Robert Southey

Account of Swedenborgianism.

I found my way one Sunday to the New Jerusalem, or Swedenborgian chapel. It is singularly handsome, and its gallery fitted up like boxes at a theatre. Few or none of the congregation belonged to the lower classes, they seemed to be chiefly respectable tradesmen. The service was decorous, and the singing remarkably good: but I have never in any other heretical meeting heard heresy so loudly insisted upon. Christ in his divine, or in his glorified human, was repeatedly addressed as the only God; and the preacher laboured to show that the profane were those who worshipped three Gods, and that their prayers, instead of a sweet-smelling savour ascending to the throne of God, were an obscene stink which offended his nostrils.

This is little remarkable in the civil, or, as his disciples would call it, the human and terrestrial part of Emanuel Swedenborg's history. He was born in 1689, at Stockholm, and was son of the bishop of Ostrogothia. Charles XII. favoured him; Queen Ulrica ennobled him, dignifying his name by elongation, as if in the patriarchal fashion, from Swedberg to Swedenborg. It is certain that he was a man of science, having been assessor of the Metallic College, and having published a Regnum Minerale in three volumes folio; but he abandoned the mineral kingdom for a spiritual world of his own, the most extraordinary that ever a crazy imagination created.[10]

His celestial history is more out of the common. I am copying from the books of his believers when I tell you—that his interiors were opened by the Lord; that he conversed with the dead, and with the very worst devils without danger; that he spoke the angelic language, and respired the angels' atmosphere; that for twenty-six years he was in the spirit, and at the same time in the body; that he could let his spirit into the body or out of the body at pleasure; that he had been in all the planets, and in all the heavens, and had even descended into hell; that the twelve apostles used to visit him; that a conspiracy of spirits was formed against him; and that he was seized with a deadly disease in consequence of a pestilential smoke which issued from Sodom and Egypt in the spiritual world.

Enough of this. Let me try if it be possible to make his mythology intelligible, and to draw out a map of his extra-mundane discoveries.

Omnia quÆ in coelis, sunt in terris, terrestri modo; omnia quÆ in terris, sunt in coelis, coelesti modo. All things which are in heaven are upon earth, after an earthly manner; all things which are upon earth are in heaven, after a heavenly manner.[11] So says Trismegistos, and who will dispute the authority of the thrice-greatest Hermes?—The Scriptures therefore cannot be understood without the science of correspondences; a knowledge which the patriarchs possessed intuitively in the golden age, which was preserved only scientifically in the silver age, became merely speculative in the copper age, and in our iron generation has been wholly lost. The Egyptian hieroglyphics are to be explained by this key, which opens also all the mysteries of the ritual law. Job was the last writer who possessed it, till it was revealed to the Swedish teacher.

There is nothing new in this, you tell me; it is the old notion of a double meaning, the external and the internal, the literal and the allegorical, the letter and the spirit. Not so, my good Father! "Correspondence is the appearance of the internal in the external, and its representation therein; there is a correspondence between all things in heaven and all things in man; without correspondence with the spiritual world nothing whatever could exist or subsist." You are growing impatient!—I must give you a specimen of common language interpreted by this science. Two legs stand for the will of God; by a small piece of the ear we are to understand the will of truth; the son of a she-ass denotes rational truth; and an ass, without any mention of his pedigree, signifies the scientific principle—certainly no ill-chosen emblem of such principles and such science as this. This is stark nonsense, you say! My good father Antonio; "No distinct idea can be had of correspondence without a previous knowledge concerning heaven as the Great Man," or Maximus Homo, as we must call him, in the Master's own words.

In sober serious explanation, Swedenborg seems to have thought upon one text and dreamt upon it, till he mistook his dreams and his delirium for revelation. "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.—So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him." His system is a wild comment upon this passage, as monstrous as any of the Rabinical reveries. Accordingly he lays it down as an axiom, that the whole of divine order was imaged in man at the creation, insomuch that he was divine order itself in a human form, and so Heaven in epitome. Upon this he has built up a creed of the strangest anthropomorphism, teaching that the divinity of the deity constitutes heaven, and that heaven itself is in a human form, Deity and heaven thus identified being the Maximus Homo, the Grand or Divine Man.

