PLAIN SPEAKING. 171 



they create, are morally identical with lies. I hold them 

 to be worse. A sudden lie may be sometimes only man- 

 slaughter upon truth, but by a carefully constructed 

 equivocation, truth always is with malice aforethought 

 deliberately murdered. The spirit of the Roman Catholic 

 religion in the days when Luther lived, led men to hold 

 a very different opinion on this matter, and Cardan, in 

 his ethical works, has critical chapters on simulation and 

 dissimulation, holding the one to be right, the other 

 wrong. He would disdain to speak untruth, or, indeed, 

 often to suggest it, but he did not think it wrong to cir- 

 cumvent 1 . Three centuries ago that was regarded gene- 

 rally as a lawful and even laudable exercise of ingenuity, 

 if it had any good purpose in view. 



While Francisco Sfondrato was engaged actively on 

 his behalf in one way, Jerome was himself engaged in 

 another way, during the year 1538, upon labours that 

 might lead to an improvement of his fortunes. He was 

 about to make his next public appearance as an author. 

 The labours to which he had been stimulated by the lean 

 and hollow-eyed mathematician, Zuanne da Coi, had 

 assisted him to the completion of an elaborate, and in 

 many respects original work on the Practice of Arith- 

 metic. As it would contain many diagrams, and abound 

 in notes, numbers, and novelties, Jerome had determined 

 1 See Cardan's De Prudentia Civili, chapters 52 and 53. 



