He now devoted himself entirely to the study of Swedenborg. He felt that in some way the life of this strange man had foreshadowed his own. Just as Swedenborg (1688-1772) had passed from the profession of a mathematician to that of a theologian, a mystic, and finally a ghost-seer and theosoph, so Strindberg passed from the worldly calling of a romance-writer to that of a preacher of Christian patience and reconciliation. He had occasional relapses into his old perverse moods, but the attacks of the rebellious spirit were weaker and weaker. He told a friend who asked his opinion regarding the theosophical concept of Karma, that it was impossible for him to belong to a party which denied a personal God, "Who alone could satisfy his religious needs." In a life so full of intellectual activity as his had been, Strindberg had amassed an enormous amount of miscellaneous knowledge. When he was nearly sixty he began to collect and arrange all his experiences and investigations from the point of view he had then attained. Thus was composed his last important work, _Das Blau Buch_, a book of amazing copiousness and originality. Regarding it, the Norwegian author Nils Kjaer writes in the periodical _Verdens Gang_: "More comprehensive than any modern collection of aphorisms, chaotic as the Koran, wrathful as Isaiah, as full of occult things as the Bible, more entertaining than any romance, keener-edged than most pamphlets, mystical as the Cabbala, subtle as the scholastic theology, sincere as Rousseau's confession, stamped with the impress of incomparable originality, every sentence shining like luminous letters in the darkness--such is this book in which the remarkable writer makes a final reckoning with his time and proclaims his faith, as pugnaciously as though he were a descendant of the hero of Lutzen." The book, in truth, forms a world apart, from which all lying, hypocrisy, and conventional contentment is banished; in it is heard the stormy laughter of a genius who has freed himself from the fetters of earth, the proclamation of the creed of a strange Christian who interprets and reveres Christ in his own fashion, the challenge of an original and creative mind which believes in its own continuance, the expression of the yearning of a lonely soul to place itself in harmonious relations with the universe.