COSMOLOGY 57 



way a herbarium spirituale sidereum might be collected, 

 such as every intelligent physician, who understands the 

 relationship existing between matter and mind, should 

 possess,^ because no man can rationally employ remedies 

 without knowing their qualities, and he cannot know 

 the qualities of plants without being able to read their 

 signatures. It is useless for a physician to read the books 

 of Dioscorides and Macar, and to learn from hearsay the 

 opinion of others who may be his inferiors in wisdom. 

 He ought to look with his own eyes into the book of 

 Nature and become able to understand it; but to do 

 this requires more than mere speculation and to ran- 

 sack one's brain ; and yet without that art nothing useful 

 can be accomplished." 



Perhaps this might be made clearer by expressing the 

 same idea in modern language, and saying : Each thing 

 is a state of mind, because the whole world is mind. 

 Each thing is a materialised thought (a " star "), and 

 represents the character of the thought expressed in it ; 

 and as one thought acts upon another, so the mental 

 state represented by a certain plant may act favourably 

 upon a certain state of the patient's mind, and thus react 

 upon the body. The peculiar qualities of a plant are 

 those which are symbolised by its form ; all that is re- 

 quired to know it, is the faculty of recognising its char- 

 acter. As there is a state and influence which is called 

 " love," " hate," &c., so there are states of mind repre- 

 sented in outward forms of plants, such as Hypericon 

 perforatum^ SambumoSy Juniperus, &c. &c. Each form 

 is only the materialised part and external expression of 

 the character of the " spirit " or the " aura " which it 

 represents, in the same way as each star in the sky is 

 only the visible part or the materialised kernel of the 

 " spirit " which it represents, and whose sphere extends 



* Eckartshausen has made such a herbarium : he gives the names of 

 modical plants and the names of the planets with which they are sympa> 

 thetically connected. 



