Pantheism was one of the principal dogmas of the Cabala; and Paracelsus adopts it in all its grossness. He affirms perpetually that every thing is animated in the universe; that every thing which exists, eats, drinks, and voids excrements: even minerals and liquids take food and void the digested remains of their nourishment.[156] This opinion leads necessarily to the admission of a great number of spiritual substances, intermediate between material and immaterial in every part of the sublunary world, in water, air, earth, and fire; who, as well as man, eat, drink, converse, beget children; but which approach pure spirits in this, that they are more transparent, and infinitely more agile than all other animal bodies. Man possesses a soul, of which these pure spirits are destitute. Hence it happens that these spiritual substances are at once body and spirit without a soul. When they die (for like the human race they are subject to death), no soul remains. Like us they are exposed to diseases. Their names vary according to the places that they occupy. When they inhabit the air, they are called _sylphs_; when the water, _nymphs_; when the earth, _pigmies_; when the fire, _salamanders_.[157] The inhabitants of the waters are also called _undinæ_, and those of the fire _vulcani_. The sylphs approach nearest to our nature, as they live in the air like us. The sylphs, nymphs, and pigmies, sometimes obtain permission from God to make themselves visible, to converse with men, to indulge in carnal pleasures, and to produce children. But the salamanders have no relation to man. These spiritual beings are acquainted with the future, and capable of revealing it to man. They appear under the form of _ignes fatui_. We have also the history of the fairies and the giants; and are told how these spiritual beings are the guardians of concealed treasures; and how these sylphs, nymphs, pigmies, and salamanders, may be charmed, and their treasures taken from them. [156] Modus Pharmacandi. Opera Paracelsi, i. 811. [157] Liber de Nymphis, Sylphis, Pygmæis, et Salamandris, et de ceteris Spiritibus. Opera Paracelsi, ii. 388. If the reader can understand this singular book, his sagacity will be greater than mine. This division of man into body and spirit, and of the things of nature into visible and invisible, has in all ages of the world, been adopted by fanatics, because it enabled them to explain the history of ghosts, and a thousand similar prejudices. Hence the distinction between soul and spirit, which is so very ancient; and hence the three following harmonies to which the successors of Paracelsus paid a particular attention: _Soul_, _Spirit_, _Body_, _Mercury_, _Sulphur_, _Salt_, _Water_, _Air_, _Earth_.