Shorter Notices
Paracelsus : Selected Writings. Edited
AMONG the most radical achievements of the school of Jung has been to alter the intelli- gent man's view of the science of alchemy, for so long looked on as the resort of quacks who were also, in some unwitting way, the forerunners of the modern chemist. It occurred to Jung, however, that the turning of base metal into gold was in fact a psycho- logical process, misunderstood by later and cruder theorists ; and that the transforma- tion in the crucible was no more than an attempt to carry out on the physical plane a work that had originally used the language of natural science—sulphurs, salts, &c.— only in a metaphorical way. The alchemist was, in fact, concerned with the fundamental process of re-birth in the individual, the central theme of all spiritual teaching from that of the great religions to the work of C. G. Jung himself. The present book is an anthology chosen from Paracelsus's volumi- nous writings, and arranged under various somewhat arbitrary headings. • It has been put together with such remSrkable skill that one has the impression of reading a con- secutive work. Yet the drawback of its method is that the reader is not immediately aware of the differences in depth of insight between Paracelsus's masterpiece, the Philo- sophia Magna, and earlier writings of a more casual nature. If he notices the source notes in the margins he will, however, speedily come to distinguish between the mature and the more tentative viewpoint of one of the most interesting figures of the
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