Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientist and Mystic/Chapter 4

by Signe Toksvig

 

CHAPTER FOUR

Undergraduate at Upsala

NO matter how antiscientific he might be, Bishop Swedberg was interested in one science, that of medicine. Not that he had ever been ailing, according to himself his health was as perfect as his character, but he noted several useful cures. One was for jaundice; it was "swine-dirt, with respects to you, mixed into a beer posset or any thin soup." In general, however, he recommended the sovereign remedy of "good old honest Rhenish wine, but it must be old and it must be honest."

Johannes Moraeus, ¹ a bright nephew of his, was sent by the Bishop to study pharmaceutics in Stockholm. Moraeus, so contemporaries said of him, was "a man of equable temper, not much affected by life's ups and downs"; more important still, he was of the science party, enthusiastic about mineralogy as well as medicine. Through him the Bishop was, unwittingly, to open a door very early to the new world of facts for his little son. The youth was about to become the first apothecary of Stockholm when his uncle requested his presence in Upsala for the Swedberg children, holding out the inducement that he would also be able to study medicine at the university. It was the sort of charity plus economy that the Bishop loved, and it was a good thing for the eight-year-old Emanuel, whose mother had just died, that this cousin joined the household in 1696. ²

Emanuel was fond of his tutor; he had a pet name for him, "Morfee." Many years later when the mature Swedenborg began making his strange journeys to that other world which he considered equally factual, he made brief and often scathing observations on what he now saw people to be like who had put up a fine front in this life. But Moraeus fared well. He must have been rather an ugly man, for Swedenborg said he did not at first recognize him, explaining that according to the laws of that other sphere the beauty of his tutor's inner goodness and truthfulness had now become exterior also. ³

For several years he was under the influence of Moraeus, so that when in 1703 he went to live with his favorite sister Anna, who had just married the young college librarian Eric Benzelius, he entered no alien realm in the world of science which so absorbed his brother-in-law.

Benzelius, as Emanuel was to write to him from London, became his "father and better than a brother," and Benzelius, as a later dedication was to testify, ⁴ led him into the paths of science. The college librarian, reported from all sides to have been a brilliant man, a true teacher and a friend of the young, kept Emanuel in his house for seven years. No doubt his influence was crucial. In that "other-worldly" notebook of Swedenborg's, where he tells the truth about his feelings, he describes this brother-in-law as haughty of exterior but full of inner goodness. There is, at any rate, a painting of the young Benzelius which shows him as a quick, impatient man. He looks as if he were about to rush out of the frame, just pausing with his head cocked a bit on one side as if willing to listen to what is being said but with a faint superciliousness, or at least pessimism, as to what it is going to be. It is a "modern" face, not cast in any stiff, traditional mold.

He was to end as Archbishop, but he never lost his love for science. Undoubtedly he had had something to do with the victory which science had won in Upsala about four years before Emanuel was enrolled as a student. Eric Benzelius had been in England where the new ideas were already established, and when the fifteen-year-old boy entered the librarian's household he came into an atmosphere where all his bright curiosity had something to feed on, something moreover that was still upsetting, revolutionary, almost contraband—the right of science to go its own experimental way, irrespective of bishops.

It had not won the right without a fight—one that has to be refought every few hundred years. Sometimes it is called the fight for freedom of speech. In Upsala it lasted from 1663 till 1689, and then it was called, heavily, the fight between Aristotelianism and Cartesianism. ⁵ It provided the mental climate in which the whole of Emanuel's generation had to live and try to think.

Three hundred years or so later the battle was on again in the United States, but then it was called Fundamentalism vs. the Darwinian doctrine of evolution. Or the literal Biblical point of view vs. that of modern science, exactly as at Upsala.

