That the following Essay may not be condemned simply because it is not understood, it is addressed “To the Members and Friends of the Church of the New Jerusalem,” or to all who read and appreciate the theological writings of Emanuel Swedenborg.  To such it is only necessary to say, that the Essay is an attempt to unfold, in some degree, the great principle so constantly set forth and illustrated in the writings of Swedenborg, viz., That there are profound differences in the interior life, or spiritual constitution, of different races of men, which give rise to a necessity for the use of widely different means for their regeneration.

The writer is aware that every idea in the following Essay needs further illustration and amplification.  But as it is, he thinks it will interest the brethren, by the far-reaching character of its views.  He does not dare to offer them as truth, but simply as his honest conviction of what the truth is.  He will be satisfied if they elicit light from others, or cultivate the spirit of charity.

THE

SPIRITUAL PHILOSOPHY OF AFRICAN SLAVERY.

What a puzzle is man upon this planet to the Christian philosopher!  What varieties of form, color, habits, and capacities!  What differences in government, in religion, in language, in private and public manners and customs!  All degrees and shades of white, black, yellow, and red!  Some progressing, some retrograding,—the most of them perfectly stagnant as to thought and life!  Is there no thread to this labyrinth of wonders—no key to these mysteries? 

It is commonly supposed that human nature is, and always has been, the same everywhere—that all men are fundamentally organized alike, have similar affections and understandings; and think and will in the same manner under analogous or identical circumstances.  The same influences, it is supposed, would produce about the same results everywhere, and at all times.  Consequently it is argued that all men are created equal, and ultimately designed for our own type of civilization, which it is their right to acquire, and their duty to achieve.

Is this so?  Is this crude and grossly material way of looking at human nature satisfactory?  Does it explain any thing?  Why are some men white and some black, some civilized and some heathen, some progressive and some hopelessly torpid?  How came the ancient civilizations to perish, and in what and why did they differ from our modern systems?  Why does the Indian become extinct, and why is the African enslaved?  These and a thousand similar questions can never be answered by that philosophy, which supposes that men are always equal and similar, and that the race has been ever gradually developing upward, under favoring natural influences, from barbarism into civilization and Christianity.

We have at last, by the mercy of God, and the instrumentality of Swedenborg, a key to the spiritual philosophy of history.  There is no true key to any thing but a spiritual key; for the sphere of causes lies always in the spiritual world, and effects can never be understood by studying them only from their natural or physical side.  We can form no true conception of the philosophy of history, or of the causes and uses of African Slavery, until we employ the key which Swedenborg has given us.

The human mind contains three distinct or discrete degrees of life and thought—the celestial, the spiritual, and the natural, and all these are inserted, like casket within casket, into the sensual-corporeal sphere, an investment of time and space.  We are connected by these discrete degrees with the three great heavens and their opposite hells, and we go after death to that heaven or hell, corresponding to the degree which has been opened in us by our life in the world.  So that we bear within us the germs of three different natures—so different, that they do not understand, nor see, nor communicate with each other hereafter, save by correspondence.  Human nature is not therefore the same everywhere, and at all times.  Celestial, spiritual, and natural are very different forms or forces, and call for very different outward surroundings.

Swedenborg says, that the first created men on this earth were of the celestial type, had open intercourse with the celestial heavens, had direct influx from those heavens into the will or voluntary faculty, and consequently felt, thought, and acted unlike any people who have existed since.  They had interior respiration.  They had no literature, no science, and no governments, in our modern sense of those terms.  Nature was an open mirror to them; they saw the divine meaning in the greatest of things and in the least; they were childlike, wise, and happy.  Those who became angels after death, now live in the third or highest heaven, and their ruling love is love to the Lord.

In process of time, and by means in this place unnecessary to detail, a great change came over the human race.  Sin became general, and as correspondences were in power, that is, as interior changes were immediately represented by corresponding exterior changes, its progress was awfully destructive.  Swedenborg is not absolutely explicit upon this point—but a fair inference is, that a vast portion of the human race perished, or were suffocated by the closure of the interior respiration.  In a few, the spiritual degree of the human mind was opened, and a new or spiritual church was instituted in connection with the second or spiritual heavens.  Those in whom the spiritual degree could not be opened, and who still had some celestial “remains,” left deeply stored away in their souls, sank into the sensualcorporeal sphere, and have ever since lived a savage life, but little elevated above that of brutes.

