Imatges de pàgina
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which again become producing forces, even to the last product; in a word, they are degrees of the formation of one thing from another, thus from the first, or supreme, to the last, or lowest, where the formation stops; wherefore things prior and things posterior, also things superior and inferior, are those degrees; all creation is effected by these degrees, and all production is by them, and all composition in the nature of the world in like manner; for if you unfold any compound subject, you will see that one thing therein is from another, even to the outermost, which is common to all; the three angelic heavens are distinguished from each other by such degrees, wherefore one is above another; the interiors of man, which are of his mind, are also distinct from each other by such degrees; in like manner light, which is wisdom, and heat, which is love, in the heavens of angels and in the interiors of men, the light itself, which proceeds from the Lord as a sun, and likewise the heat itself, which also thence proceeds, are distinguished into the same degrees, wherefore the light in the third heaven is so refulgent, and the light in the second is so bright, as to exceed a thousand times the midday light of the world; in like manner the wisdom, for light and wisdom in the spiritual world are in a like degree of perfection, wherefore the degrees of perfection are similar, and because the degrees of affections are similar, so likewise are the degrees of uses, for the subjects of affections are uses. It is further to be noted, that in every form, both spiritual and natural, there are degrees both discrete and continuous, for without Discrete Degrees, there is no interior principle in the form, which may constitute a cause or soul; and without Continuous Degrees there is no extension or appearance of it. "'* London, 26th October, 1852.

THE BULL UNIGENITUS,

FRANK.

REFERRED TO BY SWEDENBORG IN THE CONTINUATION OF THE LAST

JUDGMENT.

To the Editor.

SIR,

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you or any of your readers could point out the true nature of the Bull Unigenitus, to which Swedenborg alludes, n. 60, in the "Continuation of the Last Judgment," where he mentions Louis the Fourteenth as deeply impressing upon the mind of his grandson and successor the necessity of rejecting the said Bull from the Catholic Church in France, you would oblige several inquirers who are desirous

* On the Divine Love, xi.

to know the nature of that Bull, and the reasons why it was so desirable that it should not be admitted into the Gallican Church.

London.

I am, yours, &c.,

A CONSTANT READER. [We are glad to state that through the learned researches of Mr. Clissold in his work on the "Spiritual Exposition of the Apocalypse," &c., lately published, we are enabled, we think, to explain the nature and object of the Bull which Louis the Fourteenth is said to have condemned. In that work, Mr. Clissold observes, (vol. iv. pp. 168, 169,) that the object of the Bull Unigenitus, decreed in 1713 under Pope Clement the Ninth, was to prevent the reading by the people of the Sacred Scriptures. The Bull denounced the following propositions in respect to the reading of the Scriptures, "as false, blasphemous, heretical, and reprobate ;" and decreed that the faithful in Christ of both sexes should not presume to hold any of those propositions, under penalty of the censure of the church. The propositions condemned by the Bull are the following:

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1. "That it is useful and necessary for all persons to know the Scriptures. 2. "That the reading of the Scriptures is for every body.

3. "That the sacred obscurity of the Word of God is no reason for the laity to excuse themselves from reading it.

4. "That the Lord's Day ought to be sanctified by Christians in reading pious books, and, above all, the Scriptures.

5. "That it is a great mistake to imagine that the knowledge of the mysteries of religion ought not to be imparted to women, by the reading of the Sacred Books.

6. "That to wrest the New Testament out of the hands of Christians is to keep it closed up; by taking from them the means of understanding it, is no other than to close up the mouth of Christ as to them.

7. "That to forbid to Christians the reading of the Holy Scriptures, especially of the Gospel, is no other than to forbid the use of light to the children of light.

8. "That to deprive the unlearned people of the comfort of joining their voices with the voice of the whole church, is a custom contrary to apostolical practice, and to the design of God."

These were the propositions, so excellent in themselves, which the Bull Unigenitus condemned. This Bull emanated from the ultramontane party, and is evidently a product of the Jesuits, who plainly saw that their infernal attempts at universal dominion and despotism could not be carried out where the people are allowed to read the Scriptures. In Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Austria, they had succeeded with this Bull; but in France, which for some time past had refused to recognise the ultramontane doctrines of the church, the BULL was not so easily established, and we may see a reasonable ground for the interposition permitted by Providence, in the case of Louis XIV., as mentioned by Swedenborg, endeavouring to impress upon the mind of his grandson, the then reigning monarch, not to admit the authority of the Bull in France.-EDITOR. ]

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ORIGIN OF BEAUTY.

BEAUTY comes of marriages. For there is no beauty unless both a male principle and a female principle be present, and the beauty is the result or offspring of their union. Music, as we have seen, is in its true development, twofold: colours shew best when certain harmonies are effected beautiful forms are compounded of straight lines and curved lines. The straight line is masculine; the curved feminine; attested in the angular figure of man, and the exquisitely rounded one of woman, with its matchless hemispheres and undulations. By these two kinds of lines, separately or conjointly, every thing in nature is bounded; and it is when they are happily combined, that the most elegant configurations are produced. What can be more exquisite than the forms of flowers? Here the petals follow more or less of a curve, either in outline or attitude; while the stamens, pistils and calyx furnish in different species, the complement of straight lines. It is rarely that anything bounded exclusively by straight or by curved lines is presented by nature. This is because nature is the expression of Divine Wisdom and Divine Goodness, which principles are as man and wife, and everywhere co-impress themselves. Crystals perhaps are the only examples of the former, and as these are symbolical of truths, (whether we take spars and salts, or the exquisite little stars and crosses of snow,―water being one of the most emphatic emblems of truth ;) it is still in sublimest harmony that straight lines should shape them, inasmuch as truth belongs to the intellect, and the intellect is masculine.

