io8 JEROME CARDAN 



animal through the gift of the anima intellectwa, which, 

 as Aristotle testifies, differs from the sensitiva. Some 

 maintain that man and the animals must be alike in 

 nature and spirit, because it is possible for man to catch 

 certain diseases from animals. But animals take certain 

 properties from plants, and no one thinks of calling an 

 animal a plant. Man's nature is threefold : the Divine, 

 which neither deceives nor is deceived ; the Human, 

 which deceives, but is not deceived ; the Brutish, which 

 does not deceive, but is deceived. Dissertations on the 

 various sciences, the senses, the soul and intellect, things 

 marvellous, demons and angels, occupy the rest of the 

 chapters of the De Subtilitate. 



At the end of the last book of De Varietate, Cardan 

 gives a table showing the books of the two works 

 arranged in parallel columns so as to exhibit the 

 relation they bear to each other. A comparison of the 

 treatment accorded to any particular branch of Natural 

 Philosophy in the De Subtilitate with that given in the 

 De Varietate, will show that in the last-named work 

 Cardan used his most discursive and anecdotic method. 

 Mechanics are chiefly dealt with in the De Subtilitate, and 

 all through this treatise he set himself to observe in a 

 certain degree the laws of proportion, and kept more or 

 less to the point with which he was dealing, a system of 

 treatment which left him with a vast heap of materials 

 on his hands, even after he had built up the heavy tome 

 of the De Subtilitate. Perhaps when he began his 

 work upon the fresh volume he found this ingens acervus 

 too intractable and heterogeneous to be susceptible of 

 symmetrical arrangement, and was forced to let it 

 remain in confusion. Few men would sit down with a 

 light heart to frame a well-ordered treatise out of the 

 ddbris of a heap of note-books, and it would be unjust 



