In the ancient world there were two great libraries. There was the library of Alexandria, one of the wonders of the Ancient World, a monument to the ambition of the Ptolemaic kings, successors of Alexander the Great. And there was also the library of Pergamum, its rival, pervaded by the stoic ideal. The Stoic ideal being that the virtuous man attains happiness through knowledge, the legacy of Socrates.

Is philosophy about knowing for sure that a certain thing is what it is? Is religion about gaining safety and certainty about the reality of God and man’s salvation? What does a philosophical or theological study claim to achieve? Does it try to define a small area with certainty thereby cutting off a large number of possible areas of observation and thus diminishing experience rather than increasing it. Or could philosophy and religion be the means to give a sense of reality and life to man’s thought and experience. Maybe it is from fear of losing control that we try to define things so that they all becomes static and dull. Maybe we should look for a positive life force within ourselves that knows it cannot be lost no matter how complex and rich reality is. We could then look for a sense of reality in an ever broadening or expanding acquaintance with reality. A sense of humility in life, I think, will allow the wonder of the immeasurability of our world to affect us in such a way that we will want to explore the richness rather than go for a limited world view with a few “certain” facts of life.

Swedenborg's Theory of the Function of the Coronary Arteries