Paracelsus

“ But Paracelsus was a chemist, and the terrestrial nature of man was his peculiar interest. The theologian may prescribe for the human soul, and it is the duty of the astronomer to care for the human intellect; but the practical physician must understand the human body. Here is the Archæus imprisoned in the gross terrestrial body! It is in continual warfare with that body. What is the nature of that body which is so hostile to the human vital principle? Here Paracelsus introduces his strange chemical analysis which characterizes him as a Renaissance physician. ”

“ Scientific students will find it interesting to trace the life and speculations of Paracelsus, but to those who are not well grounded in science and philosophy, who have an easy credulity, such writings have a misleading tendency. Paracelsus was a great reformer, both in medicine and religion, and had very remarkable success as a physician. The sensation he produced, the profound admiration of his friends and hostility of his enemies show him to have been an extraordinary man. ”

“ All that Browning neglected or veiled in Paracelsus he here thrusts into stern relief. The passion and crime there faintly discerned in the background of ideally beautiful figures are here his absorbing theme. The curious technicalities of the chemist's workshop, taken for granted in Paracelsus, are now painted with a realism reminiscent of Romeo's Apothecary and The Alchemist. And the outward drama of intrigue, completely effaced in Paracelsus by the inward drama of soul, sounds delusive scorn and laughter in the background, the more sinister because it is not seen. ”

“ Like most others of his time, Paracelsus believed firmly in the doctrine of "signatures"—a belief that every organ and part of the body had a corresponding form in nature, whose function was to heal diseases of the organ it resembled. The vagaries of this peculiar doctrine are too numerous and complicated for lengthy discussion, and varied greatly from generation to generation. In general, however, the theory may be summed up in the words of Paracelsus: "As a woman is known by her shape, so are the medicines." ”

“ Such details of the personality of Paracelsus as have come down to us were written by his enemies. Erastus, a theologian as well as a physician, who may have met Paracelsus, and who fiercely attacked his system, depreciates him on hearsay. But Operinus, a disciple who had such reverence for him that when Paracelsus left Basel, he accompanied him and was with him night and day for two years, wrote a letter about him after his death to which it is impossible not to attach great importance. ”

“ The first scene is entitled "Paracelsus aspires;" and takes place at Würzburg between himself, Festus, and Michal, on the eve of his departure from their common home. Both friends begin by opposing his aspirations, and thus lead him to expound and defend them. The aim and spirit of these is the distinguishing feature of the poem. Paracelsus aspires to knowledge: such knowledge as will benefit his fellow-men. He will seek it in the properties of nature, and, as history tells us, he will succeed. ”

“ In the words of that eminent English divine, Thomas Fuller (1608-1661) , Paracelsus boasted of more than he could do, did more cures seemingly than really, more cures really than lawfully, of more parts than learning, of more fame than parts, a better physician than a man, and a better chirurgeon than physician.
Paracelsus was a very prince among quacks, for probably no man ever talked more loudly and ostentatiously or made vainer pretensions. He was emphatically a knavish practitioner of medicine, a master of the art of puffery, and was [246] phenomenally successful in achieving notoriety. ”

“ The spirit, mad with rage, shook the fir-tree as though with a whirlwind, that he might drive out the stopper which Paracelsus had thrust in, but his fury was of no avail. It held fast, and left him there with little hope of escape, for, on account of the great drifts of snow from the mountains, the forest will never be cut down, and, although he should call night and day, nobody in that neighbourhood ever ventures near the spot. ”

“ And Aureole's glee when some stray gannet builds
Amid the birch-trees by the lake. Small hope
Have I that he will honour (the wild imp)
His namesake. Sigh not! 't is too much to ask
That all we love should reach the same proud fate.
But you are very kind to humour me
By showing interest in my quiet life;
You, who of old could never tame yourself
To tranquil pleasures, must at heart despise . . .
Paracelsus.
Festus, strange secrets are let out by death
Who blabs so oft the follies of this world:
And I am death's familiar, as you know. ”

“ For who like Fuller could have brought out and set forth, this singular compound of true philosophic genius with the morals of a quack and the manners of a king of the gypsies! Nevertheless, Paracelsus belonged to his age—the dawn of experimental science: and a well written critique on his life and writings would present, through the magnifying glass of a caricature, the distinguishing features of the Helmonts, Kirchers, &c. in short, of the host of naturalists of the sixteenth century. The period might begin with Paracelsus and end with Sir Kenelm Digby. ”

“ Paracelsus, a man of powerful genius, but not well balanced in mind, of corrupt morals, and of an unlimited pride, had, notwithstanding these undeniable defects, the merit of beginning a healthy reform in the science and practice of medicine, by substituting the study of nature for the authority of the ancients and by giving a great importance to chemistry, both for the explanation of organic phenomena and for the cure of disease. ”

“ Paracelsus is a clear self-revelation, rich and inspired where it marks out the circle of sublime ideas within which the poet was through life to move, and by which he was, as a man and a thinker, if not altogether as a poet, to live; reticent where it approaches the complexities of the concrete which the poet was not yet sufficiently mature to handle, restrained where increased power was to breed a too generous self-indulgence, a too manifest aptitude for glorying and drinking deep. ”

“ You love me still: the lusts you fear will never
Outrage your friend. To Einsiedeln, once more!
Say but the word!
Paracelsus.
No, no; those lusts forbid:
They crouch, I know, cowering with half-shut eye
Beside you; 't is their nature. Thrust yourself
Between them and their prey ”

“ There is much in all that is told of him that recalls to our mind the biography of Paracelsus, a man certainly of great genius, but of much greater impudence, who gained his living by acting upon the folly of mankind. ”

