To the intellect of our time the wild investigators of the school of Paracelsus seem to be the very crown and flower of futility, they are collectors of straws and careful misers of dust.

But for all that Browning was right.

Any critic who understands the true spirit of mediaeval science can see that he was right; no critic can see how right he was unless he understands the spirit of mediaeval science as thoroughly as he did.

In the character of Paracelsus, Browning wished to paint the dangers and disappointments which attend the man who believes merely in the intellect.

He wished to depict the fall of the logician; and with a perfect and unerring instinct he selected a man who wrote and spoke in the tradition of the Middle Ages, the most thoroughly and even painfully logical period that the world has ever seen.