7 o JEROME CARDAN 



a jurisconsult, he gave Jerome in early youth a fairly 

 gooql grounding in arithmetic and geometry, deeming 

 probably that such training would not prove a bad 

 discipline for an intellect destined to attack those for- 

 midable tomes within which lurked the mysteries of 

 the Canon and Civil Law. Mathematical learning has 

 given to Cardan his surest title to immortality, and 

 at the outset of his career he found in mathematics 

 rather than in medicine the first support in the arduous 

 battle he had to wage with fortune. His appointment 

 to the Plat lectureship at Milan has already been noted. 

 In the discharge of his new duties he was bound, accord- 

 ing to the terms of the endowment of the Plat lecturer, 

 to teach the sciences of geometry, arithmetic, and 

 astronomy, and he began his course upon the lines laid 

 down by the founder. Few listeners came, however, 

 and at this juncture Cardan took a step which serves 

 to show how real was his devotion to the cause of true 

 learning, and how lightly he thought of an additional 

 burden upon his own back, if this cause could be helped 

 forward thereby. Keenly as he enjoyed his mathe- 

 matical work, he laid a part of it aside when he perceived 

 that the benches before him were empty, and, by way 

 of making his lectures more attractive, he occasionally 

 } substituted geography for geometry, and architecture 

 for arithmetic. The necessary research and the pre- 

 paration of these lectures led naturally to the accumu- 

 lation of a large mass of notes, and as these increased 

 under his hand Jerome began to consider whether it 

 might not be worth his while to use them in the com- 

 position of one or more volumes. In 1535 he delivered 

 as Plat lecturer his address, the Encomium Geometric, 

 which he followed up shortly after by the publication 

 of a work, Quindecim Libri Novce Geometries. But 



