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Doc. 313.] CHRONOLOGICAL 913
RONOLOGICAL ACCOUNT.
It may be useful to state here in brief the ground which Sweden
borg occupies as a philosopher in his treatise on "The Infinite."
The philosophers in starting their systems of philosophy meet on
the one hand with the terms, "Infinite" and "Finite," and on the
other with the expressions, "God," "Spirit," "Matter;" and the whole
drift of their systems of philosophy consists in trying to accommodate
the three terms, "God," "Spirit," "Matter," in the two terms, "Infinite"
and "Finite."
The materialistic school denies the Infinite and acknowledges
only the Finite; and Spirit, according to its expounders, is deter
mined by the organization of matter. The idealistic school acknow
ledges a distinction between Spirit and Matter, but none between
Spirit and God ; the philosophizing mind in the eyes of the idealists
being identical with God: Spirit, from being independent of space
and time, is in their eyes equivalent with the Infinite, and Matter
alone they consider as finite, because subject to the laws of space
and time.
Swedenborg, in his philosophical system, at the very outset
vindicates the term Infinite to God alone; whence he is compelled
to class spirit, and hence the human soul, in the term Finite. The
Finite, however, before the period of his illumination, was in his
eyes that which is subject to space and time, consequently that
which is measurable, and hence geometrical and mechanical.
On these philosophical grounds, therefore, he speaks in the work
before us of "the mechanism of the intercourse of the soul and
body." In order, however, to prove the immaterial nature of the
soul and its existence after death, he introduced the doctrine of
discrete degrees, and declared that the higher degrees of the Finite
are Spirit, and the lower Matter; and the higher degrees he further
declared to be independent of the lower, wherefore they can con
tinue to exist, even after the lower have perished.
Such is thenature of Swedenborg’s philosophybefore his illumination;
when he was charged not altogether without reason with favouring
a certain kind of materialism.
Yet even at this stage of his philosophy he hit upon the means
by which to escape from this dilemma ; for he reasoned : the Infinite
by its very nature and quality has no point of contact with the
Finite, wherefore it is impossible for it without mediation to flow
into matter, and sustain life in it. He therefore concluded that
there must be an intermediate between the Infinite and the Finite,
by which the Infinite can be present in the Finite, and impart life
to it. This intermediate he declared in his treatise on the "Infinite"
58
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