JEROME CARDAN 227 



had let alone. Spirits wandering about this world were 

 of greater moment to him than spirits fixed in beatitude 

 or bane in the next; and accordingly, whenever he finds 

 an opportunity, he discourses of apparitions, lamiae, 

 incubi, succubi, malignant and beneficent genii, and the 

 methods of invoking them. Now that old age was pressing 

 heavily upon him and he began to yearn for support, he 

 sought consolation not in the ecstatic vision of the fervent 

 Catholic, but in fostering the belief that he was in sooth 

 under the protection of some guardian spirit like that 

 which had attended his father and divers of the sages 

 of old. Although he had in his earlier days treated his 

 father's belief with a certain degree of respect and cred- 

 ence, 1 there is no evidence that he was possessed with 

 the notion that any such supernatural guardian attended 

 his own footsteps at the time when he put together the 

 De Varietate; indeed it would seem that his belief was 

 exactly the opposite. He writes as follows : " It is 

 first of all necessary to know that there is one God, 

 the Author of all good, by whose power all things were 

 made, and in whose name all good things are brought 

 to pass ; also, that if a man shall err he need not be 

 guilty of sin. That there is no other to whom we owe 

 anything or whom we are bound to worship or serve. 

 If we keep these sayings with a pure mind we shall be 

 kept pure ourselves and free from sin. What a demon 

 may be I know not, these beings I neither recognize nor 

 love. I worship one God, and Him alone I serve. And 

 in truth these things ought not to be published in the 

 hearing of unlearned folk ; for, if once this belief in 

 spirits be taken up, it may easily come to pass that 

 they who apply themselves to such arts will attribute 



1 " Multa de dsemonibus narrabat, quaequam vera essent nescio." 

 De Utilitate, p. 348. 



