f 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.]

Beside the Platonic philosophy, others of the ancient systems were also
revived. Stoicism was commended by Justus Lipsius (died 1606) and Caspar
Schoppe (Scioppius, born 1562); Epicureanism was revived by Gassendi
(1647), and rhetorizing logicians went back to Cicero and Quintilian. Among
the latter were Laurentius Valla (died 1457); R. Agricola (died 1485); the
Spaniard, Ludovicus Vives (1531), who referred inquiry from the authority
of Aristotle to the methodical utilization of experience; and Marius
Nizolius (1553), whose _Antibarbarus_ was reissued by Leibnitz in 1670.

The adherents of Aristotle were divided into two parties, one of which
relied on the naturalistic interpretation of the Greek exegete,
Alexander of Aphrodisias (about 200 A.D.), the other on the pantheistic
interpretation of the Arabian commentator, Averroes (died 1198). The
conflict over the question of immortality, carried on especially in Padua,
was the culmination of the battle. The Alexandrist asserted that, according
to Aristotle, the soul was mortal, the Averroists, that the rational part
which is common to all men was imm