extraordinary evidence of their perswasion,
viz.: That it is absurd and impossible that there should be a Witch or
Apparition."[276] Cardan's argument in the case of the sick woman, that it
would be difficult if not impossible to invent cause for her cure, other
than the power of imagination or Demoniac agency, if less emphatic and
lengthy than Glanvil's, certainly runs upon parallel lines therewith, and
suggests, if it does not proclaim, the existence of such a thing as the
credulity of unbelief; in other words that those who were disposed to
brush aside the alternative causes of the cure as set down by him, and
search for others, and put faith in them, would be fully as credulous as
those who held the belief which he recorded as his own.

FOOTNOTES:

[248] _De Varietate_, p. 314.

[249] _De Vita Propria_, ch. xxxvii. p. 115.

[250] "Musicam, sed hanc anno post VI. scilicet MDLXXIV. correxi et
transcribi curavi."--_De Vita Propria_, ch. xlv. p. 176.

[251] This is on p. 164.

[252] Page 266.

[253] _Judicium de Cardano_.

[254] Page 57.

[255] "Ita nostra aetate, lapsi sunt clarissimi alioqui viri in hoc genere.
Budaeus adversus Erasmum, Fuchsius adversus Cornarium, Silvius adversus
Vesalium, Nizolius adversus Maioragium: non tam credo justis contentionum
causis, quam vanitate quadam et spe augendae opinionis in
hominibus."--_Opera_, tom. i. p. 135.

[256] He writes in this strain in _De Vita Propria_, ch. xiv. p. 49, in
_De Varietate Rerum_, p. 626, and in _Geniturarum Exempla_, p. 431.

[257] On the subject of dissimulation Cardan writes: "Assuevi vultum in
contrarium semper efformare; ideo simulare possum, dissimulare
nescio."--_De Vita Propria_, ch. xiii. p. 42. Again in _Libellus
Praeceptorum ad filios_ (_Opera_, tom. i. p. 481), "Nolite unquam mentiri,
sed circumvenire [circumvenite?]."

[258] _Discoverie of Witchcraft_, ch. xi.

[259] Donato Lanza, the druggist, who had been his first introducer to
Sfondrato, was equally perverse. After Cardan had cured him of phthisis,
he jumped out of a window to avoid arrest, and fell into a fish-pond, and
died of the cold he took.--_Opera_, tom. i. p. 83.

[260] _Opera_, tom. i. p. 136.

[261] _De Vita Propria_, ch. x. p. 32.

[262] The Materia Medica of Mesua, dating from the eleventh century, was
used by the London College of Physicians in framing their Pharmacopoeia in
1618.

[263] In 1443 a copy of Celsus was found at Milan; Paulus AEgineta was
dis