28 JEROME CARDAN. 



and denied the education for which he was thirsting. 

 His want of proper standing had become more obvious, 

 and the reason of it, with a galling frequency, was on the 

 lips of his companions. His health was bad, his home 

 was uncongenial, out of doors he was in a wrong position. 

 He had become proud, and so sensitive, that his spirit 

 suffered pain from any but the gentlest touch. Worldly 

 advancement seemed impossible, restlessness became reck- 

 lessness, and the neglected youth turned all the energy that 

 was not spent in nursing his ambition upon games of 

 chance. He brought his acquired taste for mathematics 

 to the gaming-table, and calculated nicely probabilities in 

 cards and dice 1 . When, afterwards, a sure object in life 

 presented itself, quitting the company of gamblers, he 

 pursued it steadily; but in the hopeless, miserable years 

 of energy that saw no outlet, and of reckless discontent, 

 there was no game played in his day with dice at which 

 Jerome Cardan did not become proficient. Meanwhile, 

 the philosophic bias was not weaker than the passions of 

 those miserable years. The young gambler's experiences 

 were all treasured for a philosophic use, while scientific 

 calculations were submitted to the test of practice; for 

 this other work, begun in early youth, and finished at the 

 age of twenty-three, was nothing less than an original 

 and elaborate treatise on the science that belongs to 



1 De Propria Vita, p. 16. The authority remains the same for all 

 succeeding facts, until its change is indicated by another reference. 



