Book IV

, chapter xlv. I am indebted to Dr Conybeare’s translation, published by Messrs Heinemann, for this and some other quotations. The book is a very useful one, the Greek and English being given side by side.

Footnote 2:

I am indebted to G. R. S. Mead’s work, _Apollonius of Tyana, The Philosopher-Reformer of the First Century A.D._ (London: T. P. S.), for these particulars.

Footnote 3:

“Happy is the man that findeth wisdom. Length of days is in her right hand and in her left hand riches and honour. Her ways are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace” (Prov. iii. 13, 16, 17).

II PLOTINUS

The problem of the origin of the universe is one with which every religion in a certain sense claims to deal; but it is a problem only of the most recondite sphere of metaphysics, while religions generally, in order to ensure their success, make appeal to popular sympathy and endeavour to bring down the truths which they enshrine to the intellectual level of the masses of mankind. To put abstruse truths into simple language is an impossibility. They can, however, be conveyed by a species of symbolism, or presented in an allegorical form which will be interpreted in one sense by the vulgar and in another by the philosopher or the religious initiate. The communication of these hidden truths has been represented in the case of most religions as a definite revelation from a higher plane; but whatever claim is made as to their origin, they are at least put before the rank and file of the faithful as dogmas to be accepted unhesitatingly as a vital element of the orthodox religion of the time or country. Such dogmas in their crude form, it is needless to say, have never made appeal to the high philosophical intelligence of the day. Under the autocratic regime of persecuting Christianity during the Middle Ages of Europe, Christian dogma was indeed accepted nominally by great intellects, but it was accepted under duress and with a reservation, and subject to such interpretations of its inner meaning as might commend themselves to the mental standpoint of their professor. The men of highest intellect were compelled to express the faith that was in them in the most guarded language, and if they failed to do so they were only too liable to share the fate of Galileo, or—worse still—of Giordano Bruno. The sole exception to this rule is to be found in Oriental countries, such as India, where religion, whether Brahmin or Buddhist, has assumed a less dogmatic form, and has found it possible accordingly to assimilate and identify itself with philosophical speculations of the profoundest and most abstruse character, without any sense of incongruity or doing violence to its own specific tenets. It is true that Mohammedanism appears to contradict this, but it must be remembered that the religion of Mohammed was in the nature of a foreign importation and not indigenous to Indian soil.

Thus it came about that the philosophers of early Greece and Rome were almost invariably avowed sceptics as regards the popular religious beliefs of their time, though in spite of this, with the sole exception of Socrates, they were allowed to preach their doctrines openly in the market place without let or hindrance. Thus, too, the triumph of Christianity brought it eventually into open antagonism with philosophic thought. In this case, however, the dogmatic and intolerant character of the creed suffered no rival schools of opinion, and accordingly, within 200 years of the date at which it was established by Constantine as the recognised religion of the Roman Empire, the Athenian schools of philosophy were forcibly suppressed by Justinian.[4] For some two and a half centuries before this latter date Neoplatonism in one form or another had dominated the intellectual world of philosophy. It had superseded the materialistic philosophies of earlier Rome and Greece, and even before the time of Constantine, the Stoic and Epicurean schools of thought had already ceased to appeal to the inquiring spirit of the time. When, after a thousand years of intervening barbarism, under the influence of the Renaissance movement, men began to turn their attention once more to classic scholarship and classic philosophy, it was to Plato, mainly as interpreted by his successor and follower, Plotinus, that the leading spirits of the day turned in search of a solution of those problems of life which were once more pressing for interpretation, after the intellectual death in life of the Dark Ages, following the break-up of the Roman Empire. Christianity, indeed, had its metaphysics—for every religion is bound, in a sense, to explain its Divinity to its devotees—but they were the bastard metaphysics of the Athanasian Creed, the expression of a political compromise drawn up to satisfy the warring sects of Christendom. Far different was the effort of Plotinus, who sought not only to solve the riddle of the sphinx, but to express in language intelligible to his hearers the solution of the profoundest mysteries of the universe. How far he succeeded in doing so is yet in dispute to the present day. At least the basis of his philosophy still remains as an attempted approximation to the truth which forms the groundwork for the efforts of every new seeker after spiritual enlightenment.

At the date of the birth of Plotinus, Alexandria was the intellectual capital of the world. There met East and West, in spite of Mr Rudyard Kipling’s dictum to the contrary. There the philosophical and intellectual speculations of the entire civilised world enjoyed a common forum where the most diverse views found a ready audience. There Philo interpreted Judaism in terms of current Greek thought. There Gnostics and Christians contended for the supremacy of their various religious doctrines. There, among others, Ammonius Saccas lectured on his philosophical interpretation of the universal life, first from a standpoint akin to that of the new Christian religion, which was already obtaining so many converts, and later from an independent platform of his own. To him, after listening to many different philosophers, in whose views he found neither satisfaction nor illumination, came the most illustrious of his pupils, Plotinus. Plotinus was at this time about twenty-eight (he was born probably at Lycopolis in Egypt, in the year 205 or 206 A.D.), and he continued to remain at Alexandria and to elaborate his theories under the auspices of his master, Ammonius, for some eleven years. At the expiration of this period the similarity of the philosophy of Ammonius to that taught by the Brahmins of India, and doubtless also the interest in these Oriental conceptions which had been stimulated by the travels of Apollonius of Tyana, led to a decision on the part of Plotinus to emulate the Tyanian sage and himself embark on a similar mission. The expedition of the Emperor Gordian against the Persians appeared to supply a favourable opportunity for carrying out this project. This expedition was, however, destined to disaster, and Gordian met with an untimely end. Plotinus himself barely escaped with his life, but eventually reached Antioch in safety. Our philosopher did not remain long in the Syrian capital, but at the earliest opportunity sailed for Rome, where the remainder of his life was spent in lecturing and in philosophic study and discussion.

It was not until he had lived in Rome for ten years that, at the urgent request of his followers, he commenced writing what subsequently became known as _The Enneads of Plotinus_. Twenty-one of these books were completed when, at the age of fifty-nine, he first met Porphyry, who is our principal source of information with regard to his manner of life and the main facts of his career. To Porphyry was eventually allotted the task of editing his writings, which he divided into six volumes of nine books each, the number of books in each volume being thus used to give a name to his whole system of philosophy (Enneads, Greek ἐννεα, nine).

That his treatises were in urgent need of a competent editor is apparent from the observations which Porphyry makes with regard to his methods of composition. He was in the habit of writing down his thoughts just as they occurred to him, and “could not (says his biographer) by any means endure to review twice what he had written, nor even to read his own composition,” mainly on account of his defective eyesight. Nor, indeed, was he by any means a perfect master of the Greek language, in which his lectures were delivered and his books written. Porphyry in fact observes, let us hope with some exaggeration, that he “neither formed the letters with accuracy, nor exactly distinguished the syllables, nor bestowed any diligent attention on the orthography, but neglecting all these as trifles, he was alone attentive to the intellection of his wonderful mind, and, to the admiration of all his disciples, persevered in this custom to the end of his life.”

One is, indeed, not a little impressed how entirely, in the later days of the Roman Empire, “captive Greece led captive her conquerors.” Greek philosophy and Greek ideas had, in truth, permeated the whole civilised world. Not only was this the case, but when the Western or Roman Empire fell eventually into decrepitude and ruin, its Eastern partner, though threatened and harassed by barbarian foes on all its borders, continued to survive the extinction of the erstwhile mistress of the world by something like a thousand years. Alexandria was, however, destined to destruction by an Arab invasion long ere this, and never recovered from its sack by the Mohammedan Amru in A.D. 640. The survival of the Eastern Empire was doubtless due in great part to the superior vitality of the Greek race; but it does not admit of doubt that it would have fallen a victim to the Moslem invader at least 500 years before the date of its final doom, had it not been for Constantine’s choice of an Eastern capital and the almost impregnable position enjoyed by the imperial city. It is open to conjecture that had the British Government of the present day been better acquainted with the history of Constantinople and the many sieges which it had successfully sustained, they would have thought twice, and indeed thrice, before launching without adequate preparation, the ill-fated expedition to the Dardanelles.

The dialectical disquisitions of Plotinus were delivered in Greek, and his whole trend of thought was essentially Greek in character. One is inclined to ask oneself indeed whether the Latin language would have been capable of expressing the subtleties of his philosophical speculation. In this connection the similarity of his ideas to those enunciated in the great Vedantic system of Indian philosophy must not blind us to the fact that his method of treating his subject, and the closely reasoned arguments which he adduces in the defence of his scheme of the universe, are purely and entirely Greek. This appears to me to be the real truth in relation to a much disputed point, as to what Plotinus owed to Indian thought on the one hand, and to Greek culture and Greek philosophy on the other.

When Milton appealed to the Divine Muse to enable him to “soar above the Aonian Mount” and achieve “things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme,” he was in truth taking on a small order compared with the tremendous task which Plotinus set himself in his attempted solution of the riddle of the universe. To say that his exposition of his system lends itself to criticism in more than one vital point is merely to state that he was human. Whoever attempts to go behind phenomena and postulate a First Cause, whether we denominate that Cause The One, like Plotinus, or The Good, like Plato, or The Absolute, like Herbert Spencer, is manifestly passing into realms of thought with which the human mind is incompetent to deal. It stands to reason, indeed, that the finite mind cannot comprehend the infinite, and logic, therefore, inevitably fails us. But there is in truth another side to this most recondite problem. Though logic cannot fathom it, and though the finite cannot comprehend the infinite, yet the infinite spirit may contact infinity. In other words, the infinite in man, that is, the divine spark, which is part and parcel of infinity, may realise the infinite within itself, not, indeed, by any logical process, but by the immediate experience implicit in spiritual union. Hence the possibility of that form of mystical ecstasy which has been denominated Cosmic Consciousness, and which it is narrated that Plotinus experienced no less than four times during the six years, 262-268, when Porphyry was his companion in Rome. The effect of these experiences on Plotinus is very evident in his philosophy. They led to his emphasising the unity of all creation, and its oneness with the Divine, and the natural corollary of this, the illusory nature of separate individuality. Hence that which causes individuality, the principle of limitation inherent in matter, appears to him itself also of an illusory nature, that is, essentially incapable of acquiring or participating in real existence. From this negative character of matter arise, according to Plotinus, the imperfections of the material universe, and its inability to conform to the ideal or intelligible order.

At the basis of the system of Plotinus there is postulated then an ideal universe which constitutes an archetype or pattern of the phenomenal order which our senses apprehend. Plotinus assumes three root principles which he denominates the Three Divine Hypostases, and which have been since designated the Alexandrian Trinity, though it would be a mistake to confuse this triad with the Trinity of the Christian Creed. The First Divine Hypostasis is the Prime Source of Being, denominated, as already stated, the One or the Good. This corresponds to the Absolute of the Spencerian philosophy, and Plotinus tells us that it transcends all known attributes—so much so, in fact, that even existence itself cannot be predicated of it. Every being, according to the Plotinian system, tends to produce an image of itself. Hence we have the Second and Third of these Divine Principles, emanating in their turn from the First. The Second Divine Hypostasis our philosopher designates the Intelligible Universe or Universal Intelligence. This is the sphere of Absolute Reality or Essence, and constitutes a manifestation of the creative power of the One. The Third Divine Hypostasis is the Universal Soul, and this again is the image of the Second; but it differs from its principal in the fact that life in its sphere is no longer inert or motionless, but revolves about and within the Universal Intelligence. By way of explanation, Plotinus offers the parallel of one circle enclosed within another and larger but concentric circle which revolves about it, the common centre of both being represented by the One or First Hypostasis, the motionless inner circle by the Universal Intelligence, and the revolving outer circle by the Universal Soul; though it is recognised that this form of symbolism can be pressed too far, as the expressions “external” and “internal” in this connection have no real validity.

