JEROME CARDAN 107 



friend, to go mad for joy. There are diagrams of 

 furnaces, of machinery for raising sunken ships, and of 

 the common steelyard. Cardan finds no problem of 

 the universe too recondite to essay, and in like manner 

 he sets down information as to the most trivial details of 

 every-day economy : how to kill mice, why dogs bay 

 the moon, how to make vinegar, why a donkey is stupid, 

 why flint and steel produce fire, how to make the hands 

 white, how to tell good mushrooms from bad, and how 

 to mark household linen. He treats of the elements, 

 Earth, Air, and Water, excluding Fire, because it 

 produces nothing material ; of the heavens and light : 

 metals, stones, plants, and animals. Marvellous stories 

 abound, and the most whimsical theories are advanced 

 to account for the working of Nature. He tells how he 

 once saw a man from Porto Maurizio, pallid, with little 

 hair on his face, and fat in person, who had in his breasts 

 milk enough to suckle a child. He was a soldier, and 

 this strange property caused him no slight inconvenience. 

 Sages, he affirms, on account of their studious lives, are 

 little prone to sexual passion. With them the vital power 

 is carried from the heart to a region remote from the 

 genitals, i. e. to the brain, and for this reason such men as 

 a rule beget children weak and unlike themselves. Diet 

 has a valid effect on character, as the Germans, who 

 subsist chiefly on the milk of wild cows, are fierce and 

 bold and brutal. Again, the Corsicans, who eat young 

 dogs, wild as well as domestic, are notably fierce, cruel, 

 treacherous, fearless, nimble, and strong, following thus 

 the nature of dogs. He argues at length to show that 

 man is neither an animal nor a plant, but something 

 between the two. A man is no more an animal than 

 an animal is a plant. The animal has the anima sen- 

 sitiva which the plant lacks, and man transcends the 



