174 PARACELSUS 



place. Try to enable yourself to follow Nature again, 

 and she will be your instructor. Learn to know the 

 storehouse of Nature and the boxes in which her vir- 

 tues are stored up. The ways of Nature are simple, and 

 she does not require any complicated prescriptions." 



2. A physician should be an AstroTwmer ; this means 

 that he should know the heaven (the mental sphere) 

 wherein man lives, with all its stars (ideas) and con- 

 stellations. 



A physician must be an Astronomer^ for he ought to 

 know the influences of the seasons, of heat and cold, 

 of dryness and moisture, of light and darkness, &c., 

 upon the organism of man. There is a time for every- 

 thing, and what may be good at one time may be evil 

 at another. There is a time for rain and a time when 

 the roses are blooming, and it is not sufficient that a 

 physician should be able to judge about to-day, he should 

 also know what to-morrow will bring. Time is man's 

 master, and plays with him as the cat with a mouse, 

 and no one knows the future but God. A physician 

 should, therefore, not depend too much on the accom- 

 plishments of the animal intellect in his brain, but he 

 should listen to the divine voice which speaks in his heart, 

 and learn to understand it. He should have that know- 

 ledge which cannot be acquired by reading in books, but 

 which is a gift of divine wisdom. He should be married 

 to his art as a man is married to his wife, and he should 

 love her with all his heart and mind for her own sake, 

 and not for the purpose of making money or to satisfy 

 his ambition. If he loves his art, his art will be true to 

 him ; but if he sticks to it only for mercenary purposes, 

 or if he merely imitates the art of another, it will be an 

 adulterous alliance, and no good will be the result. True 

 marriage is not a mere binding together of two forms, but 

 it is an union of the soul. Tho physician who is not 

 married to his art with his soul is a quack, an adulterer, 

 and an impostor" (Comm. in Aphor. Hij>pocr^, 