Matter, as already stated, is regarded as possessing no definite attributes of its own; but it is capable of receiving a semblance of life by reflecting the forms derived by the Universal Soul from the Second Divine Principle or Intelligible Universe. Matter, then, serves as a mirror upon which the Universal Soul projects the images or reflections of its creations, and thus gives rise to the phenomena of the sensible universe. This universe, which we are accustomed to term the Phenomenal World, holds an intermediate position between Reality and Negation owing to its participation in matter, which Plotinus identifies with Evil as being the negation of the Spiritual or Real. The existence of the Universal Soul is an eternal contemplation of the One as revealed in the sphere of Intelligence or Beauty (the Second Divine Hypostasis) and is itself an indivisible noncorporeal essence, possessing omnipresent consciousness. While, then, one part of the Universal Soul inhabits the sphere of Intelligence, its inferior part has relation with the Sensible World, or Material Universe. The Universal Soul by this relation with the Material Universe gives birth to the phenomena of Nature in all their varied manifestation. But whereas the object of contemplation of the Universal Soul is the One as revealed in terms of Beauty or the Intelligible Order, the object of the contemplation of Nature is Nature itself. Nature, in short, contemplates the forms of its own creation, and hence arise the imperfections of its manifestation.

“The character of the material universe [following Dr Whitby,[5] in his summary of the doctrine of Plotinus] is thus due to the irradiation of matter or chaos by the complex unity of forms or reasons (_logoi_) derived by the Universal Soul from its contemplation of the sphere of essential reality and Absolute Perfection. By reason of the inability of matter to participate fully in the real qualities of existence, it follows that the perfection of the material universe is inferior to that of the Universal Soul, and still more so to that of the Intelligible Universe.” In writing “on the nature and origin of evil,” our philosopher observes, “Whatever is deficient of good in a small degree is not yet evil, since it is capable from its nature of becoming perfect. But whatever is perfectly destitute of good, and such is matter, is evil in reality, possessing no portion of good. For, indeed, matter does not, properly speaking, possess being, by means of which it might be invested with good. But the attribute of being is only equivocally affirmed of matter.”

The association of matter with the soul arises from the voluntary determination of the individual consciousness towards the material plane. But it must not be supposed that this commingling of the soul and matter results in any actual union between the two in the same sense as in the chemical world hydrogen and oxygen combine to form water. For matter, as explained above, is in the nature of a mirror which the divine light of the soul illuminates but which is incapable of receiving into itself that light by which it is illuminated. “But [observes Plotinus][6] matter obscures by its sordid mixture and renders feeble the light which emanates from the soul and, by opposing the waters of generation, it occasions the soul’s entrance into the rapid stream, and by this means renders her light, which is in itself vigorous and pure, polluted and feeble, like the faint glimmerings from a watch tower beheld in a storm. For if matter were never present, the soul would never approach to generation; and this is the lapse of the soul, thus to descend into matter and become debilitated and impure, inasmuch as matter prohibits many of the soul’s powers from their natural activities, comprehending and as it were contracting the place which the soul contains, in her dark embrace.” Matter thus is the cause of the evil inherent in the material world, as without this the soul would have for ever remained “permanent and pure.”

Matter, in itself, possesses no form, being unable to sustain order or measure. The soul, however, by its union with matter, imposes form upon it, this form being the result of the combination of the limitation inherent in matter, in union with the archetypal idea of which the soul is the expression. We have, then, a conception of the universe, of which the One represents Infinity, and matter, the opposite pole, or zero. Owing, however, to the fact that no attributes or qualities can be predicated of the One, and that this is, in a negative sense, also the case with matter, which is the privation of being, we arrive at a certain confusion, the attempts of our philosopher to explain matter leading to phrases which are equally applicable to Infinity or the One. The two extremes of Absolute Being and Non-Being appear, in short, to meet, and a resulting bewilderment arises in the mind, which one is rather inclined to gather, was not entirely absent from the thought of Plotinus himself. It may be suggested, tentatively, that this _impasse_ arises rather from the failure of Plotinus to describe the One in more positive terms, than in his defective description of the negative qualities of matter. The fact that the One of Plotinus is conceived of as such that no language is able to express it, does not, in reality, justify the philosopher in describing it in terms of negation, however much positive statements may fall short of portraying the Absolute Reality. Of matter itself, however, we ought perhaps to predicate a relative though inferior reality; even while we admit that the presence of spirit is in inverse proportion to the density of matter.

In the view of Plotinus the universe is a single vast conscious organism of which all the parts are similarly endowed with consciousness. He attributes a species of divinity to the Sun and the stars, and appears to accept the theory of planetary spirits. Thus also Origen observes: “As our body while consisting of human members is yet held together by one soul, so the universe is to be thought of as an immense living being which is held together by one soul, the power of the logos, God.”

According to Plotinus it is truer to state that the body is in the soul than that the soul is in the body, inasmuch as the soul is transcendent as well as immanent in the corporeal form. Thus, when a particular body acquires life the soul which is destined to animate it does not in reality descend into it and become identified with it, but rather the body comes within the sphere of its influence, thus attaining to the world of life. This explanation is, it seems to me, helpful in enabling us to understand the gradual process by which the individual consciousness becomes _en rapport_ with the immature bodies of childhood. Following out the same theory we can understand the doctrine of early Gnostic sects, that Jesus of Nazareth was overshadowed by the Christ, and also we may believe, if we will, that the guardian angels of the little children who, as Jesus asserted, “do always behold the face of My Father which is in Heaven” are indeed their own higher spiritual selves, attracted on the one hand to those physical bodies of which they are the prospective tenants, and on the other looking regretfully back to their pre-natal home in the spiritual world.

Like the Deity, the soul is in the nature of a trinity, the occult axiom, “As above, so below” being implicit in Plotinus’s philosophy. Thus man consists, firstly, of the animal, or sensual soul, which is closely united with the body; secondly, of the logical, or reasoning soul; and thirdly, of that individualised portion of the divine essence whose proper habitation is the Intelligible Universe, of which it in its origin forms a part. The return of the soul to the One is accomplished by means of a gradual process of purification, which eventually, after an immeasurable period of time, releases the soul from its inclination towards the plane of sensibility; _i.e._ its attraction to the material world. The philosophy of Plotinus thus included the doctrine of metempsychosis, as regards the affirmation of the truth of which he is very emphatic. For he declares that “The gods bestow on each the destiny which appertains to him, and which harmonises with his antecedents in his successive existences. Every one who is not aware of this is grossly ignorant of divine matters.” He would even appear to admit that at times fallen human souls are imprisoned in the bodies of animals, but speaks less confidently on this head.

The conceptions of Plotinus explain many of those psychical phenomena which have so much puzzled our modern scientists, and offer a solution for the much-debated problems involved in the phenomena of telepathy, magic, and planetary influence. “The sensitivity of nature [writes Dr Whitby, summarising this side of Plotinus’s philosophy] is manifested as a vital nexus in virtue of which every minutest and remotest particle of the universe is intimately correlated and symbolically united to the rest. The universe as a whole, although thus endowed with a potential sensitivity, may nevertheless be considered as impassive, because the soul which animates and pervades it has no need of sensations for its own enlightenment and does not, in fact, regard them. Nevertheless, and for the simple reason that nature is a living organism, sympathetic throughout, individual parts of the universe have a quasi-sensitivity, and respond to impressions from without. When, for example, the stars, in answer to human invocations, confer benefits upon men, they do so, not by a voluntary action, but because their natural or unreasoning psychical faculties are unconsciously affected. Similarly demons may be charmed by spells or prayers acting upon the unreasoning part of their nature.” For, according to Plotinus, the universe is a vast chain, of which every being is a link.

Plotinus, like every one else who has attempted to solve the Riddle of the Sphinx, is up against the basic facts of existence. Boldly and perseveringly as we may attempt to face the problem, the Sphinx sits and smiles with the smile that will not come off, well knowing that however near we may seem to be to the solution of the mystery, the problem will still baffle us, and remain unsolved to the end. We may postulate a Deity who is all Perfection, but, if we do so, it rests with us to explain how it is that evil is present in the universe, if this Deity is in reality, as Plotinus and other philosophers have taught us, the All. We may postulate matter as inherently evil in nature, in opposition to the Good, but if so, whence comes that which is not included in the All? If matter is the mere privation of good, whence come its apparently very positive qualities? If the All is complete and perfect in itself, what need for the manifested universe? What need for the striving after a higher perfection, which gives the lie to the Absolute Perfection predicated of the One? Matthew Arnold has adopted the hypothesis of a “Power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness”; but in this hypothesis he first abandons the conception of the unity of the All and subsequently throws over the idea of divine perfection. For his Deity is, after all, only striving after a perfection which he has not yet reached.

The dualistic conception offers in truth fewer difficulties to the ordinary mind. It is more in accordance with the obvious facts of existence, which are brought under our notice every day of our lives. Deceptive and illusory though the conception may be, we still appear to be confronted by the existence of a gigantic struggle between good and evil in which the two combatants are more nearly matched than we care to admit. We like to shut our eyes to this and postulate a Deity of infinite power and infinite beneficence, but, while we do so, we are for ever admitting into our intellectual sphere certain conceptions that run counter to this theory, and in order to acquit our Deity of responsibility for the evil which we see ever around us, we make of the Devil a scapegoat who, in practice, bears on his shoulders the sins of the whole world; or alternatively we accept a conception of God and the Devil which runs on parallel lines with that of Dickens’ Spenlow and Jawkins. If behind Good and Evil, the two forces which are everlastingly struggling for the mastery, we have, as Plotinus and other of the wisest philosophers assure us, some principle of Unity from which both alike flow, are we justified in postulating of that Unity Absolute Perfection and Absolute Power? Or are we not nearer the mark in describing it in the Nietzschean phrase as “beyond good and evil,” as possessed of attributes and qualities which finite brains are incapable of apprehending? Are we not indeed darkening counsel by attributing to this Unknown a perfection which, after all, the entire gamut of existence suggests to us has never yet been reached through all the æons even though we may be approaching nearer to it every day and every hour?

The creation of the universe, if we are to accept the system of Plotinus, did not actually take place in time. He argues this point out with much subtlety and ingenuity in his essay “on Providence,” rejecting the hypothesis of “a certain foresight and discursive consideration on the part of Deity, deliberating in what condition the world should be especially formed, and by what means it may be constituted as far as possible for the best”; and accepting in place of it the assumption that the universe always had a being, and that it was “formed according to intellect, and intellect not preceding _in time_ but prior[7]; because the world is its offspring, and because intellect is the cause and the world its image, perpetually subsisting in the same manner and flowing from this as its source.” In other words, being faced with the alternative of assuming a definite date at which life began, or postulating existence from all eternity, he accepts the latter as presenting the lesser difficulty of the two; but in order to do so, he finds himself involved in the necessity of admitting a sequence of cause and effect which the finite mind is quite unable to dissociate from the conception of time. Failing this, his whole theory of the three Divine Hypostases falls to the ground. If we adopt the alternative which Plotinus rejected, we are plunged into still greater embarrassment; for if creation began in time, why did the All or the One wait through all the æons of eternity[8] for its commencement? And how, indeed, did time itself evolve from eternity, in view of the fact that the two ideas have no apparent relation to each other? The philosopher may

plunge into eternity where recorded time Seems but a point, and the reluctant mind Flags wearily in its unending flight Till it sink dizzy, blind, lost, shelterless.[9]

He may do this, indeed, but after all he will not have solved the Riddle of the Sphinx.

