excursion; we must hie us back to the modern
world, with its alkaloids, serums, and anti-toxins--another day we will,
perhaps, wander again down the by-paths of Medicinal Magic.

NOTE ON THE PARACELSIAN DOCTRINE OF THE MICROCOSM

"Man's nature," writes CORNELIUS AGRIPPA, "_is the most complete Image
of the whole Universe_."(1) This theory, especially connected with the
name of PARACELSUS, is worthy of more than passing reference; but as
the consideration of it leads us from medicine to metaphysics, I have
thought it preferable to deal with the subject in a note.

(1) H. C. AGRIPPA: _Occult Philosophy_, bk. i. chap. xxxiii.
(WHITEHEAD'S edition, p. 111).

Man, taught the old mystical philosophers, is threefold in nature,
consisting of spirit, soul, and body. The Paracelsian mercury, sulphur,
and salt were the mineral analogues of these. "As to the Spirit," writes
VALENTINE WEIGEL (1533--1588), a disciple of PARACELSUS, "we are of God,
move in God, and live in God, and are nourished of God. Hence God is in
us and we are in God; God hath put and placed Himself in us, and we are
put and placed in God. As to the Soul, we are from the Firmament and
Stars, we live and move therein, and are nourished thereof. Hence the
Firmament with its astralic virtues and operations is in us, and we in
it. The Firmament is put and placed in us, and we are put and placed in
the Firmament. As to the Body, we are of the elements, we move and live
therein, and are nourished of them:--hence the elements are in us, and
we in them. The elements, by the slime, are put and placed in us, and we
are put and placed in them."(1) Or, to quote from PARACELSUS himself, in
his _Hermetic Astronomy_ he writes: "God took the body out of which He
built up man from those things which He created from nothingness into
something... Hence man is now a microcosm, or a little world, because
he is an extract from all the stars and planets of the whole firmament,
from the earth and the elements, and so he is their quintessence.... But
between the macrocosm and the microcosm this difference occurs, that the
form, image, species, and substance of man are diverse therefrom. In man
the earth is flesh, the water is blood, fire is the heat thereof, and
air is the balsam. These properties have not been changed but only the
substance of the body. So man is man, not a world, yet made from the
world, made in the likeness, not of the world, but of God. Yet man
comprises