Faustus in his biography of Agrippa, makes no mention of his ever
having been a friend or scholar of the latter.

In several of the old stories of Faustus, we read that he had a cousin
at Wittenberg, who took him as a boy to his house, brought him up, and
made him his heir when he died. If this was true, it would be more
probable that he was a native of Saxony than of Suabia. It is, however,
more probable that this narrative rests on one of the numerous cases
found in old writings in general, and above all in the history of
Faustus, in which the names Wittenberg and Würtemberg are confounded.
Our hero's abode at the former place was very probably merely that of a
traveller; he left there, as we shall soon see, a very unenviable
reputation. It is true that Saxony was the principal scene of the
Doctor's achievements; but this very circumstance makes it improbable
that he was born and brought up there, as it is well known that "a
prophet hath no honor in his own country."

Faust's studies were not confined to medicine and the physical
sciences. He was also considered eminent as a philologist and
philosopher. Physiology, however, with its various branches and
degenerate offshoots, was the idol of the scholars of that age, and of
Faustus among the rest. A passionate desire to fathom the mysteries of
Nature, to dive into the most hidden recesses of moral and physical
creation, had seized men of real learning, and seduced them into
mingling absurd astrological and magical fancies with profound and
scholarlike researches. The deepest thinkers of their time, like
Nostradamus, Cardan, Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, Thomas Campanella,
flattered themselves that they could enter, by means of art and
science, into communion with good or evil spirits, on whose aid they
depended for obtaining knowledge, fame, wealth, and worldly honors and