284 JEROME CARDAN 



Mention has been made of the list of his vices and 

 imperfections which Cardan wrote down with his own 

 hand. Out of such a heap of self-accusation it would 

 have been an easy task for some meddlesome enemy to 

 gather up a plentiful selection of isolated facts which by 

 artful combination might be so arranged as to justify 

 a formal charge of impiety. The most definite of these 

 charges were made by Martin del Rio, 1 who declares 

 that Cardan once wrote a book on the Mortality of the 

 Soul which he was wont to exhibit to his intimate 

 friends. He did not think it prudent to print this work, 

 but wrote another, taking a more orthodox view, called 

 De Immortalitate Animorum. Another assailant, Theo- 

 phile Raynaud, asserts that certain passages in this book 

 suggest, if they do not prove, that Cardan did not set 

 down his real opinions on the subject in hand. Raynaud 

 ends by forbidding the faithful to read any of Cardan's 

 books, and describes him as " Homo nullius religionis ac 

 fidei, et inter clancularios atheos secundi ordinis aevo 

 suo facile princeps." Of all Cardan's books the De Im- 

 mortalitate Animorum is the one in which materials for 

 a charge of impiety might most easily be found. It was 

 put together at a time when he had had very little 

 practice in the Greek tongue, and it is possible that many 

 of his conclusions may be drawn from premises only 

 imperfectly apprehended. Scaliger in his Exercitations 

 seizes upon one passage 2 which, according to his ren- 



1 The writer, a Jesuit, says in Disquisitionum Magicarum (Lou- 

 vanii, 1 599), torn. i. : " In Cardani de Subtilitate et de Varietate libris 

 passim latet anguis in herba et indiget expurgatione Ecclesiasticse 

 limae." Del Rio was a violent assailant of Cornelius Agrippa. 



8 " Quoniam intellectus intrinsecus est homini, belluis extrinsecus 

 collucet: unus etiam satisfacere omnibus, quse in una specie sunt 

 potest, hominibus plures sunt necessarii : tertia est quod hominis ani- 

 ma tanquam speculum est levigata, splendida, solida, clara : belluarum 

 autem tenebrosa nee levis ; atque ideo in nostra anima lux mentis 