It has been one of the many fancies of hypothetical philosophers, that all bodies are aggregates of living atoms. Admit this notion, and it explains all the mysterious operations of life with perfect facility; the little inhabitants of the secretory organs take each what they like best, and thus manufacture all the animal materials. This is analogous to the celestial system of Swedenborg, but with this difference, that each constituent part and particle of his Maximus Homo resembles the whole in form, every society in this body corporate, and every individual of each society being in the human shape divine.

Heaven is to be considered under the threefold distinction of general, special, and particular—for Swedenborg had learnt to classify in his earthly studies. Generally it is divided into two kingdoms, celestial and spiritual; but I am sorry to add that, though I have studied the anatomy of the Grand Man with some attention, I cannot discover where or how these regions are separated. The specific division into three heavens is more intelligible; the first is in the extremities, the second or middle in the trunk, the third and highest in the head. The particular division is into the societies of angels, who form the constituent monads of this divine aggregate.

Every part, however, of the Maximus Homo is not Heaven; at least the inhabitants of every part are neither possessed of celestial goodness, nor in that state of celestial enjoyment which seems essential to our ideas of paradise. For instance, the parishioners of the kidneys, the ureters, and the bladder, consist of such persons as in their mortal state took a cruel delight in bringing others to justice; these people speak with a harsh chattering voice, like magpies whose tongues have been slit. They who have despised virtue and religion are in the gall-bladder, a bitter destination no doubt! They also who dwell about the sphincter vesicÆ, amuse themselves by tormenting the evil spirits. Whether they are purged of this malignant disposition by the secretions and excretions which are going on in their vicinity, this new Emanuel sayeth not. A purgatory indeed there is, and a truly curious one! They who are still unclean in thoughts and affections are stationed in the colon; not as component parts of the Grand Man—of that honour they are not yet worthy; they are there as his aliment, to be concocted and digested, and after the gross fÆces have been cast out, filtered through lacteals and arteries into chyle and blood, till they are taken up into the system and embodied. They who are defiled with earthly dregs are in the small-guts; the most impure of all in the neck of the bladder and in the rectum, both which have below them a most dreadful and filthy hell, ready to receive their contents,

This ???a???, or Maximus Homo, seems to be the body of Deity; and the Divine Life or Spirit, like the gifted spirit of Swedenborg himself, can be in or out, separate from, or identified with it, at pleasure. Accordingly, though the angels are in him, and actually are he, yet they visibly behold him, as the sun of their world. Now the Lord in person being the sun, the light and heat which proceed from him must necessarily partake of divinity; accordingly light in Heaven is divine truth, and heat is divine love: a thin and transparent vapour, which surrounds the angels like an atmosphere, enables them to sustain this influx of Deity. An atmosphere of this kind, which is called the Sphere of Life, exhales from every man, spirit and angel; it is the emanation of the vital affections and thoughts. In Heaven, of course, it is volatile essence of love, and each angel is sensibly affected when he gets within the sphere of another. We on earth feel the same influence, though unconscious of the cause, for this hypothesis physically accounts for the sympathies of dislike and of affection.—The Deity is also the celestial moon, and this sun and moon are seen at the same time, one before the right eye, and the other before the left. Let an angel turn his face which way he will, this sun is always before him, and he always fronts the east; yet at the same time he can see the other quarters by an inward kind of vision, like that of thought. A precious olla podrida this of allegorical riddles and downright nonsense!

The oeconomy of the angels is more rationally imagined, and is better suited to our worldly habits, or suited to better worldly habits than Elysium, or Valhalla, or the Sorgon, the Paradise of Mohammed, or the ever-blessed state of Nireupan to which the Yogue approximates when he has looked at nothing for seven years but the tip of his own nose. You are not to conceive of angels as of disembodied spirits; they are material beings, though of a finer matter. They wear garments white, or flame-coloured, or shining, with which they are supplied by the Deity; only the angels of the third Heaven, being in the state of innocence made perfect, are naked. They dwell in houses, which are arranged in streets and squares, like our cities on earth; but every thing there is on a nobler scale, and of more magnificence. Swedenborg frequently walked through these cities, and visited the inhabitants; he saw palaces there, the roofs of which glittered as if with pure gold, and the floors as if with precious stones: the gardens are on the south side, where trees with leaves like silver produce fruits resembling gold, and the flowers are so arranged as by their colours to represent rainbows.—There is no space in Heaven, or, more accurately speaking, no such thing as distance: where angels wish to be, there they are; locomotion is accomplished by the mere act of volition; and, what is better still, if one angel earnestly desires the company of another, the wish attracts him, and he immediately appears.

