Most people with the church, which they know by his name, associate Emanuel Swedenborg,
the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of whose birth is being celebrated this year.
There are many besides who appreciate that he was an eminent scientist, and one who may be
properly classed as a genius. But there are few who have thought of him in connection with
the great wave of thought known as the Romantic Movement. And yet, when the facts are
examined it appears that not only was he himself, in a remarkable way, a forerunner of
that movement, but also that his writings have played an important part in its
development. For many of the greatest names connected with Romanticism are found among
those who, at some period in their lives, have come under his spell.
The eighteenth century, in which Swedenborg lived, was far from being a simple, unified
whole, an Age of Reason in which the irrational impulses were held in subjection under the
enlightened despotism of the intellect. Instead, we find a cleavage in the psyche of the
century amounting to a sort of universal schizophrenia. For underneath the cold
intellectualism known as the Enlightenment, with its materialism, empiricism, and
classicism, there ran a strong wave of mysticism and sentimentality, never really
submerged, and destined in the end to overflow and drown the Age of Reason. To quote the
words of Professor Edward Scribner Ames, “This movement is variously described as
emotionalism, or subjectivism, or romanticism, or naturalism.... It attained finally in
the work of Herder and Goethe, to clarity and comprehensive definition as the naturalistic
doctrine of the primacy of spontaneous individual impulse.” George Brandes, too,
takes note of this tendency in the eighteenth century to hyper-sensibility, as seen in
Werther and La Nouvelle Héloise: “There is undoubtedly something of the Romanticist
before the days of Romanticism in this mysterious suffering which is so conscious of being
interesting.” But perhaps the most comprehensive treatment of this counter-movement
is to be found in a work by Professor Martin Lamm of Stockholm, Upplysningstidens
Romantik* in which he makes the statement that Swedenborg, Zinzendorf and Rousseau are
typical exponents of the eighteenth century (and not mere reactions against it) as much as
Voltaire and the Encyclopaedists, for they mirror the inner movement of the century.
Ironically enough, it was the Enlightenment itself, which forged the weapon for its own
destruction, empirical psychology. For direct experience can be inner as well as outer,
and “to feel,” “to apprehend,” “to behold” can very easily
take on mystical meanings. Empiricism emphasized individual differences and gave to the
irrational factors more importance than reason, thus aiding in the evolution of the main
tenets of Romanticism.
According to Professor Lamm the two movements in the eighteenth century, which played
the greatest part in the development of Romanticism, were the religious sects (especially
Pietism) and the secret orders (especially Freemasonry). Pietism flourished in the first
half of the century, and chiefly among the middle class; Freemasonry attained its full
development in the second half, and found its adherents in the aristocracy. Thus the two
movements supplemented each other, and aristocratic occultism took up the battle against
the Enlightenment where bourgeois Pietism left off; moreover, it was a more dangerous
enemy, for it drew its membership from the same class as the Enlightenment. Strangely
enough, it is Emanuel Swedenborg who was the connecting link between the two, for his
doctrines found adherents in both classes and appealed to interests, the religious and
the pseudoscientific occult. They played a part in the development of Freemasonry, as
well as serving to form a new religious sect, which became the inheritor of the older
Pietism.
II
Swedenborg’s connection with the Pietist movement began in his childhood, when he
imbibed a few primary pietistic notions from his father, Jesper Swedberg, who, though a
Lutheran bishop, was by no means unsympathetic to the teachings of Spencer. His
precocious little son repudiated the extreme orthodox form of the doctrine of
justification by faith alone, and insisted that a good life is necessary to salvation. But
as he grew up his religious interests were eclipsed by an overwhelming devotion to
science, and it was not until middle age that they again became prominent in his life. It
is significant that it was during the hectic period following Dippel’s visit to
Stockholm, when pietistic clamor filled the air, that he began to have the strange
dreams and visions, which finally changed the course of his life. And although he was
personally antagonistic toward this later Pietism, with its hysteria and extravagances of
all sorts, yet it is undeniable that the influence of Dippel’s teachings can be
found, both in the mystical natural philosophy of Swedenborg’s Economy of the Animal
Kingdom and in the later theological works. After the religious crisis, which he
experienced in 1744, he allied himself for a short time with the Moravian Brethren in
London, but was finally repelled by the fantastic elements in their faith. His own
theology is in many points diametrically opposed to that of Zinzendorf, a fact that did
not deter a great many pious Herrnhuters from becoming ardent readers of Swedenborg.
