JEROME CARDAN 9 



nearly seventy years of age, and the other Otto Cantone, 

 a farmer of the taxes, and very rich. The last-named, 

 before he died, wished to leave me his sole heir ; but this 

 my father forbad, saying that Otto's wealth had been ill 

 gotten; wherefore the estate was distributed according 

 to the directions of the surviving brother." l 



This, told as nearly as may be in his own words, is 

 the story of Cardan's birth and childhood and early 

 discipline, a discipline ill calculated to let him grow up 

 to useful and worthy manhood. It must have been a 

 wretched spring of life. Many times he refers to the 

 hard slavery he underwent in the days when he was 

 forced to carry his father's bag about the town, and tells 

 how he had to listen to words of insult cast at his 

 mother's name. 2 Like most boys who lead solitary lives, 

 unrelieved by the companionship of other children, he was 

 driven in upon himself, and grew up into a fanciful 

 imaginative youth, a lover of books rather than of games, 

 with an old head upon his young shoulders. After such 

 a training it was only natural that he should be trans- 

 formed from a nervous hysterical child into an embittered, 

 cross-grained man, profligate and superstitious at the 

 same time. Abundant light is thrown upon every stage 

 of his career, for few men have left a clearer picture of 

 themselves in their written words, and nowhere is Cardan, 

 from the opening to the closing scene, so plainly ex- 

 hibited as in the De Vita Propria, almost the last work 

 which came from his pen. It has been asserted that 

 this book, written in the twilight of senility by an old 

 man with his heart cankered by misfortune and ill- 

 usage, and his brain upset by the dread of real or fancied 

 assaults of foes who lay in wait for him at every turn, is 

 no trustworthy guide, even when bare facts are in 



1 De Vita Propria, ch. iv. p. H. 2 Opera^ torn. i. p. 676. 



