EMANUEL SWEDENBORG
a natural faculty for contemplating facts already discovered, and eliciting their causes. Both are peculiar gifts and are seldom united in the same person. Besides, I found when intently occupied in exploring the secrets of the human body that as soon as I discovered anything which had not been observed before, I began, seduced probably by self-love, to grow blind to the most acute lucubrations and researches of others, and to originate the whole series of inductive arguments from my particular discovery alone. . . . Nay, when I essayed to form principles from these discoveries, I thought I could detect in various other phenomena much to confirm their truth, although in reality they were fairly susceptible of no construction of the kind. I therefore laid aside my instruments, and restraining my desire for making observations, determined rather to rely on the researches of others than to trust to my own."
After describing as from experience the faculty which some enjoy—who ever more than he?—of confining their attention to one thing and evolving with distinctness all that lies in it, of distributing their thoughts into classes separat-
108
