Festus' own:--

"... No, no:
Love, hope, fear, faith--these make humanity;
These are its sign and note and character.
And these I have lost!..." (vol. ii. p. 109.)


Festus has no answer to give. He parts from Paracelsus perplexed and
saddened rather than convinced, but with a dawning consciousness of
depths in life, to which his strong but simple soul has no key.

In the fourth scene these depths are more fully and more perplexingly
revealed. Two years more have elapsed. Paracelsus has escaped from Bâle,
and is at Colmar, once more confessing himself to Festus, and once more
said to "aspire." But his aspirations are less easy to understand than
formerly, because their aim is less single. The sense of wasted life,
Aprile's warnings, some natural rebound against the continued
intellectual strain have determined him to strive for a fuller
existence, and neglect no opportunity of usefulness or enjoyment. A
serious and commendable change would seem to be denoted by the words, "I
have tried each way singly: now for both!" (page 121); and again at page
126, where a new-born softness asserts itself. His language has,
however, a vein of bitterness, sometimes even of cynicism, which belies
the idea of any sustained impulse to good. He is worn in body, weary in
mind, fitful and wayward in mood, and just in the condition in which men
half impose on others, and half on themselves. He alludes to the habit
of drinking as one which he has now contracted; and he is clearly
entering on the period of his greatest excesses, perhaps also of his
most strenuous exertions in the cause of knowledge. But his energy is