60 JEROME CARDAN. 



at its height when his work on Subtilty appeared at Paris; 

 whatever he wrote was sought eagerly; it was in the 

 hands of all men, and was so much quoted and copied, 

 that he says: " I do not know whether I was most read 

 in my own works, or in the works of other people 1 ." A 

 copy of it was obtained by Bernard Palissy 2 , and another 

 fell into the hands of Julius Caesar Scaliger. All the 

 world witnessed Scaliger's attack upon it, in a thick book, 

 weak, scholastic, trivial, of which, and of the resulting 

 controversy, we shall hereafter be compelled to speak. 

 Cardan himself, probably, never heard of Palissy, or saw 

 the few sentences written in nervous French, which not 

 only pointed out the incorrectness of his theory concern- 

 ing mountains and the structure of the globe, but for the 

 first time promulgated, upon such subjects, true and philo- 

 sophical opinions. 



In the work on Subtilty, Cardan at the outset defines 

 subtle things as those which are sensible by the senses, or 

 intelligible by the intellect, but with difficulty compre- 

 hended 3 . Then he treats of matter which he supposed as 

 we suppose now to be composed of ultimate parts, minute, 



1 " Cum primum in publicum prodiere, statim in omnium manibus 

 esse eceperunt: et tot eruditorum testimonio comprobari: ut nesciam 

 an in propriis an in alienis libris nostra magis leguntur." De Lib. 

 Prop. p. 79. 



2 See the Life of Bernard Palissy of Saintes, vol. ii. pp. 173, et seq. 



3 "Est Subtilitas ratio qusedam, qua sensibilia a sensibus intelligi- 

 bilia ab intellectu difficile comprehenduntur." 



