cus and Humboldt.

It is a book for giants, written by one. Although the man was a nominal
Christian, yet to him, plainly, the Bible was only a book of fables and
fairy-tales. The Mosaic account of Creation is simply waived, as we
waive Jack the Giant-Killer when dealing with the question of capital
punishment.

That Darwin read Swedenborg with minute care, there is no doubt. In the
"Principia" is a chapter on mosses wherein it is explained how the first
vestige of lichen catches the dust particles of disintegrating rock, and
we get the first tokens of a coming forest. Darwin never made a point
better; and the nebular hypothesis and the origin of species are worked
out with conjectures, fanciful flights, queer conceits, poetic
comparisons, far-reaching analogies, and most astounding leaps of
imagination.

The man was warming to his task--this was not to be his last book--the
heavens were opening before him, and if he went astray it was light from
heaven that dazzled him. No one could converse with him, because there
was none who could understand him; none could refute him, because none
could follow his winding logic, which led to heights where the air was
too rarefied for mortals to breathe. He speculated on magnetism,
chemistry, astronomy, anatomy, geology and spiritism. He believed a
thing first and then set the mighty machinery of his learning to bear to
prove it. This is the universal method of great minds--they divine
things first. But no other scientist the world has ever known divined
as much as this man. He reminds us of his own motor-car, with the horse
inside running away with the machine and none to stop the beast in its
mad flight. To his engine there is no governor, and he revolves like the
screw of a steamship when the waves lift the craft out of the water.

There is no stimulant equal to expression. The more men write the more
they know. Swedenborg continued to write, and following the "Principia"
came "The Animal Kingdom," "The Economy of the Universe," and more vast
reaches into the realm of fact and fancy. His books were published at
his own expense, and the work was done under his own supervision at
Antwerp, Amsterdam, Venice, Vienna, London and Paris. In all these
cities he worked to get the benefit of their libraries and museums.

Popularity was out of the question--only the learned attempted to follow
his investigations, and these preferred to recommend his books rather
than read them. And as