had convinced Swedenborg of the existence of other inhabited worlds is
attributed by him to the spirits. 'It is well known in the other life,'
he says, 'that there are many earths with men upon them; for there (that
is, in the spiritual life) every one who, from a love of truth and
consequent use, desires it, is allowed to converse with the spirits of
other earths, so as to be assured that there is a plurality of worlds,
and be informed that the human race is not confined to one earth only,
but extends to numberless earths.... I have occasionally conversed on
this subject with the spirits of our earth, and the result of our
conversation was that a man of enlarged understanding may conclude from
various considerations that there are many earths with human inhabitants
upon them. For it is an inference of reason that masses so great as the
planets are, some of which exceed this earth in magnitude, are not empty
bodies, created only to be carried in their motion round the sun, and to
shine with their scanty light for the benefit of one earth only; but
that they must have a nobler use. He who believes, as every one ought to
believe, that the Deity created the universe for no other end than the
existence of the human race, and of heaven from it (for the human race
is the seminary of heaven), must also believe that wherever there is an
earth there are human inhabitants. That the planets which are visible to
us, being within the boundary of our solar system, are earths, may
appear from various considerations. They are bodies of earthy matter,
because they reflect the sun's light, and when seen through the
telescope appear, not as stars shining with a flaming lustre, but as
earths, variegated with obscure spots. Like our earth, they are carried
round the sun by a progressive motion, through the path of the Zodiac,
whence they have years and seasons of the year, which are spring,
summer, autumn, and winter; and they rotate upon their axes, which makes
days, and times of the day, as morning, midday, evening, and night. Some
of them also have satellites, which perform their revolutions about
their globes, as the moon does about ours. The planet Saturn, as being
farthest from the sun, has besides an immense luminous ring, which
supplies that earth with much, though reflected, light. How is it
possible for anyone acquainted with these facts, and who thinks from
reason, to assert that such bodies are uninhabited?'
Remembering that this reasoning was urged by the spirits, and that
during twelve years Swedenborg's interiors had been opened in such sort
that he could converse with spirits from other worlds, it is surprising
that he should have heard nothing about Uranus or Neptune, to say
nothing of the zone of asteroids, or again, of planets as yet unknown
which may exist outside the path of Neptune. He definitely commits
himself, it will be observed, to the statement that Saturn is the planet
farthest from the sun. And elsewhere, in stating where in these
spiritual communications the 'idea' of each planet was conceived to be
situated, he leaves no room whatever for Uranus and Neptune, and makes
no mention of other bodies in the solar system than those known in his
day. This cannot have been because the spirits from then unknown planets
did not feel themselves called upon to communicate with the spirit of
one who knew nothing of their home, for he received visitors from worlds
in the starry heavens far beyond human ken. It would almost seem, though
to the faithful Swedenborgian the thought will doubtless appear very
wicked, that the system of Swedenborg gave no place to Uranus and
Neptune, simply because he knew nothing about those planets. Otherwise,
what a noble opportunity there would have been for establishing the
truth of Swedenborgian doctrines by revealing to the world the existence
of planets hitherto unknown. Before the reader pronounces this a task
beneath the dignity of the spirits and angels who taught Swedenborg it
will be well for him to examine the news which they actually imparted.
I may as well premise, however, that it does not seem to me worth while
to enter here at any length into Swedenborg's descriptions of the
inhabitants of other worlds, because what he has to say on this subject
is entirely imaginative. There is a real interest for us in his ideas
respecting the condition of the planets, because those ideas were based
(though unconsciously) upon the science of his day, in which he was no
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 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, apart from the obvious fact on which the mistake is
usually based--the continued presence, namely, of snow on the summits of
high mountains even in the torrid zone--it had been shown shortly before
by Newton, that the light fleecy clouds seen sometimes even in the
hottest weather above the wool-pack or cumulus clouds are composed of
minute crystals of ice. Seeing that these tiny crystals can exist under
the direct rays of the sun in hot summer weather, many find it difficult
to understand how those rays can of themselves have any heating power.
Yet in reality the reasoning addressed by Swedenborg to his Mercurial
friends was entirely erroneous. If he could have adventured as far forth
into time as he did into space, and could have attended in the spirit
the lectures of one John Tyndall, a spirit of our earth, he would have
had this matter rightly explained to him. In reality the sun's heat is
as effective directly at the summit of the highest mountain as at the
sea-level. A thermometer exposed to the sun in the former position
indicates indeed a slightly higher temperature than one similarly
exposed to the sun (when at the same altitude) at the sea-level. But the
air does not get warmed to the same degree, simply because, owing to
its rarity and relative dryness, it fails to retain any portion of the
heat which passes through it.
