20 JEROME CARDAN. 



they who did not practice it would scarcely care to read 

 about its rules and principles, while they who did, had not 

 the wit to comprehend them. Still, for their originality, 

 and because they advanced four sciences, Cardan believed 

 that the four treatises here named all, except that upon 

 Arithmetic and Algebra, written at Pavia would be 

 known and esteemed by future generations be "eternal as 

 the human race 1 ." 



Physicians now no longer quote Hippocrates. Astrology 

 has given place to an exact science of Astronomy. Music 

 has attained in all its forms a new development, and few 

 musicians send their thoughts back to Cardan. Only the 

 mathematicians, occupying ground that has long been 

 highly cultivated, look back to him in their traditions as 

 a famous pioneer. 



For his ingenuity, Jerome was called by his friend 

 Alciat a man of inventions. The works just named, and 

 the treatise upon Subtle Things, belong, with a few others, 

 to a distinct period of his literary life, which commenced 

 when he removed to Pavia, and ended in the year 1552. 

 Upon his writings during that period more will be said 

 presently. 



Andrea Alzate, Latinised Andreas Alciatus, the great 

 jurist of his age, was another of the professors in the 

 University of Pavia when Cardan was summoned thither, 

 1 De Libris Propriis (ed. 1557), p. 70. 