Now is it not pretty certain that the African races, our Indian aborigines, and perhaps other dark-skinned barbarians, are the descendants of these old antediluvians?  Swedenburg plainly intimates as much of the African.  He says that the African is of the celestial type.  Grossly sensual and barbarian as he evidently is in his outward nature, the “remains” which lie imbedded in his spiritual structure are of the celestial order.  He is organically connected with the highest heaven and the deepest hell, as no other man or race of men upon this earth ever has been or can be.  Proofs of his innate celestial genius are apparent in his ineradicable childishness,—his light-heartedness, simplicity, credulity, and timidity,—in his passion for music and dancing, in his forgiving temper, and in that beautiful willingness to serve, which psychologically distinguishes him from almost all other races.

The man of the celestial heavens is pre-eminently majestic and beautiful—those of the opposite hells are the most hideous and dreadful of all the infernal monsters.  The sins of the antediluvians were represented outwardly, and wrought those anatomical changes, which are attributed by natural philosophers to climatic and other influences.  The black skin, the woolly hair, the thick lips, the shallow skull, the flat nose, the offensive smell, and other peculiarities approaching the animal tribes, were imposed gradually on the antediluvian form, as correspondences to the brutalizing operations going on within the soul.  Here is the key to all the differences among men.  The external was then made to correspond to the internal.  It is only since the closure of the interior degrees of the human mind that a man can smile and be a villain, or that he can entertain wicked passions and not become lurid red, or immerse himself into false persuasions and not turn disgustingly black.  The science of correspondences is the key to the anatomy, the languages, the history, customs, etc., of all races of men.

I think the aborigines of America were also descendants of the celestial men of the first church.  All perversions are of two kinds,—those of the will or the affections, and those of the understanding or the intellect.  Perversions of charity would be represented by a lurid red, copper or bronze color, and perversions of truth by a dark or black color.  The separation of faith and charity was the beginning of the end of the church.  Is it not curious that the vast black and red races of the world lay for so many centuries hidden away in two remote, widely separated, and almost unknown continents?  Did it not represent the fact that the celestial element was closed to, or eliminated from, the psychological consciousness of the rest of the race?  Were not their discovery and exploration part of the steps preparatory to the descent of the New Jerusalem, and the establishment of the New Zion?  Perhaps we shall see presently why the Indian is exterminated, and the African enslaved.  But before we speculate on those points, we must pursue the thread of a general spiritual philosophy of history a little further.

The spiritual church extended throughout the most of Asia.  The influx from heaven then flowed directly, not into the wills, but into the understandings, of men.  They thought spiritually, and lived well, because they knew and loved truth.  This spiritual condition of human nature, which was very unlike our natural mode of life, was also transitory.  The downward course of man continued; he at last ceased to think spiritually, and became thoroughly natural.  The spiritual degree was closed, and those in whom an orderly natural plane could not be opened sank into the sensual-corporeal sphere.  We may safely say, that the Hindoos, Chinese, Japanese, etc., are descendants of those people, who, from having been spiritual, became sensual-corporeal.  They differ from Indians and negroes in being what we call semi-civilized—but they are totally stagnant and unprogressive.  Their religion, their philosophy, their science, indeed every thing about them, is fossilized, petrified, crystallized.  Why is it so? 

All creation is by influx.  All development, in whatever sphere, depends upon the direct stream of divine life flowing into the human soul, and representing itself outwardly in religions, philosophies, arts, sciences, governments, etc.  Now the African and the Asiatic have celestial and spiritual “remains” deeply imbedded in their sensual-corporeal life.  But the celestial and spiritual planes of human life are closed.  The influx into those races is not from interiors outward, and hence there is no living progress, no development, no civilization.  The church is the medium of connection between the Lord and man, and even outward nature.  That church at present exists in the regenerate natural plane of the white race—through which life flows outward and downward to all men and things.  Asia and Africa can never awaken from their spell-bound sleep, until spiritual and celestial planes are reopened in the church.  Missionaries can do nothing; commercial intercourse can do nothing; external forces can do nothing.  Their “remains” must be vivified.

