His bitter disappointment with his professorship at Basel, and his contempt for those who brought about his fall there, are depicted, and the effect which the realisation that his aims had proved impossible had on his habits and character is suggested; and at last, on his death-bed in a cell in the Hospital of St. Sebastian at Salzburg, he tells his faithful friend, Festus, who has all his life sought to restrain the ambitions which have possessed him-- You know the obstacles which taught me tricks So foreign to my nature, envy, hate, Blind opposition, brutal prejudice, Bald ignorance--what wonder if I sank To humour men the way they most approved. “A study of intellectual egotism,” this poem has been called. Paracelsus was an egotist, without doubt. Indeed, egotism seems a ludicrously insignificant term to apply to his gorgeous self-appreciation. But it is, perhaps, a little difficult to recognise the wild untameable energy of this astonishing medical reformer in the prolix preacher represented in the poem. Butler’s verse (in “Hudibras”) may be taken to represent the popular view held about Paracelsus after the first enthusiasm of his followers had cooled down Bombastus kept a Devil’s bird, Shut in the pommel of his sword, That taught him all the cunning pranks Of past and future mountebanks. German studies of Paracelsus have been very numerous during the past fifty years, and the general tendency has been greatly to enhance his fame. After the death of Paracelsus, the Archbishop of Cologne desired to collect his works, many of which were in manuscript and scattered all over Germany. By this time there were many treatises attributed to him which he never wrote. It was a paying business to discover a new document by the famous doctor. It is believed that the fraudulent publications were far more numerous than the genuine ones, and it is quite possible that injustice has been done to his memory by the association with his name of some other peoples’ absurdities. HIS MYSTICISM. The mystic views of Paracelsus, or those attributed to him, are curious rather than useful. He seemed to have had as much capacity for belief as he had disbelief in other philosophers’ speculations. He believed in gnomes in the interior of the earth, undines in the seas, sylphs in the air, and salamanders in fire. These were the Elementals, beings composed of soul-substance, but not necessarily influencing our lives. The Elementals know only the mysteries of the particular element in which they live. There is life in all matter. Every mineral, vegetable, and animal has its astral body.