JEROME CARDAN 247 



mummeries and sham mysteries of the Rosicrucians, and 

 of an " Apologie pour les Grands Hommes soupgonnez 

 de Magie," and a disbeliever in supernatural manifesta- 

 tions of every kind. With a mind thus attuned it is no 

 matter of surprise that Naud6 should have been led to 

 speak somewhat severely when called upon to give 

 judgment on a man saturated as Cardan was with the 

 belief in sorcery, witches, and attendant demons. 



If Maude" indeed set to work with the intention of 

 drawing a figure of Cardan which should stand out a 

 sinister apparition in the eyes of posterity, his task was 

 an easy one. All he had to do was to place Jerome 

 Cardan himself in the witness-box. Reference to the 

 passages already quoted will show that, in the whole 

 corpus of autobiographic literature, there does not exist 

 a volume in which the work of self-dissection has been 

 so ruthlessly and completely undertaken and executed 

 as in Cardan's memoirs. It has all the vices of an old 

 man's book ; it is garrulous, vain-glorious, and full of 

 needless repetition ; but, whatever portion of his life 

 may be under consideration, the author never shrinks 

 from holding up to the world's gaze the result of his 

 searches in the deepest abysses of his conscience. Auto- 

 biographers, as a rule, do not feel themselves subject to 

 a responsibility so deep as this. Memory turns back 

 to the contemplation of certain springs of action, certain 

 achievements in the past, making a judicious selection 

 from these, and excerpting only such as promise to 

 furnish the possible reader with a pleasing impression of 

 the personality of the subject. With material of this 

 sort at hand, the autobiographer sets to work to con- 

 struct a fair and gracious monument, being easily per- 

 suaded that it would be a barbarous act to mar its 

 symmetry by the introduction of loathly and misshapen 



