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.

    495/542 (page 481)
    MATTER AND BODY NOT ALWAYS IDENTICAL. supplies the all of condition, in the mind’s brain, or in the brain’s mind; just as crystallization and other kinds of struc¬ ture, are form and condition in matter, and are the basis of its various qualities. But no one will affirm that a stone has cortical substances, or medullary fibres, which are necessary to the organization of the mind. In this, we express no specula¬ tive opinion, but a scientific fact; to wit, that the form of the mind is different from every other form; and if it is to be termed material, then let us know what matter is over and above its form, in order that we may rightly understand the predica¬ tion. Until this is the case, and so long as we maintain the definition of matter given by Swedenborg, viz., chemical form as distinguished from organic, we must maintain that the mind is bodily, but assuredly not material. Great confusion has undoubtedly been introduced by regard¬ ing body as the same with matter. For body is the necessary ultimatum of each plane of creation, and thus there is a spiri¬ tual body as well as a natural body, and by parity of fact there is a spiritual world as well as a natural world: but matter is limited to the lowest plane, where alone it is identical with body. There is no matter in the spiritual world, but there is body notwithstanding, or an ultimate form which is less living than the interior forms; which is the solid in relation to the fluid; the fibre and the skin and the membrane relatively to the living blood in its various degrees: or to speak philosophically, which is the general and the particular as contradistinguished from the universal and the singular * The presence of space and time in that degree of fixation, and with those laws, which they have in nature, is essential to the existence of matter, but body may and does exist either with that presence or without it. Time not determined by the. re volution of the planet, and space not measured by outward objects, are time and space unfixed from their known conditions in nature. Such time and space exist in the mind, and the mind exists in them, (tor the one position is as true as the other;) but here they are co-deter- mined by the state of the mind as to understanding and willing, * See the explanations of these terms in the “Economy,” Vol. II., pp. 198, 199 ; and in the “ Animal Kingdom,” Vol. I., pp- 486 493. A comprehension oi this subject is of vital importance to the understanding of Swedenborg s philosophy.