98 JEROME CARDAN. 



and the colour of the spots upon them. All these things, 

 throughout his life, Cardan, a great philosopher, reli- 

 giously believed 1 . 



He was not daunted by this problem : In children on 

 account of the softness of the skin, and in old age on 

 account of its dryness, lines are most abundant. How 

 then can lines denote the course of life when they abound 

 most in the people who do nothing? To this objection 

 Jerome was content to give the answer properly appointed 

 to be given by the teachers of the Cheiromantic creed 2 . 

 In children the lines signify the future, in old men they 

 signify the past ; in each they tell of a whole life. In the 

 mature hand, also, it is convenient to know that there are 



1 After speaking of some of the doctrines of Bodinus, who was born 

 thirty years later than Cardan, Dugaid Stewart says : " Notwithstand- 

 ing these wise and enlightened maxims, it must be owned, on the other 

 hand, that Bodin has indulged himself in various speculations, which 

 would expose a writer of the present times to the imputation of 

 insanity. ... In contemplating the characters of the eminent persons 

 who appeared about this era, nothing is more interesting and in- 

 structive than to remark the astonishing combination in the same 

 minds of the highest intellectual endowments with the most deplorable 

 aberrations of the understanding; and even, in numberless instances, 

 with the most childish superstitions of the multitude." Encyclopaedia 

 Britannica. Eighth edition. Vol. i. pp. 28, 29. The life and writings of 

 Cardan are an emphatic illustration of this fact. Speaking very 

 roughly, we may even say that where Cardan was thought mad by 

 his neighbours, we should think him wise; and where his neighbours 

 thought him wise, we think him mad. 



2 De Rer. Variet, p. 561. 



