134 THE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY 



leave Basel after some years. Thus once more he began his wanderer's life, 

 tramping from town to town in Germany for about ten years, everywhere 

 winning popularity for his wonderful cures, and hatred for his lack, of con- 

 sideration and imperiousness towards his colleagues and patients. There 

 seemed no possibility for him to settle down in peace; rather he had to flee 

 for his life time and again, until finally Archbishop Ernst invited him to 

 settle at Salzburg, which he did about the year 1540. Now at last it seemed 

 that better days were in store for him, but it was not to be for long; in 1541 

 he suffered a violent death — his calumniators declared it was through an 

 accident when under the influence of drink, but his friends said it was a 

 result of a hostile attack. Before his death he had bequeathed his few pos- 

 sessions to the poor. 



Paracelsus^ s -personality 

 Both in life and after death Paracelsus has been very variously judged: by 

 some he has been represented as a bare-faced scoundrel, an impudent trader 

 upon the good faith and superstition of humanity; by others — of early 

 times as well as in our own day — he has been highly extolled as one of the 

 boldest spirits that ever lived and one of the greatest promoters of science. 

 In actual fact, one can find, in his writings and in his life, support for both of 

 these judgments; on the one hand, uncritical superstition, fantastic paradoxes, 

 boundless self-conceit, and shamelessly scurrilous language in controversy; 

 on the other hand, penetrating criticism of his predecessors' theories, and 

 audacious ideas of his own, aiming far into the future. To brand him as a 

 conscious cheat would in any event be utterly unjust; rather he is of a type 

 that has been very common during the Sturm und Drang periods of human 

 culture. Throughout his writings we come across the same naive self-satisfac- 

 tion, the same pugnacious temperament, as one finds in several romantic 

 writers of the beginning of the nineteenth century; like them he was un- 

 doubtedly induced by an honest intention to "explain the whole of nature 

 and to reform the whole world." People with such grandiose aims easily 

 acquire something of the charlatan and humbug in their natures, which, 

 however, does not exclude the possibility of really splendid traits in their 

 character. And such Paracelsus certainly possessed; his kindness towards the 

 poor, his earnest desire to help suffering humanity, his often very poorly 

 requited loyalty towards his friends, are sufficient proof of that. In his writ- 

 ings, moreover, he often praises the medical profession as a high and noble 

 calling, claiming of its members not only knowledge, but also goodness and 

 morality. Side by side with this there appears in him a feeling of self-respect, 

 which sometimes finds worthy expression, such as in his motto: ''Nemo sit 

 alterius qui suus esse potest, ' ' ^ but more often manifests itself as high-sounding 



^ "Let no one be another's who can be his own.'" 



