286 JEROME CARDAN. 





Cardan, closely printed, constitute as heavy a load as 

 any one man would desire to carry on his back. Very 

 familiar with the pen, therefore, his hand must have be- 

 come, for to the last he printed nothing that had not been 

 thus written, rewritten, and again, and perhaps yet again 

 and again, revised 1 . " For," said Cardan, " they who 

 write without digestion are like men who eat crude things : 

 for a slight and temporary satisfaction they inflict upon 

 themselves a grave and lasting harm 2 ." Even now we 

 have not a right impression of the whole amount of 

 student's work which Cardan's writings represent, for it 

 remains to be added that his memory was very bad, and 

 for the vast store of facts and illustrations in almost every 

 department of the science of his day which his many 

 books contain, he had to depend almost exclusively on 

 written memoranda 3 . 



This persevering habit of hard work, then, was the root 

 of Cardan's fame, for genius is a sap that will not go far to 

 produce flower and fruit, still less to beget solid timber, if 

 there be not in its due place, hidden from the world's eye, 

 a root like that to keep it fresh and stirring. There were, 

 however, other qualities in Cardan's writings to which 

 we must look for an explanation of the very wide popu- 



i De Libr. Propr. (1557) p. 74. 



a De Vita Propria, cap. 1, 



3 " Quantum potui minus memoriae reliqui quam scriptis." ' 