Footnote 4:

Constantine became sole Emperor in 323 A.D. The Athenian schools of philosophy were suppressed by Justinian in 529 A.D.

Footnote 5:

To whose book, _The Wisdom of Plotinus_ (Rider, 3s. 6d. net) I must acknowledge my indebtedness.

Footnote 6:

Plotinus on _The Nature and Origin of Evil_ (Taylor’s Translation).

Footnote 7:

_I.e._, prior in the sense that cause precedes effect.

Footnote 8:

The Indian conception of the inbreathing and outbreathing of Brahma may help us here, but it does not entirely get over the difficulty.

Footnote 9:

Shelley, “Prometheus Unbound.”

III MICHAEL SCOT

The name of Michael Scot is principally familiar to English readers through Sir Walter Scott’s _Lay of the Last Minstrel_. Shakespeare’s _Tempest_ and Scott’s _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ are probably the two, best-known works among English classics which breathe throughout the weird and fascinating atmosphere of mediæval magic. Prospero is a magician, and the whole plot of the _Tempest_ is based upon his magical practices and their consequences. The Lady of Branksome in the _Lay of the Last Minstrel_ has also learned from her father the “forbidden art.”

Her father was a clerk of fame Of Bethune’s line of Picardie: He learned the art that none may name, In Padua, far beyond the sea. Men said, he changed his mortal frame By feat of magic mystery; For when, in studious mood, he paced St Andrew’s cloistered hall, His form no darkening shadow traced Upon the sunny wall! And of his skill, as bards avow, He taught that Ladye fair, Till to her bidding she could bow The viewless forms of air.

In order the more effectually to accomplish her purposes, she dispatches her staunch henchman, William of Deloraine, to Melrose Abbey, where lies buried the wizard, Michael Scot, and buried with him, the Book of Might, which contains those potent spells whereby the great wizard had achieved his world-wide celebrity. “The Monk of St Mary’s Aisle,” now an ecclesiastical veteran of some hundred summers, had in earlier days fought the Moslem on the fields of Spain, and had there met and become an intimate friend of the much dreaded wizard. He had attended him at his death-bed, and had himself buried him in Melrose Abbey, receiving injunctions from him in his last hours never to allow the Book of Might to be disinterred “save at his chief of Branksome’s need.” For Michael Scot himself was a native of Teviot Dale, though his life had been spent in Italy, in Spain, and at Palermo in Sicily in attendance at the court of the Emperor Frederick II., whose fame became in a curious way linked with his own. The date of Michael Scot’s departure from Sicily for Spain was approximately 1210 A.D., and coincided with the turning-point of that long war of centuries which ended in the ejection of the Moorish conquerors from the Spanish peninsula. 1212 A.D. was the date of the decisive battle of Las Navas, which resulted in a crushing defeat for the Moorish forces, and led within fifty years to their retirement from all parts of Spain with the exception of the province of Granada. Scot was at this time in Spain pursuing his studies in Alchemy, Astrology, and the forbidden arts generally, and translating the works of the learned Arabians, Avicenna, Averroes, and Geber, and rewriting their paraphrases of Aristotle in the Latin tongue, which was then the universal medium for the dissemination of all scientific and philosophic knowledge throughout Europe.

We may imagine the monk of St Mary’s Aisle in his early days fighting the Moorish hosts in Spain and engaged, perhaps, in the great battle of Las Navas, which sealed their doom. Here he is represented by the poet as striking up a firm friendship with the student and philosopher, Michael Scot, and learning from him the secret of his magical practices. The monk is represented as telling William of Deloraine:

“In those far climes it was my lot To meet the wondrous Michael Scot, A wizard, of such dreaded fame, That when, in Salamanca’s cave, Him listed his magic wand to wave, The bells would ring in Notre Dame! Some of his skill he taught to me; And, Warrior, I could say to thee The words that cleft Eildon hills in three, And bridled the Tweed with a curb of stone: But to speak them were a deadly sin; And for having but thought them my heart within, A treble penance must be done.”

These achievements, according to the legend, were attributed to Michael Scot’s “familiar,” to whom he entrusted first one task and then another, but finding his energies too tireless, and fearing he might engage in some mischief which would react detrimentally on himself, finally sent him to spin ropes of sand at the mouth of the Tweed. This operation being an unending one, is said to be still in progress, and as his biographer relates, the successive attempts and failures of the spirit are pointed out as every tide casts up or, receding, uncovers the ever-shifting sands of Berwick bar. The reference to bridling the Tweed with a curb of stone, is an allusion to the basaltic dyke which crosses the bed of the river near Ednam. Michael, according to the tale, enjoyed that complete mastery of words of power which in the traditions of ancient magic is so potent a force in the working of wonders. As the monk records in his conversation with the knight of Branksome:

“The words may not again be said That he spoke to me, on death-bed laid; They would rend this Abbaye’s massy nave And pile it in heaps above his grave.”

The monk was not unnaturally alarmed at the power that this archworker of spells might have given to the fiends of darkness, and took precaution to bury him

... On St Michael’s night, When the bell tolled one, and the moon was bright,

so that the cross of his patron saint reflected by the light of the moon from the emblazoned window pane might fall on the spot which was chosen for his grave. Once again on this fateful night the Red Cross was reflected on the sepulchral stone, and the opportunity which this offered to take possession of the Book of Might undisturbed by the hosts of darkness, must be taken without delay. Within the grave was one of those ever-burning lamps, for the existence of which there seems to be some historical evidence, and which was to serve in the present instance as a further protection for the wizard against the fiends of night. Deloraine’s task achieved “by dint of passing strength” with the aid of a bar of iron handed him by the monk, the light

Streamed upward to the chancel roof And through the galleries far aloof. No earthly flame blazed e’er so bright; It shone like Heaven’s own blessed light. Before their eyes the Wizard lay As if he had not been dead a day, His hoary beard in silver roll’d, He seem’d some seventy winters old; A palmer’s amice wrapp’d him round, With a wrought Spanish baldric bound, Like a pilgrim from beyond the sea: His left hand held his Book of Might; A silver cross was in his right; The lamp was placed beside his knee. High and majestic was his look, At which the fellest fiends had shook, And all unruffled was his face; They trusted his soul had gotten grace.

William of Deloraine hesitated to perform what seemed very like an act of sacrilege. He was used to battlefields, but panic seized him in this strange scene, and the monk was eventually compelled to warn him that delay in such circumstances was dangerous.

“Now speed thee what thou hast to do, Or, warrior, we may dearly rue; For those thou may’st not look upon Are gathering fast round the yawning stone!” Then Deloraine, in terror, took From the cold hand the Mighty Book, With iron clasped and with iron bound: He thought, as he took it, the dead man frowned; But the glare of the sepulchral light, Perchance, had dazzled the warrior’s sight.

How the knight and priest withdrew from the chapel after the tombstone had been replaced, in the redoubled gloom of the night, “with wavering steps and with dizzy brain,” imagining the walls of the chapel echoing with fiendish laughter as they retreated, is recounted dramatically enough by the bard of the Scottish border. We are, perhaps, more interested to know what manner of man this Michael Scot was, and how far these records of his magical powers are based on anything more than unauthenticated tradition. The facts we possess with regard to Michael Scot’s career convince us indeed that he was a man of the greatest erudition and learning, and far in advance of his contemporaries in these respects. He was a noted mathematician, and not content with gaining the highest honours in the schools of Paris of that day, he subsequently pursued his studies at the fountain-head of mathematical and alchemical research at Toledo in Spain. For it must be remembered that we owe the basis of our mathematical knowledge primarily to the Arabs who introduced to Europe not only the Arabic numerals in place of the cumbrous Roman figures, but also the study of Algebra, itself an Arabic word. To the Arabs, too, we owe the basis of our Chemistry—a word that is, of course, synonymous with Alchemy, which again bears the stamp of its Arabian origin. It is curious indeed to note how far the civilisation of the Arab was in advance of that of the greater part of Europe in those days. Five hundred years before Michael Scot took ship from Sicily for Spain, the Arabs had advanced across the whole of Northern Africa, conquering Egypt, Tripoli, Algeria, and Morocco in turn, and finally crossing to Spain and there establishing a separate kaliphate in the eighth century of the Christian era. The invasion of Spain by the Arabs introduced into the Iberian peninsula a literary culture of a kind till then quite unknown. Under the sway of the Moorish sovereigns the arts and architecture flourished, and science found a welcome which it met with nowhere else in Christianised Europe.

It was to the Moorish capital that students of the medical art repaired who desired to master the latest discoveries and most modern methods in the treatment of the human body. Irrigation with the Moors had become an applied science, and was employed extensively throughout the Iberian peninsula with the most advantageous results in enhancing the fertility of the soil. Nowhere else in Europe did the land yield such rich harvests, and nowhere else was the science of agriculture so fully understood. The fertile fields of those days are in many cases replaced by barren deserts and the towns with teeming populations by ruins and uninhabited wastes. The ignorant peasantry that has taken the place of the cultivated sons of Arabia are still in the matter of civilisation and commercial activity hundreds of years behind the busy and intelligent population whom in the latter part of the fifteenth century they finally drove over the seas after subjecting them to the most cruel persecution for adhering to the faith of their fathers. Three million Moors are said to have been ejected from Spanish soil at the bidding of the civil power, instigated by ecclesiastical tyranny. Civilisation has not yet rallied from the so-called “triumph of the Cross” in Spain. This ejection of the Moors from the west of Europe coincided, as it happened, with the advent of the Turk at Constantinople; but here, by a curious contradiction, the Turk as the champion of Mohammedanism represented not progress but the triumph of the sword. The case was inverted, but in each instance it represented the victory of barbarism over civilisation, whether the Mohammedan made headway in the east or the Christian in the west. In the east the effete remnant of the Eastern Empire was swept away before the advancing hosts of Islam. In the west a far more highly developed and industrial population was wiped out at the bidding of the myrmidons of the Papal See.

For five hundred years the Moors had ruled all but the northernmost portion of Spain, and for another 250 they retained the province of Granada. Countless examples of their ornate and characteristic semi-oriental architecture remain behind as a record of their artistic culture, and much also of their language intermingled with that of the race which they at first conquered and which in the days of their luxury and decadence reconquered them in turn. But the intellectual life of Moorish Spain, which was for so long like a beacon light in the darkness of Mediæval Europe, has passed, never to return. The Inquisition marked the high-water mark of the reaction of Christian bigotry against the tolerant and broad-minded intellectuality which had flourished under the fostering dominion of a race whose glories to-day are but a memory of the far-distant past.

Scot as a mathematician, alchemist, and astrologer, had this been his sole life’s work, would have merited no insignificant niche in the temple of Science; but in addition to this, he exercised, though in an entirely indirect manner, a marked influence on the history of Europe. His talents and learning commended him for the position of tutor to Frederick II., at that time king only of Sicily, but afterwards “Emperor of the Romans.” Frederick was an orphan, having lost both his parents in early childhood, and the receptive mind of the ardent boy responded sympathetically to the instructions of his broad-minded and accomplished tutor, who was destined subsequently to become his confidant and friend.

