228 JEROME CARDAN 



God's work to the devil." l And in another place : " I 

 of a truth know of no spirit or genius which attends 

 me ; but should one come to me, after being warned 

 of the same in dreams, if it should be given to me by 

 God, I will still reverence God alone ; to Him alone will 

 I give thanks, for any benefit which may befall me, as 

 the bountiful source and principle of all good. And, in 

 sooth, the spirit may rest untroubled if I repay my debt 

 to our common Master. I know full well that He has 

 given to me, for my good genius, reason, patience in 

 trouble, a good disposition, a disregard of money and 

 dignities, which gifts I use to the full, and deem them 

 better and greater possessions than the Demon of 

 Socrates." 2 



About the Demon of Socrates Cardan has much to 

 say in the De Varietate. He never even hints a doubt 

 as to the veracity and sincerity of Socrates. He is quite 

 sure that Socrates was fully persuaded of the reality of 

 his attendant genius, and favours the view that this belief 

 may have been well founded. He takes an agnostic 

 position, 3 confining his positive statement to an as- 

 sertion of his own inability to realize the presence of 

 any ghostly minister attendant upon himself. In the 

 De Subtilitate he tells an experience of his own by way 

 of suggesting that some of the demons spoken of by the 

 retailers of marvels might be figments of the brain. 

 In 1550 Cardan was called in to see a certain woman 

 who had long been troubled with an obscure disease of 

 the bladder. Every known remedy was tried in vain, 



1 De Varietate, p. 351. 



2 Ibid., p. 658. 



8 In his counsel to his children, he writes : " Do not believe that 

 you hear demons speak to you, or that you behold the dead. Seek 

 not to learn the truth of these things, for they are amongst the things 

 which are hidden from us." 



