Other men have written many books. It is Swedenborg’s unique distinction, if distinction it is, to be the one man in history who has written a library on his own account. The encyclopædic brain does not, as a rule, tend to perspicuity in style, and Swedenborg has suffered from neglect owing to the fact that the fertility of his genius was not sufficiently associated with the powers of selection and condensation. To search for the treasures of his knowledge among his published works is like looking, in the words of the hackneyed proverb, “for needles in a haystack.” Had he given us far less in volume the world would doubtless have profited more by the very valuable information contained in his writings. There are times when one is inclined to regret (if also to feel thankfulness) that Swedenborg was side-tracked by his Celestials and that he did not complete his phenomenal career on the lines which he had marked out for himself. It is a vain, though a most alluring speculation, to consider how the destinies of nations might have evolved if certain incidents in a single life history had eventuated otherwise than they did. We may conceive of Swedenborg bringing to completion his schemes for the construction of flying machines and submarines, nearly two centuries earlier than was decreed by destiny, and ask ourselves, if we will, what use the great Napoleon might not have made of these formidable implements of destructive warfare, and how far the map of Europe, and indeed of the world, might have been changed through their employment by his formidable genius; or, again, to what extent the linking up of the New and Old Worlds might have been accelerated by such developments. Here at least we must admit was a phenomenon—a man who realised, in a measure undreamed of by his contemporaries, not only in the physical but also in the spiritual sphere, the stupendous possibilities of the Coming Time. Footnote 10: Church property being free from taxation. Footnote 11: See _Life of Emanuel Swedenborg_. By George Trobridge. London: Frederick Warne & Co. To which book I must acknowledge my great indebtedness. Footnote 12: There are not a few of the communications recorded, notably in the “Spiritual Diary,” which might be advanced to support the hypothesis of a disordered brain; and we must not lose sight of the fact that Swedenborg’s tireless activities taxed his intellectual faculties beyond the powers of any but the most exceptional human organism. VI COUNT CAGLIOSTRO