Michael Scot’s first efforts as an author had for their aim the education of his royal pupil. For this purpose he first wrote the _Liber Introductorius_, and afterwards the _Liber Particularis_ and the _Physionomia_. The first two of these books dealt with astronomy and astrology, and the latter with physiognomy and the reading of character from the physical appearance.

Marriages were arranged early in those days, and Frederick, when a boy of but fourteen, was united in wedlock, at the Pope’s desire, with Constance, daughter of the King of Aragon, and widow of the King of Hungary, who was some ten years his senior. This brought the attendance of Michael Scot at the court at Palermo, temporarily at least, to an end, and led to his setting sail, as already narrated, for the coasts of Spain. It appears that the _Physionomia_ was his parting gift on his marriage to his illustrious pupil. On his arrival in Spain, Scot betook himself to the headquarters of the scientific activities of those days, the renowned city of Toledo. Here, towards the middle of the twelfth century, a regular school for translations from the Arabic had been established, and it was work of this kind on which Scot himself embarked. Here he translated the _Abbreviatio Avicennæ_ with a dedication to the Emperor Frederick in the following terms: “O! Frederick, Lord of the World, and Emperor, receive with devotion this book of Michael Scot, that it may be a grace unto thy head and a chain about thy neck”—no empty compliment as such phrases generally are, nor one unappreciated by its distinguished recipient. Here, too, he pursued his studies in alchemy, chemistry, medicine, and astrology. Alchemy in those days was a special bone of contention, one school maintaining its feasibility, and the other denouncing it, after the manner of nineteenth century scientists, as a mere will-o’-the-wisp. The belief in it which later on took hold of Mediæval Europe had not yet met with any general sort of acceptance, though the Arabian school in the main adopted it, and there seems little doubt that it was held by Michael Scot himself. One book indeed on this particular subject, _De Alchimia_, is attributed to his pen. The book is contained in a manuscript in possession of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. If, however, the main part of the work is genuine, which is somewhat uncertain, the dedication to Theophilus, King of the Scots, is certainly not so. We have in this book a curious formula for turning lead into gold, which runs as follows:

Medibibaz, the Saracen of Africa, used it to change lead into gold in the following manner:—Take lead and melt it thrice with caustic (comburenti), red arsenic, sublimate of vitriol, sugar of alum, and with that red tuchia of India which is found on the shore of the Red Sea, and let the whole be again and again quenched in the juice of the Portulaca marina, the wild cucumber, a solution of sal ammoniac, and the urine of a young badger. Let all these ingredients then, when well mixed, be set on the fire, with the addition of some common salt, and well boiled until they be reduced to one-third of their original bulk, when you must proceed to distil them with care. Then take the marchasite of gold, prepared talc, roots of coral, some carcharoot, which is an herb very like the Portulaca marina; alum of Cumæ, something red and saltish, Roman alum and vitriol, and let the latter be made red; sugar of alum, Cyprus earth, some of the red Barbary earth, for that gives a good colour; Cumæan earth of the red sort, African tuchia, which is a stone of variegated colours and being melted with copper changeth it into gold; Cumæan salt which is pure red arsenic, the blood of a ruddy man, red tartar, gumma of Barbary, which is red and worketh wonders in this art; salt of Sardinia which is like.... Let all these be beaten together in a brazen mortar, then sifted finely and made into a paste with the above water. Dry this paste, and again rub it fine on the marble slab. Then take the lead you have prepared as directed above, and melt it together with the powder, adding some red alum, and some more of the various salts. This alum is found about Aleppo (Alapia), and in Armenia, and will give your metal a good colour. When you have so done you shall see the lead changed into the finest gold, as good as what comes from Arabia. This have I, Michael Scot, often put to the proof and ever found it to be true.

Whether the statement appearing in the manuscript under his name, that Michael Scot worked on this recipe, be true or not, one would not envy the task of the modern chemist who was called upon to compound the prescription. The basic idea of alchemy which, since the discovery of radium, is looked upon with some favour by certain advanced scientists, that all metals are reducible to a single substance, and therefore theoretically interchangeable, does not seem to find much place in this curious prescription, which suggests the idea of what we should call to-day a gold-substitute, rather than the genuine metal itself, in spite of the fact that we are told that the gold in question would prove “as good as what comes from Arabia.”

The greatest work of Scot as translator was his reproduction in Latin of the commentary of Averroes on the _De Anima_ of Aristotle. This book, which expounded views on theological problems which were the reverse of orthodox, was long held back from publication by Scot’s patron, the Emperor Frederick, who hesitated to incur obloquy, and in especial the hostility of the Pope by reason of its publication. Friction, however, between the Papal See and the Emperor became so acute in the end that it appeared useless to attempt to placate papal bigotry further, and the publication in question was thus finally given to the world.

The study of the writings of Averroes had indeed taken very strong hold on Scot’s imagination, and if the story may be accepted as authentic, he even went so far as to attempt to evoke the spirit of the great Arabian, presumably with a view to securing his assistance in the work which he had in hand. There is nothing intrinsically improbable in the supposition that Scott practised or experimented in such methods of evocation. Averroes had only been dead some twenty years when Scot was in Spain, and holding the views he did, he may well have thought that the philosopher’s spirit had not passed so far from the physical plane that some form of necromantic conjuration of his conscious personality would be ineffectual. Here, as elsewhere, it seems impossible to draw the line between record of fact and that fabric of legend and tradition which has been woven round the story of his life.

A number of the tales told of Scot’s magical achievements reduce themselves in the light of modern knowledge to the results of highly developed hypnotic powers. It is familiar knowledge that such achievements are not unknown in India at the present day. A Florentine authority gives us one of these anecdotes. Scot’s guests at dinner, we are told, once asked him to show them a new marvel. The month was January. Yet in spite of the season he caused vines with fresh shoots and ripe grapes to appear on the table. The company were bidden each of them to choose a bunch, but their host warned them not to put forth their hands till he should give the sign. At the word “Cut!” lo, the grapes disappeared, and the guests found themselves each with a knife in the one hand and in the other his neighbour’s sleeve. Another story of a more or less similar character is told of a feast given by the Emperor to celebrate his coronation at Rome, which took place on November 22, 1220.

The pages were still on foot with ewers and basins of perfumed water and embroidered towels, when suddenly Michael Scot appeared with a companion, both of them dressed in Eastern robes, and offered to show the guests a marvel. The weather was oppressively warm, so Frederick asked him to procure them a shower of rain which might bring coolness. This the magician did accordingly, raising a great storm, which as suddenly vanished again at their pleasure. Being required by the Emperor to name his reward, Scot asked leave to choose one of the company to be the champion of himself and his friend against certain enemies of theirs. This being freely granted, their choice fell on Ulfo, a German baron. As it seemed to Ulfo, they set off at once on their expedition, leaving the coasts of Sicily in two great galleys, and with a mighty following of armed men. They sailed through the Gulf of Lyons, and passed by the Pillars of Hercules, into the unknown and western sea. Here they found smiling coasts, received a welcome from the strange people, and joined themselves to the army of the place; Ulfo taking the supreme command. Two pitched battles and a successful siege formed the incidents of the campaign. Ulfo killed the hostile king, married his lovely daughter, and reigned in his stead; Michael and his companion having left to seek other adventures. Of this marriage sons and daughters were begotten, and twenty years passed like a dream ere the magicians returned, and invited their champion to revisit the Sicilian court. Ulfo went back with them, but what was his amazement, on entering the palace of Palermo, to find everything just as it had been at the moment of their departure so long before; even the pages were still holding rounds with water for the hands of the Emperor’s guests. This prodigy performed, Michael and the other withdrew and were seen no more; but Ulfo, it is said, remained ever inconsolable for the lost land of loveliness, and the joys of wedded life he had left behind for ever, in a dream not to be repeated.

On Scot’s return to the court of Frederick II., after his sojourn in Sicily, he added the study and practice of the medical art to his other activities. Lesley states that he “gained much praise as a philosopher, astronomer, and physician,” and Dempster speaks of him as “one of the first physicians for learning.” He appears to have treated cases which would not yield to the ordinary medical pharmacopœia, and in particular he specialised in leprosy, gout, and dropsy. Acting apparently under his advice, Frederick II. instituted various reforms in the practice of medicine. It was stipulated that the course preliminary to qualification should consist of three years in arts, and five in medicine and surgery. Laws were passed forbidding the adulteration of drugs, while physicians were prohibited from demanding a greater fee than half a _taren_ of gold per day, and this gave the patient the right to be visited three times in the course of the twenty-four hours. It was stipulated that the poor should be attended free of charge. Certain recipes of Michael Scot’s are still extant, and can be studied in Latin in the British Museum. One of these bears the name of the _Pillulæ Magistri Michaelis Scoti_. They seem to be something in the nature of a universal panacea, and perhaps if the prescription were taken up by some enterprising modern chemist, they might rival the fame of the celebrated Beecham’s Pills!

It appears that Scot had ambitions in the way of ecclesiastical preferment; but though the Emperor put himself out to secure his favourite the position which he coveted, and in fact appealed to the Pope on his behalf, nothing practical came of these representations. Probably Scot’s fame was of too dubious a kind to recommend him to the heads of the orthodox Church, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, to whom the Pope applied in his interest, does not seem to have responded in any friendly fashion. Finally, an offer was made to Michael Scot of the Archbishopric of Cashel in Ireland, but in those days the Irish were little better than a barbarous race, and they spoke the language of Erse, which was a sealed book to their prospective bishop. In any case, though the Chapter had actually elected him to the post, he decided to decline. He apparently had too much principle to accept the position of an absentee bishop, and a home among a wild and uncultured race would hardly have been to the liking of a man who had associated with the most intellectual minds of Europe. These hopes of ecclesiastical preferment having fallen through, Frederick, after long delay, decided to take steps for the publication of the translation of the works of Averroes, and certain books of Aristotle, with the commentaries thereon of the Arabian philosophers. He issued an imperial circular announcing the appearance of these, and sent Michael Scot as his emissary to arrange for their publication in the principal European centres of learning. Finally, after visiting Bologna and Paris, Scot made his way to England, where he appears to have visited Oxford about the year 1230. Tradition says that he journeyed thence to his native land of Scotland. But shortly after this we lose sight of him altogether, and though there is no authoritative evidence with regard to his death, he seems to have passed away by or before the year 1232. In this year the _Abbreviatio Avicennæ_ was published at Melfi, in the Latin version which Scot had translated. Henry of Colonia was selected by Frederick to transcribe the work from the imperial copy, and Scot’s biographer is probably right in regarding this work as a wreath laid by his imperial friend on his grave. The matter would assuredly have been placed in Scot’s own hands if he were still alive.

Scot is related to have foretold that his death would take place by the blow of a stone falling on his head, and tradition says that being in church one day with head uncovered at the sacring of the mass, a stone, shaken from the tower by the motion of the bell rope, fell upon his head, mortally wounding him. Presumably this incident occurred in Scotland; if, that is, there is any truth at all in the story.

Another prediction is also attributed to Michael Scot by the same chronicler—Pipini. He states that he foretold the manner also of the Emperor’s death, which he declared would take place “ad portas ferreas”; that is, “at the iron gates,” and in a town named after Flora. Frederick, it is said, interpreted this as referring to Florence, which city he accordingly made a point of avoiding. During his last campaign, however, in the year 1250, he fell ill at Florentino, in Apulia, where he slept in a chamber of the castle. His bed, says the story, stood against a wall recently built to fill up the ancient gateway of the tower, the iron staples on which the gate had been hung still forming part of the wall. It is stated that the Emperor, learning these particulars, and calling to mind Michael Scot’s prediction, exclaimed, “This is the place where I shall make an end, as it was told me. The will of God be done, for here I shall die.” A few days later the great Emperor passed to his rest.

