One of the shortest, yet in many ways the most powerful of Swedenborg’s preparatory works is The Infinite and Final Cause of Creation, or more exactly, Forerunner of a Reasoning Philosophy Concerning the Infinite and the Final Cause of Creation; and Concerning the Mechanism of the Operation of the Soul and Body. It was originally published in Latin by Swedenborg in 1734, at Dresden and Leipzig, Germany. He was then 46 years old, a busy member of the Swedish Board of Mines, a member of the Swedish Parliament, and in his spare time a diligent student of the phenomena of the natural world.

In the middle of the 18th century, while medical students were taught that motion and sensation derive from the ventricular system, a versatile Swedish philosopher composed a series of manuscripts in which he anticipated by decades and centuries several of the basic concepts of contemporary cerebral physiology. These writings were forgotten immediately following their appearance; with very few exceptions,1 later investigators seem to have been unaware of their existence. Although several Swedish writers and at least one medical historian2 have subsequently discussed Swedenborg’s manuscripts, current monographs on the history of neurology3-5 contain no reference to his concepts, and the names of Gall, Jackson, and others are attached to some of his ideas. Such remarkable neglect becomes comprehensible only in the light of the curious circumstances surrounding his life and work.

Lecture VI: The Three Minds and Their Affections