  As already said, Cardano’s moral philosophy rests on a series of interrelated principles which also play a key foundational role in natural philosophy: that the soul is immortal; that incorporeal lives are everlasting; and that mental awareness is the defining characteristic of the soul. Since the intellect is the only thing that humans can boast about themselves as being truly immortal, intellectual self-knowledge is regarded by Cardano as the highest good that a human being may ever attain. Inevitably, this assumption re-proposes the Averroist conundrum about whether the mind belongs to humankind as a whole or it informs the life and knowledge of each individual human being. Cardano seems to suggest that the mind transcends individual human beings ([mens] superior est homini), for happiness coincides with eternal life: “he who does not live long cannot be happy for long” (De utilitate, OO, II, 23ab; on Averroism in Cardano, see García Valverde 2013). There cannot be happiness in human life if there is no afterlife for the soul. On this point, Cardano follows St Paul’s argument in his Letter to the Romans (8: 20–22):