There is a room in the southern quarter of the spiritual world the walls of which shine like gold; and in this room is a table, and on this table lies the Bible, set with jewels. Whenever this book is opened a light of inexpressible brilliancy flows from it, and the jewels send forth rays which arch it over with a rainbow. When an angel of the third Heaven comes and opens it, the ground of this rainbow appears crimson; to one from the second Heaven it is blue; to one of the first or lowest Heaven the light is variegated and veined like marble. But if one approaches who has ever falsified the word, the brightness disappears, and the book itself seems covered with blood, and warns him to depart, lest he suffer for his presumption.

There is public worship in Heaven, which Swedenborg attended, and heard sermons: they have books both written and printed; he was able to read them, but could seldom, he says, pick out any meaning; from which I conclude that he has successfully copied their style. Writing flows from the thoughts of the angels, or with their thoughts, appearing so coinstantaneously as if thought cast itself upon the paper; but as this writing is not permanent, it seems that pen and ink might usefully be introduced among them. The language of Heaven is like the writing, connate with thought, being indeed nothing more than thinking audibly. Its construction is curiously explained; the vowels express the affections; the consonants the particular ideas derived from the affections, and the words the whole sense of the matter. The angelic alphabet resembles the Chinese, for every letter signifies a complete thing,—which is the reason why the hundred and nineteenth psalm is alphabetically divided;—and every letter, and every flexure and curvature of every letter, contains some secret of wisdom. Different dialects of this language are spoken in the celestial and spiritual kingdoms; the celestials chiefly using the vowels U and O, the spirituals preferring E and I; the speech of the former resembles a smooth flowing water, that of the latter the sound of a running stream broken on its way. But the most enviable power connected with expression which the angels possess, is, that they represent their ideas in a thin undulating circumfluent fluid or ether, so that they can make thought visible.

In like manner as our human form goes on with us to our heavenly state, so also will our human affections. The ruling passion, whatever it be, not only lasts till death, but continues after death. Woe therefore to those whose whole aspirations are after things that are earthly, for they cannot enter the kingdom of Heaven! This truth is neither the less true, nor the less important, because it is found in the pages of a madman. Marriage also is not dissolved by death:—when one of the wedded couple dies, the spirit of the deceased cohabits with the spirit of the living spouse, till that also be released; they then meet again, and reunite with a tenderer and more perfect union. On no subject does Swedenborg dilate with more pleasure than upon this. The sphere of conjugal love, he tells us, is that which flows from the Creator into all things; from the Creator it is received by the female, and transferred through her to the male. It makes man more and more man; it is a progressive union of minds, for ever rejuvenescent, continuing to old age and to eternity; it is the foundation and germ of all spiritual and all celestial love; it is in Heaven, and it is Heaven, yea even the inmost Heaven, the Heaven of Heavens. It dwells in the supreme region of the Mind, in the conclave of the Will, amidst the perceptions of Wisdom, in the marriage chamber of the Understanding. Its origin is from the divine nuptials of Goodness and Truth, consequently from the Lord himself. After this it is ridiculous enough to see him trace the progress of this sphere or essence of love into the soul of man, thence into the mind, thence into the interior affections, from whence it finds its way through the breast into the genital region.

Do not, however, suppose that there are any births in Heaven. All spirits both in Heaven and Hell were born on earth; from which, it seems, a puzzling argument against the system itself might be brought: Ex nihilo nihil fit—Of nothing nothing is made; where then was the Grand Man before all the parts of which he is composed were in existence?—Heaven is supplied with children by those who die in infancy; happy are they, for they are given to virgins whose maternal feelings find in them an object, and under their tuition they grow up in the gardens of Paradise. They advance to the full bloom of youth, not beyond it; the old, who arrive in Heaven with all the marks of age, grow younger till they also arrive at the same perfection: to grow old in Heaven is to increase in beauty.

