The philosophy of Emanuel Swedenborg : God, Man and the cosmos

A thorough-going system of evolution could, theoretically, dispense altogether with the idea of a Divine Creator, since it would present us with a closed and self-explanatory system. It postulates the eternity of matter, and reduces every form of existence to matter which evolves itself, by adaptation to environment, into all the forms of extant objects by means of selectivity and fitness to survive, and which will so evolve itself to eternity.

Need I remind you that despite its popularity and widespread acceptance by all sorts and conditions of men, evolution remains an unproven theory, unproven at least so far as continuous evolution is concerned? Evolution within species is as nearly proven as will suffice for acceptance. Haeckel’s famous diagrams about the evolution of the horse show nothing more than just that—the development of a less perfect horse-being to the magnificent animal which the name ‘horse’ represents to us. It does not show the evolution of a species non-equine, into a new species called horse. So far as I know there is no factual evidence at all of any species of inanimate or animate thing evolving into an entirely new and different species.

Be that as it may, Swedenborg’s philosophy offers us a far more reasonable account of creation than is to be found in any

other cosmological theory.

The Creator is the Divine and only Man. Humanness therefore will be the outstanding witness to His Divine Humanness; and anticipations and adumbrations of the supreme form of humanness—man, will be evident throughout the Creation. That this is actually the case will easily be seen from the examples which I shall now offer.

The analysis of the atom (for so long believed to be the ultimate form of matter) into protons and electrons and into even more refinements has disclosed a most interesting and significant fact. Between these elements and the atom there exists a two-fold power: 1. that of attraction, and 2. that of repulsion. The attrac-

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