Of Michael Scot’s learning and erudition there can be no question, in spite of the unfavourable criticisms of Roger Bacon with regard to his knowledge of languages, which are the less worthy of notice in view of the fact that Bacon’s own accomplishments in this direction were far inferior to those of Scot. A fairer criticism of his work would be based on its lack of originality, and the fact that the greater part of his literary output was borrowed either from the Arabians or the Greeks. His talents as a past master of mathematics were never in dispute, and his researches into the problems presented by astronomy enjoyed a great vogue in his own day.

While there is no evidence but that of highly-coloured tradition to suggest that Michael Scot was the adept he is represented as being in magical spells and incantations, there is nothing in our historical knowledge of his career which renders the practice of such arts by him at all incredible, or indeed unlikely. Legend has magnified this portion of his many-sided activities to the exclusion of that branch of his labours which might well, one would have thought, have earned for him more enduring fame. The lovers of the marvellous have thus surrounded with a mysterious and semi-sinister halo the name of a man whose chief work in life lay in the paths of philosophy, astronomy, and medical research. It seems not improbable that the last of these pursuits led this daring thinker into the investigation and practice of what to-day we term hypnotism, and its employment to the bewilderment of his acquaintances in the creation of illusions, the source of which we now recognise in the power of a master mind to mould by sheer force of will the plastic imagination and subjective consciousness of his audience.

IV PARACELSUS

The embattled forces of conservative orthodoxy are so strong that one is sometimes tempted to wonder how it is that the world ever goes round at all; how it is that the forward movement of progress succeeds, as it apparently does, in getting the better of so many retrograde tendencies, so much prejudice, so strong a clinging to the stereotyped conditions of the day. After all, the more one thinks about it, the more one becomes convinced that the whole progress of the world is the work of the very, very few; that the positive and progressive intellect is the rare exception, and that if democratic conditions really prevailed (as of course they never do) all civilisation would go backwards and gradually revert once more to chaos. What a mockery, after all, Democracy is! And how hopelessly the modern world is deluded in thinking that anywhere or at any time Democracy has in reality held sway! As a matter of fact, the many have never ruled, have never wished to rule; they have merely asked for some strong man to lead them. Where was ever the flock of sheep that did not follow the bell-wether? Here and there we meet with a master mind that—for good or evil—leads the multitude—or, if he does not lead, at least points the way where others will eventually follow. Side by side with him we see the multitude either drifting or being led. “Work!” said Voltaire, that most popular of writers, “work for the little public!” Voltaire knew, as all great leaders have known, before and after, that it is the “little public” that ever dominates the situation. It is the “little leaven that leaveneth the whole lump.” “It is a sight beloved of the gods,” says the old saying, “to see a good man struggling against adversity.” But is it not a finer sight still, to see a strong man battling with the forces of orthodoxy, and refusing to yield his ground? A man of such a mould was Philip Bombast of Hohenheim, better known by his assumed name of Paracelsus. Never was there any one to whom Shelley’s celebrated line

The sun comes out and many reptiles spawn,

was more absolutely appropriate. The hostility and venomous antagonism of his own profession, with a few notable exceptions, followed and persecuted him throughout his entire medical career. The boldness and independence of his medical attitude galled the leaders as well as the rank and file of the profession. But what was still more galling to them than his lack of orthodoxy, was the fact that his novel methods, as they must have appeared to the doctors of that day, were so immeasurably more successful than their own. Paracelsus, indeed, never gave nor asked for quarter. John the Baptist denouncing the Pharisees who came to him as “a generation of vipers” was no bad parallel to Paracelsus’s stinging invective on the ignorance and tradition-loving proclivities of his own profession.

[Illustration: Paracelsus (aged 24).]

Many to whom the name of Paracelsus is familiar are accustomed to look upon him as little more than a singularly successful quack who revived the traditions of an earlier school of Occultism in defiance of the more scientific methods of his own time. As a matter of fact, the doctors of his day were, in the vast majority of cases, merely theorists with little real practical experience, but with a fair store of book-learning of a very indifferent kind. It was Paracelsus whose medical knowledge was derived from experiment and experience, and who had acquired the greater part of his medical and surgical skill from wide and varied travelling and visiting more countries and more different nationalities than any other medical expert of his day, and who had learnt by actual association with all sorts and conditions of men in different climes, far more than any book-learning had ever taught him.

The period of Paracelsus’s career coincided with the Reformation of Luther, and with the wider and more general Renaissance movement. This latter development had brought back in its train the study of classical learning and classical ideals which had fallen into discredit about the period of the first triumph of Christianity and its establishment as a world-religion. The attitude of the earlier Christians, who looked upon the Pagan deities as devils, and Greek and Roman classical writers as apologists for devil-worship, had passed away; and the highest dignitaries of the Church were now often noted for their classical erudition and ripe scholarship. With the return of classical ideals came back also into favour in a number of unexpected quarters the doctrines of Neoplatonism. When Hypatia perished at Alexandria, orthodox Christianity set its foot on Plotinus and all his works. The struggle at the end had been one rather between Christianity and the later Greek philosophers with their Neoplatonic conceptions than between Christianity and Pagan Rome. The gods of Rome were dead already. Pan was dead past resurrecting. The danger that threatened Christianity was the triumph of such Emperors as Julian the Apostate—Julian, whose master was Plotinus, and whose religion was Neoplatonism merely dressed in an old Roman garb. To the thinkers and philosophers of that time the triumph of Christianity seemed like the victory of exoteric religion over the inner esoteric truths. Back, now, with all that was best of the scholarship and art of Greece and Rome, came the mystic doctrines of the Alexandrian philosophers—back, not in triumph, but daring once more to reassert themselves in the face of a hostile world that had long even forgotten their existence. A thousand years separated Hypatia from Cornelius Agrippa—a thousand years which, in the realm of thought, might well be characterised as the Dark Ages. Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim was born at Cologne in 1486. Seven years later, on 10th November 1493, at Einsiedeln, near Zurich, a son was born to Dr Wilhelm Bombast von Hohenheim, and was christened Theophrastus, in honour of Theophrastus Tyrtamos, a Greek physician, philosopher, and follower of Aristotle. This child was subsequently to be known to fame and held up to obloquy under the title of Paracelsus.

It was a period in which the world was in labour with great events. Only a year before Columbus had landed on American soil. In the same year, or the previous one, passed away a man whose life was destined to create as great a revolution in the history of the human race as that of Columbus himself—William Caxton. Returning from a long sojourn in the Netherlands in or about 1474, Caxton established his printing press in the precincts of Westminster Abbey, and before his death at least sixty-four books are known to have been issued from this first English Printing House. Ten years exactly before Paracelsus’s birth, a third of these great makers of revolutions had seen the light. On 10th November 1483, Martin Luther was born at Eisleben in Lower Saxony, and when the subject of these notes was twenty-four years old, Luther nailed his ninety-five theses against the Doctrine of Indulgences on the church door at Wittenberg. Paracelsus, when occasion offered, did not attempt to disguise his sympathy with this bold reformer, though he took no actual part in the movement, and he was accused by his enemies of being a medical Luther, a charge which he took pains to show that he did not in any way resent. Another noteworthy character in the realm of History and Literature, Lorenzo de Medici, had passed away a year before our hero’s birth. In England the Wars of the Roses were over, and Henry VII. was busy establishing monarchy on a firm basis, the people, worn out by incessant struggles, being glad to accept the Tudor rule, sympathetic as it always was to the middle and commercial classes. In Europe there was no Austrian Emperor, and Italy was still fated, for centuries to come, to remain a geographical expression. The Holy Roman Empire extended from the German Ocean and the Baltic Sea on the North to the Adriatic on the South. Poland and Lithuania extended far along its Eastern border, and the outmost limit of the realm of the Muscovite was still 500 miles east of the site where a century later Peter the Great was to found and give his name to the capital of the Russian Empire. The conquering Turk was thundering at the gates of Christendom. Ferdinand and Isabella, patrons of Columbus, reigned at Madrid. Everywhere throughout the civilised world vast changes were impending, everywhere the horizon was widening, and men’s minds were being directed into new channels and to fresh fields of enterprise and of opinion.

There has been much discussion as to what exactly is connoted by the name “Paracelsus,” and how it came to be first adopted. What seems clear is that von Hohenheim adopted the name himself, and was not, as some have held, given it by his admirers. It was a usual practice in those days to write books under some Latin _nom de plume_, frequently some adaptation into Latin of the name of the writer. In all probability the last two syllables of the name, “celsus,” were suggested by “Hohen” (or “high”), “Hohenheim” being literally translated as “high home.” With regard to the first two syllables it is noticeable that these were occasionally employed by Paracelsus in giving name to his medical treatises. There is thus one treatise called “Paramirum,” and another “Paragranum.” This word “para” seems to have been used in the sense of giving the word to which it was prefixed a superlative value. Thus “Paramirum” would mean “extremely wonderful.” The whole word is doubtless a polyglot hotchpotch, the first part being Greek and the second Latin; but mediæval writers had little scruple in adapting the classical tongues to their own requirements.

To follow the writings of Paracelsus it is necessary to understand his phraseology, his jargon, as we should call it in the slang of to-day. Without this he is as incomprehensible as is the dog Latin of a scientific textbook to one who is not a scientific specialist—or, to give another example, as the language of Astrology is to one who is not an Astrologer. Paracelsus held that there were three basic substances necessary to the existence of all bodies. These he called Sulphur, Mercury, and Salt. Sulphur corresponds to fire, or rather to the principle of inflammability; Mercury to water, or fluidity; and Salt to earth, or solidity. For a full glossary of the terms which he employed, readers are referred to the volume on _The Life and Philosophy of Paracelsus_, by the late Dr Franz Hartmann. In this terminology _Azoth_ stands for the creative principle in Nature, or the spiritual vitalising force; the _Ilech Primum_ is the causative force; _Cherio_, the essence of the thing, the “fifth principle,” which constitutes what we call its essential qualities; the _Evestrum_ is man’s astral body, his ethereal counterpart, that may act to him as guardian angel and warn him of dangers; the _Elementaries_ are the astral corpses of the dead, and must not be confused with the _Elementals_, or Nature Spirits—Sylphs, Salamanders, Undines, and Gnomes; _Magic_ is the conscious employment of spiritual powers to act on external Nature. Many of these expressions have been adopted by the Theosophists of the present day and by students of Occultism.

It is clear, though Paracelsus long antedated Hahnemann, the founder of Homœopathy, that much of his medical teaching is what we should now call Homœopathic. Hahnemann, in fact, borrowed extensively from Paracelsus. Take, for instance, Paracelsus’s teaching with regard to the quintessence or virtue of each substance. This, he taught, though infinitesimal in quantity, even in large bodies, had none the less the power to affect the mass through and through, as a single drop of gall embitters, or a few grains of saffron colour a large quantity of water. The application of homœopathic cures by those ignorant of homœopathic principles has frequently led to mistakes in this connection; as, for instance, the administration of doses many times in excess of what the complaint requires, the result being the entire failure of the medicine to produce the intended effect.

“There are wide differences,” says Paracelsus, striking again a very homœopathic note, “between what the ancient doctors taught and what we here teach, and therefore our healing art differs widely from theirs. For we teach that what heals a man also wounds him, and what wounded will also heal him. For the nettle can be so changed that it cannot burn, the flame so that it does not scorch, and the chelidony so that it does not cicatrize. Thus similars are good in healing, such and such a salt to such and such a sore. And the things which heal a wound in Nature heal the same sort of wound in man.”