It is interesting to notice how Swedenborg's scientific conceptions of
the result of the (relatively) airless condition of our moon suggested
peculiar fancies respecting the lunar inhabitants. Interesting, I mean,
psychologically: for it is curious to see scientific and fanciful
conceptions thus unconsciously intermingled. Of the conscious
intermingling of such conceptions instances are common enough. The
effects of the moon's airless condition have been often made the subject
of fanciful speculations. The reader will remember how Scheherazade, in
'The Poet at the Breakfast Table,' runs on about the moon. 'Her delight
was unbounded, and her curiosity insatiable. If there were any living
creatures there, what odd things they must be. They couldn't have any
lungs nor any hearts. What a pity! Did they ever die? How could they
expire if they didn't breathe? Burn up? No air to burn in. Tumble into
some of those horrid pits, perhaps, and break all to bits. She wondered
how the young people there liked it, or whether there were any young
people there. Perhaps nobody was young and nobody was old, but they were
like mummies all of them--what an idea!--two mummies making love to each
other! So she went on in a rattling, giddy kind of way, for she was
excited by the strange scene in which she found herself, and quite
astonished the young astronomer with her vivacity.' But Swedenborg's
firm belief that the fancies engendered in his mind were scientific
realities is very different from the conscious play of fancy in the
passage just quoted. It must be remembered that Swedenborg regarded his
visions with as much confidence as though they were revelations made by
means of scientific instruments; nay, with even more confidence, for he
knew that scientific observations may be misunderstood, whereas he was
fully persuaded that his visions were miraculously provided for his
enlightenment, and that therefore he would not be allowed to
misunderstand aught that was thus revealed to him.
'It is well known to spirits and angels,' he says, 'that there are
inhabitants in the moon, and in the moons or satellites which revolve
about Jupiter and Saturn. Even those who have not seen and conversed
with spirits who are from them entertain no doubt of their being
inhabited, for they, too, are earths, and where there is an earth there
is man; man being the end for which every earth exists, and without an
end nothing was made by the Great Creator. Every one who thinks from
reason in any degree enlightened, must see that the human race is the
final cause of creation.'
The moon being inhabited then by human beings, but being very
insufficiently supplied with air, it necessarily follows that these
human beings must be provided in some way with the means of existing in
that rare and tenuous atmosphere. Tremendous powers of inspiration and
expiration would be required to make that air support the life of the
human body. Although Swedenborg could have had no knowledge of the exact
way in which breathing supports life (for Priestley was his junior by
nearly half a century), yet he must clearly have perceived that the
quantity of air inspired has much to do with the vitalising power of the
indraught. No ordinary human lungs could draw in an adequate supply of
air from such an atmosphere as the moon's; but by some great increase of
breathing power it might be possible to live there: at least, in
Swedenborg's time there was no reason for supposing otherwise. Reason,
then, having convinced him that the lunar inhabitants must possess
extraordinary breathing apparatus, and presumably most powerful voices,
imagination presented them to him accordingly. 'Some spirits appeared
overhead,' he says, 'and thence were heard voices like thunder; for
their voices sounded precisely like thunder from the clouds after
lightning. I supposed it was a great multitude of spirits who had the
art of giving voices with such a sound. The more simple spirits who were
with me derided them, which greatly surprised me. But the cause of their
derision was soon discovered, which was, that the spirits who thundered
were not many, but few, and were as little as children, and that on
former occasions they (the thunderers) had terrified them by such
sounds, and yet were unable to do them the least harm. That I might know
their character, some of them descended from on high, where they
thundered; and, what surprised me, one carried another on his back, and
the two thus approached me. Their faces appeared not unhandsome, but
longer than those of other spirits. In stature they were like children
of seven years old, but the frame was more robust, so that they were
like men. It was told me by the angels that they were from the moon. He
who was carried by the other came to me, applying himself to my left
side under the elbow, and thence spoke. He said, that when they utter
their voices they thunder in this way,'--and it seems likely enough that
if there are any living speaking beings in the moon, their voice, could
they visit the earth, would be found to differ very markedly from the
ordinary human voice. 'In the spiritual world their thunderous voices
have their use. For by their thundering the spirits from the moon
terrify spirits who are inclined to injure them, so that the lunar
spirits go in safety where they will. To convince me the sound they make
was of this kind, he (the spirit who was carried by the other) retired,
but not out of sight, and thundered in like manner. They showed,
moreover, that the voice was thundered by being uttered from the abdomen
like an eructation. It was perceived that this arose from the
circumstance that the inhabitants of the moon do not, like the
inhabitants of other earths, speak from the lungs, but from the abdomen,
and thus from air collected there, the reason of which is that the
atmosphere with which the moon is surrounded is not like that of other
earths.'
