Johan Gustaf Bj?rklund was born the tenth of November, in the year 1846. His parents were farmers in very small circumstances. His father seems to have been endowed with a good business head and, ultimately, became a real estate owner on a small scale, first in one city and then in Upsala, the principal university town of Sweden. Poverty was familiar to Bj?rklund throughout his life. Doubtless[xii] one reason for this was that his consuming interest in sociology and philosophy prevented him from taking those higher examinations, which in Sweden are indispensable for obtaining any official position. He studied, however, for several years at the University of Upsala, but followed no recognized course, and it was only because of the ardent persuasion of his friends that he took a degree as B. A. In 1884, Bj?rklund moved to Stockholm, where he remained until his death, in 1903. At the University of Stockholm, he took the courses in biology and natural science, and won for himself the admiration and lasting friendship of many of the professors of that institution. During this time he mainly supported himself by teaching philosophy, and among other pupils, afterward renowned, was Ellen Key, the well-known Swedish writer on sociology and the woman question. The most absorbing interests during this period were, however, sociology and the peace movement.
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To broaden his views and study social conditions in general, Bj?rklund undertook several protracted journeys to England, Germany, Belgium, and France.
From 1887, Bj?rklund began to publish the fruits of his untiring labor. His first work was, “The Fusion of the Nations.” In that, as in “The Anarchy of Evolution” and “Peace and Disarmament,” Bj?rklund throws his overwhelmingly convincing statistical resources and solid scientific learning in favor of an ultimate universal, but more especially European union of the nations. Toward this goal it is necessary to steer, according to Bj?rklund, if a general “Anarchy of Evolution” is to be avoided; for that is the condition that will prevail, if the state neglects to carry out an organization of society that shall keep step with the degree of material culture reached. “Because during the most profound peace, a nation suffers from its own army the same impeding influences that in time of war is due to the hostile army.”
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The last mentioned book, “Peace and Disarmament,” at once made Bj?rklund famous. It was translated into French, German, English, Polish, Dutch, Hungarian and several other languages, and would no doubt have brought its author a Nobel prize, had it appeared fifteen years later. Bj?rklund was now elected an honorary member of the Swedish Peace Society. At the Peace Congress in Bern (1892) his treatise, “The Armed Peace,” was distributed in English, German and French, and the Italian Society, “unione Operaia Umberto I,” subsequently elected him an honorary member.
In his later years Bj?rklund devoted less time to active work in the universal peace movement. He became more absorbed in scientific research and the problems of philosophy. An important impulse to his later development, he received from a book, “Significance of Segmentation in the Organic World” (Stockholm, 1890). Here he was brought to serious consideration of the nature of[xv] the cell and of its place in life. In the organization of the cells in a human body Bj?rklund saw an example of a universal law, governing all life. With this thought as a starting point, he undertook to investigate the problem, all-important to his philosophy, of the awakening of self-consciousness in a cell-organization and the relationship between this newborn ego and the cells themselves, each of which, to a certain degree, leads an independent life.
The result of his studies was first made known in 1894 in a treatise, “The Relation Between Soul and Body from a Cytologic Point of View.” In the year 1900, he published the volume herewith presented to the American public, in which he has partly rewritten the former book, and further added his latest conceptions of the nature and evolution of life.
This work is undoubtedly one of Sweden’s most remarkable and interesting contributions to contemporary philosophy. It is also the last work from Gustaf[xvi] Bj?rklund’s hand. In July, 1903, his earthly existence was brought to an end, and he was “fully translated” to that spiritual world, the existence of which he was so thoroughly convinced.
It is true that the philosophical structure that Bj?rklund so successfully commenced to upbuild is far from complete. But the basis he laid is solid and will serve as a foundation for many temples of the future, whether they who worship therein believe in Bj?rklund’s God or not.
This foundation is the fact overwhelmingly proved by Bj?rklund, that life is not a quality in matter or physical force, but must be of immaterial origin and substance. Granting that time as well as space are forms in which matter and physical force are comprehended by man on his earthly stage of consciousness, Bj?rklund has also demonstrated the immortality of life. For if life be a reality, which is not here denied, with no roots in matter or physical[xvii] force, whether these are identical or not, this reality exists outside of the forms, time and space, in which matter appears. But whether matter and physical force exist per se, or are mere transient phenomena or what their origin and purpose is, these are questions that Bj?rklund never was granted the time to discuss.
Bj?rklund’s grand conception of the relationship between all living beings and their organic upbuilding of larger conscious units, where each individual of higher order is the sum total of all its constituent members of lower order, is certainly a most helpful and inspiring addition to our theory of evolution.
But the question why an evolution is necessary at all for beings that are constituent members in The Perfect Being, is hardly satisfactorily answered by Bj?rklund. His ingenious explanation, fully presented toward the end of this volume, still leaves us in a dilemma. Bj?rklund holds that Perfect Love has[xviii] left it to time-existent beings to become of Free Will what they of eternity have been to the All-Spirit; much as a child, unless considered merely a mechanical toy, must of free will, grow into the man that his father preconceived and all the time sees in it. But even so we are left between Scylla and Charybdis, for either this evolution has a purpose, which must be reached outside of time—that is, it will come to a standstill; an ending in Nirvana—or else evolution is everlasting, without final purpose, and its proper name—delusion. Again the time-bound mind meets in this, as well as in every ethical or metaphysical problem, if it be pushed to its ultimate consequences, the same conflict or irrationality that is destined to baffle the space-bound man, whether his microscope is restlessly at work to solve the riddle of the divisibility of matter, or his telescope sweeps the heavens in a vain search for the utmost star. This irrationality, that everywhere surrounds[xix] us, is a chasm that only religion can bridge. From a philosophical point of view, therefore, we must be satisfied if our workable hypotheses in philosophy and in natural science do not contradict each other; and Gustaf Bj?rklund has shown us a road to reconciliation between idealism and natural science, that for a long time seemed entirely lost in the jungle of the materialism of the last century.
J. E. FRIES.
For the biographical data of Bj?rklund’s life I am indebted to S. A. Fries, D. D., well known in continental theological circles as a scientist of rank and founder of the international Congresses in the interest of the History of Religion. (See Theologische Literatur Kalender 1906; Wer ist’s? 1908.) Dr. Fries, who is one of the leading ministers in Stockholm, has done more in speech and print than anybody else to introduce Bj?rklund to the reading public.