The relation of Swedenborg to Freemasonry is of quite a different sort. It is probable
that he himself was never a member of the order, though he might very well have been. Many
of his friends and associates in political and scientific life were members of the rapidly
growing Lodges, and during his long sojourns in England, France and Germany he must have
come in contact with the leaders of the movement. But by temperament Swedenborg was not a
“joiner,” and it is characteristic of him to keep aloof from all such
commitments. The points of similarity between his theosophical system and that of
Freemasonry can be accounted for by the Neo-Platonic, Kabbalistic soil from which they
both sprung. But the influence of his writings on the Masonic doctrine is of utmost
importance, especially in regard to the after-life. In fact, he became “the Baedeker
of the spiritual world” for Freemasons. And in return it was Freemasonry, which
served to awaken an interest in Swedenborg among the upper-class circles all over Europe.
III
In his own country Swedenborg’s influence operated along channels, the religious
and the occult. During his lifetime he won adherents among the clergy and in the
universities, but persecution by the firmly entrenched
State Lutheranism prevented the growth of a Swedenborg sect. However, a movement known
as Skara-Swedenborgianism, originating among the high ecclesiastics of the diocese of
Skara and spreading to the Universities of Lund and Uppsala, found enough adherents in
high places to stem the tide of ecclesiastical opposition and to exert a liberalizing
effect on theology. It was also through this group that Swedenborg began to influence
Swedish philosophy and literature. Many to be the result of Swedenborgian influence, as
exemplified in its chief exponent, Boström, concede the essential difference between
Swedish idealism and that of Germany. Swedenborg himself had carried on the conflict with
the philosophy of the Enlightenment begun by the Pietists. In his Economy of the Animal
Kingdom, under the influence of Neo-Platonism, he had spiritualized the whole universe,
and by means of his doctrine of correspondences had brought the material world into close
relationship with the spiritual. He had attacked many of the pet tenets of the
Enlightenment, such as the conformity of man with the animal world, and Helvetius’
idea of self-love as the basis of all human action. Thus the new Romantic philosophy from
Germany found in Swedenborgianism a strong ally against all materialistic conceptions.
In the realm of literature his influence is very marked. His own little work, The
Worship and Love of God, a bit of fantasy cast in the form of a Platonic myth, is a pure
work of the new Romanticism born before its time. Neglected by its contemporaries, it
remained in obscurity until discovered by Atterbom, who hailed it as an authentic work of
true poetic genius. Its influence may be seen in the poetry of Franzén. It was
Swedenborg’s glorification of human love into a divine relationship determined by
spiritual affinity and destined for immortality, which was especially sympathetic to the
new school of poets, - and his description of the life of wedded pairs in the spiritual
world, which reads like a pastoral idyll in the rococo style I The most important of these
Swedenborgian Romanticists was Thomas Thorild, who based his speculations on
Swedenborg’s system of aesthetic philosophy as expounded in the Arcana Coelestia and
Conjugal Love. Thorild called Swedenborgianism “reason’s religion,” and
remodeled it into his own pantheistic monism.
Among Swedenborg’s first adherents were certain members of the court circle who
had known him personally - his political associates in the House of Nobles. Two years
after his death Augustus Nordensklöld, eminent chemist and mining engineer, and J. C.
Halldin, the court poet, began to publish a weekly paper, Aftonbladet, devoted to
Swedenborgian propaganda and to the works of the pre-Romantic school. And in 1786 the
Exegetic-Philanthropic Society was organized for the purpose of publishing his writings in
foreign languages. Among its hundred and fifty distinguished members were the Prime
Minister, Count von Höpken, Baron Gyllenhall, Count Ekeblad, and many others whose
interests included alchemy, spiritualism, magnetism, Freemasonry and the new trends in
literature. The court of Gustav III was a hotbed of all the “-isms” of the day,
with the King himself playing the role of arch-magician. But this rising tide of occultism
was strenuously opposed by the leaders of the State Church, who joined forces with the
still active exponents of the Enlightenment. These, under the brilliant leadership of Kellgren, were carrying on a vitriolic campaign in the Stockholm Post. Unfortunately the
Exegetic-Philanthropic Society fell a victim to the new furor for animal magnetism. They
undertook to explain in. their journal, Samlingar for Philanthroper, the phenomena of
Mesmerism in accordance with Swedenborg’s teaching regarding spirits, and thus
brought down upon themselves the ridicule of the learned journals of various European
universities. Both the Aftonbladet and the Samlingar were banned by the Consistory, and by
1791 the Society had succumbed to the onslaught of powerful enemies; but in the meantime a
great part of Swedenborg’s philosophy of science, as well as his revelations of
life in the spiritual world, had been absorbed into Freemasonry where it continued to
influence the thought of the following century.
