SOURCE: Toksvig, Signe. “Why Swedenborg.” In Emanuel Swedenborg: Scientist and Mystic, pp. 1-6. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948.

In this essay, Toksvig notes that Swedenborg was a thinker of incredible range, with interests in science, mysticism, psychology, ethics, philosophy, and religion but admits that Swedenborg is difficult to comprehend fully and that he has been misunderstood by many who have read him.

A member of one of America's great endowed institutions for scientific research was congratulated on belonging to this modern sanctuary, where he could work, free of material worry, together with men interested in the same subject.

He took the congratulations with a shade of reserve, explaining that he sometimes wished he were working at a university where he could drop into a faculty club and talk over his subject and theirs with men from entirely different fields, and learn their points of view. By contact even...