Excerpt from Emanuel Swedenborg: His Life and Writings Swedenborg has as far as possible been left to tell his own story, and to reveal the heart of his own books. The selec tion of proper material from a territory so extensive has cost far more pains than the same amount of original com position. In many cases the selected passages have suffered severe abridgment. Swedenborg's thoughts are constantly delivered in bulky solution, and if in getting rid of the superfluous water I have ever strained away some of the essential substance, I have in all cases supplied the reference for my extract, whereby a suspicious reader may test its accuracy. The complaint however which I really dread is, that whilst I was straining I did not strain harder. As a critic of Swedenborg, my difficulties have not been slight. With a few exceptions, he has undergone no criticism. He has been cursed without reserve, and he has been blessed without reserve, but he has been rarely appreciated. I have therefore had to form many judgments which I feel sure would be modified had I enjoyed the discussion of liberal and enlightened minds. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.