Aristotle, however, was no hard-shell Baptist, and Aristotelianism in the seventeenth century had little to do with him. Christian theologians had taken what suited them of Aristotle's ideas (badly translated from the Arabic) and had used them in their sacred edifice. This, according to them, was a world in which the earth, the home of sin and imperfection, was the center of the universe. Above it was Heaven, salvation, and perfection. Aristotle, so the theologians said, had studied nature all that was needful; for science it was only necessary to study him. But where he was at variance with the Bible they declared him wrong. Spiritual force, or, as the Christians said, God, governed matter, hence miracles were possible. Before Bishop Swedberg left Upsala he said to the students, "All that you need for time and eternity you can learn in the Bible, let that be your handbook."

But when he said this in 1703 the Fundamentalism of the Faculty of Theology at Upsala had already been beaten.

It had been beaten, chiefly, by René Descartes, ⁶ the frail Frenchman whom the Swedish winter had killed while he was on a visit to Stockholm in 1650. Although he believed he had "discovered the foundations of a marvelous science" in a series of dreams the night of November 10, 1619, he was essentially a "mechanistic materialist," and mainly responsible for freeing the study of nature from the limits set to it by medieval religion. For him material phenomena were not, as Aristotle had held, the result of indwelling spiritual forces or forms, translated by Christian theologians as God. The universe of matter, including the human body, Descartes maintained, was a vast mechanism ruled by the laws of physics. He did make provision for God and for the soul, but as outside of space and time and thus not interfering with the physical laws.

On this theory science was at last free to demonstrate the laws of nature from natural phenomena.

Not, however, if the Faculty of Theology of Upsala could prevent it. They complained about modern science in 1663, and the fight between the theologians and the Faculty of Medicine continued on and off until 1686 when the theologians succeeded in persuading the clerical part of the Diet to present Charles XI with a written application for measures to be taken against Cartesianism at Upsala.

This contained as many teeth as a harrow, and it was intended to root out the spirit of free inquiry forever. The theological faculty was to be the censor of the whole university. Stipends to be given only to loyal Aristotelians. All "disputations" (theses) to be passed on by the theologians as well as all books from foreign countries. The professorship of physics, the hearth of Cartesianism, was to be taken away from the Faculty of Medicine and given to a good Aristotelian in the Faculty of Philosophy.

But Charles XI, conservative and orthodox though he was, did not yield to the black gowns. In 1689, after letting the controversy cool a bit, he decided that though the Christian faith was not to be criticized philosophy should be free "in practice and discussion." "Philosophy" was in effect everything that did not come in under religion. Science had won the right to live.

It had to live, however, in a garment of Latin, like all other learned subjects. This kept the populace reasonably safe from disturbing ideas and equipped scholars with what was still a world language. In Emanuel's childhood and youth he learned to write and to speak Latin. How natural it finally became to the students is best seen by the fact that when one of the professors at Upsala had braved royal wrath by asserting that popular consent was needed for new laws, the students "rushed out into the streets shouting 'Bene nobis, bene nobis, bene republicae litterariae!'" (Good for us, good for us, good for the republic of letters!) ⁷

The students were young. Upsala seems to have registered them, at least, as early as eleven. They were then called "novitiates." At the age of thirteen Emanuel was called a Junior, but he was not listed as a Senior until he was twenty. Of college life as it is thought of today there was at least one feature that had some resemblance to American colleges—the clubs or societies known as the "nations." It was as if fraternities were not by invitation but as if the students from Iowa all belonged to an Iowa club with their own house, those from Virginia to theirs, and so on. Students from the different provinces of Sweden belonged to their "nation." It was organized with officers and laws, strict control was kept of the members, and probably it was a good thing for the students, far from home in those ox-cart days. In any case, the university, which had long fought their establishment, finally had to give up. There were twenty-two "nations" at Upsala in Emanuel's time. He was inscribed in the Vestmanland Dala Nation, of which his father was the Inspector or "faculty adviser." ⁸

