Page 20 - Paracelsus Three Books of Philosophy

mystery, and so nothing else but as a painted colour is to the wall. Such is our life
under heaven, that one thing as well as another may be destroyed and turned into
nothing. For as the table or frame of a picture may be destroyed or burnt, so also may
the Great Mystery, and we with it. And as all the things of the creatures are wiped
away, diminished and do perish with the mystery, as a forest which the fire burns into
a little heap of ashes, out of which ashes but a little glass is made and that glass is
brought into a small beryl, which beryl vanishes into wind: in like manner we also shall
be consumed, still passing from one thing into another, till there be nothing of us left.
Such as the beginning such is the end of the creatures. If the Cypress tree can spring
out of a little grain, surely it must be brought into as small a quantity as that little kernel
was at first. A grain and the beryl are alike. As it begins in a grain, so it ends in a beryl.
Now when the separation is thus made, and every thing reduced to its nature, or first
principle, to wit, into nothing, then is there nothing within the sky but is endless and
eternal. For that by which it is for ever will there flourish much more largely than it did
before the creation, it having no frailty or mortality in it. As no creature can consume
glass, so neither can that eternal essence be brought to nothing by that which is eternal.

The last separation being the dissolution of all creatures, and one thing consuming
and perishing after another; thereby the time of all those things is known. When the
creatures once were, they had no utter ruin in them; for a new seed still supplies the
room [place or space] of the old decayed thing. Thus there is somewhat eternal, not
subject to ruin, in the things that are mortal, by renovation of another seed, which thing
the Philosopher knew not. No seed doth admit or constitute that which is eternal. Yet
doth it admit putrefaction, when that which is eternal is taken into the eternal. In this
respect man only among all the rest of the creatures hath that which is eternal in
himself joined with that which is mortal. According to what hath been said, the mortal
and eternal are joined together: understand, that which is mortal prepares an essence in
the stomach, and upholds the default of the body. The only cause whereof is, that that
of man which is eternal might live for ever, and that which is mortal might die
according to its frailty. Such as the body, such is the eternal that comes from the body.
This is that which confounds all philosophy, that the mortal should domineer, and as it
were bear sway as it lifts over that which is eternal and that this also should depend on
Man, who thereby is made more a companion of that which is eternal than if his mortal
and eternal both flows from himself. Whence we may conclude, that all creatures
should live together, the reasonable and unreasonable, one being serviceable to
another, the eternal planted into the mortal, and these two dwelling together. Hence
philosophy teaches, that all those things cannot be destroyed and consumed that live
together without squabbling and fighting, without guile and deceit, without good and

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