Surprisingly, perhaps, given the mythic status he now enjoys as the archetype of the modern scientist, the protagonist of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818) has an approach to science that is decidedly anti-modern. In the early part of his confessional narrative Victor describes how his project to re-animate the dead was initially inspired by the study of writers such as Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus and Albertus Magnus, a group of mystics and alchemists considered by his tutor the ‘progressive’ Professor Krempe to be ‘as musty as they are ancient’. For Frankenstein, however, they display a holism that is noticeably lacking in the disciples of modern natural philosophy:

Even after having been persuaded of the value of modern experimental techniques by the sympathetic Mr Waldman, Victor does not abandon his pursuit of the ancient ideal.