The ancient nations which lived in the natural degree of life, connected by influx with the first or natural heavens, were, probably, the Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, Jews, etc.  Of all these, the Jews were the most sensual and corporeal, and the church established among them was, not a living, but a representative church.  Men had now ceased to think spiritually, and became immersed in the senses.  The knowledge of correspondences was lost, and idolatry and magic were prevalent from their perversion or abuse.  The first, or natural heaven was rapidly closing to man, the nearest hell was opening wide, and the whole race would then have sunk into the mere sensual-corporeal, into the sphere of the life of beasts, and there perished, deprived of influx from heaven, but for a most astounding event!

Our Lord, the Divine Man, the Creator of the Universe, the sole-subsisting and self-subsisting, descended into this world in the human form, executed judgment in the world of spirits, cast out devils from the human race, conquered the hells and reduced them to temporary external order, and penetrated all things, even the sensual-corporeal sphere, with his divine presence.  He thereby saved the race from impending annihilation, and reopened the closed ways to heaven.  He is now the Mediator, the Way, and the Life.  By means of influx from him, our sensual-corporeal is again reduced to order, and made obedient to the higher faculties.  We have a new natural, new science, new rationality, new life.  Into this new natural, based on an orderly sensual-corporeal, a new spiritual and a new celestial may be inserted.  The work of demolition was ended; celestial, spiritual, natural, had all perished or been closed by evil.  The work of reconstruction began; natural, spiritual, celestial, will all be opened again.  “Praise the Lord, all ye his hosts!”

The European races, and especially the Teutonic branches, have been capable of receiving this new natural plane with the greatest success.  Hence the church has been established with them, and hence their great civilization and power.  Their civilization differs from the ancient forms in this.  It has been developed from below, or without, by observation, experiment, and the cultivation of the senses.  The old forms were received from above by correspondences, and were successively crystallized or destroyed by the closure of mental planes.  Ancient empires, languages, etc., perished and are dead, because men successively ceased to live, think, and act in the spheres of life derived from the three distinct heavens, known as celestial, spiritual, and natural.  There can be no retrograde or downward step in modern progress, because our Lord lives forever in his Divine Humanity, and the heavens are pressing down to fill us with their life and power, as fast as recipient vessels can be prepared for their influx.

We may form some faint idea of the vast and wonderful operations of Providence, when we consider the fact that it has taken eighteen hundred years to prepare the natural plane of thought in the white race, for engrafting upon it the life of the spiritual and celestial churches.  All the events of history, etc., during that period have been movements preparatory to the Second Advent, and the inauguration of spiritual and celestial life in the church.  In the mean time, influx was through the natural plane of the white race.  This influx, flowing into the sensual-corporeal spheres about it, caused the rise of Mohammedanism, the crusades, and all the historical events, discoveries, etc., which have brought Europe and Asia more closely together.  In another direction, it caused the discovery and exploration of America and Africa, and the strange events which have transpired in the historical lives of the Indian and the Negro.  This is and must be the New Church mode of looking at history.  Effects are produced by spiritual causes, operating solely for spiritual ends.  The ultimation of a celestial church, as in the most ancient days, is the event to which all creative energies in the world must have conspired.

The Lord has revealed to us a vast body of spiritual truth through Swedenborg.  These doctrines of heaven are received by the spiritual man through intelligence, and perceived by the celestial man through affection.  These spiritual truths correspond to celestial goods, and are their recipient vessels.  When the charity and truth of this New Church prevail indeed, all things will be reduced to order.  There will be no sin, no disease, no oppression.  All social and political enigmas will have been solved.

Discarding the perplexities of detail and grasping' only the large facts, we may say for all practical purposes, that three great races exist at present on the earth, with distinctive spiritual peculiarities.  There is the white race, with the natural or scientific plane of thought, open and cultivated, and with the capacity of becoming either spiritual or celestial.  Secondly, there is the yellow, or Asiatic race, sensual-corporeal outwardly, but capable of becoming spiritual by an opening of its interiors.  Lastly, there is the African, still more grossly sensual-corporeal outwardly, but capable of becoming celestial by the opening of his interiors.  Now influx being through the Church established among the white race, how are these other races to be brought into contact with the white race, so as to become truly recipient of the influx from heaven?  Missionary, commercial, and military intercourse have proved fruitless.  The reason is, the scientific or natural plane of thought in those nations or races is not open as it is in the European.  Above the sensual-corporeal sphere, which is common to all, we have little or nothing which communicates or touches.  They think, feel, and act differently from us in every thing.  There is an impassable gulf between us.  They do not understand us, nor we them.  The cause lies in our organic spiritual differences.  Those who have studied the Negro, or the Indian, or the Hindoo closely, understand what I mean by this strange incommunicability of thought.

