Hidden Texts/1943 Lindroth, Paracelsismen i Sverige

Introduction

[p. 11] One of the most essential problems in the history of knowledge concerns the breakthrough of modern natural science. Although long-prepared, this breakthrough came to characterize the scientific and intellectual life of the 17th century. The obstacles that had to be overcome were significant. Orthodoxy and the conservative mindset stood in the way of the revolution in question. Although the course of events was complicated, it is permissible to simplify by focusing on scholastic philosophy as the main opposition that the new scientists had to defeat. This scholasticism was not a uniform entity; however, in its adherence to Aristotelian thought, it was conservative in nature. Consequently, the emergence of the new science was largely shaped as a struggle against Aristotelian scholasticism. The dismantling of the conservative worldview became to some extent the most important element in the liberation process that culminated in a new natural science and a new worldview. Many forces were at play; among the most significant, we can consider Paracelsism.

Paracelsism, at least in its founder's intentions, was revolutionary. It aimed to crush scholastic learning and build another, better science. However, it was by no means devoid of roots in the past. Its connections to ancient and medieval literature are many and evident, though ultimately inadequately explored. The science that Paracelsism thus continued was to some extent 'mystical'; it did not engage with the rationalist methods of the established scholasticism. The Neoplatonic tradition and its branches in various occult thoughts during the Middle Ages are one of the preconditions for Paracelsism's natural doctrine. In the religiously-oriented late antique treatises attributed to the mythical Hermes Trismegistus, an esoteric wisdom was concealed, which could advantageously be played against the official knowledge of the day; this was particularly the case within later Paracelsism to such an extent that Paracelsism in some places became synonymous with Hermetic science. In medieval alchemy, with its combination of practical laboratory work and spiritualistic religiosity, Paracelsus and his followers had yet another starting point, [p. 12] perhaps the most important one. It is clear from these hints that Paracelsism represented a mindset that fundamentally differed from the spirit expressed in the experimental natural science that emerged around the same time and for which the future was reserved. Paracelsism played an incredibly important role, particularly in the first half of the 17th century, in several seemingly disparate areas. To some extent, it had succeeded in achieving the desired revolution. However, the lasting results did not match the influence it undoubtedly had during its peak period.

This is not to say that the real "significance" of Paracelsism lay solely in its polemics, its criticism of Aristotelianism, and, within medicine, Galenism. The following overview will show that the work of the Paracelsists was of extraordinary importance, especially for the emergence of modern chemistry and for a rather radical reorientation of medicine towards more fruitful problems, partly determined by the chemical view of nature. Additionally, there are the equally obvious yet complex connections that link the Paracelsian spirit, its scientific enthusiasm, and utopian pathos, with the exact and inductive research of the time.

These perspectives are merely hinted at here. The main point remains that Paracelsism, as it actually emerged, played a significant role in scientific life for more than a century (let's say from 1560 to 1700). This contribution raises many questions of the greatest historical interest.

The man who gave rise to the movement we describe here, Theophrastus Paracelsus, was born in 1493 and died in 1541. He was feverishly active as a practicing physician and writer on various subjects. Under often quite difficult conditions—he led a restless wandering life in Switzerland and southern Germany—he recorded his thoughts on medicine, physics, anthropology, and religion in numerous treatises, often of considerable length. Filled with a burning pathos, he saw himself as a reformer, even in his inspired moments as a messianic savior, who would overthrow the official falsehoods in schools and academies to fundamentally build a new natural science and a new art of healing. There is a tremendous force behind his diatribes against scholastic learning, often heightened to excess; Paracelsus did not want to make any concessions, he was a man who took everything to the extreme. The same unwavering love for the pointed expression characterizes the science he wanted to establish in place of the one he overthrew. With a strength that must be admired, Paracelsus follows his thoughts to their conclusion. However, naïve in his disposition, he cares little for coherence or a well-thought-out system; one [p. 13] often has to laboriously piece together the Paracelsian doctrine from his writings, extracting it from the often confusing, yet often brilliantly concise expressions. Contradictions in Paracelsus' works are countless (a shift in opinions over the years also played a part); he always seems to write raptim, full of confidence in his own intuitive ability to strike at the truth. And yet, there is no doubt about the internal unity in Paracelsus' seemingly chaotic works at first glance. The rare vitality it possessed is proof enough. One does not inspire philosophy and science for several generations with mere lucky ideas and brilliant slogans. Paracelsism was, from the beginning, a worldview, indeed a system, without the formal characteristics of a system but with its vast scope and unlimited validity. This precisely accounted for its remarkable success—here was offered a replacement for scholasticism's encyclopedic philosophia peripatetica. Indeed, Paracelsus had left succeeding generations more than just a doctrine; he had bequeathed a unique perspective, a general mindset that had a significant explosive effect and eventually came to exert its influence far beyond the circles of Paracelsian doctrinarians.

