Three years later he has ready the first two volumes of his new work,
and the following year, 1745, a third volume. This work is the ›_Regnum
Animale_›, (The Soul’s Kingdom). It is constructed upon a very grand
plan, comprising not less than 17 parts. Of these, however, only the
three mentioned above issued from the press, and they treat of the
organs of the chest, abdomen, and skin, and of the senses of touch and
taste.[50] Professor IMMANUEL TAFEL (Tübingen) in the middle of the
19th century afterwards published two more volumes of the manuscript.
The first of these, Pars quarta, treats chiefly of the senses of smell,
hearing and sight and the higher degrees of the soul’s activity; and the
other, Pars septima, treats of the soul.[50 b]
But simultaneously with the work in question SWEDENBORG wrote still
another, namely, the great work on the brain, ›De Cerebro›.—In these
works SWEDENBORG reached _the summit of his scientific career_, and they
afterwards served as the foundation of the religious edifice to which he
devoted the remainder of his life.
The ›_De Cerebro_› of SWEDENBORG, just referred to, is a rather large
work which treats of the brain from the anatomical, physiological, and
philosophical standpoints. This work left by SWEDENBORG in Ms., has
appeared in print only in part, namely, in the English translation by
Dr. RUDOLF TAFEL, published in London in two volumes, 1882 and 1887, and
entitled ›The Brain›. Although this edition comprises, as was said, only
a portion of the whole work, it treats of both the cerebrum, cerebellum
and medulla oblongata, as well as of the cranium and the membranes of the
brain, but chiefly only in so far as their structure and function regard
the activity of the soul. Without doubt SWEDENBORG’s main interest here
centred on this subject, and therefore I shall give some intimations
concerning how deeply SWEDENBORG has succeeded in seeing into the
function of the cerebrum as the organ of the soul’s life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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