are dear unto one another; great in affinity.  The cause is not in the body, nor is it from without; it comes from your souls (Geisten), who are allied.  The same pair may become inimical, or remain so.  And that ye may understand a cause for this, note that the Spirit (Geist) of the Reasoning Faculty (Vernunft) is not born, save from the Will, therefore the Will and the Reason are separate.  What exists and acts according to the Will lives in the Spirit; what only according to the Reason lives against the Spirit.  For the Reason brings forth no spirit, only the Soul (Seel) is born of it—­from Will comes the Spirit, the essence of which we describe and let the Soul be.”

In this grandly conceived but most carelessly written passage the author, in the beginning thereof, makes such confusion in expressing both Soul and Spirit with the one word, Geist, that his real meaning could not be intelligible to the reader who had not already mastered the theory.  But, in fact, the whole conception is marvelous, and closely agreeing with the latest discoveries in Science, while ignoring all the old psychological system.

Very significant is what PARACELSUS declares in his Fragmenta Medicina de Morbis Somnii, that so many evils beset us, “caused by the coarseness of our ignorance, because we know not what is born in us.”  That is to say, if we knew our mental power, or what we are capable of, we could cure or control all bodily infirmities.  And how to rule and form this power, and make it obey the Geist or Will which PARACELSUS believed was born of the common conscious Soul—­that is the question.

For PARACELSUS truly believed that out of this common Soul, the result of Sensation and Reflection, and all we pick up by Experience and Observation (and such as makes all that there is of Life for most people), there is born, or results, a perception of Ideas, of right and wrong, of mutual interests; a certain subtle, moral conscience or higher knowledge.  “The Souls may become inimical;” that is, the Conscience, or Spirit, may differ or disagree with the Soul, as a son may be at variance with his father.  So the flower or fruit may oft despise the root.  The Will is allied to Conscience or a perception of the Ideal.  When a man finds out that he knows more or better than he has hitherto done:  as, for instance, when a thief learns that it is wrong to steal, and feels it deeply, he endeavors to reform, although he feels all the time old desires and temptations to rob.  Now, if he resolutely subdue these, his Will is born.  “The spirit of the Reasoning faculty is not born, save of the Will. . . . what exists and acts according to the Will lives in the spirit.”  The perception of ideals is the bud, Conscience the flower, and the Will the fruit.  A pure Will must be moral, for it is the result of the perception of Ideals, or a Conscience.  The world in general regards