CARDAN'S DEMON. 307 



"Publish no crude books; they disarm you, and pass 

 over to the enemy. 



" Talk little. Do not relate common things that have 

 happened to you, still less tell your secrets. 



" Words uttered without thought are heavy losses. 



" Do not carry out by day what you have resolved upon 

 in the night, for by night things appear what they are not, 

 as in dreams." 



It would be easy to fill chapters with such wisdom 

 taken from this single volume that was dictated by the 

 philosopher in his last days. But their end is near, and 

 there are other aspects of his life on which we now must 

 dwell. If in his youth Jerome inherited from his father 

 any opinion concerning guardian spirits, we have seen 

 that in his maturity he rejected the idea that he was 

 attended by a demon. After his son's death he mani- 

 fested a disposition to maintain it, but in his old age he 

 was to be found firm in his persuasion of the fact. He had 

 been long persuaded, he said 1 , that he was attended by a 

 presiding spirit, called in Greek an angel; such spirits 

 had attended certain men, Socrates, Plotinus, Synesius, 

 Dion, Flavius Josephus, and himself. All had been for- 

 tunate except Socrates and himself, though he, too, was 

 in a condition of which he ought not to complain. In 

 what way he was admonished by the spirit he could 



1 De Vita Propria, cap. xlvii. 

 x2 



