i88 3 •] 
Paracelsus . 
187 
Mephistopheles.—“ Quite right ! but spare your too uneasy virtue, 
For when ideas all desert you 
A lucky word comes in and helps you through. 
| With words right well we wage our quarrels, 
Words fashion codes of thought and morals, 
Faith built of words can ne’er be brittle, 
Since from a word you can’t take jot or tittle.” 
But later on, in the second part, Mephistopheles again 
meets the student, who is now a Baccalaureus, and accosts 
his quondam preceptor with magnificent insolence. In the 
course of the dialogue he says — 
“ I practise Youth’s pre-eminent vocation, — 
Before me was no world, — ’t is my creation :* 
’T was I who raised the sun from out the sea; 
The moon began her changeful course with me ; 
Day decked herself in dazzling robes to meet me ; 
Earth budded forth with leaves and flowers to greet me ; 
I gave the signal on that primal night, 
When all the host of heaven burst forth in light. 
Who but myself saves man from the dominion 
Of dogmas cramping, crushing, Philistinian ? 
So, free and gay, my spirit’s voice I heed, 
And follow where the inner light may lead, 
Still hasting onward with a gladsome mind, 
The Bright before me, and the Dark behind.” 
These latter lines may stand very fairly for the self-painted 
portrait of Paracelsus, or, to give him his full title, of 
Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastes von Hohen- 
heim. The name by which he is usually known seems to 
be a bad translation of his patronymic. His father, a phy- 
sician and alchemist, living at Einsiedeln, not far from 
Zurich, doubtless initiated him into the elements of the 
chemistry and medicine of those days ; and although little 
can be ascertained respecting his early history, it is probable 
that he studied at Basel in his sixteenth year, took a regular 
degree, — though in what University does not appear, — and 
served for some time as an army surgeon in Italy and the 
Netherlands. However this may be, it is certain that he 
soon began to wander far and wide in quest of knowledge. 
He visited the Universities of France, Germany, and Italy; 
but his independent spirit revolted against the slavish vene- 
ration paid to the classics of his profession, and rushed to 
* A pretentious claim, virtually identical with that of Lord Bacon in his 
Introduction to the “ Novum Organon ” : — “ Ut opis mentis universum de inte- 
gro resumcitur ” — a claim acquiesced in by the common opinion of contempo- 
rary physicists who believe in a total breach of continuity between ancient and 
mediaeval traditions and existing science. ( See Preface to Stallo’s Concepts 
and Theories of Modern Physics.) 
O 2 