There are many mansions in Heaven, and infinite degrees of happiness, yet is there no envy nor discontent; every one is happy to the utmost measure of his capacity; the joys of a higher state would be no joys to him: his cup is full. But the longer he has been in Heaven, the happier he becomes, his capacity of enjoyment increasing as he is progressive in virtue and goodness, that is, in divine love.

As all Heaven is one Grand Man, or Divinity, so is all Hell one Grand Devil, and the wicked are literally to become members of Satan. The road from one to the other is through the Maximus Homo's Port Esquiline; it opens immediately into the mouth of Hell, and the two-and-thirty white millers who sit in the gateway, receive all they have to grind through that channel.[13] Hell fire is no torment to the damned: it imparts no other sensation to them than an irascible heat; for in truth the fire of Hell is nothing more than their evil passions, which appear to good spirits in flame and smoke. This is the only light they have, proceeding from themselves, and resembling that which is given out by red-hot coals. The Hell of Swedenborg is what earth would be if all virtue were destroyed, if the salt of the earth were taken away, and its corruptions left to putrefy. There are cities inhabited only by the profligate, where they are abandoned to their own vices, and to the inevitable miseries which those vices produce. They have even their places of public amusement; he saw the dragons holding their abominable diversions in an amphitheatre. Deserts, fields laid waste, and houses and towns in ruins which have been destroyed by fire, fill up the picture.

Of all the heretics who have sprung from the spawn of Luther, Swedenborg is the only one who admits a purgatory.—You will not expect a rational one;—in this intermediate world, as the good are purified from their imperfections, so are the wicked divested of what little goodness they may possess, and thus the one are fitted for Heaven, and the other for Hell. The state of maturity for Heaven is known by the appearance of the regenerate, which is not altogether consistent with our earthly ideas of beauty, for the cuticle appears like a fine lace-work of bright blue. Here the wicked follow their accustomed vices, till, after they have been repeatedly warned in vain, their cities are shaken with earthquakes, the foundations yawn under them, they sink into the gulf, and there grope their way into their respective Hells.

Hypocrites who still preserved an exterior of piety were permitted to remain in the intermediate world, and make to themselves fixed habitations. This constitutes one of the wildest and absurdest parts of all this strange mythology; for Swedenborg teaches that these residents, by the abuse of correspondences and help of phantasies, built Heavens for themselves, which became at last so many and so extensive, that they intercepted the spiritual light and heat, that is, divine love, in their way from Heaven to Earth. At length this eclipse became total; there was no faith in the Christian church, because there was no charity, and the Last Judgment was then executed; which consisted in destroying these imaginary Heavens, like the tower of Babel, stripping the hypocrites of their cloak, and casting them into Hell. This consummation took place in the year of our Lord 1757; and there is no other Last Judgment to come, except what every individual will experience for himself singly, after death.

Nothing now remains but to apply the science of correspondences to this scheme of the Maximus Homo and the Grand Satan. Spirits act upon men in those parts which correspond to their own anatomical situation: thus impulses and affections of good come from the agency of good angels operating by influx on their corresponding region, whether head or foot, heart, pancreas, or spleen; they, for instance, who inhabit the brain watch over us when we sleep. On the contrary, diseases are the work of the devils; hypocritical devils occasion belly-ache; and spirits who are ripening for Hell, and take delight in putridity, get into our insides and manufacture for us indigestion, hypochondriasis, and dyspepsy; so that in all cases exorcism must be more applicable than medicine.

One word more:—they who have loved infants with most tenderness are in the province of the neck of the uterus and of the ovaries. By some unaccountable oversight the inference has been overlooked. There is therefore a Grand Woman also! It is not good for man to be alone, not even for the Grand Man. I have found a wife for him! The discovery, for it is a discovery, is at least equal in importance to any in the eight quarto volumes of the Arcana Coelestia, and entitles me to be ranked with Swedenborg himself; if, indeed, as I modestly beg leave to hint, the honour of having perfected his discoveries and finished his system, be not fairly my due.[14]