104 JEROME CARDAN 



wrote and published several small works during the 



four years from 1547 to 1551 of his Professorship at 



Pavia; the most noteworthy of which were the Book of 



/ Precepts for the guidance of his children, and some 



Treatises on the Preservation of Health. He also wrote 



' >}. a book on Physiognomy, or as he called it Metoposcopy, 



an abstract of which appears as a chapter in De Utilitate 



\ (lib. iii. c. 10), but the major part of his time must 



/ have been consumed in collecting and reducing to form 



^ the huge mass of facts out of which his two great works, 



De Subtilitate and De Varietate Rerum, were built up. 



A mere abstract of the contents of these wonderful 

 books would fill many pages, and prove as uninteresting 

 and unsuggestive as abstracts must always be ; and a 

 commentary upon the same, honestly executed, would 

 make a heavy draft on the working life-time of an 

 industrious student. In reference to each book the 

 author has left a statement of the reasons which impelled 

 him to undertake his task, the most cogent of which 

 were certain dreams. 1 Soon after he had begun to 

 write the De Astrorum Judiciis he dreamt one night 

 that his soul, freed from his body, was ranging the vault 

 of heaven near to the moon, and the soul of his father 

 was there likewise. But he could not see this spirit, 

 which spake to him saying, " Behold, I am given to you 

 as a comrade." The spirit of the father then went on 

 to tell the son how, after various stages of probation, he 

 would attain the highest heaven, and in the terms of 

 this discourse Cardan professed to discern the scheme 

 of his more important works. 



The De Subtilitate represents Cardan's original con- 



1 " Post ex geminatis somniis, scripsi libros de Subtilitate quos 

 impresses auxi et denuo superauctos tertio excudi curavi." De 

 Vita Propria, ch. xlv. p. 175. 