Official evidence shows that Emanuel, far from being a shrinking introvert, took such eager part in the "national" life that he once had to be slightly discouraged. The chief events in the life of these fraternities were not athletics but intellectual contests called "disputations," in Latin of course. Emanuel's nation had been choosing its subject for debate in exalted realms. In 1704 he had been opponent in a debate on "God's Providence," in 1706 in one on the duties of married people, and later in the same year in one on the duties of parents and children. This seems to have overstimulated him because on the same day he offered to preside at the next disputation which was to be on Natural Law. His offer was praised but rejected. "His Magnificence," that is, the university rector who was faculty adviser of the nation at the time, asked the members if a Junior had ever been known to preside. They answered that it had occurred once or twice although the Seniors, whose privilege it was, never liked it. Such a novelty "might conceivably lead to disorder." Where would the Juniors stop? "So nothing further was done." ⁹

The occasional slight stutter which people later noted in the mature Swedenborg was evidently not much of a handicap to him, perhaps not even in existence then. Or perhaps this was the very time he cultivated a stutter, consciously or unconsciously, because with such a handicap he could not enter the church, the only obvious career for Bishop Swedberg's bright son, who even at the age of seven had been given a Hebrew grammar. ¹⁰ At any rate, though he studied most of the subjects offered by the university, he does not seem to have taken theology or law.

It is known from his letters that he studied with zest under the professors of mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. The curriculum was not as complicated as at a modern school. ¹¹ A single folio sheet, printed in double columns, held not only the list of courses for the whole year, but each professor's description of what he proposed to do. A look at these sheets for the years during which Emanuel was at the university shows that though science had intruded, the "ancients" still dominated. The professors of history were not even permitted to use any except classic textbooks. They got around that by compiling their own, with modern instances, and using those in the private tutorial classes which all professors were allowed to have and by which they added to their incomes.

Perhaps for this reason they slipped a little gentle advertising into the catalogue. The professor of philosophy promised "publicly to endeavor to insinuate into his auditors the Art of Logic by a succinct and easy method; and for the rest whatever of his private labor can be of service to those requiring the same, this he will willingly and sedulously contribute."

The professor of eloquence and politics intended to expound Pliny's Panegyric "with that faithfulness and care whereby as he judges both the cultivation of the Latin speech and the study of civil prudence can be most greatly advanced." If anyone desired private help he "would in no way fail them."

The professor of poetry was going to explain Virgil's Æneid. "In this he will first lead his auditors by the hand as it were to a knowledge of the nature and constitution of Epic poetry, and this publicly in the large Gustavian auditorium at one o'clock. Privately, from the more chaste writings of Ovid, Horace and other poets, he will demonstrate to students of poetry the art of making verses."

No scholar and gentleman was complete unless he could write Latin verses, and Emanuel rather fancied himself in this art. For years he now and then sought laurels as a Latin versifier. His efforts are said to be neither worse nor better than many similar ones of the time.

The professor of mathematics after he had "briefly covered music" intended "God willing" to set forth the doctrine of numbers, "that is to say arithmetic, both logistic and specious."

"With the good favor of God," the professor of astronomy was going to go into spherical trigonometry, and other fields, while, equally with divine assistance which but few of the professors dared to omit leaning on, a Greek philologist sensibly proposed to teach his subject "in the measure of his own ability, after the manner of his profession, and according to the grasp of his auditors."

The two professors of medicine, whatever they may have ventured in private, stuck to two guides in public. One discoursed on materia medica as explained in a book written A.D. 78 by the Greek Dioscorides; the other interpreted the theories of "the illustrious Wedelius," "embracing briefly and perspicuously almost the whole art of medicine."

This proponent of Wedelius usually limited himself to the above brief statement in the catalogue, but in 1706 he seems to have been stung by some criticism for lack of novelty, since now he explains that he intends "by the goodness of God to continue with the method commenced in former years, and that he may be of service both to newly come tyros and also to his former auditors, he will not introduce anything unusual and novel as is customarily done to beguile the weariness of delicate and fastidious men, but will set forth the same interpretation of the Theories of Wedelius which he has heretofore found to be fruitful for his auditors."

Wedelius or Wedel had taught medicine at Jena about 1680. He does not seem to have been a very remarkable man. A pupil of his, however, the medical mystic G. E. Stahl,¹² had made a stir in the world of learning. During Emanuel's time at Upsala, Stahl's metaphysics formed the topic of lectures "GOD willing" to be given by Professor Fabianus Törner.