An overview of Paracelsus' teachings can advantageously start from his general conception of nature, the Paracelsian holistic view of the macrocosm; here, something of the most characteristic features of this philosophy is revealed. Paracelsus and Paracelsism always stood very close to nature; it was regarded as a great and wonderful realm, filled with divine powers: "thus the magnalia of God and his mysteria are great and wonderfully to be recognized." This view of nature was poetic, religious, vastly different from the strictly logical physics of scholasticism; its historical preconditions lay in Neoplatonic, Hermetic, and alchemistic literature, in their conceptions of the universe as a harmonious and ensouled whole. Paracelsus regarded nature as a spiritual reality; in the bodily shells lay hidden invisible forces, and this invisible realm was what mattered solely to the philosopher. With a multitude of terms, Paracelsus seeks to denote the forces in the invisible natura naturans: arcana, mysteria, Vulcanus, ares, and especially archeus. He also uses a unified term for the invisible world; it is "das gestirn," the realm of the stars, the inner firmament. Every body carries within it a firmament-like power ("where there is an elemental body, there is also a firmament-like quality"); in this strange star realm lies the reason of things, all wisdom, and all art. This reorientation of astrological concepts becomes of extraordinary importance in Paracelsus' writings; but at the same time, this "gestirn" concept is very difficult to interpret without contradiction. Here, Paracelsus stands outside any form of empirical natural research, completely captivated by the sage's intuitive vision.

[p. 14] The natural philosophy that Paracelsus develops from these foundations has its emphasis on the doctrine of elements and principles. Aristotelian scholasticism taught that the four elements—earth, water, air, and fire, characterized by certain elemental qualities—formed the sublunary things through mutual mixing, mixtio. Paracelsus denies this. Elements cannot mix with each other; they are "separated in their state," unified cosmic regions that, like mothers, produce 'fruits' of their own nature. Therefore, each thing consists of only one element. Each element consequently has a generative force that brings forth things, the invisible element, the soul of the element; "thus there are four souls or spirits." This is the aforementioned doctrine of the invisible nature in a new formulation. The stars, "das gestirn," actually have their dwelling in the elements; "what is an element, that is also a star." As a consequence of this view, Paracelsus rejects the role that Aristotelians attributed to the four elemental qualities in the generation of things. He understands this process primarily as a spiritual one; "the secret" (arcanum) acts, "not the cold."

Another deviation from the accepted doctrine that garnered much attention was Paracelsus’ exclusion of fire from the number of elements ("for it gives nothing elemental to man, gives nothing of fruits"). In its place, he positioned the sky as a fourth element; this highest elemental region he believed, inspired by Stoic and Hermetic philosophy, consisted of fire, but not the earthly fire, rather a nobler and life-giving fire, which truly had its 'fruits,' the stars. With this, the Aristotelian dogma of the sky as a non-elemental and imperishable quintessence was eradicated.

