PARACELSUS
651
PARACLETE
tagia niirifica arte sustulit," including his treatment of S3'i)hilis and obstinate ulcers, in which he excelled. Though Paracelsus pretended to he guided by Hip- pocratic principles, his action appears more that of an empiric. He taught ratlier a trust in experience and experiment, and ascertaining the nature of the drugs and specific application of them, than a dependence on ob- solete theory, and thus he encouraged independent ob- servation and research. His knowledge of chemistry was equal, if not superior, to that of any adept of his time. As regards his theosophical views, tliey are a quaint medley of the metaphysical and physical, and it is difficult to determine them, on account no less of the subject-matter than by reason of the obscure, singular language he invented, and the peculiar sense he put upon words different from their common signification. He supposed an analogy between the universe (macro- cosmus) and the human system (microcosmus, or little world). He gave currency to the opinion, still indi- cated in our popular almanacs, that the principal parts of a man's body stand in some relation with and under control of the planets; e. g. the heart with the sun, the brain with the moon, the spleen with Saturn, the lungs witli Mercury, the Ividneys and genital organs with Ve- nus, etc., and extended this intiuence also to plants, minerals, and animals. He maintained a prima mate- ria, whence spring, among other things, the seeds of plants, animals, and minerals; generation, he asserts, is only the exit of the seed from darkness to light. Be- sides the so-called four elements (tire, earth, air, and water), and three principles (salt, sulphur, and mercury), he taught that there is in all natural bodies some- thing of a celestial nature, a quintessence, a substance corporeally drawn from bodies that increase, and from everything that has life, free from all impurity and mortality, the highest subtilty separated from all ele- ments. This he calls by several names: philosophical tincture, philosopher's stone, the flower, the sun, heaven, and ethereal spirit. He believed in an internal illumi- nation, an emanation from Divinit)', and in the univer- sal harmony of all things. His mysticism is a kind of pantheism, for which he was decried as an inlidel, her- etic, and atheist. He was decidedlj' in favor of the Eeformation, as of a tendency to liberate and liberalize the mind from superstition and bigotry. Paracelsus was a contemporary of Luther, and already half a Prot- estant. He regarded Christ as the light of nature as well as of man, and sought to show the inward relation between the revelation given in Christianity and that manifested in nature. He also held that there is an inward relation between nature and man. Everything is contained in each individual man : he is a microcosm ; he has within him even all the spirits of the stars ; the only question is how to arouse them. He admitted no astro- logical fate over man, nor any objective magic; magic is to be found in man himself; it is the power of a man united to God by faith. Faith is omnipotent; it effects what it conceives, what it chooses. In his view, magi- cal power, proper!}' so called, is the imagination of faith, for God also created all things by means of imagina- tion. He has but little to say of sin and justification, but much of the sickness of the body and the reason ; this, however, is healed by the imaginative power of the spirit which has placed itself in relation to Clirist, and received his Spirit. As our souls were poured into our bodies by God himself in unfathomable love, so do we also receive from Christ, through the Holy Spirit, and by means of the imagination of faith, the seed of a heavenly and spiritual body. This takes place espe- cially in tlie Lord's Supper, so that Christ has his incar- nations in all believers through the Spirit. A tendency towards forming spirit and corporeity into a unity is here unmistakable; but this mysticism does not see its way to such a unity except in the case of Christ's glori- fied body and our resurrection body. Here it finds that union of spirit and nature which it does not extend to the earthly body. This it regards as rejected and a
prey to death by reason of its material nature, in which notion a still unsurmounted remnant of dualism is ap- parent (Dorner, }Jist. of P rot. Theol. ii, 179). In spite of his abhorrence of book-learning, and his many peregrina- tions, which would not allow him much time for studied compositions, there are quite a large number of treatises extant which claim Paracelsus as their author; but they are so manifold and so unequal that it is hardly possible to believe that they proceeded from the same brain. The most of them may rather be denominated Paracelsiana — works and interpolations of Paracelsists, his disciples. During his lifetime only a few of them were printed: the first three books of his Chirurfiia magna (Ulm, 1536): — De natura reium (1539): — per- haps also Ue composltionibus, De r/ixidibus, De Tai'taro, the explanation of which constituted the subject of his lectures. The following are deemed genuine: Chirur- gla magna : — Cku'urgia minor : — Dejieste: — A rckidoxa medicince : — De ortu rerum naturalium : — De vita re'rum naturalium : — De ti'ansforniatione rerum naturalium : — De vita longa: — De mineralibus. Many of the theolog- ical essays passing under liis name are regarded as spu- rious. The most complete collection of his writings is the one edited by Dr. Huser in Strasburg (1616-18, 3 vols, fol.) ; the earliest and best is in German (Basle, 1589-90, 10 vols. 4to), followed by that in Latin (Frankf. 1603, 10 vols. 4to ; Geneva, 1658, 3 vols. fol.).