chiromancy is limited to the hand, for
there are significant lines (indicating character), all over the body.
And it is so in vegetable life. For in a plant every leaf is a hand.
Man hath two; a tree many, and every one reveals its anatomy--a
hand-anatomy. Now ye shall understand that in double form the lines
are masculine or feminine. And there are as many differences in these
lines on leaves as in human hands."

GOETHE has the credit that he reformed or advanced the Science of
Botany, by reducing the plant to the leaf as the germ or type; and
this is now further reduced to the cell, but the step was a great one.
Did not PARACELSUS, however, give the idea?

"The theory of signatures," says VAUGHAN, in his _Hours with the
Mystics_, "proceeded on the supposition that every creatures bears in
some part of its structure . . . the indication of the character or
virtue inherent in it--the representation, in fact, of its ideal or
soul. . . . The student of sympathies thus essayed to read the
character of plants by signs in their organization, as the professor
of palmistry announced that of men by lines in the hand." Thus, to a
degree which is very little understood, PARACELSUS took a great
step towards modern science. He disclaimed Magic and Sorcery, with
ceremonies, and endeavored to base all cure on human will. The name of
PARACELSUS is now synonymous with Rosicrucianism, Alchemy, Elementary
Spirits and Theurgy, when, in fact, he was in his time a bold
reformer, who cast aside an immense amount of old superstition, and
advanced into what his age regarded as terribly free thought. He was
compared to LUTHER, and the doing so greatly pleased him; he dwells on
it at length in one of his works.

What PARACELSUS really believed in at heart was nothing more or less
than an unfathomable Nature, a _Natura naturans_ of infinite resource,
connected with which, as a microcosm, is man, who has also within him
infinite powers, which he can learn to master by cultivating the will,
which must be begun at least by the aid of sleep, or letting the
resolve ripen, as it were, in the mind, apart from Consciousness.

I had written every line of my work on the same subject and principles
long before I was aware that I had unconsciously followed exactly in
the footprints of the great Master; for though I had made many other
discoveries in his books, I knew nothing of this.

CHAPTER XII.

LAST WORDS.

"By carrying calves Milo, 'ti