  Cardano’s reflections on mental happiness, assimilation to God, and universal intelligibility should be read against the background of contemporary discussions about the Averroist notion of intellectual beatitude. There is no doubt that, when Cardano characterizes the highest good as the union of the soul with God, his definition is full of Aristotelian and Averroistic resonances. The summum bonum, he argues in De utilitate ex adversis capienda, is “to be assimilated to the highest good,” i.e., God. Unlike other kinds of love, love of God is “honest” and “safe,” for its object never deserts the seeking soul (De utilitate, OO, II, 6, 25a. 500a; De sapientia, OO, I, 500–501; ed.  Bracali, 30–36). Elsewhere, Cardano’s definition of summum bonum is suppler and implies such components as wisdom (sapientia), virtue (especially fortitude and prudence), and progeny: wisdom is distinctively human; expressions of fortitude and prudence can also be seen in several animals; to have children, finally, is a prerogative that belongs to almost all living beings. It is a sort of pyramidal model of virtue, with fertility at the basis and wisdom at the top (only very few people can reach wisdom) (De utilitate, OO, II, 25b; Theonoston, OO, II, 302b; on Cardano’s views on virtue, see Ingegno 1980, 318–76). 