But the agreeable effects developed by circumstances of shape, colour, and proportion, constitute only one kind of beauty. Many things are beautiful for reasons which no artist or geometrician can point out; and that very beauty itself, which is connected with shape, colour, and proportion, so far from being universally obvious, is to many eyes invisible. Wherein, then, does Beauty essentially consist? What are its omnipresent and eternal features? What is the standard whereby it shall be determined whether a given thing be beautiful or plain, independent of individual opinions? Beauty, in its highest being, has no standard. It is of its very nature to have no standard, except that which exists in each man's own soul, cognizant and intelligible to himself alone. A reality felt and understood by all, Beauty yet has no costume, because it is of all costumes; and though every one sees it, none can shew it to another, because no two individuals understand it exactly in the same way. Beauty, in a word, in its

essential nature, is not a physical fact, but a spiritual one; whence the fine axiom of Lord Bacon, that the best part of beauty is that which no painting can express. The beauty induced by physical properties is only representative or symbolic beauty. It is like the material body of man, which is but the shell or envelope of his real self; and is beautiful not so much in its own person, as in being the result, outbirth, or physical presentation of the Soul, or spiritual body.

Beauty, in its essential nature, is the child of the soul's intercourse with given objects and phenomena of the external world. It is neither in the one nor in the other exclusively; the object does not in itself possess it; nor can the soul of itself generate it. It is developed whenever the soul comes in contact with what excites its most valued and agreeable emotions. These are the beauty, and we affix the name, metaphorically, to that by which they are excited. Whatever is constantly sought out and beloved as the aliment of our true life; whatever is felt to be the complement of our inmost being, by reason of its exciting those emotions, is the beautiful' to us; every man finding his soul's complement in a different direction, and therefore differing from every other man in his secret estimate of beauty. One is most charmed by flowers, another by birds; one by sweet sounds, another by rocks and waterfalls; one loves the facts of science, another those of poetry. The woods, the sea, the stars, the truths of religion, morals, metaphysics, philosophy, mathematics, all have their own special admirers. The preferences which men so entertain, and which thus provide them with their several shares in the feeling of the beautiful, are a part of their inmost nature. Born with them, they may be cultivated, corrupted, or repressed, but can never be wholly eradicated.

Under the great, primal law of Adaptation, not only is every individual gifted with aptitude to find preeminent beauty in some particular objects or circumstances of nature, which throughout life are his peculiar pleasure and solace; but every man and every woman upon earth is doubtless specially fitted to be the partner and complement of a particular individual of the opposite sex, who though long or for ever concealed amid the crowd, is still the treasured and everlasting beauidéal of perfect man or perfect woman in the soul, and when found, is recognized as one's other, well-known self, and loved as soon as seen. It is because of this native and secret beau-idéal of beauty, which every one has for himself, that the same woman is often to one man sweetly beautiful, to another plain, or even ugly. How often do men accredited of purest taste, attach themselves to women who are destitute of what are popularly called 'personal attractions,' and love them with the

fondest affection. The beau-idéal of the soul, is in fact, its one only true and perennial love. A man chooses his wife by reference to it, wherever a choice is really made, and the nearer she comes up to it, the more deeply and unchangingly he loves her. A second wife, there fore, may be quite as much loved as the first, and a third as a second; and not only as much, but more so, seeing that in all likelihood she is nearer the beau-idéal, which undoubtedly is in the first choice liable to be slighted, (alas, how suicidally,) under the merely animal impulse of amativeness. Certainly it is her external, physical aspect which forms the medium of attraction; but it is for what he spiritually sees within her pretty face that he really and permanently loves her. If her corporeal beauty be not felt to translate itself into spiritual beauty, there is no true love. The well-spring of love,' says that charming old essayist, Maximus Tyrius, is the beauty of the soul gleaming upwards through the body. And as flowers seen under water appear still more brilliant and exquisite than they are, so the flower of the soul (√vxîs avos) seems to manifest additional splendour when invested with corporeal loveliness.** Corporeal beauty is not to be undervalued, because the spiritual is better. To a rightly-ordered mind the corporeal beauty of things is as delicious as the spiritual, and the spiritual as the corporeal. The wise man knows that there is no richer pleasure than the contemplation of the latter while it lasts, and he luxuriates in it accordingly; but he knows also that it is only of a day, as are all things that are only emblems, and that the spiritual alone can live, because spirit alone wears the robes of immortality, and he finally estimates them by their duration. Spiritual beauty, and the sweet youthfulness which cleaves to it, unlike the fading beauty of the body, never departs. Rather does it enhance with age, participating in the nature of the angels, and is often loveliest at the moment when the temple it has inhabited falls away from it ruined and dismantled. The better it is known, the more ardently it is loved; and hence it is that at the end of a long life, the woman who is possessed of it, though the rose leaves be all scattered, charms her husband even more than at the first.

As hate and dislike tend to hinder offspring, and as mutual affection is the best pathway to it; so the more we become like in soul to the divine truths and principles of which nature is the expression, the more beauty do we discern in her. In other words, the more that we foster in ourselves the love of whatever is noble and good, the more do our primitive relations with nature develope and dilate. There is a broader surface for impression, and beauty multiplies in proportion.

* Dissertation IX., p. 94. Ed. Heinsii, 1614.

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