“Many kinds of rust,” says Paracelsus again, “occur in the minerals; for each mineral has its own peculiar nature.” This rust is in the form of a disease, and iron has one disease, while copper has another. In a similar way a man has a sore and it is healed by treatment. The metal, too, has a sore, and can be healed by treatment. “Metallic bodies,” says Paracelsus, long antedating the discoveries of the present day, “are as liable to death as the others, for their salt is arsenic.” The whole earth is linked together, and the life that passes through the bodies of men passes also through the bodies of minerals. Paracelsus had no patience with those who taught of a panacea that would heal all diseases. He described them as people who “rode all horses with one saddle,” through whom more harm than good was effected. He maintained that a doctor must know the sick and all matters appertaining to their state “just as a carpenter knows his wood.” He mentions six essential qualifications for the practical physician.

(1) A doctor (he says) must know how many kinds of tissue there are in the body, and how each kind stands in relation to the man.

(2) He must know all the bones, such as the ribs and their coverings, the difference between one and another, their relations to each other and their articulations.

(3) He must know all the blood-vessels, the nerves, the cartilages and how they are held together.

(4) He must know the length, number, form, condition, and purpose of each member of the body, its particular flesh, marrow, and all other details.

(5) He must know where all emunctoria lie and how they are to be averted; also what is in every cavity of the body, and everything about the intestines.

(6) He must with all his might and being seek to understand about life and death, what the chief organs in man mean, and what each member can and may suffer.

If we look to Paracelsus as the real founder of Homœopathy, so also must we regard him as the pioneer of magnetism and magnetic healing. Man, he maintained, is nourished through the magnetic power which resides in all Nature and by which each individual being draws its specific nourishment to itself. He called this magnetic force _Mumia_ in his special phraseology, and he laid great stress on the healing power which resided in this _Mumia_. “Just as the power of the lily breaks forth in perfume which is invisible, so,” he writes, “the invisible body sends forth its healing influence. Just as in the visible body are wonderful activities which the senses can perceive, so, too, lie powers in the invisible body which can work great wonders.” To him the whole universe was one, and knit together by indissoluble bonds.

“The astral currents created by the imagination of the Macrocosmos,” he writes, “act upon the Microcosmos, and produce certain states in the latter, and likewise the astral currents produced by the imagination and will of man produce certain states in external Nature; and these currents may reach far, because the power of the imagination reaches as far as thought can go. The physiological processes taking place in the body of living beings are caused by their astral currents, and the physiological and meteorological processes taking place in the great organism of Nature are caused by the astral currents of Nature as a whole. The astral currents of either act upon the other, either consciously or unconsciously; and if this fact is properly understood it will cease to appear incredible that the mind of man may produce changes in the universal mind, which may cause changes in the atmosphere—winds and rains, storm, hail and lightning—or that evil may be changed into good by the power of Faith. Heaven is a field into which the imagination of man throws the seeds.”

Here, in a single paragraph, is the philosophy of Astrology, and the justification for the efficacy of prayer.

I have said that Paracelsus was the father of Homœopathy, and the father also of that later school of animal magnetism which was founded in France in the latter part of the eighteenth century, and the inception of which is always associated with the name of Mesmer. Unfortunately, Mesmer had neither the knowledge nor the experience, nor yet the intuitive faculties of his master, Paracelsus. But, resurrected as it was under somewhat unfavourable conditions, there is reason to believe that magnetic healing is destined to play a far greater part in the future of medical art than it has ever done in the past. Not only was Paracelsus a pioneer in Homœopathy and animal magnetism, he was also one of the first, as well as one of the greatest, of all Faith-healers. “Faith,” he says, “has a great deal more power than the physical body.” “All magical processes are based upon Faith.” “The power of Faith overcomes all spirits of Nature, because it is a spiritual power, and Spirit is higher than Nature.” “Whatever is grown in the realm of Nature may be changed by the power of Faith.” “Anything we may accomplish which surpasses Nature is accomplished by Faith, and by Faith diseases may be cured.” “Imagination,” he says again, “is the cause of many diseases. Faith is the cure for all.” “If we cannot cure a disease by Faith, it is because our Faith is too weak. But our Faith is weak on account of our want of knowledge. If we were conscious of the power of God within ourselves, we should never fail.” “The power of amulets does not rest so much in the material of which they are made as in the Faith with which they are worn.” Paracelsus’s chosen motto was:

Alterius non sit qui suus esse potest—

“Let him not belong to another who has the power to be his own”—who can, in short, be master of his own soul. Paracelsus declined to follow any leader, but formed his own conclusions from his own experience. For him the _Codex Naturæ_ was a system which led straight to exact knowledge, and he rejected whatever could not be verified by research. He laid the foundations of a new system, built on evidence rather than on the outworn traditions of the medicine of his day. This system comprised within itself at once a practical guide to the medical art and a spiritual philosophy of life. The fatal error of divorcing the physical from the spiritual, and treating the physical as a thing apart, which has rendered abortive so much of the medical research of recent generations, would undoubtedly have been obviated, had the modern exponent of the medical art realised that in Paracelsus was to be found a pioneer who brought the life-giving genius of his intellect to bear on old truths in their relation to modern problems, rather than a quack and mountebank who deluded his contemporaries—none so easy a task—into the idea that he had accomplished marvellous cures where the medical faculty of his day could show nothing but a record of failures.

V EMANUEL SWEDENBORG

Of all the men and women whom the world has classed under the general title of “mystic,” not one certainly occupies so singular a position as Emanuel Swedenborg. If we decide to accept the world’s verdict—and it seems difficult to do otherwise—and agree to call Swedenborg a mystic, we are confronted by the fact that we can find no parallel either to his personality or to his career, though we search the roll of the mystics of all the ages. Pascal indeed was, like Swedenborg, a master mathematician, and a man of wide general learning, but he was a mystic first and foremost, and his life from an early date was given up to his calling as a leading light of the Catholic Church. Swedenborg, on the other hand, was, until the age of fifty, a man of science and a man of affairs; that is, he was a scientist of the most eminently practical kind, one whose encyclopædic knowledge was turned always into utilitarian channels, and for whom knowledge of any kind appeared to have no meaning outside its practical application. It would be difficult to instance a single one of the world’s great men whose interests were so wide, or whose mental activity was so all-absorbing. Outside art there seemed literally nothing that did not appeal to him as a field for his indefatigable investigation, and, as regards art, it was presumably its lack of utilitarian value which led to its neglect by his essentially practical mentality.

[Illustration: Emanuel Swedenborg.]

Swedenborg started his travels in the first years of early manhood, and wherever they took him there was nothing which escaped his observant eye. To whatever part of Europe he went it would seem that he could not be satisfied without learning all that was to be learnt, without seeing all that was to be seen. When he establishes himself in London he does not merely take lodgings because the price is reasonable or because the cooking is good, or because he thinks he will be comfortable. He writes from London in 1711: “I turn my lodgings to some use, and change them often. At first I was at a watchmaker’s, and now I am at a mathematical instrument maker’s. From them I steal their trades, which some day will be of use to me.” At Leyden he learnt to grind glass for lenses, so that he might furnish himself with appliances which he could not afford to buy. His brother wishes for globes for the university at Upsala. These proved too expensive, and he was asked to purchase printed maps which might be mounted in Sweden. The makers would not supply these, so Swedenborg applied himself to learning engraving, and prepared them himself. When chafing at enforced inactivity at home he turns his attention to music, and writes to his brother-in-law that he has been able several times to take the place of the organist. In travelling on the Continent he studies the fortifications of the towns, the methods of constructing fences. He visits and investigates all the manufactories. He passes critical remarks with regard to the blast furnaces, the vitriol, arsenic, and sulphur works, the copper and tin manufactories, the paper mills, and studies also the methods of mining. Not content with this, he investigates the social conditions of the people, criticises the situation of affairs in France, the wealth of the Church and the poverty of the people. “Everywhere,” he says, “the convents, churches, and monks are the wealthiest and possess most land. The monks are fat, puffed up, and prosperous. A whole proud army might be formed of them without their being missed.” Again: “The houses are miserable, the convents magnificent, the people poor and wretched.” He investigates the problem of the revenue of the French Government, obtained by the system of taxation called tithing. “It amounts,” he says, “to some thirty-two million livres, and Paris, on account of its rents, contributes nearly two-thirds of the sum.” “I am told,” he says, “that the ecclesiastical order possesses one-fifth of all the property in the State, and that the country will be ruined if this goes on much longer.”[10] He gives the number of convents in France, actually at that date between fourteen and fifteen thousand; the number of the members of the religious orders; the number of the abbesses, prioresses, chapters, etc. He goes to hear the celebrated preachers, among them the King’s chaplain, who “gesticulates like an actor.” He discusses the adoration of saints with an abbé. He visits the hospitals and attends the opening of Parliament. Not content with this, he frequents the opera and the theatres, and passes opinions upon the most popular pieces and the most distinguished actors and actresses. In the midst of all this we find him speculating on the form of the particles of the atmosphere, and writing an introductory essay to a book which he is planning to prove that “the soul of wisdom is the knowledge and acknowledgment of the Supreme Being.” As if this were not enough, he occupies his spare moments in the study of anatomy, astronomy, magnetism, and hydrostatics.

Surely, since the world began, there was never a more versatile brain! He has even observations to make on military matters. He goes to see the Brandenburg soldiers, Frederick the Great’s famous regiment. “The men,” he says, “are tall and slender and they march erectly. They go through their drills with the greatest promptness and regularity, but their manner is a little theatrical. The whole squadron is like a machine placed there, moving instantaneously at the pleasure of the machinist.” “If,” he says, “they displayed the same uniformity in battle as in drill, they would conquer Alexander’s army, and subject a great part of Europe to Prussia, but——” He leaves it to the reader to fill in the reason of his doubt.

Others besides Swedenborg have possessed that encyclopædic type of brain which amasses vast stores of miscellaneous knowledge, but few, if any, have possessed at the same time Swedenborg’s extraordinary capacity for utilising the knowledge gained and turning it to practical account. The idea of learning as an object in itself was indeed entirely alien to Swedenborg’s type of mentality. All information acquired was merely regarded as a means towards some practical end. We thus find him founding universal principles upon the knowledge he has accumulated in explanation of the laws which govern phenomena. We see him, for example, deducing his conclusions in the field of geology from a number of observed facts. He reports on the geological conformation of Sweden, and concludes from it that the country was at one time swept over by a sea in a state of great commotion. He notices the fact that the stones on the mountain sides are worn off and rounded, in support of this. He also describes the remnants of a wrecked ship excavated far inland, and the skeleton of a whale which was discovered in West Gothland. “Swedenborg’s contributions in the field of geology,” says Professor A. G. Nathorst, “are of such significance and value that they alone would have been sufficient to have secured him an honoured scientific name.” As a mining expert he was unequalled. “We should never be able to finish,” says Professor Schleiden, “if we attempted to enumerate all the improvements which Swedenborg introduced in the working of the mines in his own country.” “The metallurgical works of this remarkable man,” says Dr Percy, “seem to be very imperfectly known, and yet none are in my judgment more worthy of the attention of those interested in the history of metallurgy.” The air-tight stove which he describes in his work on _New Observations and Discoveries Respecting Iron and Fire_, published in 1721, is stated to be identical in principle with one recently patented in Washington.[11] Sir Isaac Newton had propounded the corpuscular theory of light, which was for long universally held. Swedenborg dissented, stating, in his _Principia_, that “motion diffused from a given centre through a contiguous medium or volume of particles of ether produced light.” This theory is the one now adopted. Swedenborg also notices that light and electricity are produced by the same efficient cause, thereby supplying the clue to the utilisation of electricity as a means of lighting. Even where in the field of science he was looked upon as a dreamer in his own days, his dreams have since taken practical shape. Among the inventions which he projected was “the plan of a certain ship which with its men was to go under the surface of the sea wherever it chooses, and do great damage to the fleet of the enemy.” He also designed a flying machine, a project which he was very reluctant to drop. Christopher Polhem, however, threw cold water on this, saying, with respect to flying by artificial means, “there is perhaps the same difficulty as in making a _perpetuum mobile_, or gold by artificial means.”

