At the dawn of this century, in 1812, came into the world its master poetic mind. I say this to-day without hesitation, for no other English poet of the century has been so thoroughly aware of the intellectual tendencies of his century, and has so emotionalized them and brought them before us under the humanly real conditions of dramatic utterance. It is not surprising, considering this fact, that in his second poem, written in 1835, Browning ventures into the arena and at once tackles the supreme problem of the age, what is to be the relation of mind and spirit? It is characteristic of the poetic methods, which dominated his work, that he should have presented this problem through the personality of a historical figure who played no inconsiderable part in the intellectual development of his time, though not a man to whom general historians have been in the habit of assigning much space in their pages. Browning, however, as Hall Griffin informs us, had been familiar with the name of Paracelsus from his childhood, of whom he had read anecdotes in a queer book, Wanley's "Wonders of the Little World." Besides, his father's library, wherein as a boy he was wont to browse constantly, contained the _Opera Omnia_ of Paracelsus. With the confidence of youth and of genius the poet attempts in this poem a solution of the problem. To mind he gives the attribute of knowledge, to spirit the attribute of love. The poem as a whole does not concern us here except as a background for its final thoughts. In order, however, to put the situation clearly before readers not already familiar with it, I venture to transcribe a portion of a former analysis of my own. Paracelsus aspires to the acquisition of absolute knowledge and feels born within him the capabilities for attaining this end, and, when attained, it is to be devoted to enlarging the possibilities of man's life. The whole race is to be elevated at once. Man may not be doomed to cope with seraphs, yet by the exercise of human strength alone he hopes man may one day beat God's angels.