The African of the western coast is thoroughly sensual-corporeal, a perfect barbarian.  His fetichism is to the perverted celestial, what Asiatic idolatry is to the perverted spiritual.  His hereditary influx is derived from the third, or deepest hell, and no exertion of his volitional or intellectual faculties can ever deliver him from its bondage.  But our Lord, who, in preparing to establish his celestial church, is reducing those antediluvian hells to order by powerful external restraints and severe punishments, has prepared also a way for the poor African’s escape.  The coast African alone, of all the races in the world, eats dirt, and worships, with horrid rites, the serpent—the type of the sensual-corporeal principle to which he is enslaved.  Why has the African been subordinated to the white man?  Why have his masters been changed?

By African slavery the sensual-corporeal principle of the African is brought into obedience and subjection to the natural or scientific plane of the white man’s life.  The white man wills and thinks for him, determines his outgoings and his incomings, his food, his clothing, his sleep, his work, etc.  He compels him to do uses under a rational and scientific supervision.  He makes him obedient as a child, partly by affectionate control, partly by the fear of corporeal punishment.  What is the result?  His sensual-corporeal is adjoined as a servant to the regenerate natural of the white man, and receives influx through it.  His hereditary torpor is dissipated; the sphere of order, justice, and active use into which he is inserted is repugnant to his attendant evil spirits, and they measurably leave him.  He begins to feel, think, and act from new motives, new influx.  His sensual-corporeal sphere is reduced to order, and he acquires something similar to the regenerate scientific and rational life of the white man.  This serves as a basis, or vessel, for the down-flowing of his innate celestial “remains.”  They are vivified.  He exhibits the virtues, and, in part, the graces of the child.  He sings, he dances, he is light-hearted, taking no thought of to-morrow.  He is truthful and virtuous, faithful and affectionate.  He is passing through the process which Almighty God has provided, and which will eventuate in his true liberty and his final salvation.  “Bonds make free, so they be righteous bonds.”

Suppose he is prematurely liberated from the control of the white man, before the new basis for celestial influx has been duly formed?  He relapses into indolence, superstition, vice, and barbarism.  His natural or scientific plane of thought can not be opened or cultivated, under the best influences, beyond that of the white child of ten and twelve years.  Political privileges and general education would suffocate the only true life he has, and leave in its place the poor boon of imitating the white man in those points where he has least prospect of success.  The celestial man is always a child, and knows nothing of politics.  His knowledge and science will come by intuition and correspondence, and not by rule and precept, by books and colleges.  Little do they know of the African or his mission, who wish him to compete with the white man in the studio and the forum.  He wants nothing at present but wise discipline, and room and opportunity for the outworking of heavenly affections into an orderly sensual-corporeal life.

The evils of slavery, like those of all human society, are many and formidable, but they are not inherent in the institution.  They flow from the unregenerate natural life of the white man acting upon the sensual-corporeal sphere of the subjugated African.  Negroes may be made miserable, just as wives and children are in the unregenerate domestic circle.  But whoever believes in Providence knows that the regeneration of the race is steadily and surely progressing, and the evils of slavery are not to be removed by its abolition, which would be a retrograde step in the economy of God, but by the continued Christian culture of both master and slave.

