ation; Venus, love, etc. God is reflected in
the macrocosm, gives light in all directions through all creatures,
is adumbrated in man microcosmically, and so forth.

Among others, Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus Paracelsus
von Hohenheim (1541), ranked Nature and the Bible, like Agrippa, as
the best books about God and the only ones without falsehood.

'One must study the elements, follow Nature from land to land, since
each single country is only one leaf in the book of creation. The
eyes that find pleasure in this true experience are the true
professors, and more reliable than all learned writings.'

He held man to be less God's very image than a microcosmic copy of
Nature--the quintessence of the whole world. Other enthusiasts made
similar statements. Sebastian Frank of Donauwoerth (1543) looked upon
the whole world as an open book and living Bible, in which to study
the power and art of God and learn His will: everything was His
image, all creatures are 'a reflection, imprint, and expression of
God, through knowledge of which man may come to know the true Mover
and Cause of all things.'

He shewed warm feeling for Nature in many similes and descriptions[4]--
in fact, much of his pithy drastic writing sounds pantheistic. But he
was very far from the standpoint of the great Italian philosophers,
Giordano Bruno and Campanella. Bruno, a poet as well as thinker,
distinguished Nature in her self-development--matter, soul, and
mind--as being stages and phases of the One.

The material of all things issues from the original womb,
For Nature works with a master hand in her own inner depths;
She is art, alive and gifted with a splendid mind.
Which fashions its own material, not that of others,
And does not falter or doubt, but all by itself
Lightly and surely, as fire burns and sparkles.
Easily and widely, as light spreads everywhere,
Never scattering its forces, but stable, quiet, and at one,
Orders and disposes of everything together.

Campanella, even in a revolting prison, sang in praise of the wisdom
and love of God, and His image in Nature. He personified everything
in her; nothing was without feeling; the very movements of the stars
depended on sympathy and antipathy; harmony was the central soul of
all things.

The most extraordinary of all German thinkers was the King of
Mystics, Jacob Boehme. Theist and pantheist at once, his mind was a
ferment of different systems of thought. It