paper-wisdom of the ancients lead to no result. The world is a living
whole, which, like man, the microcosm, in whom the whole content of
the macrocosm is concentrated as in an extract, runs its life course.
Originally all things were promiscuously intermingled in a unity, the
God-created _prima materia_, as though inclosed in a germ, whence the
manifold, with its various forms and colors, proceeded by separation.
The development then proceeds in such a way that in each genus that is
perfected which is posited therein, and does not cease until, at the last
day, all that is possible in nature and history shall have fulfilled
itself. But the one indwelling life of nature lives in all the manifold
forms; the same laws rule in the human body as in the universe; that which
works secretly in the former lies open to the view in the latter, and the
world gives the clew to the knowledge of man. Natural becoming is brought
about by the chemical separation and coming together of substances; the
ultimate constituents revealed by analysis are the three fundamental
substances or primitive essences, quicksilver, sulphur, and salt, by which,
however, something more principiant is understood than the empirical
substances bearing these names: _mercurius_ means that which makes bodies
liquid, _sulfur_, that which makes them combustible, _sal_, that which
makes them fixed and rigid. From these are compounded the four elements,
each of which is ruled by elemental spirits--earth by gnomes or pygmies,
water by undines or nymphs, air by sylphs, fire by salamanders (cf. with
this, and with Paracelsus's theory of the world as a whole, Faust's two
monologues in Goethe's drama); which are to be understood as forces
or sublimated substances, not as personal, demoniacal beings. To each
individual being there is ascribed a vital principle, the _Archeus_, an
individualization of the general force of nature, _Vulcanus_; so also to
men. Disease is a checking of this vital principle by contrary powers,
which are partly of a terrestrial and partly of a sidereal nature; and the
choice of medicines is to be determined by their ability to support the
Archeus against its enemies. Man is, however, superior to nature--he is not
merely the universal animal, inasmuch as he is completely that which other
beings are only in a fragmentary way; but, as the image of God, he has also
an eternal element in him, and is capable of attaining perfection through
the exercise o