chapter xlvii

. of the _De Vita Propria_, which must have been written shortly before his death, that he lets the reader see most plainly how strong was the hold which this belief in a guardian spirit of his own had taken upon him. "It is an admitted truth," he writes, "that attendant spirits have protected certain men, to wit, Socrates, Plotinus, Synesius, Dion, Flavius Josephus, and myself. All of these have enjoyed prosperous lives except Socrates and me, and I, as I have said before, was at one time offered many and favourable opportunities for the achievement of happiness. But C. Cæsar the dictator, Cicero, Antony, Brutus, and Cassius were also attended by mighty spirits, albeit malignant. For a long time I have been persuaded that I too had one, but by what method it gave me intelligence as to events about to happen, I could not exactly ascertain until I reached the seventy-fourth year of my age, the season when I began to write this record of my life. I now perceive that when I was in Milan in 1557, when my genius perceived what was hanging over me--how that my son on that same evening had promised to marry Brandonia Seroni, and that he would complete the nuptials the following day--it produced in me that palpitation of the heart of which I have already made mention, a weakness known to my genius alone, a manifestation which served to simulate a trembling of the bed."

Cardan writes at length to show that the mysterious knocking which he and Rodolfo Sylvestro had heard during his imprisonment at Bologna, the peasant who entered his bed-chamber saying "_Te sin casa_," and divers other manifestations, going back as far as 1531--croaking of ravens, barking of dogs, and the ignition of fire-wood--must all have been brought about by the working of this powerful spirit. In 1570 there happened to him one of his everyday experiences of the presence of supernatural powers. In the middle of the night he was conscious of some presence walking about the room. It sat down beside him, and at the same time a loud noise arose from a chest which stood near. This phenomenon, he admits, might well have been the figment of a brain overburdened with thought; but suddenly his memory flies back to an experience of his twentieth year, upon which he proceeds to build a story, wild and fanciful even for his powers of imagination. "What man was it," he asks, "who sold me that copy of Apuleius when I was in my twentieth year, and forthwith went away? I indeed, at that time, had made only one essay in the literary arena, and had no knowledge of the Latin tongue; but in spite of this, and because the book had a gilded cover, I was imprudent enough to buy it. The very next day I found myself just as well versed in Latin as I am now. Moreover, almost at the same time I acquired knowledge of Greek and Spanish and French, sufficient for reading books written in these languages."

Cardan was by this time completely possessed by the belief in his attendant genius, and the flash of memory which recalled the purchase of some book or other in his youth, suggested likewise the attribution of certain mystic powers to this guardian genius, and conjured up some fanciful explanation as to the way these powers had been exercised upon himself; he, the person most closely concerned, being entirely unconscious of their operation at the time when they first affected him. This recorded belief in a gift of tongues is one of the most convincing bits of evidence to be gleaned from Cardan's writings of the insanity which undoubtedly afflicted him, at least periodically, at this crisis of his life.

FOOTNOTES:

[221] He mentions this matter briefly in the _De Vita Propria_: "Bis arsisset lectus, prædixi me non permansurum Bononiæ, et prima vice restiti, secunda non potui."--ch. xli. p. 151. A fuller account of it is in _Opera_, tom. x. p. 464.

[222] _Opera_, tom. x. p. 464.

[223] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xxx. p. 80. He seems to have had many untoward experiences in driving. He tells of another mishap (_Opera_, tom. i. p. 472) in June 1570; how a fellow, some tipstaff of the courts, jumped into his carriage and frightened the mares Cardan was driving, jeering at them likewise because they were rather bare of flesh.

[224] "Demum sub conductionis fine, voces sparserunt, et maxime apud Moronum Cardinalem, me exiguo auditorio profiteri, quod quanquam non omnino verum esset, quinimo ab initio Academiæ multos, et usque ad dies jejunii haberem auditores."--_De Vita Propria_, ch. xvii. p. 56.

[225] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xvii. p. 57.

[226] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xliii. p. 163.

[227] "Alii multis diebus abstinent cibo, alii igne uruntur, ac ferro secantur, nullum doloris vestigium preferentes; multi sunt vocem e pectore mittentes, qui olim engastrimuthi dicebantur; hoc autem maxime eis contingit cum orgia quædam exercent, atque circumferuntur in orbem. Quæ tria ut verissima sunt et naturali ratione mira tamen constant, cujus superius mentionem fecimus, ita illud confictum nasci pueros e mulieribus absque concubitu."--_De Subtilitate_, p. 353.

[228] Ranke, _History of the Popes_, vol. i. p. 246.

[229] Mr. Stephen Paget in his life of Ambroise Paré, the great contemporary French surgeon, gives an interesting account of Paré's beliefs on the divine cause of the plague, p. 269.

[230] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xxii. p. 63.

[231] "Multa de dæmonibus narrabat, quæ quam vera essent nescio."--_De Utilitate_, p. 348.

[232] _De Varietate_, p. 351.

[233] _Ibid.,_ p. 658.

[234] In his counsel to his children, he writes: "Do not believe that you hear demons speak to you, or that you behold the dead. Seek not to learn the truth of these things, for they are amongst the things which are hidden from us."

[235] Cardan alludes to Niger in _De Varietate_, p. 641: "Referebat aliquando Josephus Niger harum rerum maximé peritus, dæmonem pueris se sub forma Christi ostendisse, petiisseque ut adoraretur."

[236] _De Subtilitate_, p. 530.

[237] "Nolim ego ad trutinam hæc sectari, velut Porphyrius, Psellus, Plotinus, Proclus, Jamblicus, qui copiose de his quæ non videre, velut historiam natæ rei scripserunt."--_De Subtilitate_, p. 540.

[238] _Opera_, tom. i. 672.

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