Stahl had made valuable contributions to the sciences of chemistry and biology, but he had crashed into the current mechanistic conception of the human body by declaring that what held it together was the soul. If the soul didn't attend properly to the body, the body fell ill.

Törner was the professor selected for or by Emanuel to preside over his final university disputation or thesis or graduation exercises, so it is probable that he had listened to Törner on Stahl and on the Golden Verses of Pythagoras. Plato and Plotinus were known at Upsala. Along with dry Lutheran theology there was a current of mysticism in the community, but while the seeds may have been stored in the young man's mind they lay dormant there. He flung himself into the exact sciences, those to which everything human is alien, mathematics, physics, astronomy—the measurable, the law-submitting. That way lay freedom.

There is a painting of him,¹³ probably from about his eighteenth year, the year 1706 when he had wanted to preside over the debate

EMANUEL SWEDENBORG AS A YOUNG MAN

The tradition that this is Swedenborg was investigated and believed to be correct by Alfred H. Stroh, the fine Swedenborgian scholar. It compares well with the bust made from the skeletal measurements, with the Bernigroth engraving (see page 70) and the Per Krafft (the elder) painting (see page 330). (In the possession of Mrs. Signe Strolz, by whose courtesy it is here reproduced.)

on Natural Law. It shows a handsome, half-smiling youth with definite regular features but still boyishly plump. In spite of his father's hell-fire clamor against wigs, he wears a powdered wig, the long, curling and flowing kind, a very becoming frame. One suspects lace cuffs on the long fitted coat, and a gleam of a rapier. Emanuel was rather tall, he could carry this male plumage well. The students insisted on it as their right.

It was a male period in Sweden's history.¹⁴ By 1706 the incredible King Charles XII, then twenty-four years of age, had already been at war for several years and had won battles with the Danes, the Russians, the Saxons, and imposed a new king on the Poles. He had so impressed the world that Marlborough himself came to see Charles near Leipzig to find out if western Europe needed to fear him. Whether the Englishman understood the Swedish Puritan who at least believed that he fought only for his just rights is doubtful, but he was able to reassure England that Charles would need no bribes to attack Russia again—not that it would have been a safe occupation to offer bribes to Charles XII!

The Sweden of that day was twice its present size. The Baltic was its lake. But the population of the whole empire was only about three million, of which half inhabited Sweden proper. The bulk of the people were peasants, freeholders, and the educated classes fell into fairly rigid castes, Sweden being then as it still is the most formal of the Scandinavian nations. At that time industry was immature and commerce not for gentlemen. You belonged to the church or the army or the civil service. Under Charles XI the royal power had been made almost absolute so that those who wanted preferment had to look to the throne. Bishop Swedberg was expert in this but not so his son. What was Emanuel to be? Since the church was out of the question there was always that appendage of the church, the university. Perhaps he could be a teacher or an official of some sort. But first he had to finish his own education.

Education has to finish with a flourish, a rainbow loop of displayed knowledge, to be satisfactory to all parties, teacher and student, family and friends. An essay read aloud was the accepted form.

On the first of June, 1709, Emanuel Swedberg, aged twenty-one, read a very long paper in the large Gustavian auditorium, so there must have been quite a throng to hear him, as well as his two official opponents. The Bishop was also present, so that perhaps Emanuel was not wearing all the finery of laces and knots of ribbon with which academic disputants liked to bedeck themselves, but he was no doubt in his best.

Far from his fields of science, the essay dealt with selections from the sayings of a Syrian slave, Publilius Syrus, who had become a favorite Roman author of mimes or short plays. These sayings would now be called "wisecracks," and the Romans were as fond of them as the Americans. The Romans were not afraid of putting wisdom as well as cracks into them. Probably only a classic subject could have been chosen for the disputation, but Emanuel's choice of this one was neither perfunctory nor accidental. He says himself that he put a lot of work on it. This is evident, since each saying in Latin is accompanied by all the interpretations of it that he could hunt up from the learned of all ages, including Erasmus, Scaliger, and even "Rabbelais." Classic authors had also been combed for similar maxims.

