e priests have tended more diligentlie
upon the execution of them; bicause more wealth is to be caught from them;
insomuch as now they deale so looselie with witches (through distrust of
gaines) that all is seene to be malice, follie, or avarice that hath beene
practised against them. And whosoever shall search into this cause, or
read the cheefe writers hereupon, shall find his words true."

In 1554 Cardan published also with Petrus of Basel the _Ptolemaei de
astrorum judiciis_ with the _Geniturarum Exempla_, bound in one volume,
but he seems to have written nothing but a book of fables for the young,
concerning which he subsequently remarks that, in his opinion, grown men
might read the same with advantage. It is a matter of regret that this
work should have disappeared, for it would have been interesting to note
how far Cardan's intellect, acute and many-sided as it was, was capable of
dealing with the literature of allegory and imagination. He has set down
one fact concerning it, to wit that it contained "multa de futuris
arcana." The next year he produced only a few medical trifles, but in 1557
he brought out two other scientific works which he characterizes as
admirable--one the _Ars parva curandi_, and the other a treatise _De
Urinis_. In the same year he published the book which, in forming a
judgment of him as a man and a writer, is perhaps as valuable as the _De
Vita Propria_ and the _De Utilitate_, to wit the _De Libriis Propriis_.
This work exists in three forms: the first, a short treatise, "cui titulus
est ephemerus," is dedicated to "Hieronymum Cardanum medicum, affinem
suum," and has the date of 1543. The second has the date of 1554, and,
according to Naude, was first published "apud Gulielmum Rovillium sub
scuto Veneto, Lugduni, 1557." The third was begun in 1560,[174] and
contains comments written in subsequent years. The first is of slight
interest, the second is a sort of register of his works, amplified from
year to year, while the third has more the form of a treatise, and
presents with some degree of symmetry the crude materials contained in the
first. Having finished with his writings up to the year 1564, Cardan
lapses into a philosophizing strain, and opens his discourse with the
ominous words, "Sed jam ad institutum revertamur, deque ipso vitae humanae
genere aliquo dicamus." He begins with a disquisition on the worthlessness
of life, and repeats somewhat tediously the story of his visit to
Scot