Is there no comfort or pleasure to the Christian heart in the contemplation of the fact, now fully authenticated, that there are at this time four millions of black laborers in the United States—better fed, better clothed, more lightly tasked, more humanely and sympathetically treated, and really happier and more contented on the fair average than any other four millions of laborers on the face of the globe?  But what is this to deeper and more significant truths?  African slavery has converted more heathen to Christianity than all the missionary efforts of all the churches in all ages of the world combined.  Let the New Churchman think of the additions which have been made to the New Church in the heavens from this source!  Let him reflect upon their reactionary influence on the church and the world!  Will not the celestial church become ultimated upon earth just in proportion as the African is elevated and civilized?  Will not the celestial influx flow directly from the African into the spiritual “remains” of the Asiatic, and after awhile awaken that dormant continent to the beauty and glory of the New Church life?  There will be no need to enslave the Asiatic, because by the vivification of the celestial “remains” in the African the highest stand-point for divine influx into every thing beneath it will have been attained.

It would be pleasant for us, but it is not necessary, to foresee clearly the final issues of African slavery.  One thing is certain, however long it lasts, however far it extends, and whatever different phases it may assume,—whenever the celestial “remains” have been thoroughly vivified, and divine influx resumes its old channel from the inmost to the outmost, correspondences will reacquire their old power, and the external again be made to correspond with the internal.  All the repulsive features of the African will then disappear, and his will be the most beautiful and lovely of all the races in the world.  His political status, that miserable bone of contention with us poor naturalists, I shall not pretend to prophesy.  If he is true to his celestial genius, he will choose to be “the servant of all.”

While it is true that the possession of irresponsible power by the unregenerate man is fatal or injurious both to himself and his inferiors, it is equally true that, where there is proper Christian culture, slaveholding is neither a sin nor a curse to the master.  The proper subordination of the African is fraught with benefit to himself, the church and the world, and it is hard to believe that the millions of the white race who are involuntary agents in the work, are to reap nothing but evil from the institution.  It appears to me that the white man derives much of the “celestial” in childhood by his contact and dealings with the negro race.  The character of the southern man is impulsive, credulous, generous, and childlike.  His emotional life predominates over the scientific and intellectual spheres; while the reverse is the case with our northern brethren.  And he excels all other races in that beautiful deference to woman, which belongs to the celestial genius, and is one of the best tests of a high civilization.  Slaveholding enlarges the sphere of our duties and responsibilities, and where these are met and discharged in a lofty and conscientious Christian spirit, the character must of necessity be purified and elevated by the experience.

The New Churchman will bear in mind that the end of slavery is to subordinate the sensual-corporeal of the African to the regenerate natural of the white race, and so procure an orderly basis for the descent of the celestial.  The spiritual causes at work are no doubt the same as those by which our Lord is preparing the way for the celestial church in us as well as in the African, and reducing the third or deepest hell to order.  As the force of hereditary influx from that hell into the African is broken, he will be more and more prepared for the glorious destiny which certainly awaits him.  How long the disciplinary ordeal is to last we can not tell.  The wise and salutary control of the white man will probably be imposed upon the African throughout all the tropical regions, in which, by reason of correspondence, the celestial church of the future will most especially flourish.  From this time forth, if let alone, the institution will go on, under the divine auspices, to improvement and perfection, until the relation of master and slave will indeed be as tender, beautiful, and sacred as that of parent and child.

Now, why are our aborigines, and the Sandwich Islanders, the New Zealanders, the Australians, etc., etc., fading away before the encroachments of white power and civilization?  They will soon be all extinct, one of the strangest and most melancholy facts, says Mr. Everett, in human history.  Now these people are not enslaved.  Their sensual-corporeal principle comes into contact with ours, but it is not subordinated to our scientific and rational faculties.  They only learn our sensual vices, and contract our diseases and perish.  The same influx which, flowing through the natural plane of the white man into the subordinated sensual-corporeal of the Negro, makes him the longest lived and most prolific race in the world, flowing into the disorderly sphere of the unsubdued Indian, exterminates him.  The same thing happens to Negroes when they are released from the control of the white man, and yet live within his powerful sphere.  Free Negroes everywhere will ultimately die out in the presence of white civilization.  The British Civilization Society will depopulate Africa instead of enlightening it.  The safety of the Negro lies, first of all, in his wise and humane subordination in some form to the white race.

It may be that our aboriginal Indian, the most sullen, revengeful, malicious, cruel, and implacable creature in the world, represents the perversion of celestial good and its consequent ineradicable falsities.  He may have no recipient vessels in his mind (truths are such vessels) for reformatory influx and the sphere of the celestial heavens, now beginning to operate, may suffocate and destroy him.  The Negro being perverted only as to celestial truths, influx takes place into a good will-principle, and there is only need of an orderly arrangement of all the inferior planes and faculties for its happy descent into ultimates.  These and many other curious points easily suggest themselves to those acquainted with the New Church psychology.

