74 JEROME CARDAN. 



outer life are events of real importance, happy or unhappy 

 in themselves, but in the man whose character is formed 

 the outer life is subject to the inner. I have taken pains, 

 as I thought just, to call attention to those incidents of 

 Cardan's youth which had a baneful influence upon his 

 character. The child Jerome it was right to handle ten- 

 derly, but now that he has grown up, and has come out 

 into the world to take his part in it as independent worker, 

 he must run alone, for he is too old to be nursed by a 

 biographer. 



In his own morbid way Cardan tells us that as there are 

 short giants and tall pigmies, so when he says that he 

 spent at Sacco happy days, we must understand them to 

 have been happily wretched 1 . He enjoyed games of 

 chance, indulged his love of music, rambled through a 

 beautiful country, dined and studied indolently. No- 

 body molested him, he spent his money and he had 

 his friends, he was respected, visited by gay Venetian 

 nobles. The magnates of the town associated with him, 

 he kept open house, and men gathered about him, prompt 

 enough to own that Jerome Cardan was a great philoso- 

 pher. This cheerful bit of Cardan's life extended over 

 five years and a half, commencing in September, 1526, 

 and ending in the month of February, 1532, not very 



1 De Vita Propr. cap. xxxi. p. 129. The authority remains the same 

 until there occurs a fresh citation. 



