XXI. Swedenhorg. " Let every one therefore be

cautious how he persuades himself that he lives from himself; and also that he is wise, believes, loves, per- ceives truth, and wills and does good from himself." T. G. B. page 36.
Spinoza. " There is no absolute or free will in the mind ; and it may be demonstrated that the mind has no absolute faculty of understanding, desiring, loving." &c. Ethics, part 2, prop. 48, schol.
It is proper to remark here, that altliougli both writers deny the freedom of the will of man, as of himself^ yet the two writers do not hold to the doc- trine in the same manner. Spinoza adhered strictly to this doctrine, and gave a reason for the gen-
29i 8WEDENB0RO, [Ch. XII.
eral prevalence of tlie oj)inion that man is free, saying that 7nan thinks himself free hecause he is conscious of his desires^ hut not conscious of the causes that imj^el him to desire. Yet Spinoza contends for a certain freedom in man, when he acts from what he calls adequate ideas, which he says are in God and in man at the same time ; and it comes to this, that the freedom of man arises from his knowledge of God, which Spinoza calls the power of reason, to the elucidation of which he devotes Part Fourth of his Ethics. Man is free in obeying God hnoiuingly ^ and no otherwise.
Swedenborg theoretically denies the freedom of the will as completely as Spinoza, as must be seen above ; 3^et he cannot do without it in his system. He adopts, however, extraordinary lan- guage for a philosopher in reference to it, saying that, although man is not free as of himself, yet he must act "as if" he was free, while he must "know " that " all freedom is from the Lord."
It must be confessed that Swedenborg gives us no light on this question. If he saw the truth himself, he has not been able to explain it, and on this long disputed question he leaves his reader where he finds him, — unless the student of Swe- denborg may " fancy " he knows what he does
Ch. XII.] A HERMETIC PHILOSOPHER. 295
not know at all ; — I mean, as a result of Sweden- borg's teachings.
Without assuming to solve this controverted question myself, I will remark that the chief dif- ficulty seems to arise, not from a " pre-established harmony " in the ideas we have of God and man, but from preconceived ideas irreconcilable with each other ; which ought to satisfy us that one set of them, at least, cannot be true. To main- tain the idea of God's omnipotence in the usual sense, and of the eternity and immutability of his decrees, as extending to all things, and, at the same time, the notion of man's free agency, as if he possessed an actual power of his own, is im- possible. Whoever holds these two opinions must necessarily carry about a conflict within himself. One or both sets of ideas should be^z^ rified^ in order to introduce harmony. If the Philosopher's Stone could solve this one question, it might be worth seeking, if for nothing else. Let the power of God — ^I say it reverently — be called sulphur^ and the power of man mercury : then find a salt that shall be their unity. This is the problem.
The student of this problem need not go out of himself, to find the root of the controversy be- tween necessity and freedom, and may be able to
296 6WEDENB0EO, [Cii. XII.
understand the principjil (juostion between Au- gustine and relagius, between Calvin and Ar- minius, and between the " Old School " and the "Kew School" of more recent times, lie may lind that the controversy lies between two of the elements or principles of man, and must last until the third principle becomes recognized, which, though last discovered, is first in order, and stands above, as it were, the. other two, and, though it decides, it takes no part in the controversy. This third principle, Avhen awakened in man, consti- tutes Swedenborg's Celestial State ; that is, in this state man is an angel, and no longer " opines " about things, but " knows." This I understand to be Swedenborg's view, and it does not differ essentially from that of Spinoza, — that which is said by one of reason^ being said by the other of the spiritual in man.
But to return to the parallels :