From this new and spiritual standpoint, can we not look down and analyze some of the causes at work in the great anti-slavery agitation of the present time?  It is pronounced good by the greatest and best authorities of the age.  Statesmen, philosophers, divines, and poets, vie with each other in denouncing the institution of slavery as “the sum of all villainies,” and in laboring, not for its amelioration and perfection, but for its total abolition.  Can it be possible that all these great and good men and women are mistaken?  It is even so.  They are unconsciously involved in a vast vortex of the most subtle and direful phantasies.  Devils and enthusiastic spirits conspire to thwart the operations of Divine Providence, to prevent the opening of the spiritual and celestial planes of life, and to oppose the descent of a celestial church in the world.  If they can liberate the sensual-corporeal of the African race from the control of the regenerating natural of the white race, the passage of the celestial into ultimates is measurably prevented.  The African returns to his barbarism or perishes in presence of the white man; the material interests of the world are shaken to the centre; revolution, war, destitution, anarchy, are engendered; the heavens are closed, the hells opened; angels recede and devils rejoice.  The Abolition spirit is the subtlest demonism of the age.  Enthusiastic evil spirits have taken possession of the reason, the imagination, the fancy, and almost the senses of its devotees.  And it is part and parcel of a still more general effort of the hells to emancipate the whole sensual-corporeal sphere of the race from the control of the higher faculties.

To accomplish this gigantic scheme of evil, the hells have cunningly assumed the livery of heaven.  The noblest instincts and passions of the soul are enlisted in the mighty work.  The love of life and liberty, the hatred of cruelty and oppression, pity for the weak and helpless, sympathy for the distressed and struggling, and the generous spirit of self-sacrifice for the good of others, have all been perverted from their true spheres and uses, to vitalize and sanctify this mysterious movement of the hells.  So blinded are their human agents, that they see little or no difference between Garibaldi contending in Italy and John Brown plotting in Virginia, and regard the liberation of Negroes and the emancipation of Russian serfs as events occurring on the same plane, and of equivalent value.  I know of nothing, save the grace of God, which can dissipate these delusions, but the New Church doctrines of Order, Influx, Degrees, and Correspondence, and their cautious application to the philosophy of history.

Who values free institutions and constitutional liberty more sincerely than the southern patriot?  Who has made more splendid sacrifices in their behalf?  Who is readier at this moment to lay down life and fortune in the maintenance of equal rights and liberal government?  Who rejoices more gladly that the serfs are emancipated, and that Italy is free?  The bondage of white man to white man, or of black man to black man, is fraught only with evil.  It is instigated by the devils, who, from the love of self and the lust of power, impose their own thoughts and wills upon others in the hells.  The church, which is based upon spiritual freedom, can never be truly ultimated in any given plane of life, until all resident upon that plane are free and equal.  But, in the name of truth and justice, is not the subordination of the Negro to the white man a very different thing-?  The Negro is a child, organically and spiritually a child—not to be made a man of our sort by any amount of political or scientific culture.  The relation of master and slave is for him a far better and happier one than that of capitalist and laborer.  He can only think and will for himself sensually and corporeally: it is vastly to his advantage that we should think and will for him rationally and scientifically.  His true life and hope and liberty are to be found under the patriarchal system.  Let us adopt him into our family.  Let us lead him firmly but tenderly and wisely.  Let us forbear with him and forgive him, but let us also govern and correct him.  Let us imbue him with all the knowledges he can truly use and enjoy, and grant him every liberty and pleasure which is rational and proper.  Let us do for him just what we would be wise in asking him to do for us, if we were spiritually and physically organized as he is.  We have a hard task to accomplish, but with patience and gentleness and humility and wisdom from above it will be accomplished at last.  In the mean time, let us regard those who oppose us, the accusers of their brethren, less in anger than in sorrow.  All this we may do, still believing that the worst enemy of the Negro, of his own race and country, of the world and of the church, is he who, by precipitate and disorderly methods, would sunder the existing relation between master and slave.