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

INTRODUCTION

by DR L R TWENTYMAN

IT WAS ONE of the main motifs of Dimitrije Mitrinovi¢é’s work to call attention to and emphasise the significance of genius, not only in principle, but in the persons of those great individual men of genius who are the creators of our heritage of values and truth. Emanuel Swedenborg was one of those men of immensely great genius of whose importance he spoke again and again, In this present planetary crisis, this vast universal world debate in which we are all engaged, should not the voices of these men from the past be sounded and heard? For, as Mitrinovi¢ said, their only disadvantage in comparison with those of us here is that the happen not to be alive. But their thoughts should live and be truly translated for out understanding and use to-day. We are very glad that the Reverend Clifford Harley has agreed to give this lecture and we are glad to listen and pay respect to Swedenborg in this Hall dedicated to his memory. We have many memories of previous meetings within the hospitality of its walls.

Now why do we in New Atlantis consider it important to understand the man Swedenborg, a man whom Immanuel Kant honoured, a man whose ideas of atomic structure and of the ultimate realities of the physical universe are in these last decades being corroborated by scientific research, who was the first in history to describe the functions of the so-called endocrine glands,

I