The writings of John Greenleaf Whittier, Volume 5.
John Greenleaf Whittier, Ed.

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‘ [234] he may be the soul of a mad Viking of the middle centuries. Depend upon it, that Italian philosopher was not far out of the way in his ingenious speculations upon the affinities and sympathies existing between certain men and certain animals, and in fancying that he saw feline or canine traits and similitudes in the countenances of his acquaintance.’

‘Swedenborg tells us,’ said I, ‘that lost human souls in the spiritual world, as seen by the angels, frequently wear the outward shapes of the lower animals,—for instance, the gross and sensual look like swine, and the cruel and obscene like foul birds of prey, such as hawks and vultures,—and that they are entirely unconscious of the metamorphosis, imagining themselves “marvellous proper men,” and are quite well satisfied with their company and condition.’

‘Swedenborg,’ said the Elder, ‘was an insane man, or worse.’

‘Perhaps so,’ said the Doctor; ‘but there is a great deal of “ method in his madness,” and plain common sense too. There is one grand and beautiful idea underlying all his revelations or speculations about the future life. It is this: that each spirit chooses its own society, and naturally finds its fitting place and sphere of action,—following in the new life, as in the present, the leading of its prevailing loves and desires,—and that hence none are arbitrarily compelled to be good or evil, happy or miserable. A great law of attraction and gravitation governs the spiritual as well as the material universe; but, in obeying it, the spirit ’