Volume 2

The economy of the animal kingdom, considered anatomically, physically, and philosophically / by Emanuel Swedenborg. Translated from the Latin by the Rev. Augustus Clissold. [Ed. by J.J.G. Wilkinson].

  • Swedenborg, Emanuel, 1688-1772.
Date:
1846
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The economy of the animal kingdom, considered anatomically, physically, and philosophically / by Emanuel Swedenborg. Translated from the Latin by the Rev. Augustus Clissold. [Ed. by J.J.G. Wilkinson]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    are the ends of physics, yet his moral grounds are his own, and imply intellectual mechanics to connect them with nature; although induction is his method, yet it is not the induction of which others have the responsibility; finally although God is in all his thoughts and doctrines, yet it is in no case the God of the Theist, but the revealed personal Lord of the Christian. To shew the meaning which Swedenborg puts upon common philosophical terms, we select as instances the following; viz., unity or simple, principle, substance, and cause. Now the unity and simplicity of the philosophers are ultimate resolutions of thought, or formulas of absolute being. With Swedenborg, however, unity or unities signify “ those things that are least in each series, and enter its form as essential parts; and which are proper to it, and would not suit any other series or form if they were applied to it.” Thus “the pulmonary vesicle is the unity of the lungs as regards their respiratory office, inasmuch as there is no lesser cavity into which the air can penetrate, and inasmuch as the lungs exist, and are called the lungs, from their vesicles. Whatever goes beyond the vesicles, or whatever that is more simple exists within them, as the fibre or capillary vessel that enters the composition of the vesicle, cannot be called the proper unity of the lungs, for the fibres and vessels universally determine every fabric of the body.”* The unity, therefore, here spoken of, is a relative, knowable, substantial thing, by no means indivisible, or abstract; nay one which abstract thought is almost sure to overpass, or misapprehend. With respect to the simple, which is another expression of the unity, the same remarks may be made; it, too, being relative and substantial: so that Swedenborg says: “ All things refer themselves to their unities : and the unities themselves to theirs; for everything is a series and in a series: there is no such thing as absolute sim¬ plicity in nature. Hence there is no series that may not be assumed as a unity, if we please.”f And again he observes : “ By the simples of the blood we do not mean the simplest ele¬ ments of nature, but the simples and unities of particular com¬ pounds ; for there are degrees of simples as well as of compounds. * “ Animal Kingdom,” Vol. II., p. 466. f Ibid., Vol. I., p. 53.