As these hints have made clear, the elements primarily had a spiritual function. Their outer shells, the world of elemental bodies, therefore—Paracelsus argues—must have specific material principles. These were the later so renowned three chemical substances, salt, sulfur, and mercury (which were only later explicitly called principles). In medieval alchemy, a theory was put forward, primarily in the works attributed to the Arab Geber, according to which metals were composed of sulfur and mercury, which in turn contained the four elements. Paracelsus, who was essentially educated in the alchemical worldview, develops and transforms this idea. He adds salt as a third principle, and he lets this chemical theory apply to all natural things without exception, all the fruits of the elements; even the sky and its bodies are in this way salt, sulfur, and mercury. The entire visible world is composed of these three. Through the combustion of things, their properties are revealed. It turns out that sulfur represents the principle of combustibility itself, mercury the liquid (liquor), and salt finally the solid, the ash, hardness ("all congelation, coagulation comes [p. 15] from salt"). The three substances are therefore not identical with the commonly known substances bearing the same names but correspond to certain conditions in matter; they signify the basic forms of primordial matter and constitute, as such, the bodies of the elements by being 'transferred into the nature of the four mothers.' They are thus in the truest sense tria prima. Paracelsus reverses the earlier alchemical theory, in which the elements were retained as the material building blocks. In his view, the chemical substances have taken over the role that the elements played in Aristotelian natural philosophy. Certain obscurities indeed accompany this new and radical physics; but it undoubtedly represents a grand attempt to implement a chemical explanation of nature, where the material world is interpreted in terms of an empirical laboratory science.

Paracelsus also devoted his speculation to cosmogony. His description of these matters gives us an opportunity to vividly study the natural philosophy whose main features have just been outlined. The universe originated from the primordial body that God created in the beginning. According to Paracelsus, it was a chaos where all unformed bodies lay, a unity of force and matter that he calls yliaster (mysterium magnum in the probably apocryphal Philosophia ad Athenienses); in this thoroughly Peripatetic doctrine of matter as a truly existing primordial principle, Paracelsus follows ancient cosmogony, Hermetic philosophy, and medieval alchemy, where speculations about the chaos preceding things played a significant role. The chaotic primordial body was, from the beginning, tripartite, i.e., it contained the principles of corporeality: salt, sulfur, and mercury ("these three are prima materia, they have only one name"). During the six days of creation, God, in alchemical work, extracted the multitude of things from the chaotic mass, first the elements as four mighty bodies, then in extractions and separations, the individual things from the mother-elements.

Paracelsus' doctrine of humanity, its nature and activity, cannot be separated from his natural philosophy. He always strives to view humans as a part of the great world, with the task of exploring it, revealing the hidden, the 'invisible' nature, by interpreting it. This must be done according to God's command: "for God is marvelous in his works and creations, who, without end, has wonderfully commanded man, as the noblest creature, to philosophize about everything himself and to explore nature, so that he may reveal the wonders of God." Thus, humanity holds extraordinary significance in the great cosmic contexts. Paracelsus is, in general, captivated by the grandeur and rare perfection of humanity; he aligns with the apotheoses of the dignity of man that were particularly embraced in Florentine Platonism by Ficino and Pico della Mirandola. This nobility of humanity has [p. 16] another of its prerequisites in its "composition." As a microcosm, man encompasses within himself the entire great world, the macrocosm. This doctrine of man as a summary of creation, long prevalent especially in Platonizing circles, is taken to its ultimate consequences by Paracelsus. All external things exist within man: "in him grows all fruit that grows in the world, grass and other things...". The external and the internal, the world and man, says Paracelsus, are one thing, a constellation, an influence. For man, the son of the universe, was created from the great world, from a slime-like mass that was a quintessence of the macrocosm; this was the Mosaic text's limus terrae. These circumstances indicate that the world's composition of visible and invisible, corporeal and astral ("gestirn"), must be repeated in man; he consists of an elemental body and a siderial body; in addition, there is the soul, given directly by God and immortal, "the spirit of the image." This tripartite, entirely non-scholastic doctrine of man, which Paracelsus developed mainly in his anthropological main work *Philosophia sagax*, has a rich history in Platonizing literature. Particularly important were the Hermetic writings (*Poimandres*, *Asclepius*); there, man is conceived as a union of the divine (mens, nous) and the corporeal, with mens as a mantle enveloping the soul (anima), which in turn is connected to the body by the spirit (spiritus).

