272 JEROME CARDAN. 



died about thirty years after the acquisition of two of his 

 rules, and a quarter of a century after the acquisition of 

 the others, without having either published them or used 

 them so that it could be known of him that he had done 

 so as the stepping-stones to higher knowledge. Cardan 

 committed most undoubtedly a breach of faith, and was 

 guilty of an abstract though not therefore the less real 

 wrong; practical wrong he did to nobody, for his book 

 on Algebra was a great gain to science, and did no actual 

 injustice to Tartalea, to whom Cardan rendered in it that 

 which was his due. When to the preceding facts we add 

 the reflection that this great algebraic quarrel took place 

 in the most corrupt of European states at one of the cor- 

 ruptest periods of modern history, when the promise of a 

 pope himself was good for nothing, we shall be likely to 

 decide fairly upon the degree in which the details of this 

 controversy should affect our estimate of Cardan's cha- 

 racter. 



The Book of the Great Art, the Algebra 1 , published by 

 Cardan in the year 1545, which was the tenth book of his 

 Arithmetic, was published by Petreius, of Nuremberg, and 

 dedicated to the scholar in that town for whose courtesy 

 he was indebted for his introduction to its presses, Andrew 



1 " De Arte Magna, sive de Kegulis Algebraicis." It was published 

 in folio, says Naudaeus, who appears not to have seen the first edition. 

 I believe it is not in any English public library. 



