Swedenborg's idea of the Spiritual Sun suggests certain inquiries and surmises with which we shall well-nigh end this third and final volume of the series begun with "Special Teachings from the Arcane Science."

In a previous chapter it was said that the great day of creation opened with a surpassingly brilliant point of spiritual light which, appearing at the centre, afterward widened to the circumference of the universe. Those who know, do not positively affirm that this point manifested at the middle of what now is the Zodiacal circle, and that it was, in fact, the centre of the Spiritual Sun, if that which focuses itself in every atom can be said to have what generally is understood as a centre. Whether or not other universes lie beyond the range of telescopic vision, is a matter about which the Masters of Wisdom are reticent, for what was said in the chapter: "The Great Breath," concerning the universe and the Universal Life Globe, does not necessarily make these all-inclusive, nor does it, as a certainty, cover those remotest regions discoverable through modern astronomical methods; so, as already said, we now shall confine ourselves to inquiry and surmise.

Should other universes exist, comparable with that of which the Milky Way is the framework, did each or any proceed from a Spiritual Sun of its own, and in a manner analogous to that of our universe? and will the evolution of each or any be succeeded by involution? by a drawing back comparable with what our universe is now in process of?

As for the "coal sacks," those abyssmal deeps of impenetrable blackness, bounded by the star-clusters of the Galaxy, may they not each hide an entire universe; one seemingly dead, but really in the midst of a profound pralaya destined to endure for untold ages? Again, what of those farthest faintest nebulae that well-nigh defy the most powerful lens? nebulae probably bulking large as our universe, or larger still, but apparently small as the most diminutive star-group, because separated from human eyes by what Herschel estimated at not less than two million light years.

Furthermore, what of other nebulae hiding where their discovery awaits the perfecting of every astronomical means? And what of the swift-journeying stars unquestionably there also; stars that will seem fixed through myriads of centuries?

Does each of these incipient universes look to its own Supreme, and thus verify Whitman's dictum that there can be any number of Supremes? Assuming a satisfactory answer to these questions, we are led to a still deeper inquiry. Inasmuch as the ancient sages may not have known the kosmos entire, is the Parabrahman of the Vedantins all-inclusive? or can there be other all-inclusives, so to speak? and is each above, or at the very inmost of its division of the shoreless, etheric ocean to which, in the beginning of time - that comprehensible aspect of eternity - the Creative Word set seeming bounds?

That numbers as such are the multiplications of units, is self-evident, but, in respect to things, numbers usually require investigation, and the thinker is therefore urged to trace them down to their very base. Even the ordinary mind shows an inherent desire to reduce multiplicity to unity. This desire manifests in various ways, for instance, with the Hindus, it narrows the human family back to the twins Yama and Yami, or to Manu the divine man whose mind-born children were the progenitors of the race that, with the Jewish chronologists, began with a pair originally one in Adam. Again, this desire makes every creature of the animal kingdom a descendant of the two that, as sole survivors of their species, came forth from the Ark to multiply upon the face of the earth.

Constructing their pantheons, the ancient peoples of the north, as well as of the south, capped the living pyramid with one supreme ruler. Here He was the All-Father, towering above the fiery Woden and his kin, and there the Persian Ormozd, or else the Egyptian Ammon Ra, that dark and hidden being adored of lesser gods. Elsewhere in prehistoric times He was a never-Hellenized Zeus, who spurned the soil of an Olympus such as the Greeks had invented; or else He was a Jupiter more spiritual than the Latins ever knew. So, for the wholly celestial pantheon here conjectured, we shall posit a Supreme of Supremes, the container of all Parabrahmins, in fact, a being more remote and indefinable than the God of Spinoza, or the "Unknowable" of the Spencerian philosophy.