78 JEROME CARDAN. 



healing many. But reason should lead to invention, and 

 experiment is a master and a cause of work in others. In 

 experimenting, if there be danger, it should be attempted 

 gently, and by degrees. 1 Now, by these two discoveries of 

 yours, you have bound men to you not less than you have 

 enriched our science. For if it is not a light thing to adorn an 

 art with illustrious and magnificent works, and to add to it, 

 with the course of time, increments of knowledge to which no 

 wit or patience of those living before had penetrated, how 

 much more in the art which is above all, and which is destined 

 for the safety of the whole human race, is it of immense 

 utility to fetch out something abstruse and recondite, remote 

 from the vulgar method of philosophising and from popular 

 ideas. Not a few are deceived in believing that the art of 

 healing, discovered by the labour of the ancients, has been 

 brought to perfection, and can make no further progress. 

 They would have all posterity marching, as it were, in one 

 file, and stepping in the same track, from which it shall be 

 nefarious to diverge (as they say) by a nail's breadth. 

 * * * * * 



So, as I said to M. Fernel, the famous physician of Paris, 

 they err as much who contend that all things have been 

 thoroughly investigated and comprehended by the ancients, 

 as they who deny to them the first knowledge of things, and 

 reject them as old-fashioned in their practice. But perhaps 

 I am more prolix than is needful in a letter destined to- 

 another kind of business. I, to return to the matter in hand, 

 have felt myself so addicted and bound to you by your 

 erudition, virtue, and wisdom, in the use of which you do 

 not cease with assiduity of study to make yourself of value 

 to all students of letters, that for a long time I have desired 

 nothing more than that there might be offered to me an occa- 



