y significant is what PARACELSUS declares in his _Fragmenta
Medicina de Morbis Somnii_, that so many evils beset us, "caused by
the coarseness of our ignorance, because we know not what is born in
us." That is to say, if we knew our mental power, or what we are
capable of, we could cure or control all bodily infirmities. And how
to rule and form this power, and make it obey the _Geist_ or Will
which PARACELSUS believed was born of the common conscious Soul--that
is the question.

For PARACELSUS truly believed that out of this common Soul, the result
of Sensation and Reflection, and all we pick up by Experience and
Observation (and such as makes all that there is of Life for most
people), there is born, or results, a perception of Ideas, of right
and wrong, of mutual interests; a certain subtle, moral conscience
or higher knowledge. "The Souls may become inimical;" that is, the
Conscience, or Spirit, may differ or disagree with the Soul, as a son
may be at variance with his father. So the flower or fruit may oft
despise the root. The Will is allied to Conscience or a perception of
the Ideal. When a man finds out that he knows more or better than he
has hitherto done: as, for instance, when a thief learns that it is
wrong to steal, and feels it deeply, he endeavors to reform, although
he _feels_ all the time old desires and temptations to rob. Now, if
he resolutely subdue these, his Will is born. "The spirit of the
Reasoning faculty is not born, save of the Will. . . . what exists and
acts according to the Will lives in the spirit." The perception of
ideals is the bud, Conscience the flower, and the Will the fruit. A
pure Will must be _moral_, for it is _the_ result of the perception of
Ideals, or a Conscience. The world in general regards Will as mere
blind force, applicable to good or bad indifferently. But the more
truly and fully it is developed, or as Orson is raised to Valentine,
the more moral and optimistic does it become. _Will_ in its perfection
is Genius, spontaneous originality, that is Voluntary; not merely a
power to lift a weight, or push a load, or force others to yield, but
the Thought itself which suggests the deed and finds a _reason_ for
it. Now the merely unscrupulous use of Opportunity and Advantage, or
Crime, is popularly regarded as having a strong Will; but this, as
compared to a Will with a conscience, is as the craft of the fox
compared to that of the dragon, and that of the dragon to Siegfried.