272 PARACELSUS 



coaxed with promises, but it comes to those whose 

 minds are pure and whose hearts are open to receive 

 it. It is said that those who wish to become wise 

 must be like children, but there are few amongst the 

 learned who would be willing to undertake such a feat. 

 There are few who would be able to realise the fact, 

 even if they were willing to do so, that they them- 

 selves are without life, without knowledge, and without 

 power, and that all life and consciousness, knowledge 

 and power, come from the universal fountain of all, 

 of which they are merely imperfect instruments for 

 its manifestation. There are few amongst the learned 

 capable of giving up their pet theories, their accepted 

 opinions, their dogmatic reasoning and speculations about 

 possibilities and probabilities, and sinking their own per- 

 sonal will entirely into the wisdom of God. Humanity 

 resembles a field of wheat, in which each individual 

 represents a plant, attempting to grow higher than the 

 others and to bear more abundant fruit; but there 

 are few who desire to be nothing themselves, so that 

 God may take full possession of them and be all in and 

 through them. 



" The great majority of the ' investigators of theo- 

 sophy ' do not love wisdom, they only desire it ; they 

 desire to possess it for the purpose of adorning them- 

 selves with it ; but wisdom is no man's servant — it 

 comes only to those who, abandoning self, sacrifice them- 

 selves in the spirit of wisdom. Those who seek the 

 truth for their own benefit and gratification will never 

 find it, but the truth finds those in whom the delirium 

 of *self* disappears, and it becomes manifested in them." 



The object of existence is to become perfectly happy, 

 and the shortest way to become so is to be perfect and 

 happy now, and not wait for a possibility to become so 

 in a future state of existence. All may be happy, but 

 only the highest happiness is enduring, and permanent 

 happiness can be obtained only by attaining permanent 



