In Sweden

The tendency of Wolff's disciples to tread confidently in their master's footsteps, to accept both his philosophical and his theological views, and to tie them together via the mathematical method, was muted in Sweden by resistance to the casual combination of philosophy and theology. Sweden's true introduction to Wolff came through

the efforts of the mathematicians Anders Celsius and Samuel Klingenstierna, whose reputation at Uppsala University recommended their opinions to many students. In a manual of arithmetic (1727), Celsius spoke warmly of the existence of the mathematical method and also of its importance to other disciplines.^[20] By the following year, in a pro gradu dissertation on the existence of the soul or the intelligence, Celsius completely embraced the philosophy of Wolff. He praised not only Wolff's method but also followed the master in setting out his dissertation in traditional Euclidean form, with short propositions under such headings as axioma, theorema, definitio, observatio, demonstratio , and scholion . The dissertation argues that the soul can be proved to exist by means of Wolff's philosophical laws, and Wolff himself is called "the greatest philosopher of our time," philosophus nostra aetate summus .^[21]

Several theses reminiscent of Celsius' approach appeared over the next few years, all of them loud in praise of the mathematical method and bearing the imprint of the mathematical form favored by Wolff. Early in June 1729, the brothers Erik, Nils, and Johan Gottschalk Wallerius and their close friend Olof Hammaræus performed as respondents to four Wolffian dissertations. Presented first pro exercitio , two years later all four dissertations were defended pro gradu , under Celsius and Klingenstierna as tutors. Several of the dissertations describe the mathematical method without employing it; one stresses that certain philosophical knowledge is impossible without it. Jacob Friedrich Müller, professor of philosophy at Giessen, was quoted in support of this statement, although, unknown to the author, Müller had just defected to the camp of Wolff's denigrators.^[22]

Other dissertations under Celsius follow the same pattern. One deals with the subject of "incomprehensible books," which provided

the opportunity to laud Wolff as an example of lucidity and intelligibility.^[23] Evidence suggests that Celsius was behind the most detailed presentation of Wolff's philosophy, a dissertation in two parts (1731–2) on the subject of "how to attain worldly happiness through philosophy." The subject may appear novel, but the theme is familiar. The philosophy that can promote profit and happiness is contained in logic and mathematics. Hence the mathematical method is superior to earlier instruments and Wolff is the greatest of philosophers, outshining lesser lights like Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes. With Wolff's method, the author "brushes aside the weapons of atheism and defends the truths of the Christian religion." Ad pleniorem scientiam , the dissertation demonstrates that mathematics and physics are of fundamental importance to all other sciences, technology and mechanics, medicine, law, economics, and military subjects such as fortification and pyrotechnics.^[24]

Samuel Klingenstierna had already earned a name for himself as a mathematical genius when he set off to study abroad in 1727. He went first to Marburg to hear the much admired Wolff. It is recorded that the pupil much impressed the teacher. When the chair of mathematics at Uppsala became vacant, Klingenstierna applied for it. Because Marburg was within the native state of King Fredrik I of Sweden, Wolff had access to the king and recommended Klingenstierna in the strongest terms. Appointed to the post in 1728, Klingenstierna did not take up his professorship until 1731, when he returned to Sweden with newly purchased books and fresh reports on the fashionable new philosophy. His were popular lectures, and students sought him as tutor for their doctoral theses. These theses are filled with quite simple Wolffian propositions about the excellence of the mathematical method or the role of contingency in the creation of the world, and frequently make reference to Wolff and Bilfinger. Mathematics thus linked up with philosophy, notably in Klingenstierna's seminars in philosophiam naturalem .^[25]

