JEROME CARDAN 45 



praise accorded to me, charge me with the faults of 

 others rather than my own. I attack no man, I only 

 defend myself. 



" And what reason is there why I should spend myself 

 in this cause since I have so often borne witness of the 

 emptiness of this life of ours ? My excuse must be that 

 certain men have praised me, wherefore they cannot deem 

 me altogether wicked. I have always trained myself to 

 let my face contradict my thoughts. Thus while I can 

 simulate what is not, I cannot dissimulate what is. To 

 accomplish this is no difficult task if a man cultivates 

 likewise the habit of hoping for nothing. By striving for 

 fifteen years to compass this end and by spending much 

 trouble over the same I at last succeeded. Urged on by 

 this humour I sometimes go forth in rags, sometimes 

 finely dressed, sometimes silent, sometimes talkative, 

 sometimes joyful, sometimes sad ; and on this account 

 my two-fold mood shows everything double. In my 

 youth I rarely spent any care in keeping my hair in order, 

 because of my inclination for other pursuits more to my 

 taste. My gait is irregular. I move now quickly, now 

 slowly. When I am at home I go with my legs naked 

 as far as the ankles. I am slack in duty and reckless in 

 speech, and specially prone to show irritation over any- 

 thing which may disgust or irk me." 



The above-written self-description does not display a 

 personality particularly attractive. Jerome Cardan was 

 one of those men who experience a morbid gratifica- 

 tion in cataloguing all their sinister points of character, 

 and exaggerating them at the same time ; and in this 

 picture, as in many others scattered about the De Vita 

 Propria, the shadows may have been put in too 

 strongly. 



In the foregoing pages reference was made to certain 



