erfect mating of the right man with the right woman. In order to
explain what perfect marriage is, Swedenborg works by the process of
elimination and reveals every possible condition of mismating. Every
error, mistake, crime, wrong and fallacy is shown in order to get at the
truth. Swedenborg tells us that he got his facts from four husbands and
four wives in the Spirit Land, and so his statements are authentic.
Emerson disposes of Swedenborg's ideal marriage as it exists in heaven,
as "merely an indefinite bridal-chamber," and intimates that it is the
dream of one who had never been disillusioned by experience.

In Maudsley's fine book, "Body and Mind," the statement is made that
during Swedenborg's stay in London his life was decidedly promiscuous.
Fortunately the innocence and ignorance of Swedenborg's speculations are
proof in themselves that his entire life was absolutely above reproach.
Swedenborg's bridal-chamber is the dream of a school-girl, presented by
a scientific analyst, a man well past his grand climacteric, who
imagined that the perpetuation of sexual "bliss" was a desirable thing.

Emerson hints that there is the taint of impurity in Swedenborg's
matrimonial excursions, for "life and nature are right, but closet
speculations are bound to be vicious when persisted in." Max Mueller's
little book, "A Story of German Love," showing the intellectual and
spiritual uplift that comes from the natural and spontaneous friendship
of a good man and woman, is worth all the weighty speculations of all
the virtuous bachelors who ever lived and raked the stagnant ponds of
their imagination for an ideal.

The love of a recluse is not God's kind--only running water is pure; the
living love of a live man and woman absolves itself, refines, benefits,
and blesses, though it be the love of Aucassin and Nicolete, Plutarch
and Laura, Paola and Francesca, Abelard and Heloise, and they go to hell
for it.

From his thirty-fourth year to his forty-sixth Swedenborg wrote nothing
for publication. He lectured, traveled, and advised the government on
questions of engineering and finance, and in various practical ways made
himself useful. Then it was that he decided to break the silence and
give the world the benefit of his studies, which he does in his great
work, "Principia." Well does Emerson say that this work, purporting to
explain the birth of worlds, places the man side by side with Aristotle,
Leonardo, Bacon, Selden, Coperni