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1318 NOTES TO VOLUME II.
IX.
MR. WHITE AND SPIRITISM.
In 1856 Mr. White wrote, "Of late years it has become common
to talk of Swedenborg as a clairvoyant, to associate him with
mesmeric objects, and make him a kinsman of French and American
Spiritualists, such as Cahagnet and Andrew Jackson Davis. This
mistake is made through ignorance . . . . It is a law of the spiritual
world that every man is associated with his like ; and thus supposing
that any man’s spiritual sight were opened, he would come into
conjunction only with spirits like himself: that is, with those who
would echo his own ideas and opinions, and repeat his own feelings.
It is evident then, that in such a case the nature of the revelations
made, are entirely dependent upon the character of the revelator,
and in all cases must be suspiciously received by the lover of
truth . . . . In his Diary Swedenborg says, ’Spirits narrate things
wholly false, and lie. When spirits begin to speak with man, care
should be taken not to believe them, for almost everything they say
is made up by them, and they lie ; so that if it were permitted them
to relate what heaven is, and how things are in heaven, they would
tell so many falsehoods, and with strong assertion, that man would
be astonished; wherefore it was not permitted to me, when spirits
were speaking, to have any belief in what they stated. They love
to feign. Whatever may be the topic spoken of, they think they
know it, and form different opinions about it, altogether as if they
knew; and if man then listens and believes, they insist, and in various
ways deceive and seduce.’ Any one who has paid attention to the
phenomena of spirit-rappings and to the communications received
through clairvoyants from the world of spirits, and has observed the
very Babel of contradictions uttered by these ’mediums,’ will be able
to appreciate the truth of the passage we have quoted [ Spiritual
Diary, no. 1622] , as well as our desire to draw a broad and distinct
line between such and Swedenborg" (pp. 30, 31).
In 1856, when he wrote his first "Life of Swedenborg," Mr. White
professed to see clearly the distinction between the communications
received from spiritistic mediums and those revealed through the
instrumentality of Swedenborg; in 1867, when he wrote his second
"Life of Swedenborg", he had lost the perception of this difference ;
for we read there : " Spiritualism offers wide and easy access to the
other world, the Swedenborgians would have all acquaintance with
it confined to the reports of their Author. If you presume to any
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