atise out
of the _debris_ of a heap of note-books, and it would be unjust to
censure Cardan's literary performance because he failed in this task.
Probably no other man living in his day would have achieved a better
result. It is certain that he expended a vast amount of labour in
attempting to reduce his collected mass of facts even to the imperfect
form it wears in the _De Varietate Rerum_.[120]

Considering that this book covers to a great extent the same ground as its
predecessor, Cardan must be credited with considerable ingenuity of
treatment in presenting his supplementary work without an undue amount of
repetition. In the _De Varietate_ he always contrives to bring forward
some fresh fact or fancy to illustrate whatever section of the universe he
may have under treatment, even though this section may have been already
dealt with in the _De Subtilitate_. The characteristic most strongly
marked in the later book is the increased eagerness with which he plunges
into the investigation of certain forces, which he professes to appreciate
as lying beyond Nature, and incapable of scientific verification in the
modern sense, and the fabled manifestations of the same. He loses no
opportunity of trying to peer behind the curtain, and of seeking--honestly
enough--to formulate those various pseudo-sciences, politely called
occult, which have now fallen into ridicule and disrepute with all except
the charlatan and the dupe, who are always with us. Where he occupies in
the _De Subtilitate_ one page in considering those things which lie
outside Nature--demons, ghosts, incantations, succubi, incubi,
divinations, and such like--he spends ten in the _De Varietate_ over
kindred subjects. There is a wonderful story[121] told by his father of a
ghost or demon which he saw in his youth while he was a scholar in the
house of Giovanni Resta at Pavia. He searches the pages of Hector
Boethius, Nicolaus Donis, Rugerus, Petrus Toletus, Leo Africanus, and
other chroniclers of the marvellous, for tales of witchcraft, prodigies,
and monstrous men and beasts, and devotes a whole chapter to
chiromancy,[122] a subject with which he had occupied his plenteous
leisure when he was waiting for patients at Sacco. The diagram of the
human hand given by him does not differ greatly from that of the
contemporary hand-books of the "Art," and the leading lines are just the
same. The heavenly bodies are as potent here as in Horoscopy. The thumb is
given to M