His philosophy recognises the synthetical as well as the analytical method as requisite to arrive at true conclusions. “Both,” he says, “are necessary in reflecting upon and tracing out one and the same thing; for in order to do so there is required both light, _a priori_, and experience, _a posteriori_.” “He who is possessed of scientific knowledge,” he says elsewhere, “and is merely skilled in experiment, had taken only the first steps in wisdom. For such a person is only acquainted with what is posterior, and is ignorant of what is prior. Thus his wisdom does not extend beyond the working of the senses and is unconnected with reason; whereas, nevertheless, true wisdom embraces both.”

Unquestionably Swedenborg, as he is known to us from the record of the first fifty years of his life (if we except the earliest years of his childhood), was about the last person one would expect to have his name associated with that Swedenborgian gospel by which eventually it came to be known to the world at large. He had, as we have seen, earned many titles to recognition, but assuredly that of a medium of communication between this world and the world of spirits was not one of them.

Swedenborg’s father was a Swedish Lutheran Bishop with leanings towards pietism, and a rather broader and more sympathetic outlook than the majority of his fellow clergy. His name, Swedborg, was subsequently changed to Swedenborg when the family was ennobled by the Swedish king. Emanuel was the second son and third child of Bishop Swedborg and his wife, Anna, of whom we know but little, and who died when Emanuel was only eight years old. The child was thus surrounded by religious influences in his early days, and it is said that his father had a guardian angel with whom he claimed to be able to hold converse on occasion. Reared under these conditions, he naturally enough evinced strongly religious tendencies in his childhood. “From my fourth to my tenth year,” he says, “I was constantly engaged in thought upon God, salvation, and the spiritual experiences of men. I revealed things at which my father and mother wondered, saying that angels must be speaking through me.” Here at least we obtain some suggestion of what he eventually became, and of which the intervening years between childhood and middle age seem to afford us little or no hint. The believer in heredity will point to the psychic temperament of the father as inherited by the son; but there appears to be no foreshadowing in his ancestry of that encyclopædic mind with which he was destined to astonish his contemporaries. His father evidently failed to understand his precocious son, and the relations between the two were far from cordial, the son considering that his father was inappreciative and failed to encourage his intellectual activities, and also blaming him for meanness in matters of finance. Bishop Swedborg had, however, eight other children besides Emanuel, and very probably he did not find it easy to make two ends meet, especially as he was something of an author himself, and published books at his own expense, which proved far from remunerative. Probably the father considered that the son ought to settle down to some regular trade or profession instead of commencing life by travelling in search of knowledge first to one country and then to another. Presumably he regarded his precocious offspring as likely to become a jack-of-all-trades and master of none, and there are doubtless many other parents who, under similar circumstances, would have thought the same. In any case the son was able to start off on his travels in spite of financial embarrassments and many dangers on the way. He was nearly wrecked when approaching England. Then the ship was boarded by pirates, and on the top of this was fired into by a British guardship, being mistaken for the pirate craft. Finally, our youthful hero narrowly escaped hanging for breaking the quarantine regulations, the plague at this time being prevalent in Sweden. Under somewhat similar circumstances the great Julius told the captain of his vessel not to be afraid, as he was carrying Cæsar. Whether Swedenborg had any such faith in a Providence watching over his future destiny, we are not told. He certainly realised his unique powers, but can hardly have suspected the channel into which they were eventually to be diverted.

The one link between Emanuel and his family was his brother-in-law, Eric Benzelius, afterwards bishop, and the sister to whom he was married. In his financial and other troubles he repeatedly appeals to him for sympathy and practical help, evidently not without response. He also asks for intercession with his father, to whom he obviously did not care to appeal direct, having met with too many rebuffs. It is interesting to note that one of the first objects that met his eyes in London was “the magnificent St Paul’s Cathedral, finished a few days ago, in all its parts.” He makes the acquaintance of Flamsteed, the most notable astronomer in England, who was concerned in the founding of Greenwich Observatory and seems to have been something of an astrologer as well. Apparently as the result of this visit, he takes up with enthusiasm the study of astronomy.

I have made such progress in it [he says], as to have discovered much which I think will be useful in its study. Although in the beginning it made my brain ache, yet long speculations are no longer difficult for me. I examined closely all proportions for finding the terrestrial longitude, but could not find a single one. I have, therefore, originated a method by means of the Moon, which is unerring, and I am certain that it is the best which has yet been advanced. In a short time I will inform the Royal Society that I have a proposition to make on this subject, stating my points.... I have also discovered many new methods for observing the planets, the Moon, and the stars. That which concerns the Moon and its parallax, diameter, and inequality I will publish whenever an opportunity arises.

He longs to go to Oxford, and investigate the Bodleian Library, but cannot, for want of money. “I wonder,” he says, “my father does not show greater care for me than to let me live now for more than sixteen months upon 250 rixdalers (something under £50).” Finally, he returns home and obtains an appointment as Assessor-extraordinary at the State Department of the Board of Mines, which was responsible for the supervision of the great mining industries of Sweden. In this connection he is fortunate in making the acquaintance of Christopher Polhem, the celebrated engineer, who recommends him for his talents and readiness of resource. By degrees he becomes an intimate guest with Polhem’s family, a circumstance which leads in the end to a tragic love affair. He falls desperately in love with Polhem’s younger daughter. The father gives his consent; but the girl, a mere child of thirteen or fourteen, cannot reconcile herself to the idea. Swedenborg, with great sorrow, relinquishes his claim, resolving never again to let his thoughts settle upon any woman. Polhem himself seems to have been almost equally distressed with Swedenborg over the incident, especially as it led to a breach between himself and the young man, whom he had come to regard in the light of his own son. A period of depression follows, which is accentuated by the death of Charles XII. of Sweden, about the same period, from whose encouragement and support Emanuel had considerable expectations. The relations between himself and the King were, indeed, singularly intimate, Charles readily appreciating the young man’s remarkable talents and mathematical knowledge. “Every day,” says Swedenborg, in writing on 14th September 1718, “I had some mathematical matters for his Majesty, who deigned to be pleased with all of them. When the eclipse took place, I took his Majesty out to see it, and talked much to him about it. This, however, is a mere beginning.”

In the summer of 1721, Swedenborg started again on his travels, his object this time being to study the mines and manufactories of other countries, so that he might be in a position to render greater services to his own in the office to which he had been appointed. On this occasion he visited all the mines in Saxony and the Hartz mountains, and was royally entertained by Duke Ludvic Rudolf of Brunswick-Lüneburg, who showed him a generosity which he doubtless appreciated after his father’s parsimony. Meanwhile his pen was by no means idle. He published a treatise at Amsterdam on Chemistry and Physics; some observations on Iron and Fire; and a work on the construction of Docks and Dykes; and later on, at Leipzig, some miscellaneous observations on Geology and Mineralogy. On his return home he settled down again for a period to his work at the Board of Mines, in the meantime gathering matter for further publications which followed in due course. The most important of these were his _Opera Philosophia Mineralia_, and a treatise on _The Infinite_. The former work met with a very favourable reception, and between one publication and another Swedenborg soon won for himself a European reputation. The Academy of Sciences at St Petersburg nominated him a corresponding member, while he was one of the first to be elected for the newly established Royal Academy of Sciences in his own country.

Everything thus seemed to open out for Swedenborg a career of great scientific and practical utility. He became, however, gradually led by his philosophical speculations to an investigation of the nature of the soul and its operation in the body, and the mutual relations of the two. This study was the subject of two important works, entitled respectively _The Economy of the Animal Kingdom considered Anatomically and Philosophically_, and _The Animal Kingdom considered Anatomically, Physically, and Philosophically_. By the “animal kingdom” must be understood the kingdom presided over by the soul. In the first of these books Swedenborg deals with the composition of the blood and its circulation, with the heart, arteries, and veins, and with the brain and its cortices. In this book Swedenborg attaches “great importance to the blood, for, as he says, nothing exists in the body that has not previously existed in the blood.” He describes it again as “a vital and most spirituous fluid, which has an immediate connection with the soul.” In the _Animal Kingdom_ Swedenborg describes in full detail all the organs of the body and their uses, the object being in the end to track the soul home and to describe its activities. “For as yet,” he tells us, “her modes of being and her nature are absolutely unknown.” Naturally he recognises that this will be regarded by the philosophers of his day as a vain and useless quest. But he is prepared to meet their objections with the following pertinent remarks, which, now that the materialistic hypothesis has been finally discarded by the advance guard of modern Science, are likely to find a sympathetic echo in scientific as well as philosophic circles.

Inasmuch [he says] as the soul is the model, the idea, the first form, the substance, the force, and the principle of her organic body, and of all its forces and powers, or what amounts to the same thing, as the organic body is the image and type of its soul conformed and principled to the whole nature of the soul’s efficiency, it follows that the one is represented in the other.... Thus by the body we are instructed respecting the soul, by the soul respecting the body, and by both respecting the truth of the whole.

Emerson describes the _Animal Kingdom_ as “an anatomist’s account of the human body in the highest style of poetry,” and its object as to “put science and the soul, long estranged from each other, at one again.” It was while continuing his pursuit of this apparently visionary aim that Swedenborg quite unexpectedly found himself, as he believed, in touch with another than the physical world. In writing of this extraordinary development in his life history in the Introduction to the _Arcana Cœlestia_, the first volume of which appeared in 1749, he gives his own account of his relationship with the spiritual realm in justification of the remarkably dogmatic statements contained in the book in question.

“It is,” he says, “expedient here to premise that of the Lord’s divine mercy it has been granted me now for several years to be constantly and uninterruptedly in company with spirits and angels, hearing them converse with each other and conversing with them. Hence it has been permitted me to hear and see things in another life which are astonishing, and which have never before come to the knowledge of any man nor entered into his imagination. I have thus been instructed concerning different kinds of spirits and the state of souls after death—concerning Hell, or the lamentable state of the unfaithful—concerning Heaven, or the most happy state of the faithful—and particularly concerning the doctrine of Faith, which is acknowledged throughout all Heaven, on which subjects, by the divine mercy of the Lord, more will be said in the following pages.” With regard to the extraordinary transformation which these experiences brought about in his life’s work, he explains to a friend that the Lord has elected him for this work, and “for revealing the spiritual meaning of the Sacred Scriptures which he had promised to the Prophets and in the Book of Revelation.” “My purpose previously,” he adds, “had been to explore Nature, chemistry, and the sciences of mining and anatomy.”

The basis of Swedenborg’s teaching which, of course, under the circumstances he did not claim in any way as original, was that the Bible must be accepted absolutely as a divinely inspired book, but must be taken in an allegorical sense. Thus where historical events are recorded they are not recorded for the sake of history, for the object of the Scriptures is to treat not of the kingdoms of the earth, but of the Kingdom of God. In other parts of the Bible, as in Genesis, there is no truth in the story from the historical point of view. The record is merely an allegory of the soul.

