region remote from the genitals,
_i.e._ to the brain, and for this reason such men as a rule beget children
weak and unlike themselves. Diet has a valid effect on character, as the
Germans, who subsist chiefly on the milk of wild cows, are fierce and bold
and brutal. Again, the Corsicans, who eat young dogs, wild as well as
domestic, are notably fierce, cruel, treacherous, fearless, nimble, and
strong, following thus the nature of dogs. He argues at length to show
that man is neither an animal nor a plant, but something between the two.
A man is no more an animal than an animal is a plant. The animal has the
_anima sensitiva_ which the plant lacks, and man transcends the animal
through the gift of the _anima intellectiva_, which, as Aristotle
testifies, differs from the _sensitiva_. Some maintain that man and the
animals must be alike in nature and spirit, because it is possible for man
to catch certain diseases from animals. But animals take certain
properties from plants, and no one thinks of calling an animal a plant.
Man's nature is threefold: the Divine, which neither deceives nor is
deceived; the Human, which deceives, but is not deceived; the Brutish,
which does not deceive, but is deceived. Dissertations on the various
sciences, the senses, the soul and intellect, things marvellous, demons
and angels, occupy the rest of the chapters of the _De Subtilitate_.

At the end of the last book of _De Varietate_, Cardan gives a table
showing the books of the two works arranged in parallel columns so as to
exhibit the relation they bear to each other. A comparison of the
treatment accorded to any particular branch of Natural Philosophy in the
_De Subtilitate_ with that given in the _De Varietate_, will show that in
the last-named work Cardan used his most discursive and anecdotic method.
Mechanics are chiefly dealt with in the _De Subtilitate_, and all through
this treatise he set himself to observe in a certain degree the laws of
proportion, and kept more or less to the point with which he was dealing,
a system of treatment which left him with a vast heap of materials on his
hands, even after he had built up the heavy tome of the _De Subtilitate_.
Perhaps when he began his work upon the fresh volume he found this _ingens
acervus_ too intractable and heterogeneous to be susceptible of
symmetrical arrangement, and was forced to let it remain in confusion. Few
men would sit down with a light heart to frame a well-ordered tre