
when constituted in order, to the infinite esse and existere in God ; on the Good
and the True ; on the Spheres, Degrees, and Correspondences of creation : on
the relation between the different circles of life, descending by degrees from the
highest to the lowest of created existences, and connected together in one uni-
*^^sthetic is a term which signifies the sensation and perception of the Beautiful in
Mind, in Nature, and in Art ; it was originated as a science by the celebrated Baum-
garten, and is a branch of philosophy much cultivated in Germany ; it is derived from
aisthesis.
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