230 JEROME CARDAN 



easily found a lodgment in his shaken and bewildered 

 brain. In the Dialogus de Humanis Consiliis, one of the 

 speakers tells of a certain man who is clearly meant to 

 be Cardan himself. The speaker goes on to say that he 

 is sure this man is attended by a genius, which manifested 

 itself to him somewhat late in his life. " Aforetime, indeed, 

 it had been wont to convey to him warnings in dreams and 

 by certain noises. What greater proof of his power could 

 there be than the cure of this man, without the use of 

 drugs, of an intestinal rupture on the right side ? If 

 indeed it had not fared with him thus, after his son's 

 death, he would at once have passed out of this life, 

 whereby many and great evils might have come to pass. 

 He was freed also from another troublesome ailment. 

 In sooth, so many and so mighty are the wonderful 

 things which had befallen him, that I, who am very 

 intimate with him (and he himself thinks the same), 

 am constrained to believe that he is attended by a 

 genius, great and powerful and rare, and that he is not 

 the master of his own actions. What he would have, he 

 has not ; and what he has, he would not have chosen, 

 or even wished for. This thing causes him much trouble, 

 but he submits when he reflects that all things are God's 

 handiwork." The speaker ends by saying that he never 

 heard of any others thus attended, save this man, and 

 his father before him, and Socrates. 1 



But it is in chapter xlvii. of the De Vita Propria, 

 which must have been written shortly before his death, 

 that he lets the reader see most plainly how strong was 

 the hold which this belief in a guardian spirit of his own 

 had taken upon him. " It is an admitted truth," he 

 writes, "that attendant spirits have protected certain 

 men, to wit, Socrates, Plotinus, Synesius, Dion, Flavius 

 1 Opera, torn. i. 672. 



