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Eschy, in his tragedy of the Suppliants

(998, 1015.) It is because of these analogies that to the accomplished mind there are few things more delightful than to note the early primrose and anemone, the woodsorrel and the young, uncurling ferns. It sees in them, and in all delicate buds, the pictorial counterparts of its own first steps,images of the pretty little flowers of fancy and affection put forth from the heart of a child. The same circumstances originate an important part of the pleasure with which the mind regards the verdure of trees newly-leafed, the activities and the music of birds, and the thousand other fair conditions of the year in its adolescence. It sees reflected in them its own felt progress. In that perfect sea of rich poetry, 'Festus,' both the physical and the spiritual symbolism of the year are given in a single passage:—

We women have four seasons, like the year.
Our Spring is in our lightsome, girlish days,
When the heart laughs within us for sheer joy.
Summer is when we love and are beloved;
Autumn when some young thing with tiny hands,
And rosy cheeks, and flossy, tendrilled locks,
Is wantoning about us day and night.

And winter is when those we love have perished,
For the heart ices then.

Some miss one season, some another; this
Shall have them early; and that, late.

The soul, as it quickens towards God, (which is quite a different thing from growth in the loves and intellectualities of the simply secular life) similarly views itself reflected wherever the vernal is gushing forth, and loves to think how mutual is the dependence on him who changeth the times and the seasons, who giveth wisdom to the wise, and revealeth the deep and secret things.' (Dan. ii. 21.) A more complete and admirable image than is here presented, it would be difficult to find. For like the seeds and roots which lie hidden in the cold, bare earth during winter, full of splendid capacity and life, are the latent desires in the unawakened soul for what is good and heavenly, inherited from the golden age; and when once quickened, nothing can repress their energy, or forbid their shooting into a luxuriant and flowery vesture for the surface late so naked. We should never desire to be regenerated were it not for the remains of original innocence which thus repose, like sleeping angels, in our hearts. Martineau appropriately opens his beautiful book, Endeavours after the Christian Life,' with sketching this truest spring-time of the soul, this beginning of its real, productive life. The thoughts which constitute religion are too vast and solemn to remain subordinate. They are germs of a growth which, with true nurture, must burst into independent life, and overspread the whole

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soul. When the mind, beginning to be busy for itself, ponders the ideas of the infinite and eternal, it detects, as if by sudden inspiration, the immensity of the relations which it bears to God and immortality. The old formulas of religious instruction break their husk, and give forth the seeds of wonder and of love. Everything that before seemed great and worthy is dwarfed; and secular affinities sink into nothingness compared with the heavenly world which has been discovered. There is a period when earnest spirits become thus possessed; disposed to contrast the grandeur of their new ideal with the littleness of all that is actual, and to look with a sublimated feeling, which in harsher natures passes into contempt, on pursuits and relations once sufficient for the heart's reverence.' Pray that your flight be not in the winter,'

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means before the frosts of indifference to God have melted.

The sequence of morning to night of course pourtrays precisely the same facts, because each perfect and independent day of twenty-four hours is a year in little, and therefore the analogue of the entire spiritual history. We speak accordingly, of the night of ignorance, the night of supersti tion, the dawn of reason, the dawn of the understanding. Hence, too, the innumerable beautiful figures in which these things are spoken of under the equivalent names of darkness' and 'light,' treated of in another place. As with the transition from ignorance into knowledge, so with the nobler progress which introduces us to God. Before we know him it is night, afterwards it is morning and day. It is in the night that he comes to us, just as it is during the night of nature that the sun approaches, (for it is not morning till he is risen) whence the beautiful figure in the parable, that the cry of the bridegroom's coming is heard. at 'midnight.' It was for the same reason that the angels announced the nativity to the shepherds by night rather than by day,-a ministry sweetly renewed, with its own heavenly light and music, wherever the 'flocks' of the heart are seen to be watched and cherished.

To the same class of facts belong the circumstances of our Lord being born into the material world in the depth of winter; and of the crucifixion taking place during chilly, wintry weather, as shewn by the people kindling a fire and warming themselves. (Luke xxii. 55.) These are not mere accidents in the history, but representative Occurrences inseparably connected with the spiritual ones they accompany. In several ancient languages the name of God is literally 'light," or morning.' Such is the case with the Greek eos and the Latin Deus (whence the French Dieu, and our own word Deity), both of which, together with the name of the old Indian god Dyaus, rest on the Sanscrit root div, to shine or irradiate. The Greek Zeus and the

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Latin Ju-piter are from the same source, by permutation of sounds, as shewn by the inflections A.Fos, Jovis, &c., and by the derivatives divum (whence divine and divinity) and dies, the day, literally the shining.' Jupiter, and the equivalent Diespater, Diespiter, signify literally, 'father of light,' With the same root are doubtless connected the Celtic di, dian, and the Anglo-Saxon degan, whence our current dawn and day.*

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But more than one such day is needful to regenerate a man. He must go through many successive stages, introduced to one day after another, through the medium of many nights of labour and struggle. And that we may be familiarised with it from the first, this is just what is depicted at the very entrance to God's Word. In their 'evenings and mornings, and the accompanying serial creations, the opening verses of Genesis sublimely picture the development of the various emotions and perceptions proper to the Christian character, which gradually open out, like the days of a week. For there are no leaps in the history of spiritual progress,-no violent transitions. There can be no seventh day's rest in heaven without six preceding ones of work, which every man must perform for himself, with God's help and at God's suggestion. Let there be light' is only the introductory act,-the shewing of the way. At first man is not conscious how much is needed of him. It seems sufficient that light has broken. He knows not how bare and desolate is his heart, nor that until a third, and a fourth, and a fifth day shall have clothed it with the spiritual counterparts of the living creatures,' the grass,' the herbs,' and the fruit trees,' i'll be only a desert, and can neither 'rejcico' nor blossom as the rose.' Of such a course of developments accordingly, growth in religion is made up, each stage having its own evening d morning, just as each year of life has its winter and summer. For evening' here signifies, not the twilight of a day that is past, Lut the whole of the dark portion of the twenty-four hours, and morning' the whole of the light portion. The two together make up a complete period in the history, just as a night and a day combined (the latter dating from midnight) make up each of the 365 days' of the solar year.

