In what is called the third scene, five years more have elapsed; and
Paracelsus is at Bâle, again opening his heart to his old friend. He is
professor at the University. His fame extends far beyond it. Outwardly
he has "attained." But the sense of a wasted life, and above all, of
moral deterioration, is stronger on him than ever, and the tone in which
he expresses it is only calmer than in the previous soliloquy, because
it is more hopeless. He has failed in his highest aims--and failed
doubly: because he has learned to content himself with low ones. He
believes that he is teaching useful, although fragmentary truths; that
these may lead to more; that those who follow him may stand on his
shoulders and be considered great. But the crowning TRUTH is as far from
him as ever; and the mass of those who crowd his lecture-room do not
even come for what they can learn, but for the vulgar pleasure of seeing
old beliefs subverted, and old methods exposed. He is humiliated at
having declined on to what seems to him a lower range of knowledge;
still more by the kind of men with whom it has brought him into contact;
and he sees himself sinking into a lower depth, in which such praise as
they can give will repay him. His contempt for himself and them is
making him reckless of consequences, and preparing the way for his
disgrace.

In spite however of his failure Paracelsus has done so much, that Festus
is converted; and ready to justify both his early belief in his own
mission, and the abnormal means by which he has chosen to carry it out.
Their positions are reversed, and he combats his friend's self-abasement
as he once combated his too great confidence in himself. He grieves over
what seems to him the depression of an over-wrought mind, and what he
will not regard as due to any deeper cause. But Paracelsus will take no
comfort; and when, finally, he denounces the folly of intellectual
pretensions, and ends with the pathetic words--in part the echo of