mean proficient. And even where his mysticism went beyond what his
scientific attainments suggested, a psychological interest attaches to
the workings of his imagination. It is as curious a problem to trace his
ideas to their origin as it sometimes is to account for the various
phases of a fantastic dream, such a dream, for instance, as that which
Armadale, the doctor, and Midwinter, in 'Armadale,' endeavour to connect
with preceding events. But Swedenborg's visions of the behaviour and
appearance of the inhabitants of other earths have little interest,
because it is hopeless to attempt to account for even their leading
features. For instance, what can we make of such a passage as the
following, relating to the spirits who came from Mercury?--'Some of them
are desirous to appear, not like the spirits of other earths as men, but
as crystalline globes. Their desire to appear so, although they do not,
arises from the circumstance that the knowledges of things immaterial
are in the other life represented by crystals.'

Yet some even of these more fanciful visions significantly indicate the
nature of Swedenborg's philosophy. One can recognise his disciples and
his opponents among the inhabitants of various favoured and unhappy
worlds, and one perceives how the wiser and more dignified of his
spiritual visitors are made to advocate his own views, and to deride
those of his adversaries. Some of the teachings thus circuitously
advanced are excellent.

For instance, Swedenborg's description of the inhabitants of Mercury and
their love of abstract knowledge contains an instructive lesson. 'The
spirits of Mercury imagine,' he says, 'that they know so much, that it
is almost impossible to know more. But it has been told them by the
spirits of our earth, that they do not know many things, but few, and
that the things which they know not are comparatively infinite, and in
relation to those they do know are as the waters of the largest ocean to
those of the smallest fountain; and further, that the first advance to
wisdom is to know, acknowledge, and perceive that what we do know,
compared with what we do not know, is so little as hardly to amount to
anything.'[27] So far we may suppose that Swedenborg presents his own
ideas, seeing that he is describing what has been told the Mercurial
spirits by the spirits of our earth, of whom (during these spiritual
conversations) he was one. But he proceeds to describe how angels were
allowed