Outlines of a philosophical argument on the infinite, and the final cause of creation; and on the intercourse between the soul and the body / by Emanuel Swedenborg. Translated from the Latin by James John Garth Wilkinson.

  • Emmanuel Swedenborg
Date:
1847
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Outlines of a philosophical argument on the infinite, and the final cause of creation; and on the intercourse between the soul and the body / by Emanuel Swedenborg. Translated from the Latin by James John Garth Wilkinson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    The present work may be regarded as in some measure intermediate between the Principia and the Economy of the Animal Kingdom, which latter did not appear until seven years later. The reader of the Outlines will find himself continu- ally in want of some sketch of the views of the Principia, and we shall therefore here transcribe from that work the author's own statement of his doctrine of the simple, and of actives, finites and elements. The following is from the Rev. Augustus Clissold’s translation, Vol. I., pp. xciui—xcix. *] am apprehensive lest, at the very outset of our philosophy, particularly its First Part, my readers should be deterred from proceed- ing further, when they meet with views which cannot but appear strange and foreign to those which are generally received; as also with such unusual phraseology as that of a Finite, an Active, an Elementary, &c.; terms which are unknown in any of our philosophical treatises ; that is, which are not applied to the principles of mechanism, geometry, and the elementary world. For this reason it will be requisite, by way of preface, to present a general outline of our work, and thus a key to . its contents. - * Every one from the light of reason may perceive, that nature, conforming to principles of geometry, is ever pursuing a most simple course ; a course proper to herself, and truly mechanical. He may likewise perceive, that all things in the world originate from what is uncompounded; consequently from one single fountain-head and one primitive cause; that this primitive cause is derived into the various things which are caused (a truth which necessarily follows, if further products are to be derived from those which have already been brought into being); also that no other cause could possibly have had existence than the one which had proceeded by genealogical descent, as it were, from its first parent or simple. This cause, therefore, must be latent in the first simple; and into the first ens derived from it, or into the first finite there must be derived a similar cause. Now since the world deduces its origin and subsequent increments, by a connected and con- tiguous series, from the first or single end through intermediates to another end; and since there must be present a cause, and indeed an efficient and active cause, before anything can be produced in a series ; it follows that there must be a passive, an active, and as a product from both, a compound, or elementary; if therefore there be anything com- posite, it must consist of two principles, namely, a passive and an active; without which nature herself would be as it were in a state of