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Doc. 203.] 591
FINDING THE LONGITUDE.
which should be free from these difficulties ; and as I dis
covered the following method, which had not before that time
occurred to any one, and which avoids these difficulties, I con
sider it my duty to make it public, and to submit it to the
judgment and the examination of experienced astronomers.
It is to be borne in mind, however, that I here communicate
it altogether as I found I had written it in my youth :
for since that time it has been enjoined upon me to give up
that study, and to apply my mind to more interior things.”
This method, it seems, was communicated by Swedenborg to
the various learned societies, and to the universities of his
native country. The letters accompanying his gift to the
Academy of Sciences in Stockholm and to the University of
Lund follow herewith; also the letter of the astronomical pro
fessor at Lund in which he animadverts upon the method,
with Swedenborg’s reply.
A.
SWEDENBORG TO THE ROYAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. *
I consider it my duty to present to the Royal Academy
the accompanying “ Method of finding the Eastern and Western
Longitude, by sea and land, by means of the Moon,” which
I have published at Amsterdam; and as it is the only practi
cable method of doing this by means of the moon, I desire
to make the following statement in connection with it.
As soon as this little work appeared in print I sent a
copy of it to the Hague and to the Academies in Holland
and Germany, as well as to Copenhagen; and subsequently
also to the Royal Society of Sciences at Paris; and after my
arrival in London I communicated it to Lord Morton, the
President of the Royal Society in that place, on May 19, of
the present year. This gentleman informed me then that
* The original of this letter is preserved among the Swedenborg MSS.
in the Library of the Academy of Sciences in Stockholm ; it was printed
for the first time by Mr. G. E. Klemming, the Royal Librarian in Stock
holm , in his edition of the so -called “ Swedenborg’s Drömmar," Stockholm
1879, p. 77.
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