JEROME CARDAN 43 



There was in Cardan's nature a strong vein of 

 melancholy, and up to the date now under consideration 

 he had been the victim of a fortune calculated to deepen 

 rather than disperse his morbid tendencies. A proof of 

 his high courage and dauntless perseverance may be 

 deduced from the fact that neither poverty, nor the 

 sense of repeated failure, nor the flouts of the Milanese 

 doctors, prevailed at any time to quench in his heart 

 the love of fame, 1 or to disabuse him of the conviction 

 that he, poverty-stricken wretch as he was, would before 

 long bind Fortune to his chariot-wheels, and would force 

 the adverse world to acknowledge him as one of its 

 master minds. The dawn was now not far distant, but 

 the last hours of his night of misfortune were very dark. 

 The worst of the struggle, as far as the world was 

 concerned, was over, and the sharpest sorrows and the 

 heaviest disgrace reserved for Cardan in the future were 

 to be those nourished in his own household. 



Writing of his way of life and of the vices and defects 

 of his character, he says : " If a man shall fail in his 

 carriage before the world as he fails in other things, who 

 shall correct him ? Thus I myself will do duty for that 

 one leper who alone out of the ten who were healed 

 came back to our Lord. By reasoning of this sort, 

 Physicians and Astrologers trace back the origin of our 

 natural habits to our primal qualities, to the training of 

 our will, and to our occupations and conversation. In 

 every man all these are found in proper ratio to the 

 time of life of each individual ; nevertheless it will be 

 easy to discern marked variations in cases otherwise 

 similar. Therefore it behoves us to hold fast to some 

 guiding principle chosen out of these, and I on my part 



1 " Hoc unum sat scio, ab ineunte aetate me inextinguibili 

 nominis immortalis cupiditate flagrasse." Opera, torn. i. p. 61. 



