JEROME CARDAN 109 



to censure Cardan's literary performance because he 

 failed in this task. Probably no other man living in his 

 day would have achieved a better result. It is certain 

 that he expended a vast amount of labour in attempting 

 to reduce his collected mass of facts even to the imper- 

 fect form it wears in the De Varietate Rerum}- 



Considering that this book covers to a great extent 

 the same ground as its predecessor, Cardan must be 

 credited with considerable ingenuity of treatment in 

 presenting his supplementary work without an undue 

 amount of repetition. In the De Varietate\\t always con- 

 trives to bring forward some fresh fact or fancy to illus- 

 trate whatever section of the universe he may have under 

 treatment, even though this section may have been 

 already dealt with in the De Subtilitate. The charac- 

 teristic most strongly marked in the later book is the 

 increased eagerness with which he plunges into the 

 investigation of certain forces, which he professes to 

 appreciate as lying beyond Nature, and incapable of 

 scientific verification in the modern sense, and the fabled 

 manifestations of the same. He loses no opportunity 

 of trying to peer behind the curtain, and of seeking 

 honestly enough to formulate those various pseudo- 

 sciences, politely called occult, which have now fallen 

 into ridicule and disrepute with all except the charlatan 

 and the dupe, who are always with us. Where he 

 occupies in the De Subtilitate one page in considering 

 those things which lie outside Nature demons, ghosts, 



1 " Sed nullus major labor quam libri de Rerum Varietate quern 

 cum saepius mutassem, demum traductis quibuscunque insignio- 

 ribus rebus in libros de Subtilitate, ita ilium exhausi, ut totus denuo 

 conscribendus fuerit atque ex integro restituendus." Opera, torn. 

 i. p. 74- 



He seems to have utilized the services of Ludovico Ferrari in 

 compiling this work. Opera^ torn. i. p. 64. 