There are about seven hundred sayings of Publilius extant, arranged alphabetically. Of these Emanuel chose the first group,¹⁵ getting no further than through "D," but it contained such topics as Love, Money, Friendship, Avarice. Aspects of human mind and manners were dealt with in the brief black-and-white style dear to youth looking for short cuts to experience; in fact these were pellets of practical psychology, a subject which was always to interest both young Swedberg and the mature Swedenborg. Some of the sayings would reappear many years later in his writings, such as "He hurts the good who spares the evil," and the comments on love he was to expand at great length. In his book on love ¹⁶ he was to be very charitable toward hot-blooded young men troubled by early sexual development, and he may have thrown a backward glance to the handsome youth of twenty-one who was earnestly declaiming on June 1, 1709, that "The mind may choose to love but not to cease loving," and "Time not mind makes an end of love," and "Love cannot be wrenched away, it can slip away." As for the malady's origin, "tears of love rise in the eyes, they fall in the breast." The state itself had psychological disadvantages. "To love and to be wise is hardly granted to God." "An angry lover much deceives himself." "He who loves what he is suspicious of is a waking man asleep." "The wrath of a lover is placated by tears." "Love like a torch burns brighter by being agitated." To meet the contention that "An adulterer is a more passionate lover of his own wife" he quoted from Plutarch that concupiscence was not love. Nor would he let woman as such be slandered. To the thrust that "When woman is openly bad then she's good," he remarked that actors had to say outrageous and witty things to get applause, but that in general expressed hatred was the less dangerous. When Publilius said that "Woman either hates or loves, she knows no middle way," Emanuel, while admitting that woman was a creature of extremes, maintained that so were her critics—"not a few of them prove it by their own manners."

The heart of all friendship, he said, was in the saying "Friendship is either between equals or makes them so," otherwise adulation crept in. "Friendship is always helpful, love can be injurious." Or, as Seneca had put it, "He who is a friend loves; he who loves is not always a friend." He was sure that "To injure a friend even in jest is not permissible," in fact he consigned to the devil "those jocular wranglings, that eloquence vomiting baneful poison with which certain men of the utmost urbanity exercise their biting and pointed wit—and seek friendship." Seneca came to his aid again: "To be malignant is not funny."

The young intellectual agreed that "Tension breaks the bow, want of it the mind." He noted that "He who fights with a drunken man fights with one who is absent," and that "He sleeps well who does not know how ill he sleeps"—here Emanuel paused to praise sleep on grass in the forest. The grieving mind, he agreed, was not a credible witness on anything, nor was the desire-dominated mind, see Sallust. And "The memory of wrath is itself a brief moment of anger"; "A good mind is more seriously angry when outraged than a poor one," because, Emanuel said, it does not get angry except for just cause.

"Feigned goodness in speech is worse than malice"—this touched a string in him that vibrated throughout life at the idea of hypocrisy. "Let our lips be consonant with our minds," he exclaimed, in his own words, "not slyly speaking, insidious; let them be unrouged, unveiled, unplastered, not imitating goodness by words!"

"Cruelty is not placated by tears, it feeds on them." "When vices flourish, he sins who does right." "God hasn't much power over a happy man." "Frankness is foolish against impudence." "A fluent companion is as good as a carriage." Ovid too had said that speech shortens the road, and Emanuel would some day bring the dictum into his discussion of space-time relationships.

"Whatever the soul of man demands of itself, that it obtains." He called this the highest point reached by the Stoics.

Emanuel was sure he could get whatever he demanded from himself, but after the disputation he was going to demand something from his father, something the Bishop hated to part with—money. Especially money for the object that Emanuel had in view: a journey to England to study there, and to study science.

The disputation had been dedicated to his father, with a sort of sincere gratitude in advance. And among the maxims he chose to dwell on were a number describing the misery of avarice. "Money only irritates the miser, it doesn't content him." "What ill do you wish a miser but a long life?" "The miser does nothing right except when he dies." Whereas "He receives who gives to a worthy man," and "The benevolent discover chances to give," and "Help is doubly grateful if offered over and above"; Emanuel stressed that even the learned Erasmus had said benefits shouldn't have to be extorted.

