scattered rays should meet
Convergent in the faculties of man.

* * * * *

"Hints and previsions of which faculties,
Are strewn confusedly everywhere about
The inferior natures, and all lead up higher,
All shape out divinely the superior race,
The heir of hopes too fair to turn out false,
And man appears at last."[A]

[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_.]

Power, knowledge, love, all these are found in the world, in which

"All tended to mankind,
And, man produced, all has its end thus far:
But, in completed man begins anew
A tendency to God."[B]

[Footnote B: _Ibid_.]

For man, being intelligent, flings back his light on all that went
before,

"Illustrates all the inferior grades, explains
Each back step in the circle."[C]

[Footnote C: _Ibid_. 189.]

He gives voice to the mute significance of Nature, and lets in the light
on its blind groping.

"Man, once descried, imprints for ever
His presence on all lifeless things."

And how is this interpretation achieved? By penetrating behind force,
power, mechanism, and even intelligence, thinks the poet, to a purpose
which is benevolent, a reason which is all embracing and rooted in love.
The magnificent failure of Paracelsus came from missing this last step.
His transcendent hunger for knowledge was not satisfied, not because
human knowledge is essentially an illusion or mind disease, but because
his knowledge did not reach the final truth of things, which is love.
For love alone makes the heart wise, to know the secret of all being.
This is the ultimate hypothesis in the light of which alone man can
catch a glimpse of the general direction and intent of the universal
movement in the world and man. Dying, Paracelsus, taught by Aprile,
caught a glimpse of this elemental "love-force," in which alone lies the
clue to every problem, and the promise of the final satisfaction of the
human spirit. Failing in this knowledge, man may know many things, but
nothing truly; for all such knowledge stays with outward shows. It is
love alone that puts man in the right relation to his fellows and to the
world, and removes the distortion which fills life with sorrow, and
makes it

"Only a scene
Of degradation, ugliness and tears,
The record of disgraces best forgotten,
A sullen page in human chronicles
Fit to erase."[A]

[Footnote A: _Paracelsus_.]

But in the light of love, man "see