Work Notes I

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1.
erdmann. history of philosophy. v1
on paracelsus

We are not awfully concerned with Paracelsus, but we note the parallel with the notion of "tares."

4. To these two component parts, which together make man an animal, there is now added the seat not of the light of nature, but of the eternal reason, the soul, which springs from God (anima). This is the living breath, which when God created Adam He caused to be added to the limus terrae, and at the generation of each individual He causes to be added to the seed, the extract of all the elemental parts, and which at death, being eternal, returns to the eternal. The soul which is essentially distinct from the spirit, and which is re- lated to its thoughts as a king to his council, has its seat in the heart, with which accordingly we ought to love God (Phil, sag., Wks., x. pp. 263, 264). It is so related to the spirit that the latter may be called its body, and itself the spirit's spirit (De anim. horn., Wks., ii. p. 272 ff.). Paracelsus moreover sometimes uses the word spiritus in such a wide sense as to include both the spirit (of life) and the soul. It is the result of a confusion between spirit and soul when any one shifts to the power of the elements or the stars, the responsibility of an individual's being good or evil. Whether he be hot or cold depends on the former, whether he be smith or builder on the latter, but whether he be good or evil de- pends on the soul alone, which God has left free, and in the power of which He has left it to determine itself in one direc- tion or another. As regards the reasons which have induced God thus to leave the soul to freedom, in which if it persists it is miserable, whilst bliss consists in entire submission to God, philosophy has nothing to say. Indeed, all that con- cerns that supernatural essence, the soul, is denied, when considered by the light of nature (Phil, sag., Wks., x. p. 148). Through this triplicity of nature, man is partly like to, partly surpassed by, three other kinds of beings. He is nature, spirit, and angel, unites in himself the properties into which the beasts, angels, and elemental spirits (Sagance] are divided. These latter namely, which are named after the elements to which they belong, Watermen (Nymphs, Undines), Earthmen
2 4 l, 5-1 PARACELSUS. 617
(Gnomes, Pygmies), Airmen (Sylphs, Sylvans, Lemurs), Fire- men (Salamanders, Penates), have no souls and are therefore often called Inanimata. Only by marriage with human beings can they receive souls for themselves and their chil- dren (De nymphis, Wks., ix. p. 46 ff. et passim}. As the body has its food in the elements, the spirit in the stars, so the soul has its food in Christ, who speaks to her as the earth to her children ; take, eat, this is myself (Phil, sag., Wks.> x. p. 24). The means of partaking of this food is faith, which is so much more powerful and effects so much more than imagination, just because the soul is more than the spirit. It is on that account frequently contrasted as the sacramental with the elemental (De nat. rer., fol. 57).

5. As man by his three component parts points to the elemental, the sidereal and the divine ("deal") world, the knowledge of these three worlds is the condition of complete knowledge of man. Accordingly, philosophy, astronomy and theology are given as the foundations on which the true science of medicine rests. But Paracelsus, besides that he was himself a physician, had the further reason for referring to medicine, that in the true physician he saw the ideal of a scientific man, so much so that he says that of all the arts and faculties, that of the physician was the dearest to God (Paragr., Wks., ii. p. 83). Very naturally so, for the man whose task it is to investigate the nature of the highest thing in the world and to further its well-being, may well look down on the rest. Besides the dignity of its object, medicine may also pride itself on something else : in it namely, are united the two elements which according to Paracelsus belong to true science speculation, which without experience gives but "vain phantasies," and experimentum, which nevertheless without science, as Hippocrates says, is fallax and results in nothing but " experimentler " (empirics), who deserve no preference to many an old woman and barber ; but they combine to make a true experientia or a plain, demonstrative, and obvious philosophy (int. al.,Paragr. alt. and Labyrinth, meet., !V/cs., ii. pp. 106, 113, 115, 216). Without philosophic, astronomical and theological knowledge the physician is not in a position to decide which diseases are of an earthly, which of a sidereal origin, and which are visitations of God. But as the Tkeorica causes coincides with the Theorica curee (Labyrinth, medic., Wks., ii. p. 224), he runs the risk of attacking elemental

6l8 THIRD PERIOD OF MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. [241,6.

diseases with sidereal remedies, or vice versa, or also of making attempts at natural healing where such do not belong (Param., Wks., i. pp. 20-23).