“ The poem Paracelsus is divided into five parts, each of which describes an important period in the experience of Paracelsus, the celebrated German-Swiss physician, alchemist, and philosopher of the sixteenth century. Book I tells of the eagerness and pride with which he set out in his youth to compass all knowledge; he believed himself commissioned of God to learn Truth and to give it to mankind. ”

“ Say, the fallen prince of morning some short space
Remained unchanged in semblance; nay, his brow
Was hued with triumph: every spirit then
Praising, his heart on flame the while:—a tale!
Well, Festus, what discover you, I pray?
Festus.
Some foul deed sullies then a life which else
Were raised supreme?
Paracelsus.
Good: I do well, most well
Why strive to make men hear, feel, fret themselves
With what is past their power to comprehend? ”

“ Paracelsus promises to liberate him if he will procure him a medicine which will cure all sick people, and a tincture which will turn everything into gold. The Devil agrees to do this, and Paracelsus takes his pen-knife, gets hold of the plug with it, and with some difficulty takes it out. A hideous black spider crawls out, which runs down the trunk of the tree, but hardly has it touched the ground before it disappears, and a tall thin man with squinting red eyes, who is dressed in a red cloak, rises as if from the earth. ”

“ Here, loathsome with despair and hate and rage!
Is there no fear, no shrinking and no shame?
Will you guess nothing? will you spare me nothing?
Must I go deeper? Ay or no?
Festus.
Dear friend . . .
Paracelsus.
True: I am brutal—'t is a part of it;
The plague's sign—you are not a lazar-haunter,
How should you know? Well then, you think it strange
I should profess to have failed utterly,
And yet propose an ultimate return
To courses void of hope: and this, because
You know not what temptation is, nor how
'T is like to ply men in the sickliest part. ”

“ The rock splits into two pieces with a loud crack, and the Devil disappears but soon comes out again, and gives Paracelsus two small glasses—a yellow one, containing the gold tincture, and a white one the medicine. Then he once more strikes the rock, whereupon it closes together again in a moment. And now they both return, the Devil intending to go to Innsbrück to fetch the man who had imprisoned him. Paracelsus has compassion on the exorciser, and resolves to rescue him. When they once more arrive at the fir-tree he admires the Devil for having been able to turn himself into a spider. ”

“ Aprile answers, and dies. "Our perfection is not in ourselves but in God. Not our strength, but our weakness is our glory. Not in union with me, with earthly love alone, will you find the perfect life. I am not that you seek. It is God the King of Love, his world beyond, and the infinite creations Love makes in it."
But Paracelsus does not grasp that last conclusion. He only understands that he has left out love in his aim, and therefore failed. He does not give up the notion of attainment upon earth. ”

“ His sense for actual fact is always keen. In that poem of Paracelsus, which is a discussion in the air if ever a poem was, it is significant to find him emphasizing the circumstance that he had taken very few liberties with his subject, and bringing books to show evidence of historical fidelity. But, little of the dramatic spirit as there is in Paracelsus, there was much in Browning when it should come to be released, and it belongs to the dramatist to be interested in the facts of life, the flesh and blood reality, in which he may or may not (according to his greatness) find a soul. ”

“ Of all the poets in our literature, no other is so completely, so consciously, so magnificently a teacher of men. He feels his mission of faith and courage in a world of doubt and timidity. For thirty years he faced indifference or ridicule, working bravely and cheerfully the while, until he made the world recognize and follow him. The spirit of his whole life is well expressed in his Paracelsus, written when he was only twenty-two years old:
I see my way as birds their trackless way. ”

“ Paracelsus’ idea of the existence of an “archaeus,” a power which presides over all physiological actions as well as over all the operations of medicinal drugs, resembles very closely the “vital force,” or “animism” so strongly championed by Stahl in the seventeenth century.
From all that I have said above regarding the excitable nature of Paracelsus it seems almost a waste of time to tell our readers that his contributions to the science of [406] surgery were of very slight value. ”

“ Cabanès, the author of an admirable biography of Paracelsus (Revue Scientifique, Paris, May 19, 1894) , gives his own estimate of this remarkable man’s character in the following terms: “Poor, miserable, and persecuted during his lifetime, he was misunderstood even after his death, and was calumniated by history.” Paracelsus evidently believed it to be his bounden duty to destroy the then prevailing cult of Aristotle, Galen and Avicenna as the great teachers in medicine; and, filled with this idea, he prophesied the growth of a new science of medicine on the ruins of their teachings. ”

“ On the basis of principles substantially the same with those represented by Agrippa, Paracelsus developed, in his own way, 2-73the doctrine of signatures, and the relationships of the macrocosm and the microcosm.
The special illumination of the Holy Ghost was not more essential to the monastic perfection of preceding mystics, than to the success of the theosophist in that devout pursuit of science inculcated by Paracelsus. The true Physician—he who would be wise indeed in the mysteries of nature, must seek with ceaseless importunity the light that cometh from above. ”

“ Festus attempts to comfort and advise: he too has felt sorrow: sweet Michal is dead. This rouses Paracelsus to endeavour on his part to comfort Festus by declaring his faith in the soul’s immortality.
Paracelsus Attains. Book V. In a cell in the hospital of Salzburg, in 1541, Paracelsus lies dying. His faithful friend is by his side, watching through the weary night; and as he watches the patient, he prays for the tortured champion of man. He has sinned, but surely he has sought God’s praise. Had God granted him success, it must have been to His honour. ”

“ Paracelsus is a great revolutionary spirit in an epoch of intellectual revolution; it is as much his task to destroy as to build up; he has broken with the past, and gazes with wild-eyed hopes into the future, expecting the era of intellectual liberty to dawn suddenly with the year One, and seeing in himself the protagonist of revolution. Such men as Paracelsus, whether their sphere be in the political, the religious, or the intellectual world, are men of faith ”