PHYSICAL LIFE. 35 



unknown, or wit can dazzle us before there can exist a 

 Howard or a Milton a mind must have swerved out of 

 that horizontal line on which all faculties stand written 

 at an equal altitude. That Cardan's mind was not well 

 balanced we have already seen while noting its relations 

 in the days of youth with the surrounding world. Much 

 of the eccentricity displayed in it was caused, un- 

 doubtedly , by the condition of the frame in which it had 

 been set. That part of our history his physical life up 

 to the year in which he joined a university, we therefore 

 proceed now to consider. 



In infancy, Cardan was fat and red; in boyhood, lean, 

 with a long, white face, and reddish hair. He grew fast, 

 so that he had attained at the age of sixteen his full 

 stature. Of the plague that caressed him at the breast of 

 his first nurse mention has been already made. His health 

 was at all times infirm. He was born with a slight ente- 

 rocele, inherited from Fazio, his father. Throughout life 

 he was vexed by the occasional outbreak of cutaneous 

 eruptions and by nervous itchings 1 . Between his fourth 

 and his seventh year 2 the excitement of his nervous sys- 

 tem caused a condition perhaps not altogether rare in 

 children: phantoms haunted him. On account of his 



1 De Vita Propr. cap. vi. and li. for the preceding details. 



2 De Vita Propr. cap. xxxvii. p. 160. Sprengel attributes to his 

 early illnesses the vividness of imagination by which Cardan was 

 always characterised. 



D2 



