PARACELSUS. 221 



and sank into a mere strolling charlatan, wandering from 

 town to town telling fortunes, casting nativities, selling 

 alleged receipts for producing the philosopher's stone, and 

 preying generally upon the most ignorant classes. In 1541 

 he ended his career in abject poverty, an inmate of the 

 public hospital at Salzburg. 



The modern tendency toward psychical research, the 

 ever-present inclination of the credulous to accept old de- 

 lusions if revamped in novel guises, and probably Mr. 

 Robert Browning's poem 1 have given to Paracelsus and 

 his cult a new and wholly factitious importance. His 

 absurdities have been dignified by the name of a u phil- 

 osophy," and the man himself converted into a martyr. 

 He knew human nature, and played upon its foibles with 

 consummate skill. In that he proclaimed the doctrine of 

 free thought in medicine and developed the therapeutic 

 value of opium and mercury, the world is indebted to him. 

 But, as a teacher of physical science, the best that can be 

 said of him is that he preached reliance upon phenomena 

 rather than faith, and practised exactly the opposite. 



His notions concerning the magnet are of moment, be- 

 cause of their retarding effect upon scientific progress. 

 Yet they were merely amplifications of myths as old as the 

 race itself, re-told in manner suited to that era, as they are 

 still rehearsed in terms suited to the present time. Lies, 

 in which the people wish to believe, rival the truth in im- 

 mortality. The finger rings from Samothrace, the Martial 

 Amulets of Paracelsus, and the magnetic cure-alls of to- 

 day are all accounted for in the persistence of human 

 gullibility and ignorance through all civilizations and all 

 ages. Exposures seem powerless to destroy them. Human 

 imagination and chance recoveries afford ample sustenance. 



According to Paracelsus, every human being is a mag- 



1 To this it is but fair to say that Mr. Browning himself provides an 

 antidote in his appended notes. There is no one work, I apprehend, 

 which shows more fully the influence of Paracelsus on the thought of his 

 time, than Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. 





