Emerson, in his _Representative Men_, chose Swedenborg as the
representative mystic. He accepted Swedenborg's way of looking at
the world as universally characteristic of the mystical temperament.
The Higher Space Theory was unheard of in Swedenborg's day,
nevertheless in his religious writings--thick clouds shot with
lightning--the idea is implicit and sometimes even expressed, though
in a terminology all his own.
To Swedenborg's vision, as to Plato's, this physical world is a
world of ultimates, in all things correspondent to the casual world,
which he names "heaven." "_It is to be observed_," he says,
"_that the natural world exists and subsists from the spiritual world,
just as an effect exists from its efficient cause_."
According to Swedenborg, conditions in "heaven" are different from
those in the world: space is different: distance is different He says,
"_Space in heaven is not like space in the world, for space in the
world is fixed, and therefore measurable: but in heaven it is not
fixed and therefore cannot be measured_."
Herein is suggested a _fluidic_ condition, singularly in accord with
certain modern conceptions in theoretical physics. Commenting upon
the significance of Lobatchewsky's and Bolyai's work along the lines
of non-Euclidian geometry, Hinton says, "By immersing the conception
of distance in matter, to which it properly belongs, it promises to
be of the greatest aid in analysis, for the effective distance of
any two particles is the result of complex material conditions, and
cannot be measured by hard and fast rules."
The higher correlative of physical distance is a difference of state
or condition, according to the Norwegian seer. "_Those are far apart
who differ much_," he says "_and those are near who differ little_."
Distance in the spiritual world, he declares, originates solely
"_in the difference in the state of their minds, and in the heavenly
world, from the difference in the state of their loves_." This
immediately suggests the Oriental teaching that the place and human
environment into which a man is born have been determined by his own
thoughts, desires, and affections in anterior existences, and that
instant by instant all are determining their future births. The
reader to whom the idea of reincarnation is repellent or unfamiliar
may not be prepared to go this length, but he must at least grant
that in the span of a single lifetime thought and desire determine
action, and consequently, position in space. The ambitious man goes
from the village to the city; the lover of nature seeks the wilds;
the misanthrope avoids his fellowmen, the gregarious man gravitates
to crowds. We seek out those whom we love, we avoid those whom we
dislike; everywhere the forces of attraction and repulsion play
their part in determining the tangled orbits of our every-day lives.
In other words, the subjective, and (hypothetically) higher activity
in every man records itself in a world of three dimensions as action
upon an environment. Thought expresses itself in action, and so
flows outward into space.
Observe how perfectly this fits in with Swedenborg's contention that
physical remoteness has for its higher correspondence a difference
of love and of interest; and physical juxtaposition, a similarity of
these. In heaven, he says, "Angels of similar character are as it
were spontaneously drawn together." So would it be on earth, but for
impediments inherent in our terrestrial space. Swedenborg's angels
are men freed from these limitations. We suffer because the free
thing in us is hampered by the restrictions of a space to which it
is not native. Reason sufficient for such restriction is apparent in
the success that crowns every effort at the annihilation of space,
and the augmentation of power and knowledge that such effort brings.
It would appear that a narrowing of interest and endeavor is always
the price of efficiency. The angel is confined to "the narrow prison
of the breast" that it may react upon matter just as an axe is
narrowed to an edge that it may cleave.