In his intercourse with spirits from Jupiter, Swedenborg heard of
animals larger than those that live on the earth. It has been a
favourite idea of many believers in other worlds than ours, that though
in each world the same races of animals exist, they would be differently
proportioned; and there has been much speculation as to the probable
size of men and other animals in worlds much larger or much smaller than
the earth. When as yet ideas about other worlds were crude, the idea
prevailed that giants exist in the larger orbs, and pygmies in the
smaller. Whether this idea had its origin in conceptions as to the
eternal fitness of things or not, does not clearly appear. It seems
certainly at first view natural enough to suppose that the larger beings
would want more room and so inhabit the larger dwelling-places. It was a
pleasing thought that, if we could visit Jupiter or Saturn, we should
find the human inhabitants there
In bigness to surpass earth's giant sons;
but that if we could visit our moon or Mercury, or whatever smaller
worlds there are, we should find men
Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room
Throng numberless, like that pygmaean race
Beyond the Indian mount; or fairy elves,
Whose midnight revels, by a forest side
Or fountain, some belated peasant sees,
Or dreams he sees.
Later the theory was started that the size of beings in various worlds
depends on the amount of light received from the central sun. Thus
Wolfius asserted that the inhabitants of Jupiter are nearly fourteen
feet high, which he proved by comparing the quantity of sunlight which
reaches the Jovians with that which we Terrenes receive. Recently,
however, it has been noted that the larger the planet, the smaller in
all probability must be the inhabitants, if any. For if there are two
planets of the same density but unequal size, gravity must be greater at
the surface of the larger planet, and where gravity is great large
animals are cumbered by their weight. It is easy to see this by
comparing the muscular strength of two men similarly proportioned, but
unequal in height. Suppose one man five feet in height, the other six;
then the cross section of any given muscle will be less for the former
than for the latter in the proportion of twenty-five (five times five)
to thirty-six (six times six). Roughly, the muscular strength of the
bigger man will be half as great again as that of the smaller. But the
weights of the men will be proportioned as 125 (five times five times
five) to 216 (six times six times six), so that the weight of the bigger
man exceeds that of the smaller nearly as seven exceeds four, or by
three-fourths. The taller man exceeds the smaller, then, much more in
weight than he does in strength; he is accordingly less active in
proportion to his size. Within certain limits, of course, size increases
a man's effective as well as his real strength. For instance, our tall
man in the preceding illustration cannot lift his own weight as readily
as the small man can lift his; but he can lift a weight of three hundred
pounds as easily as the small man can lift a weight of two hundred
pounds. When we get beyond certain limits of height, however, we get
absolute weakness as the result of the increase of weight. Swift's
Brobdingnags, for instance, would have been unable to stand upright; for
they were six times as tall as men, and therefore each Brobdingnag
would have weighed 216 times as much as a man, but would have possessed
only thirty-six times the muscular power. Their weight would have been
greater, then, in a sixfold greater degree than their strength, and, so
far as their mere weight was concerned, their condition would have
resembled that of an ordinary man under a load five times exceeding his
own weight. As no man could walk or stand upright under such a load, so
the Brobdingnags would have been powerless to move, despite, or rather
because of, their enormous stature. Applying the general considerations
here enunciated to the question of the probable size of creatures like
ourselves in other planets, we see that men in Jupiter should be much
smaller, men in Mercury much larger, than men on the earth. So also with
other animals.
But Swedenborg's spirit visitors from these planets taught differently.
'The horses of our earth,' he says, 'when seen by the spirits of
Jupiter, appeared to me smaller than usual, though rather robust; which
arose from the idea those spirits had respecting them. They informed me
that among them there are animals similar, though much larger; but that
they are wild, and in the woods, and that when they come in sight they
cause terror though they are harmless; they added that their terror of
them is natural or innate.'[28] On the other hand the inhabitants of
Mercury, who might be thirteen feet high yet as active as our men,
appeared slenderer than Terrene men. 'I was desirous to know,' says
Swedenborg, 'what kind of face and person the people in Mercury have,
compared with those of the people on our earth. There therefore stood
before me a female exactly resembling the women on that earth. Her face
was beautiful, but it was smaller than that of a woman of our earth; she
was more slender, but of equal height; she wore a linen head-dress, not
artfully yet gracefully disposed. A man also was presented. He, too, was
more slender than the men of our earth; he wore a garment of deep blue,
closely fitted to his body without folds or flowing skirts. Such, I
learn, were the personal form and costume of the humans of that earth.
Afterwards there was shown me a species of the oxen and cows, which did
not indeed differ much from those on our earth, except that they were
smaller, and made some approach to the stag and hind species.' We have
seen, too, that the lunar spirits were no larger than children seven
years old.
One passage of Swedenborg's description of Jupiter is curious. 'Although
on that earth,' he says, 'spirits speak with men' (_i.e._ with Jovian
men) 'man in his turn does not speak with spirits, except to say, when
instructed, _that he will do so no more_,'--which we should regard as a
bull if it were not news from the Jovian spirit world. 'Nor is man
allowed to tell anyone that a spirit has spoken to him; if he does so,
he is punished. Those spirits of Jupiter when they were with me, at
first supposed they were with a man of their own earth; but when in my
turn I spoke with them, and thought of publishing what passed between us
and so relating it to others, then, because they were not allowed to
chastise me, they discovered they were with a stranger.'