to converse with the Mercurial spirits in order to convince them
of their error. 'I saw another angel,' says he, after describing one
such conversation, 'conversing with them; he appeared at some altitude
to the right; he was from our earth, and he enumerated very many things
of which they were ignorant.... As they had been proud on account of
their knowledges, on hearing this they began to humble themselves. Their
humiliation was represented by the sinking of the company which they
formed, for that company then appeared as a volume or roll, ... as if
hollowed in the middle and raised at the sides.... They were told what
that signified, that is, what they thought in their humiliation, and
that those who appeared elevated at the sides were not as yet in any
humiliation. Then I saw that the volume was separated, and that those
who were not in humiliation were remanded back towards their earth, the
rest remaining.'

Little being known to Swedenborg, as indeed little is known to the
astronomers of our own time, about Mercury, we find little in the
visions relating to that planet which possesses any scientific interest.
He asked the inhabitants who were brought to him in visions about the
sun of the system, and they replied that it looks larger from Mercury
than as seen from other worlds. This of course was no news to
Swedenborg. They explained further, that the inhabitants enjoy a
moderate temperature, without extremes of heat or cold. 'It was given to
me,' proceeds Swedenborg, 'to tell them that it was so provided by the
Lord, that they might not be exposed to excessive heat from their
greater proximity to the sun, since heat does not arise from the sun's
nearness, but from the height and density of the atmosphere, as appears
from the cold on high mountains even in hot climates; also that heat is
varied according to the direct or oblique incidence of the sun's rays,
as is plain from the seasons of winter and summer in every region.' It
is curious to find thus advanced, in a sort of lecture addressed to
visionary Mercurials, a theory which crops up repeatedly in the present
day, because the difficulty which suggests it is dealt with so
unsatisfactorily for the most part in our text-books of science.
Continually we hear of some new paradoxist who propounds as a novel
doctrine the teaching that the atmosphere, and not the sun, is the cause
of heat. The mistake was excusable in Swedenborg's time. In fact it so
chanced that, ap