82 JEROME CARDAN. 



taste for the purchase of books, can scarcely be named as a 

 peculiarity 1 . More characteristic, in the same way, of the 

 philosopher whose ruling passion was an eagerness for 

 everlasting fame, was a delight in expensive writing mate- 

 rials, a desire to lavish money on the instruments by use 

 of which his name was to be made immortal 2 . A per- 

 sonal peculiarity which lasted for about two years while 

 he was at Sacco, Jerome regarded as a portent. His 

 skin exhaled a strong odour of sulphur 3 . As a practi- 

 tioner of medicine, Cardan, very wisely indeed, consider- 

 ing the science of the time, trusted more to experiment 

 and observation than to his own wisdom or the knowledge 

 of his art. As a philosopher, apart from dice and cards, 

 he professed and felt tender regard for time, the economy 

 of which he recommended by some such proverb as that 

 many mouthfuls make a bellyful 4 . Not only when pro- 

 fessedly at work, but also when riding, walking, eating, 

 or awake in bed, there were analyses and distillations 

 going on within the laboratory of his brain. He con- 

 sidered it a good and wise thing to court the acquaint- 

 ance of old men, and to seek knowledge in their society. 

 He also, in a spirit of the truest philosophy, considered it 



1 " Profusus in emendis libris." De Vit. Propr. cap. xxv. p. 94. 



2 De Vit. Propr. cap. xviii. p. 80. 



3 De Serum Varietate (ed. Basil. 1557), Lib. viii. cap. 43, p. 316. 



4 " Multa modica faciunt unum satis." De Vit. Propr, cap. xxiii. 

 p. 90. All that is stated in this paragraph depends for authority on the 

 same chapter in the Liber de Vita Propria. 