But enthusiasm for Wolff and the use of mathematics in philosophy went too far. Alert theologians, worried by the excessive spread of rationalism, castigated Wolff as "heathen and atheistic." In 1732 the chancellor of Uppsala, Gustaf Cronhielm, warned professors against dealing too casually with the new philosophy inspired by Wolff. The professors responded with promises to be careful and to protect their young students. Two years later the tone of admonition grew sharper. The chancellor decreed that professors should not preside at theses outside their own disciplines, a rebuke directed particularly at the professors of mathematics, who had been so ready to interpret the Wolffian philosophy. A year later, students were required to give a declaration of faith when enrolling at the university, to guard the purity of the doctrine. Such censorship and official criticism encouraged attacks on Wolff. His opponents asserted that mathematics and philosophy did not belong among the fundamental sciences; they saw all questions as ultimately teleological in nature. Philosophy, they insisted, should stick to its time-honored role as the handmaiden of faith.^[26]

The situation soon changed radically. Cronhielm was succeeded as chancellor by Gustaf Bonde, known for his deep interest in mysticism, alchemy, and Platonic mathematics. An admirer of physicotheology and of Wolff, he later published three volumes of "reflections on the wonders of God in nature." On a visit to Uppsala University in 1738, Bonde stressed the desirability of teaching the younger generation theologia naturalis as a timely defense against "atheists and indifferentists." The new chancellor thus recommended what the old one had forbidden. Bonde went even further when he engineered an offer to Wolff of the most highly regarded professorship in the university (which Wolff declined). Bonde's permissiveness sanctioned latent interests among the faculty. Petrus Ullén, professor of philosophy, became the first important figure in this new phase. By the time of his death in 1747, he had presided over a hundred theses, a third of which were Wolffian through and through. Ullén was no original

thinker. He praised mathematics for its ability to clarify and present problems in easily grasped diagrams and figures, and he insisted on the importance of the Wolffian philosophy to theology. He vehemently attacked all tendencies toward deism or "indifferentism"; true to the later Wolff, he used rationalism as a defense of orthodoxy and against the ideas of the Enlightenment.^[27]

An even louder champion of Wolffianism was Nils Wallerius, who started out as a mathematician and physicist, continued as a philosopher, and ended up as a theologian. He succeeded Ullén as professor of philosophy in 1746. Within the compass of philosophy he included logic, metaphysics, psychology, and natural theology, all slavishly arranged in accordance with Wolff's system. The mathematical method was fundamental in all philosophy, but mathematics must yield to theology, lest it lead to materialism and atheism. Wallerius shared the concern of both philosophers and theologians over theologia polemica —the struggle against Enlightenment philosophy. In 1755 Wallerius received a new chair in theology devoted to uncovering and combatting heretics. The new professor was to repudiate all freethinkers, "such as atheists, naturalists, deists, anti-scripturalists, indifferentists and other unbelievers."^[28] Wallerius warmed to the task: Moravian Brethren, Socinians, pantheists, and mystics, too—here he named Jakob Böhme, Paracelsus, Robert Fludd, and Johann Conrad Dippel—fell under his flail. In an essay on the repulsiveness and wickedness of materialism, Wallerius ranted at the ancient atomists Democritus, Epicurus, and Lucretius and their modern successors Thomas Hobbes and Pierre Bayle. "O stupida ingenia, sive mente ac ratione ," you are so blind that you cannot imagine anything beyond the bounds of the material.^[29] In 1756, Julien Offray de La Mettrie, the leading contemporary materialist, came in for particularly severe criticism.^[30] Wallerius decried the deists from Locke to Hume as

"naturalists"—Wallerius' favorite epithet for his opponents—and Voltaire as "the greatest fraud of the day."^[31]

Wallerius' guiding ambition was to reconcile mathematics, philosophy, and theology. At hand were all the necessary tools: a professional graps of mathematics, philosophy, and theology; a passion for system; and Wolff's method. His eminent elogist in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Torbern Bergman, showed restrained appreciation of Wallerius' contribution, and a like opinion was expressed in another contemporary biography: "Had he lived fifty years earlier and in a more scholastic era, his memory would have been even more illustrious."^[32]