ASPIRATION. 41 



life, and his whole energy was bent upon the working ] 

 out for himself with his mind of glory after death 1 . Boy 

 as he was, he was at work upon his treatise on the 

 Earning of Immortality; upon his treatise on the True 

 Distances of Objects, based upon an old volume of 

 Geber's, upon Triangles, that he had found among 

 his father's books ; upon his treatise on Games of Skill 

 and Chance ; and upon other youthful undertakings 2 . 

 From the first he was unable to confine his mind to 

 labour on a single topic. He did not sit down to \vork 

 out his immortality of fame by writing a great book ; he 

 began at once with three or four books. He was never 

 throughout life checked in the commencement of a new 

 literary labour, by the reflection that he might have four 

 or five unfinished works already in hand 8 . Book- writing 

 was pleasure, and he could not easily deny himself any 

 addition to a pleasure that he loved. 



Though miserably trained into impatience, there was 

 a strain of youthful joyousness in Cardan's mind when 

 he arrived at manhood. The most prevailing of his 

 sensual pleasures was a love of music 4 . He was not 



1 " Conternptor pecunise, glorias post obitum cultor, mediocria etiam 

 nedum parva omnia spernere solitus." 



2 De Libris Propriis (ed. 1557), p. 10. 



3 "Multa et varia scrips!, neque enim mens tandiu intenta uni 

 negocio esse potest." De Libris Propriis (ed. 1557), p. 12. 



4 " Laetus, voluptatibus deditus, Musicae praecipue." De Vita Propr. 

 cap. li. 



