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1194 NOTES TO VOLUME 11.
of the translation of the Regnum Animale were published under
the auspices of the Swedenborg Association, a society instituted for
the purpose of printing the scientific and philosophical works of
Swedenborg, which has since been merged in the Swedenborg
Society.
Of Dr. Wilkinson’s own works the following require to be spe
cially mentioned: (1) "Emanuel Swedenborg: a Biography
." London,
1849. This up to the present time is the only biography written
of Swedenborg, which is worthy of its subject. (2) "The Human Body
and its connexion with Man," London, 1851 ; a prose poem of singular
beauty and power. (3) "On Human Science, good and evil, and its
works ; and on Divine Revelation and its works and sciences,"
London, 1876. This is a most powerfully written book, in which
a merely sensual science is arraigned before the justice-seat of God,
and where its shortcomings and pretensions are mercilessly exposed.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, the celebrated American critic, says respect
ing Dr. Wilkinson in his lecture on "Swedenborg the Mystic,” which
is printed in his volume entitled "Representative Men." Swedenborg
printed his scientific works in the ten years from 1734 to 1744, and
they remained from that time neglected : and now, after their century
is complete, he has at last found a pupil in Dr. Wilkinson, a philo
sophic critic, with a co-equal vigour of understanding and imagination
comparable only to Lord Bacon’s, who has produced his Master’s
buried books to the day, and transferred them, with every advantage,
from their forgotten Latin into English, to go round the world in
our commercial and conquering tongue. This startling re-appearance
of Swedenborg, after a hundred years, in his pupil, is not the least
remarkable fact in his history. Aided it is said, by the munificence
of Mr. Clissold, and also by his literary skill, this piece of poetical
justice is done. The admirable preliminary discourses with which
Dr. Wilkinson has enriched these volumes, throw all the contempo
rary philosophy of England into the shade, and leave me nothing
to say on their proper grounds." In his "English Traits," p. 140,
Mr. Emerson descants on the same theme in the following strain,
"Wilkinson, the editor of Swedenborg, the annotator of Fourier, and
the champion of Hahnemann, has brought to metaphysics and to
physiology a native vigour, with a catholic perception of relations,
equal to the highest attempts, and a rhetoric like the armoury of
the invincible knights of old. There is in the action of his mind a
long Atlantic roll, not known except in deepest waters."
"Frazer’s Magazine" for 1857, alluding to this tribute of Mr.
Emerson, says (Vol. LV, p. 178), “Mr. Wilkinson, who probably knows
more of Swedenborg’s writings of the scientific period of his life
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