lV
Into Germany Swedenborgian influence came through several different channels. The first
disciple among the clergy was Prelate Oetinger, through whose later works Schelling became
acquainted with Swedenborg. His persecution by the Church made it clear that Lutheranism
would permit no such heretical views among its priests. In academic circles considerable
interest was aroused by the new doctrines, and also much hostility. The university
journals at Jena and Weimar had attacked the Society in Stockholm in the magnetism
controversy. In Prussia the court librarian to Frederick III, Abbe Pernety, became a
convert and began the publication of French translations of Swedenborg. With the
introduction and spread of Freemasonry his doctrines began to reach the nobility
everywhere. But it was the Pietists who furnished the largest numbers of readers—and
among them Lavater and Herder, leaders of the Sturm und Drang. Romanticism in Germany
began in Pietism, and was, fundamentally, the result of a religious crisis. Its literary
aspect, the revolt against French classicism, had its rise in the pietistic hymns of the
Halle school—the first truly German literature. Among the leaders in the Romantic
Movement who were also Pietists, or came from pietistic homes, were Hamann, Wieland,
Klopstock, Novalis, and Jung-Stilling. And these were almost all earnest students of
Swedenborg. But the most important figure, of course, was Goethe, who at the age of
nineteen, while ill at Frankfort, began the study of magic, alchemy, Pietism, Herrnhutism
and Swedenborgianism—an event apparently trivial in itself, but fraught with
tremendous consequences for subsequent literary history.
The Goethe-Swedenborg problem is one, which has interested a number of scholars.
Among these are Hans Schlieper, Max Morris, and Brieger-Wasservogel, all of whom find the
influence of Swedenborg on Goethe’s scientific and philosophical thought to be of
paramount importance. Apparently it was the Arcana Coc’lej-tia (contemptuously
dismissed by Kant as “eight quarto folios of pure nonsense”), which first came
into the hands of the youthful Goethe, and it was the revelations of life in the other
world, which seem to have interested him especially. In a letter to Lavater he says:
“No one is more inclined than I am to believe in another world besides the visible
one; and I have imagination and vitality enough to feel that even my own limited ego can
embrace a Swedenborgian conception of the spirit-sphere.” But it was
Swedenborg’s organic conception of nature, which combined with the vitalism of
Bruno, Leibnitz and Hailer, and the 1 pantheism of Spinoza, to form the natural philosophy
of the mature Goethe. Whether or not the mysterious Nostradamus of the first Faust
monologue stands for Swedenborg (as Max Morris believes) is of little moment—the fact
remains that a great deal of Swedenborg f has found its way into Faust, and thence into
much of the later literature of Romanticism.
Transcendentalism, the philosophy of the later Romantic period, also bears the traces
of Swedenborgian influence. The line from Swedenborg to Herder and Goethe, and thence to
Schelling, is clear enough. But there is also another line of influence from the great
original, Immanuel Kant himself. When rumors of the Swedish Seer’s remarkable
clairvoyant powers, and of his journeys up and down the spiritual world, reached the ears
of Kant, he became tremendously excited and went to considerable trouble and expense to
have them confirmed by reputable authorities in Stockholm. He even wrote to Swedenborg
seeking further information, but received in reply only a copy of the Treatise on Influx
as an answer to his questions. When the Arcana Coelcstia was published, Kant became
utterly disgusted and hastened to the attack. In his Dreams of a Spirit-Seer he treats
Swedenborg with airy disdain, carefully keeping the skirts of his own philosophy clear of
suspicions of mysticism. Nevertheless, as has been pointed out by Vaihinger and other
Kantián scholars, his Inaugural Dissertation of 1770 was unmistakably colored by
Swedenborg’s Treatise on Influx, and his Lectures on Psychology are even more
Swedenborgian. Kant himself, in the words of Professor Walter M. Horton, was “too
cautious to affirm the Swedenborgian creed as more than a great postulate of faith; but
through Hamann, Oetinger, and other German mystics, it exerted a deep and fundamental
influence upon the whole Romantic Movement in philosophy, which claimed Kant as its
patron. Swedenborg must be named, along with Jakob Boehme and Spinoza, as one of the chief
progenitors of the idea of the immanence of God, which flows through all the thought of
the early nineteenth century.”
