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 of his rational judgment.  Paracelsus distinguishes three worlds:  the elemental or terrestrial, the astral or celestial, and the spiritual or divine.  To the three worlds, which stand in relations of sympathetic interaction, there correspond in man the body, which nourishes itself on the elements, the spirit, whose imagination receives its food, sense and thoughts, from the spirits of the stars, and, finally, the immortal soul, which finds its nourishment in faith in Christ.  Hence natural philosophy, astronomy, and theology are the pillars of anthropology, and ultimately of medicine.  This fantastic physic of Paracelsus found many adherents both in theory and in practice.[2] Among those who accepted and developed it may be named R. Fludd (died 1637), and the two Van Helmonts, father and son (died 1644 and 1699).

[Footnote 1:  On Paracelsus cf.  Sigwart, Kleine Schriften, vol. i. p. 25 seq.; Eucken, Beitraege zur Geschichteder neueren Philosophie, p. 32 seq.; Lasswitz, Geschichte der Atomistik, vol. i. p. 294 seq.]

[Footnote 2:  The influence of Paracelsus, as of Vives and Campanella, is evident in the great educator, Amos Comenius (Komensky, 1592-1670), whose pansophical treatises appeared in 1637-68.  On Comenius cf.  Pappenheim, Berlin, 1871; Kvacsala, Doctor’s Dissertation, Leipsic, 1886; Walter Mueller, Dresden, 1887.]