wledge,
seeing that all the grace and power of his manhood must needs have
fled.[294]

In another of his moral treatises he has formulated a long indictment
against old age, that hateful state with its savourless joys and sleepless
nights. Did not Zeno the philosopher strangle himself when he found that
time refused to do its work. The happiest are those who earliest lay down
the burden of existence, and the Law itself causes these offenders who are
least guilty to die first, letting the more nefarious and hardened
criminals stand by and witness the death of their fellows. There can be no
evil worse than the daily expectation of the blow that is inevitable, and
old age, when it comes, must make every man regret that he did not die in
infancy. "When I was a boy," he writes, "I remember one day to have heard
my mother, Chiara Micheria--herself a young woman--cry out that she wished
it had been God's will to let her die when she was a child. I asked her
why, and she answered: 'Because I know I must soon die, to the great peril
of my soul, and besides this, if we shall diligently weigh and examine all
our experiences of life, we shall not light upon a single one which will
not have brought us more sorrow than joy. For afflictions when they come
mar the recollection of our pleasures, and with just cause; for what is
there in life worthy the name of delight, the ever-present burden of
existence, the task of dressing and undressing every day, hunger, thirst,
evil dreams? What more profit and ease have we than the dead? We must
endure the heat of summer, the cold of winter, the confusion of the times,
the dread of war, the stern rule of parents, the anxious care of our
children, the weariness of domestic life, the ill carriage of servants,
lawsuits, and, what is worst of all, the state of the public mind which
holds probity as silliness; which practises deceit and calls it prudence.
Craftsmen are counted excellent, not by their skill in their art, but by
reason of their garish work and of the valueless approbation of the mob.
Wherefore one must needs either incur God's displeasure or live in misery,
despised and persecuted by men.'"[295] These words, though put into his
mother's mouth, are manifestly an expression of Cardan's own feelings.

Cardan was the product of an age to which there had recently been revealed
the august sources from which knowledge, as we understand the term, has
flowed without haste or rest since the unse