V
In France, also, it was the cultivated aristocracy who first embraced the doctrines of
Swedenborg. Among these were Baron Breteuil, who had known Swedenborg personally when he
was in Stockholm as ambassador to Sweden, the Marquis de Thomé, and M. Moet, the royal
librarian at Versailles, who translated some of his books into French. One of the most
active propagandists was Captain Jean-Jacques Bernard, member of the Legion of Honor, who
spread the doctrines among his fellow officers. Among his other converts were M. Oegger,
First Vicar of the Cathedral of Paris, and confessor to the Queen, who resigned his post
and gave up all connection with the Catholic Church. It was Oegger who brought
Swedenborgianism in France into active alliance with animal magnetism and
spiritualism—an unholy alliance that did much to bring it to the attention of the new
Romantic school. Bernard also introduced Saint Martin to the writings of
Swedenborg—an acquaintance that bore fruit in Le Nouvel Horn me. And Frederic
Oberlin, the philanthropist, too, became an admirer of the “Prophet of the
North.”
The development of French Freemasonry along Swedenborgian lines forms an interesting
study. In 1760 Abbé Pernety and Count Grabianka, a Polish nobleman, founded a Lodge at
Avignon, into which the Marquis de Thomé introduced his famous “Rite de
Swedenborg.” This Lodge, later reorganized as the- Academic des Iiluminés
d’Avignon, became active propagandists sending missionaries into other countries to
link up all Swedenborgians with Freemasonry. And there was another Swedenborgian Lodge
in Paris. At this time Swedenborg was at the height of his influence as a mystical
philosopher, his name appearing constantly along with Paracelsus, Agrippa von Nettesheimn,
Jakob Boehme and Saint Martin. And it was in this aspect, and not as a theologian, that he
began to influence the French Romanticists.
Between the eighteenth century forerunners of the new movement, Rousseau and
Chateaubriand, and the Romantic movement proper, stands the figure of Mme. de
Stael— Janus-headed, facing both ways. It was she who, in her Dc l’Allemagne,
introduced the new Romantic Movement in Germany to her French public. And it was through
her German literary friends that she had become an admirer of Swedenborg. It is in this
connection that Balzac uses her as a character in his Swedenborgian novel, Louis Lambert.
It is this novel, together with the exquisite and amazing Seraphita, which marks the apex
of Romantic occultism in the work of Balzac. He had received his taste for mysticism early
in life from his mother—a lady “ardente au mysterieux,” and personally
acquainted with all the celebrated “magnetizers” of the day. But mysticism was
no passing phase with Balzac—it was his lifelong religion. In a letter to Mme. Hanska
he says: “Politically I am of the Catholic religion, before God I am of the religion
of St. John, of the church mystical, the only one which has preserved the true
doctrine.” And Balzac’s eclectic mysticism contained many elements derived from
the Swedish Seer. Both Louis Lambert and Scraphita are filled with paeans of praise for
Swedenborg, and lengthy discussions of his teachings. “Swedenborg undoubtedly
epitomizes all the religions—or rather the one religion of humanity.... Though his
books are diffuse and obscure, they hold the elements of a vast social conception. His
theocracy is sublime; and his religion is the only one a superior mind can
accept”—thus speaks Balzac through the mouth of his hero. Among the other
Romantic writers who were readers and admirers of Swedenborg were Victor Hugo, George
Sand, and Beaudelaire.
VI
Swedenborg’s influence on the English Romantic movement came in a roundabout way,
mainly from
Germany. For although it was in England that he found his first true disciples, in a
religious sense, and there that the New Church was founded, the somewhat anomalous fact
remains that he influenced English thought less directly than that of the other countries.
This is due to the fact that there his followers, generally speaking, belonged to the
middle class, and not to a cultivated aristocracy. Also the Masonic movement there was
less influenced by his teachings, and magnetism and spiritualism were taboo in the higher
circles. But among the London New-Church group was an artist, John Flaxman, the sculptor,
who was a close friend of William Blake, and though him Blake made the acquaintance of
Swedenborg. Although Blake’s mysticism was closer to that of Bochme and Paracelsus,
nevertheless some of the loveliest creations of this forerunner of Romanticism, both in
the poetry and in his drawings, are saturated with the spirit of Swedenborg.
