He is a man who can do all and
dares do all, and who carries his measure in himself. Whether we like
him or not, he lives, such as he was, as a significant type of the
modern spirit.
Another man deserves a brief mention in connection with this subject--a
man who, like Benvenuto, was not a model of veracity: Girolamo Cardano
of Milan (b. 1500). His little book, 'De propria vita,' will outlive
and eclipse his fame in philosophy and natural science, just as
Benvenuto's Life, though its value is of another kind, has thrown his
works into the shade. Cardano is a physician who feels his own pulse,
and describes his own physical, moral, and intellectual nature,
together with all the conditions under which it had developed, and
this, to the best of his ability, honestly and sincerely. The work
which he avowedly took as his model--the 'Confessions' of Marcus
Aurelius--he was able, hampered as he was by no stoical maxims, to
surpass in this particular. He desires to spare neither himself nor
others, and begins the narrative of his career with the statement that
his mother tried, and failed, to procure abortion. It is worth remark
that he attributes to the stars which presided over his birth only the
events of his life and his intellectual gifts, but not his moral
qualities; he confesses (cap. 10) that the astrological prediction that
he would not live to the age of forty or fifty years did him much harm
in his youth.
Pages:
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390