sharpened by intercourse with the _elite_ of the learned world, and his
hand nerved by the magnetic stimulant of success, he sat down to write as
the philosopher and man of the world, rather than as the man of science.
He was, in spite of his prosperity, inclined to deal with the more sombre
side of life. He seems to have been specially drawn to write of death,
disease, and of the peculiar physical misfortune which befell him in early
manhood. Like Cicero he goes on to treat of Old Age, but in a spirit so
widely different that a brief comparison of the conclusions of the two
philosophers will not be without interest. Old age, Cardan declares to be
the most cruel and irreparable evil with which man is cursed, and to talk
of old age is to talk of the crowning misfortune of humanity. Old men are
made wretched by avarice, by dejection, and by terror. He bids men not to
be deceived by the flowery words of Cicero,[293] when he describes Cato as
an old man, like to a fair statue of Polycleitus, with faculties
unimpaired and memory fresh and green. He next goes on to catalogue the
numerous vices and deformities of old age, and instances from Aristotle
what he considers to be the worst of all its misfortunes, to wit that an
old man is well-nigh cut off from hope; and by way of comment grimly adds,
"If any man be plagued by the ills of old age he should blame no one but
himself, for it is by his own choice that his life has run on so long." He
vouchsafes a few words of counsel as to how this hateful season may be
robbed of some of its horror. Our bodies grow old first, then our senses,
then our minds. Therefore let us store our treasures in that part of us
which will hold out longest, as men in a beleaguered city are wont to
collect their resources in the citadel, which, albeit it must in the end
be taken, will nevertheless be the last to fall into the foeman's hands.
Old men should avoid society, seeing that they can bring nothing thereto
worth having: whether they speak or keep silent they are in the way, and
they are as irksome to themselves when they are silent, as they are to
others when they speak. The old man should take a lesson from the lower
animals, which are wont to defend themselves with the best arms given them
by nature: bulls with their horns, horses with their hoofs, and cats with
their claws; wherefore an old man should at least show himself to be as
wise as the brutes and maintain his position by his wisdom and kno