  The characteristic oscillation between intellectual good and prosperous life is particularly evident in De utilitate ex adversis capienda. This work is meant to provide directions on how to overcome difficult situations and lead a reasonably serene life relying only on the material conditions of one’s existence and on the information that one can get from sensible experience. Contrary to the approach followed in Theonoston, in De utilitate Cardano focuses on the kind of happiness that one can reach in this life, advancing the hypothesis – to be understood in an experimental sense – that there is no survival of the soul (etiam sublata immortalitate) (De utilitate, II, 5). In this case, the moral actor is confronted not so much with the goods attainable by the mind as with the ills that the mind needs to transform into opportunities for inner exercise or practical gain. Cardano divides ills (mala) into external and internal. They both can be measured according to the impact they have on our lives (magnitudo) and the level of constraint they impose on our actions (necessitas). External ills depend on the variable arrangement of external events (fortunae arbitrium) and on the shifting states of the body. Although, properly speaking, the body is “no part of ourselves,” nevertheless, it communicates with our mind. Internal ills are all those passions that can be hardly eradicated from our soul, such as madness, anger, fear, and envy. Since they are located within the soul (animus), it is exceedingly difficult to turn them into something useful and productive unless we undergo a radical transformation of our self (De utilitate, OO, II, 11b–12a, 13b).