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The creation of man comes last, because it is not until such a 3 of developments has taken place, that the intellect and affood attain to that upright and noble attitude in reference to God, wi constitutes genuine manliness. †

* See a highly interesting and beautiful commentary on these worde, and their significance, in the Edinburgh Review for October, 1851, No. 102, p. 334-339.

See for the full analysis of this splendid chain of correspondences, Rev. E. D. Kendell's Antediluvian History,' chapters 3 and 18.

(To be concluded in our next.)

25

SWEDENBORG'S PHYSIOLOGY AND PSYCHOLOGY.

No. II.-LAUGHTER.

PHILOSOPHERS, from not understanding the true nature and constitution of humanity, (for it was reserved for the New Dispensation to manifest this) have given the most absurd definitions of man, with the view of distinguishing him from the brute. One author has deemed it sufficient to mark this distinction by defining man to be "the laughing animal;" as if it were the fact that man and brute were alike in all things except that he can laugh and the brute cannot. Nevertheless it is quite true that man alone possesses this power, for

"Smiles from reason flow,

To brutes denied."-Milton.

This affection is so very different to others with which man is endowed, that it has excited the attention of eminent men of all ages, and has engaged the pens of Aristotle, Hobbes, Akenside, Addison, Hutcheson, Dr. Beattie, and others, mostly in the endeavour to discover its origin; but without success. Hobbes, writing in the 17th century, says, "There is a passion that hath no name; but the sign of it is that distortion of the countenance which we call laughter, which is always joy: but what joy, what we think and wherein we triumph when we laugh, is not hitherto declared by any." Nor let it be supposed that such a subject is unworthy the attention of the philosopher, since, surely, “whatever is peculiar to rational nature must be an object of importance to a rational being." Guided, then, by the discoveries of Swedenborg as published in his philosophical works, and by the light of the New Dispensation as disclosed in his theological writings, we propose to inquire into the origin of laughter; its nature; its use; and to consider the question, Does laughter exist in heaven?

Laughter has been defined," An affection peculiar to mankind, occasioned by something which tickles the fancy," and in which the muscles of the face are excited to great activity, and the vocal organs pleasantly agitated. It may be tacit, slight, or violent. Tacit is termed smiling; slight, tittering; and violent, cachinnation. however, are what are properly denominated laughter.

The last two,

Is laughter the result of any sensuous perception? To determine this question, let us examine each sense. Taste and smell may at once be dismissed with a negative. Touch; tickling is an offspring of this sense, and appears to be productive of laughter; but this, it is apprehended, can only be regarded as induced hysteria, and not as a normal N. S. NO. 145.-VOL. XIII.

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sensation. The two nobler senses of sight and hearing, being the subjects of active forces, approach in their activities more nearly to mental operations, and, therefore, demand more attention in our inquiry. Laughter is seldom produced by the agency of mere sound, and when this happens the effect results from a comparison of the sound with something which previously had gained admission into the mind of the hearer. A similar remark will apply to the sense of sight; but it may be needful to add, that through this sense incongruous images are more suddenly and unexpectedly thrown upon the imagination, and hence laughter arises apparently more immediately from the agency of the sense of sight than from that of hearing. Yet still it is, as we shall see presently, an affection of the mind, and not the sensuous images, which are the origin of the laughter that ensues. If any of these material or sensuous ideas could originate laughter, the brutes would laugh; for such ideas, it is well known, are possessed by them. We must, therefore, look beyond the senses, and interrogate mind upon the subject.

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The proximate cause of laughter is gladness in the external mind.* Hence it is that children laugh so much, for their internal mind not being as yet formed, every impression on the senses can excite the external mind only. Now, as it is a law of creation that that which enters the mind with delight becomes fixed and permanent, it is wisely ordained by the Creator that all the appearances of the world, as they are presented to a child, should wear a bright and happy aspect, and 'that our first years should be sportive and joyous," in order that material ideas, which form the basis of all higher mental things, being insinuated with delight, may thus be rendered permanent. In this way it is provided that interior things shall not flow away in consequence of the transitory nature of the foundation on which they rest, and, indeed, on which their very existence depends. From this, it is obvious that early training should always wear a pleasing aspect, for it is contrary to the constitution of the infant mind to have knowledge thrust upon it rudely and with asperity and gloom,—

"And harsh Austerity, from whose rebuke

Young Love and smiling Wonder shrink away,
Abashed and chill of heart."-Akenside.

Cheerfulness, therefore, should ever pervade the school room, and the oft-frequented play.ground ring with joyous, jocund laughter.

The perception of truth yields a delight which is peculiar to man, since no mere animal can discriminate between truth and its opposite,

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