JEROME CARDAN 293 



more sorrow than joy. For afflictions when they come 

 mar the recollection of our pleasures, and with just 

 cause ; for what is there in life worthy the name of 

 delight, the ever-present burden of existence, the task of 

 dressing and undressing every day, hunger, thirst, evil 

 dreams ? What more profit and ease have we than 

 the dead ? We must endure the heat of summer, the 

 cold of winter, the confusion of the times, the dread of 

 war, the stern rule of parents, the anxious care of our 

 children, the weariness of domestic life, the ill carriage 

 of servants, lawsuits, and, what is worst of all, the state of 

 the public mind which holds probity as silliness ; which 

 practises deceit and calls it prudence. Craftsmen are 

 counted excellent, not by their skill in their art, but by 

 reason of their garish work and of the valueless appro- 

 bation of the mob. Wherefore one must needs either 

 incur God's displeasure or live in misery, despised and 

 persecuted by men.' " l These words, though put into 

 his mother's mouth, are manifestly an expression of 

 Cardan's own feelings. 



Cardan was the product of an age to which there had 

 recently been revealed the august sources from which 

 knowledge, as we understand the term, has flowed with- 

 out haste or rest since the unsealing of the fountain. He 

 counts it rare fortune to have been born in such an age, 

 and rhapsodizes over the flowery meadow of knowledge 

 in which his generation rejoices, and over the vast 

 Western world recently made known. Are not the 

 artificial thunderbolts of man far more destructive than 

 those of heaven ? What praise is too high for the 

 magnet which leads men safely over perilous seas, 

 or for the art of printing? Indeed it needs but little 

 1 De Consolatione (Opera, torn. i. p. 605). 