His doctrine of Correspondences was merely the recognition of this allegorical relationship of the spiritual and material. The universe, according to Swedenborg, is symbolical throughout, All material things are derived from their spiritual archetypes, and are representations of these. The bodily form represents the spiritual character, for the spirit forms the body in its own likeness. A man’s acts are thus the outcome of his inward nature, and there is consequently a similar correspondence between them and the inward man. The basis of these ideas is, of course, the ancient occult teaching that the universe is the macrocosm, and man the microcosm. Thus Swedenborg tells us that as there is a material sun, moon, and stars, so each of these heavenly bodies has its mental and spiritual counterpart.

Swedenborg’s doctrine of Degrees appears to follow from his doctrine of Correspondences. The three degrees of the human mind correspond to the three kingdoms of Nature: animal, vegetable, and mineral, corresponding to spirit, soul, and body. “Degrees,” Swedenborg tells us, “are of two kinds, discrete and continuous.” “All things, from least to greatest, in both the spiritual and natural worlds, co-exist at once from discrete and continuous degrees. In respect of discrete degrees there can be no intercourse between either by continuity.” It follows, therefore, with regard to the degrees of the human mind, the celestial, spiritual, and the natural, that they cannot communicate under normal conditions one with another. Thus, too, men on earth can have no sensible communication with the spiritual world or see things of that world without a special opening of the spiritual sight. Elsewhere Swedenborg tells us “to the intent that anything may be perfect it must be distinguished into three degrees. The ground and reason of this is because there must be end, cause, and effect.” Another doctrine of Swedenborg’s was that of regeneration. In order to be partaker of the higher life, man, he held, must be born again, but this regeneration was not a special occurrence of any particular date, but a continuous process. One of the orthodox doctrines which Swedenborg attacked was that of the Trinity. He denied that Jesus Christ was merely the Second Person of a Divine Trinity. He cites St Paul’s statement that “in Him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily,” and maintains that the whole Trinity is centred in his Person. “In consequence,” he says, “of separating the Divine Trinity into Three Persons each of which is declared to be God and Lord, a sort of frenzy has infected the whole system of theology as well as the Christian Church so called from its Divine Founder.... That a trinity of gods occupies the minds of Christians, although they deny it from shame, is very evident from the ingenuity of many who contrive methods to prove that three are one, and one three, by geometry, arithmetic, and physics.... Others have trifled with the Divine Trinity as jugglers play one with another. Their juggling on this subject may be compared to those sick of a fever who see a single object, such as a man, a table, or a candle, as three; or three as one.”

The basis of this orthodox Christian teaching with regard to the Trinity is, of course, the Athanasian Creed, which attempts to explain the matter by the absurd method of a juxtaposition of contradictions. It is well to bear in mind, in view of the enormous amount of theological twaddle that has been talked on this subject, that the Athanasian Creed was in the nature of a political concordat to meet the exigencies of a time of acute religious difficulty, and in no sense an exposition of spiritual truth.

As the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity was false, argued Swedenborg, and there were no three Persons, as supposed, it was, of course, impossible for one of them, the Son, to offer Himself as sacrifice to appease the wrath of another, the Father. The doctrine of the atonement, therefore, as taught by the Church, had no basis in fact. God needed no reconciliation to His creatures. It was they who needed to be reconciled to Him before they could be fitted to appear in His presence. Christ took upon Himself human nature that He might conquer mankind’s spiritual enemies which were keeping him in bondage and estranged from his Divine Source.

One of Swedenborg’s most astounding statements had reference to the Last Judgment. This was not, maintained Swedenborg, as the orthodox generally hold, the final consummation of all things. The event was an occurrence in the spiritual sphere which actually took place in the year 1757! It appears from this amazing account that in the Intermediate State so many undesirable and evil spiritual entities had accumulated that they were threatening the whole world with imminent catastrophe. It may be remembered, in this connection, that in Swedenborg’s time scepticism was everywhere rampant, and that religious life had reached its lowest ebb. This was the case not only on the Continent, but pre-eminently in England, where the movement headed by John Wesley led to such remarkable scenes in connection with the great spiritual revival which followed this period of religious apathy. To avert the catastrophe threatened to the world according to Swedenborg’s theory, a general judgment was executed upon the spirits who were in revolt and were imperilling the divine order. These powers of evil were at that date placed under restraint, so that an influx of new spiritual forces among men might be made possible. Swedenborg actually goes so far as to affirm that he himself was permitted to witness this judgment in fulfilment of the prophecies made in the Gospels and in the Book of Revelation.

The Swedenborgian teaching which has come in probably for most criticism is that with regard to Marriage. Swedenborg (thus far as it appears to me quite rightly) insisted that sex is a spiritual as well as a physical distinction. He denied the virtues of celibacy and declared that true chastity resides in the perfect marriage relation. Marriage, according to Swedenborg, is not a physical relationship till death part the united pair, but is eternal in its character. “Conjugial love” being the central and fundamental love of man’s life is also the source of his fullest joy. The delights of the true conjugial love exceed the delights of all other loves. All delights that are felt by man proceed from love, and it follows, therefore, that the principal happiness in the celestial life must have a similar source, and the highest joy of heaven must therefore be the spiritual counterpart of the conjugial life of earth. It does not, of course, necessarily follow from this that earthly marriages are perpetuated in heaven. If the feelings of the marriage partners towards one another are concordant and sympathetic, they continue indeed their married life; but if they are discordant and antipathetic, they dissolve it. For true conjugial love is the only possible form of marriage in heaven, and “as their love lasts to eternity, it follows that the wife becomes more and more a wife and the husband more and more a husband. The true reason of this is that in a marriage of truly conjugial love each married partner becomes continually a more interior man. For that love opens the interiors of their minds and in the proportion in which these are opened the man becomes more and more a man.”

Swedenborg has some very beautiful observations with regard to the rejuvenescence of those who have passed into the higher life. “All who come into heaven,” he says, “return into their vernal youth, and remain so to eternity. The more thousands of years they live the more beautiful and happy is the spring to which they attain.... In a word, to grow old in heaven is to grow young.... They who live in the chaste life of marriage are above all others in the order and form of Heaven after death. Their beauty, therefore, is surpassing, and the flower of their youth endures for ever.”

What are we to say of this man who propounded this amazing gospel as a direct message from the highest spheres? What are we to say of his communications and conversations with the unseen world? Of his _bona fides_ it is impossible to entertain a doubt. The ordinary hypothesis is that he suffered from hallucinations. It has been argued on the other hand, that for a man so sane and so shrewd in the ordinary affairs of the world, hallucinations of the kind were an impossibility. This, however, seems going rather too far. Some of the sanest men in the world have had special points on which they were not mentally sound. Monomania is a recognised form of mental aberration, and the man who suffers from it is as sane as his fellows on all matters except one.

This spiritual communion, however, was continuous in the case of Swedenborg for many years, and during those years occupied either in itself or in the activities that arose from it the larger portion of his life. In spite of this absorption, his relations with his fellow men continued as sane and responsible as those of any of his neighbours. Would this have been possible, one may ask, in the face of so absorbing an interest, had this interest merely been founded on a monomania? It would, I think, be difficult to parallel such a case. If, however, we decide to take Swedenborg’s relations with the other world at his own valuation, are we called upon to accept his gospel at his own valuation on that account? Certainly I think not. Swedenborg’s estimate of the status of the spiritual beings with whom he communicated, even if we accept their reality, need not be ours. Recent investigations and records of innumerable psychic experiences have tended to show what a miscellaneous crowd of spirits hover around the confines of this material world. Swedenborg’s mistake has been made by many spiritualists of the present day, and sometimes with disastrous results. Swedenborg had not before him the evidence which we now hold to warn him of the necessity of testing the quality of his spiritual communicants. The experiences encountered overwhelmed him by their unexpected and apparently miraculous character, and his naturally sane judgment was at fault for want of a criterion by which to estimate them.[12] Few of those who now accept the genuineness of psychical phenomena are prepared to question Swedenborg’s exceptional mediumistic powers. To allow them to their fullest extent is by no means to accept the doctrine which was preached through his mediumship.

Of Swedenborg’s psychic gifts there is indeed plenty of evidence quite outside the teachings of his celestial visitors. On one occasion he disclosed to the Queen of Sweden a secret that had existed between her and her deceased brother, the Crown Prince Augustus William of Prussia, which was unknown to any living person. On another he described to a whole company of people at Gothenburg a destructive fire which had broken out at that very moment in Stockholm. Again on another occasion he revealed to the widow of Monsieur de Marteville the hiding place of a missing receipt for money which had been paid by her husband, the Dutch Ambassador at Stockholm. These incidents are among the best authenticated of any extant historical records of a psychic character. The philosopher Kant, among others, made a searching investigation into the evidence on which they rested, and came away absolutely convinced of their truth. It is curious to note that John Wesley was not a little interested in the Swedenborgian propagandism. The great Methodist preacher was impressed with a strong desire to meet the Swedish seer—a desire to which, however, he had never given open expression. The Rev. Samuel Smith, one of Wesley’s preachers, records how, about the end of February 1772 he was in attendance upon John Wesley, when the latter received a communication as follows from Swedenborg, who was then in London, which he read aloud.

GREAT BATH STREET, GREAT BATH FIELDS.

SIR,—I have been informed in the world of spirits that you have a strong desire to converse with me. I shall be happy to see you if you will favour me with a visit. I am, sir, your humble servant,

EMANUEL SWEDENBORG.

Mr Wesley wrote in reply that he was then on the point of starting for a six months’ journey, but would be pleased to wait on Swedenborg after his return to London. Swedenborg replied to this, that the visit proposed by Wesley would be too late, as he, Swedenborg, would enter the world of spirits on the 29th day of the next month, never more to return, a prediction which proved perfectly correct.

Other men have written many books. It is Swedenborg’s unique distinction, if distinction it is, to be the one man in history who has written a library on his own account. The encyclopædic brain does not, as a rule, tend to perspicuity in style, and Swedenborg has suffered from neglect owing to the fact that the fertility of his genius was not sufficiently associated with the powers of selection and condensation. To search for the treasures of his knowledge among his published works is like looking, in the words of the hackneyed proverb, “for needles in a haystack.” Had he given us far less in volume the world would doubtless have profited more by the very valuable information contained in his writings.

There are times when one is inclined to regret (if also to feel thankfulness) that Swedenborg was side-tracked by his Celestials and that he did not complete his phenomenal career on the lines which he had marked out for himself. It is a vain, though a most alluring speculation, to consider how the destinies of nations might have evolved if certain incidents in a single life history had eventuated otherwise than they did. We may conceive of Swedenborg bringing to completion his schemes for the construction of flying machines and submarines, nearly two centuries earlier than was decreed by destiny, and ask ourselves, if we will, what use the great Napoleon might not have made of these formidable implements of destructive warfare, and how far the map of Europe, and indeed of the world, might have been changed through their employment by his formidable genius; or, again, to what extent the linking up of the New and Old Worlds might have been accelerated by such developments. Here at least we must admit was a phenomenon—a man who realised, in a measure undreamed of by his contemporaries, not only in the physical but also in the spiritual sphere, the stupendous possibilities of the Coming Time.

Footnote 10:

Church property being free from taxation.

Footnote 11:

See _Life of Emanuel Swedenborg_. By George Trobridge. London: Frederick Warne & Co. To which