ncouth and dangerous conduct. Dreams are a
temporary insanity--reason sleeps and the mind roams the universe,
uncurbed and wildly free. On awakening, for an instant we may not know
where we are, and all things are in disorder; but gradually time,
location, size and correspondences find their proper place and we are
awake.

Should, however, the dreams of the night continue during the day, when
we are awake and moving about, we would say the man was insane.
Swedenborg could become oblivious to every external thing, and dream at
will. And to a degree his mind always dictated the dreams, at least the
subject was of his own volition. If it was necessary to travel or
transact business, the dreams were postponed and he lived right here on
earth, a man of good judgment, safe reason and proper conduct.

Unsoundness of mind is not necessarily folly. Across the murky clouds of
madness shoots and gleams, at times, the deepest insight into the heart
of things. And the fact that Swedenborg was unbalanced does not warrant
us in rejecting all he said and taught as false and faulty. He was
always well able to take care of himself and to manage his affairs
successfully, even to printing the books that contain the record of his
ravings. Follow closely the lives of great inventors, discoverers, poets
and artists, and it will be found that the world is debtor to so-called
madmen for many of its richest gifts. Few, indeed, are they who can
burst the bonds of custom and condition, sail out across the unknown
seas, and bring us records of the Enchanted Isles. And who shall say
where originality ends and insanity begins? Swedenborg himself
attributed his remarkable faculties to the development of a sixth sense,
and intimates that in time all men will be so equipped. Death is as
natural as life, and possibly insanity is a plan of Nature for sending a
searchlight flash into the darkness of futurity. Insane or not, thinking
men everywhere agree that Swedenborg blessed and benefited the
race--preparing the way for the thinkers and the doers who should come
after him.

SPINOZA

Men are so made as to resent nothing more impatiently than to be
treated as criminal on account of opinions which they deem true,
and charged as guilty for simply what wakes their affection to God
and men. Hence, laws about opinions are aimed not at the base but
at the noble, and tend not to restrain the evil-minded but rather
to irr