Jerome Cardan | Page 7

in my presence, and
grieved amain that I would not settle down to the study of his own
subject. He deemed it the more salutary discipline--proofs of which
opinion he would often bring forward out of Aristotle--that it was better
adapted for the acquisition of power and riches; and that it would help
me more efficiently in restoring the fortunes of our house. He perceived

moreover that the office of teaching in the schools of the city, together
with its accompanying salary of a hundred crowns which he had
enjoyed for so many years, would not be handed on to me, as he had
hoped, and he saw that a stranger would succeed to the same. Nor was
that commentary of his destined ever to see the light or to be illustrated
by my notes. Earlier in life he had nourished a hope that his name
might become illustrious as the emendator of the 'Commentaries of
John, Archbishop of Canterbury on Optics and Perspective.'[26] Indeed
the following verses were printed thereanent:
'Hoc Cardana viro gaudet domus: omnia novit Unus: habent nullum
saecula nostra parem.'
"These words may be taken as a sort of augury referring rather to
certain other men about to set forth to do their work in the world, than
to my father, who, except in the department of jurisprudence (of which
indeed rumour says that he was a master), never let his mind take in
aught that was new. The rudiments of mathematics were all that he
possessed, and he gathered no fresh knowledge from the store-houses
of Greek learning. This disposition in him was probably produced by
the vast multitude of subjects to be mastered, and by his infirmity of
purpose, rather than by any lack of natural parts, or by idleness or by
defect of judgment; vices to which he was in no way addicted. But I,
being firmly set upon the object of my wishes, for the reasons given
above, and because I perceived that my father had achieved only
moderate success--though he had encountered but few
hindrances--remained unconvinced by any of his exhortations."[27]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Bayle is unwilling to admit Cardan's illegitimate birth. In De
Consolatione, Opera, tom. i. p. 619 (Lyons, 1663), Cardan writes in
reference to the action of the Milanese College of Physicians:
"Medicorum collegium, suspitione obortâ, quòd (tam malè à patre
tractatus) spurius essem, repellebat." Bayle apparently had not read the
De Consolatione, as he quotes the sentence as the work of a modern
writer, and affirms that the word "suspitio" would not have been used
had the fact been notorious. But in the Dialogus de Morte, Opera, tom.

i. p. 676, Cardan declares that his father openly spoke of him as a
bastard.
[2] De Utilitate ex adversis Capienda (Franeker, 1648), p. 357.
[3] Matteo Visconti was born in 1250, and died in 1322. He was lord of
Novara Vercello Como and Monferrato, and was made Vicar Imperial
by Adolphus of Nassau. Though he was worsted in his conflict with
John XXII. he did much to lay the foundations of his family.
[4] De Vita Propria (Amsterdam, 1654), ch. i. p. 4.
[5] Cardan makes a statement in De Consolatione, Opera, tom. i. p. 605,
which indicates that her disposition was not a happy one. "Matrem
meam Claram Micheriam, juvenem vidi, cum admodum puer essem,
meminique hanc dicere solitam, Utinam si Deo placuisset, extincta
forem in infantia."
[6] De Vita Propria, ch. i. p. 4.
[7] Geniturarum Exempla (Basil, 1554), p. 436.
[8] De Rerum Varietate (Basil, 1557), p. 655.
[9] De Utilitate, p. 347. There is a passage in Geniturarum Exempla, p.
435, dealing with Fazio's horoscope, which may be taken to mean that
these children were his. "Alios habuisse filios qui obierint ipsa genitura
dem[o=]strat, me solo diu post eti[a=] illius mort[e=] superstite."
[10] With regard to the union of his parents he writes: "Uxorem vix
duxit ob Lunam afflictam et eam in senectute."--Geniturarum Exempla,
p. 435.
[11] "Igitur ut ab initio exordiar, in pestilentia conceptus, matrem,
nondum natus (ut puto) mearum calamitatum participem, profugam
habui."--Opera, tom. i. p. 618.
"Mater ut abortiret medicamentum abortivum dum in utero essem,
alieno mandato bibit."--De Utilitate, p. 347.

[12] De Vita Propria, ch. ii. p. 6.
[13] In one passage, De Utilitate, p. 348, he sums up his physical
misfortunes: "Hydrope, febribus, aliisque morbis conflictatus sum,
donec sub fine octavi anni ex dysenteria ac febre usque ad mortis
limina perveni, pulsavi ostium sed non aperuere qui intro erant."
[14] "Inde lac praegnantis hausi per varias nutrices lactatus ac
jactatus."--De Utilitate, p. 348.
[15] The De Vita Propria, the chief authority for these remarks, was
written by Cardan in Rome shortly before his death.
[16] The illness would have occurred about October 1508, and the
victory of the Adda was on May 14,