d any of Cardan's books, and
describes him as "Homo nullius religionis ac fidei, et inter clancularios
atheos secundi ordinis aevo suo facile princeps." Of all Cardan's books the
_De Immortalitate Animorum_ is the one in which materials for a charge of
impiety might most easily be found. It was put together at a time when he
had had very little practice in the Greek tongue, and it is possible that
many of his conclusions may be drawn from premises only imperfectly
apprehended. Scaliger in his Exercitations seizes upon one passage[280]
which, according to his rendering, implied that Cardan reckoned the
intelligence of men and beasts to be the same in essence, the variety of
operation being produced by the fact that the apprehensive faculty was
inherent in the one, and only operative upon the other from without. But
all through this book it is very difficult to determine whether the
propositions advanced are Cardan's own, or those of the Greek and Arabian
writers he quotes so freely: and this charge of Scaliger, which is the
best supported of all, goes very little way to convict him of impiety. In
the _De Vita Propria_ there are several passages[281] which suggest a
belief akin to that of the Anima Mundi; he had without doubt made up his
mind that this work should not see the light till he was beyond the reach
of Pope or Council. The origin of this charge of impiety may be referred
with the best show of probability to his attempt to cast the horoscope of
Jesus Christ.[282] This, together with a diagram, is given in the
Commentaries on Ptolemy, and soon after it appeared it was made the
occasion of a fierce attack by Julius Caesar Scaliger, who declared that
such a scheme must be flat blasphemy, inasmuch as the author proved that
all the actions of Christ necessarily followed the position of the stars
at the time of His nativity. If Scaliger had taken the trouble to glance
at the Commentary he would have discovered that Cardan especially guarded
himself against any accusation of this sort, by setting down that no one
was to believe he had any intention of asserting that Christ's divinity,
or His miracles, or His holy life, or the promulgation of His laws were in
any way influenced by the stars.[283] Naude, in recording the censures of
De Thou, "Verum extremae amentiae fuit, imo impiae audaciae, astrorum
commentitiis legibus verum astrorum dominum velle subjicere. Quod ille
tamen exarata Servatoris nostri genitura fecit," and