acquire knowledge; and he believes also that it is only to be acquired
through untried methods, through untaught men: most of all through
solitary communion with nature, and at the sacrifice of all human joys.
Festus regards this as a delusion, and combats it, in this first scene,
with the arguments of common sense; overshooting the mark just enough to
leave his friend the victory. Paracelsus has declared that he
appreciates all he is renouncing, but that he has no choice. He knows
that the way on which he is about to enter is "trackless;" but so is the
bird's: God will guide him as He guides the bird. And Festus replies
that the road to knowledge is _not_ trackless. "Mighty marchers" have
left their footprints upon it. Nature has not written her secrets in
desert places, but in the souls of great men: the "Stagirite,"[11] and
the sages who form a glory round him. He urges Paracelsus to learn what
they can teach, and then take the torch of wisdom from the exhausted
runner's hand, and let his fresh strength continue the race. He warns
him against the personal ambition which alloys his unselfish thirst for
knowledge; against the presumption which impels him to serve God (and
man).

"... apart from such
Appointed channel as he wills shall gather
Imperfect tributes, for that sole obedience
Valued perchance...." (vol. ii. p. 17.)

against the dangers of a course which cuts him adrift from human love.
But Paracelsus has his answer ready. "The wisdom of the past has done
nothing for mankind. Men have laboured and grown famous: and the evils
of life are unabated: the earth still groans in the blind and endless
struggle with them. Truth comes from within the human intellect. To KNOW
is to have opened a way for its escape--not a way for its admission. It