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
Catalogue details

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.

    63/208 (page 27)
    from the infinite, were superlatively perfect, and the other deriva- tive existences were less and less so, it is a plain proof, that the latter had their origin from finites successively and immediately, which would account for a successive or graduated series of im- perfections. It is a proof, moreover, that in the origin of these other things which are comparatively imperfect, there was more and more of the natural principle involved,—more and more of that which was divine only mediately, or after the intervention of nature. Nature, then, or the finite, and not the infinite, is the cause of all imperfection. Nevertheless aij Furthermore it may be argued with good things are from God. yeason, that all things whatever, whether com- pound or simple, the whole or the parts, the heavens or the worlds, were created and produced by God alone, and not by nature. To nature nothing can be attributed, because all things are so made as to conspire and proceed together, spontaneously and necessarily, from the first end, through the means, to the second or last end ; that thus the cause of one thing may come from the cause directly preceding it; and all the causes be therefore centred in the first cause: so that to attribute any- thing to a natural cause, is the same ultimately as attributing it to the first cause, or to God alone. Nature is then but a me- chanism, which is bound to keep certain sequences because the first cause has so willed, or what amounts to the same thing, be- cause He so wills now. ‘Therefore all that there is in the world is the work of God, and none of it is the work of nature. So likewise whatever we wonder at in nature—whatever we think wise, exact, harmonic, whether below or above our senses—we wonder at, not as natural, but as divine. There is nothing natural but is divine; and so in every portion of the world, to whatever corner we turn our eyes, there is nothing existing wherein we ought not to wonder at the Creator and the cause. Hence it follows, that the more we wonder at nature's play, the more do we wonder at the infinite in nature: because the na- turalis nothing but obedience; and not even obedience, inas- much as nature is forced by necessity to obey. We may attribute Since then there is nothing natural that we [causation] fo nature. can wonder at, still less worship, on its own account, but only as divine, we may now, acknowledging this,