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22 [Doc. 4.
GENERAL BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES.
thankfully declined; and the Society of Sciences had admitted
him into the number of its members in 1729.
The learned abroad, also, hastened to send him marks of
their esteem.
The Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg, by a letter
of invitation, dated December 17, 1734, desired to admit him
among its corresponding members.
Christian Wolff, 18 and other foreign men of learning
addressed him by letter, in order to obtain his ideas on sub
jects which they found it difficult to fathom .
The editors of the Acta Eruditorum in Leipsic, in which
the contents of the works of the learned are discussed and
impartial opinions pronounced upon them, found in his work
a rich store with which to adorn their pages.
Nor has time deprived this work of any of its value. The
authors of the magnificent Descriptions des arts et métiers,
which is now in course of publication in France, thought so
highly of that part of the Opera Philosophica et Mineralia,
which covers the same ground as their own publication, that
they translated the second part, which treats of iron and
steel, and inserted it entire in their collection.
Our Royal Academy, also, when it was founded, hastened
to enroll among its first members a man, who already held
so distinguished a rank in other learned societies.
I have hitherto spoken only of one part of SWEDENBORG’S
works; but the others take a different direction. Let us there
fore dwell a little longer on the former.
These works are unmistakable proofs, that his desire for
learning extended in all directions, and that he by preference
occupied himself with studies which cannot be mastered
without mature judgment and profound thought. No one can
charge him with having wished to shine in borrowed plumes,
or with re-arranging and giving a different colouring to the
work of others, and then publishing it under his own name ;
for everywhere we perceive, that he did not depend upon
others, but followed his own thoughts, and often made obser
vations and applications which cannot be found in any other
author of his times: nor can he, like the majority of those
who make it a point to acquire encyclopædic knowledge, be
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