And, in a maxim like a sigh, the boy quoted from Publilius that one should "Love a just parent; bear with an unjust."

The disputation came to an end as it had begun, with a little bow to death. Emanuel, aged twenty-one, expatiated on the words: "While life is welcome is the best time for death." He declaimed that "It were best to die before by way of hoary locks, wrinkles and languid powers the transit is made to cold and weary death."

In this year, 1709, it was a transit that a great many young Swedes had been privileged to make. Charles XII, careless of the Publilius maxim that "Twice conquers he who in victory conquers himself," didn't know when to stop, and his luck had turned. In fact it had turned over a year before, when he chose to go south in Russia. His armies had been warring for over eight years. The worst frost of generations came to aid his enemies. His soldiers still followed him, because, as his chaplain said, "He was the last King who didn't say to his soldiers, Go and fight, but who said, Come! and took the lead." ¹⁷

They fell frozen off their horses, they were killed, they died of disease. Charles, illimitably stubborn, sent home for many more men, much more money. The country, never rich, was being drained and depopulated.

Good and sensible men, like Emanuel's brother-in-law Eric Benzelius, must have wondered how Sweden was to be built up again. What about the badly utilized mineral resources? What about building up young scientists? It was the progressive Benzelius who urged Emanuel to follow his bent and go to study science in England.

But the Bishop sat on the money-bags quite contentedly—not a bit so irritated by having money as a miser ought to be, according to the maxims of Publilius.

The "graduation exercises" at Upsala ended in June, 1709. On July 13, Emanuel felt sure he would be leaving for England in fourteen days. But on March 6, nine months later, he was still in his father's house at Brunsbo, writing to his "Highly honored D:Brother-in-Law," Eric Benzelius, "I have very little desire to remain longer in this place, since I am wasting my time here almost in vain. Yet I have so improved myself in music that I can act as organist, but in other branches of science there is very little to offer here, nor do those who are here hold it in any esteem, so that I might be encouraged thereby." ¹⁸

He had watched the local bookbinder and bound three books in leather himself; he had written Latin verses and had them printed at the Skara Press; he had collected everything collectable, including an ancient coin for Benzelius and the bones of a whale for the museum at Upsala. And he had begun a lifetime of methodically making notes. Anything which brought in mathematics, such as astronomy, optics, physics, statics, was then called "mathesis," and mathesis was what he took notes on, turning his intense mind wholly on the exact sciences.

He wrote to Benzelius that since with d:brother's advice and approval he had chosen these studies, he meant to continue the collection of such items in the foreign countries he was going to visit, so as to come to know all about every branch of mathematics. He wanted his d:brother to send him a note of whatever he might come across in this connection. And he wished the great Swedish scientist and inventor, Christopher Polhem, would record his inventions; Emanuel would like them for his collection.

This letter had not long been sent before news came of the defeat of Charles XII at Poltava and his internment in Turkey. The situation of Sweden was bad. The Danes were attacking them. Emanuel's father could say, and likely he did say, that the seas were unsafe—the French and English being also at war—and the English journey would have to wait.

But need he wait in flat, dull, discouraging Brunsbo?

Benzelius took pity on him; it was most likely the brother-in-law who suggested that in lieu of foreign travel Emanuel should become the pupil of the great Polhem. At any rate, in the letter of March 6, 1710, Emanuel said, "It is now my chief desire to get a little information of my plan which is being discussed here, to be with Polhem. If so be it that my foreign journey must wait till the spring [of 1711] then I am quite content to be with him for some time, seeing that I can probably reap more advantage there in summer than in winter, and there everything will be so much more lively and pleasant, and my mind in better condition."

He had already met the salient Polhem and they had been attracted to one another. The older man noted that the youth was capable of helping him in his physics experiments, but the scientist refused a request from the Bishop that Emanuel should be apprenticed to him. Eric Benzelius had better luck when he approached Polhem on the same errand.

But—where was Emanuel?