Paracelsus' version of these ideas is original, especially in his doctrine of the siderial man. Just as the inner stars of the great world are conceived as the principles of reason and ingenious actions, Paracelsus places all natural knowledge and wisdom, all arts, including the essential 'natural light' for his doctrine of knowledge, within the siderial man. Note, he says, "that the true man is the constellation ... that is invisible and intangible in the body, that is the light of nature, the natural wisdom, which God has given into the sidus and from the sidus into man." Thus, man's star body is a concentrate of all natural wisdom. This doctrine would also have consequences for Paracelsus' attitude towards astrology. He did not doubt that astral influence is crucial for human life. But this influence primarily emanates from man's own stars, his inner heaven; "for as much as the ascendant of heaven can achieve, so much can man achieve." The stars of the outer heaven have no power over him; Mars, for example, operates only if a martial star exists within man. Even if Paracelsus' liberation from astrological fatalism has been greatly exaggerated, his attitude in these matters, through his microcosmic view of man, has acquired a peculiar form.

Paracelsus' thinking is filled with religious feeling. The divine force [p. 17] permeates the universe. Paracelsus also dedicated a significant part of his writings to the problems of the church and Christianity; during the 1530s, he wrote several theological treatises, many of which remain unpublished. Inspired by medieval mysticism, oppositional Spiritualism, and its ideals of poverty, he fiercely opposed the Catholic Church, its pompous formalism, and hierarchical order. He condemned ceremonies and idol worship; nothing should stand between man and the things "that come from heaven." Christianity can only endure in the Christian life, in heartfelt faith, poverty, and following Christ. Such a way of life is indeed possible. Paracelsus was imbued with spiritualistic views. His theory of knowledge is characterized by this; the divine force, he believed, inspires the wise in their contemplation of nature's mysteries. This spiritualism is also the core of his theology. Man can be deified already in this life, leaving the Adamic; Christ dwells in us "so that we may be heavenly." Christ's own imperishable nature—Paracelsus also connects to the Gnostic notion of Jesus' body as 'heavenly'—is imparted to the saved person. All who are truly Christian in this way form, without any forms and external practices, a real ecclesia spiritualis, an 'inner' church distinct from the papacy's official "Maurkirche." Thus, the fundamental thoughts of spiritualistic faith are powerfully expressed in Paracelsus. He is partly carried by the same pathos as Luther (whom he deeply despised); this struggle against orthodoxy and formalism is, however, entirely his own affair, a hallmark of his entire endeavor within science and religion.

Paracelsus was primarily a practitioner. His goal was to master and simultaneously serve nature through ingenious arts; he wanted to understand its essence to drive it to work. This is achieved through the magical arts that occupy such a broad place in Paracelsus' writings. Medieval occultism has in him, as in his contemporary Agrippa, a worthy heir; the magic Paracelsus practices is essentially a natural magic, an art that exploits the invisible nature where all forces reside. The natural art, which Paracelsus loved greatly, was nevertheless medicine. He was first and foremost a physician; the suffering of humanity was his field of work, and the knowledge of nature was for him above all a necessary prerequisite for medicine, because, as he develops particularly in *Paragranum*, man-the-microcosm can only be interpreted in her essence with the help of the great world, her father. The nobility of the medical calling was extraordinary for Paracelsus; "for he [the physician] has completed his day with the arcana and has lived in God and in nature as a mighty master of the earthly light." It was primarily as a reformer of the art of healing that Paracelsus wanted to be seen. For the old medicine had to be overthrown; it was an imperative necessity for him.

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