But it was primarily through their interest in German philosophy and literature that
the English Romanticists derived their enthusiasm for him. Transcendentalism produced the
intellectual atmosphere in which Swedenborg could best be appreciated and understood. By
way of Goethe, Herder, Schelling, and the others, his doctrines gradually began to
permeate the British school. Carlyle and Ruskin and Tennyson knew and admired him.
Coventry Patmore embraced his doctrine of “conjugal love.” The Brownings, too,
found in his teaching regarding the immortality of the true love relationship an answer
to their own love’s deepest need. The following is pure
Swedenborg:
What if heaven be that, fair and strong
At life’s best, with our eyes upturn’d
Whither life’s flower is first disccrn’d,
We, fix’d so, ever should so abide?
What if we still ride on, we two
With life forever old yet new,
Changed not in kind but in degree,
The instant made eternity...
And the entire atmosphere of Coleridge is saturated with him. In his strange dream
world we feel the strongest waves of psychic emanation from the “spiritual
world” as described in Heaven and Hell. It almost seems as if the following lines
might express the feeling of awe inspired in many by Swedenborg himself:
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair! Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.
VII
And what of America? What influence has our Seer had on the thought of that New World
in which all human dreams, even his own, may yet be realized? The answer must be sought in
several different directions, the first and most obvious being that of the New Church
itself. From the very beginning its members have been indefatigable in their efforts to
spread the “Heavenly Doctrines” by means mainly of the printed word. Thousands
of copies of Swedenborg’s writings and thousands of copies of various collateral
works have been distributed broadcast. And thousands of volumes of New-Church
periodicals have gone through the press. Add to this an earnest personal proselytism,
and some results are obliged to be forthcoming. In tracing the influence of Swedenborg on
various writers of the Romantic Era we find that they were generally induced to read him
by some Swedenborgian friend. Both Edgar Allen Poe and Sidney Lanier became interested
in this way, and Thomas Holley Chivers was himself an ardent Swedenborgian. Poe also
received the Swedenborgian influx at second hand through Coleridge, and found for
himself a dwelling place in that “mystic mid region of Weir” which seems to lie
somewhere in Swedenborg’s spiritual world midway ‘twixt Heaven and Hell! And
numbers of the minor poets of the period were also readers of Swedenborg.
But it was, of course, in New England—in that glorious flowering of literary
genius so ably described by Van Wyck Brooks—that Swedenborg reached his highest peak
of respect and influence. Emerson received him at first hand from his friend Sampson Reed,
whose little book, Obscurations on the Growth of Mind, was of so much interest to
Carlyle. And it was Emerson who introduced Swedenborg to the intellectual world by means
of lectures and published works. The Brook Farm Transcendentalists became earnest
students of “the Writings” both through their friends and through their studies
in German philosophy. Quite a few of their number called themselves Swedenborgians,
though not members of the New Church. Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, Ellery Channing,
and many others yielded to his spell. From the Transcendentalist center the circle
widened, touching many others here and there, —Whittier, Hawthorne, Melville,
—and down the line to Emily Dickinson, Vachel Lindsay, and Robert Frost.
In accounting for Swedenborg’s popularity during our nineteenth century, S. Foster
Damon says: “Swedenborg’s great strength lay in his powers of introspection,
which revived consciousness of subjective experience...In a new land eager for fresh and
authentic accounts of the soul his works were read and understood widely...One of the
dominant impulses of American literature has been an awareness of psychological
fact.” This last statement seems to furnish a clue to a sudden revival of interest
today in the life and work of Swedenborg, —a psychological interest emanating from
the new psychoanalytic school.
Emanuel Swedenborg, contemporary with Immanuel Kant, was born at Stockholm, January 29,
1688, and died at London, March 29, 1772. Despite years of activity as a mining expert and
also as a member of the Swedish Parliament, Swedenborg was a man of ideas far more than of
action. His powerful mind moved steadily over the field of human knowledge. Combining
scientific investigation and philosophical reflection, he made his way to the frontiers of
inquiry in mineralogy, metallurgy, physics, anatomy, physiology and psychology, often
projecting ideas, which have only recently been verified by empirical science. The range
and the penetration of his studies were so great that only specialists in the various
fields can fully assess his contributions. A profound religious experience brought an
unexpected turn in his career. In the latter thirty years of his life he devoted all his
powers to questions of religion, restating Christian teaching and expounding the
Scriptures. Again it can be said of this labor, that theologian and biblieist have yet to
evaluate it fully. A silent penetration of Christian thought by his views is widely
attested.
(From the Invitation to the Commemoration Dinner in New York City.)
