CARDINAL VIRTUES (Lat. cardo, a hinge; the fixed point on which anything turns), a phrase used for the principal virtues on which conduct in general depends. Socrates and Plato (see Republic, iv. 427) take these to be Prudence, Courage (or Fortitude), Temperance and Justice. It is noticeable that the virtue of Benevolence, which has played so important a part in Christian ethics and in modern altruistic and sociological theories, is omitted by the ancients. Further, against the Platonic list it may be urged (1) that it is arbitrary, and (2) that the several virtues are not specifically distinct, that the basis of the division is unsound, and that there is overlapping. It is said that St Ambrose was the first to adapt the Platonic classification to Christian theology. By the Roman Catholic Church these virtues are regarded as natural as opposed to the theological virtues, Faith, Hope and Charity. Some authors, combining the two lists, have spoken of the Seven Cardinal Virtues. In English literature the phrase is found as far back as the Cursor Mundi (1300) and the Ayenbite of Inwit (1340).
See B. Jowett, Republic of Plato (Eng. trans., Oxford, 1887, Introd. p. lxiii); Plato, Protagoras (329-330); Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, vi. 13. 6; Th. Ziegler, Gesch. d. chr. Eth. (2nd ed.); H. Sidgwick, History of Ethics (5th ed.), pp. 44, 133, 143; and Methods of Ethics, p. 375.
CARDING, the process of using the “card” (Lat. carduus, a thistle or teasel) for combing textile fibrous materials. The practice of carding is of such great antiquity that its origin cannot be traced. It consists in combing or brushing fibres until they are straight and placed in parallel lines; in doing this, imperfect fibres are separated from perfect ones, all impurities are removed, and the sound fibres are in condition for further treatment. The teasels once used have long given place to hand cards, and these in turn to what, in the rudest form, were known as “stock cards,” namely, two wire brushes, each 4 in. broad by 12 in. long, and having teeth bent at a uniform angle. One was nailed upon a bench with the teeth sloping from the operator, the other was similarly secured upon a two-handled bar with the teeth sloping towards the operator. The material to be treated was thinly spread upon the fixed card, and the movable one drawn by hand to and fro over it. When sufficiently carded, a rod furnished with parallel projecting needles, called a “needle stick,” was pushed amongst the card teeth to strip the fibres from the comb. The strip thus procured was rolled into a sliver and spun. James Hargreaves, the inventor of the spinning jenny, suspended the movable comb by passing two cords over pulleys fixed in the ceiling and attached balance weights to opposite ends of the cords. This enabled him to lengthen the cards, to apply two or three to the same stock and to manipulate the top one with less labour, as well as to produce more and better work. In May of 1748, Daniel Bourn, of Leominster, patented a machine in which four parallel rollers were covered with cards, and set close together. Fibres were fed to the first rotating roller, each in turn drew them from the preceding one, and a grid was employed to remove the carded material from the last roller. This introduced the principle of carding with revolving cylinders whose surfaces were clothed with cards working point to point. In December of the same year Lewis Paul, of Birmingham, the inventor of drawing rollers, patented two types of carding engines. In one, parallel rows of spaced cards were nailed upon a cylinder which was revolved by a winch handle. Beneath the cylinder a concave trough had a card fixed on the inside, so that as the fibres passed between the two series of teeth they were combed. This was the origin of “flat-carding,” namely, nailing strips of stationary cards upon transverse pieces of wood and adjusting the strips or flats by screws to the cylinder. In 1762, the father of Sir Robert Peel, with the assistance of Hargreaves, erected and used a cylinder carding engine which differed in some important particulars from Bourn’s invention. But although roller-carding and flat-carding are the only principles in use at the present time, to Sir Richard Arkwright belongs the merit of introducing an automatic carding engine, for between the years 1773 and 1775 he combined the various improvements of his predecessors, entirely remodelled the machine, and added parts which made the operation continuous. So successful were these cards that some of them were in use at the beginning of the present century. Notwithstanding the numerous and important changes that have been made since Arkwright’s time, carding remains essentially the same as established by him. (See Cotton-spinning Machinery.)
(T. W. F.)
CARDIOID, a curve so named by G. F. M. M. Castillon (1708–1791), on account of its heart-like form (Gr. καρδία, heart). It was mathematically treated by Louis Carré in 1705 and Koersma in 1741. It is a particular form of the limaçon (q.v.) and is generated in the same way. It may be regarded as an epicycloid in which the rolling and fixed circles are equal in diameter, as the inverse of a parabola for its focus, or as the caustic produced by the reflection at a spherical surface of rays emanating from a point on the circumference. The polar equation to the cardioid is r = a(1 + cos θ). There is symmetry about the initial line and a cusp at the origin. The area is 32πa2, i.e. 112 times the area of the generating circle; the length of the curve is 8a. (For a figure see Limaçon.)
CARDONA (perhaps the anc. Udura), a town of north-eastern Spain, in the province of Barcelona; about 55 m. N.W. of Barcelona, on a hill almost surrounded by the river Cardoner, a branch of the Llobregat. Pop. (1900) 3855. Cardona is a picturesque and old-fashioned town, with Moorish walls and citadel, and a 14th-century church. It is celebrated for the extensive deposit of rock salt in its vicinity. The salt forms a mountain mass about 300 ft. high and 3 m. in circumference, covered by a thick bed of a reddish-brown clay, and apparently resting on a yellowish-grey sandstone. It is generally more or less translucent, and large masses of it are quite transparent. The hill is worked like a mine; pieces cut from it are carved by artists in Cardona into images, crucifixes and many articles of an ornamental kind.
CARDOON, Cynara cardunculus (natural order Compositae), a perennial plant from the south of Europe and Barbary, a near relation of the artichoke. The edible part, called the chard, is composed of the blanched and crisp stalks of the inner leaves. Cardoons are found to prosper on light deep soils. The seed is sown annually about the middle of May, in shallow trenches, like those for celery, and the plants are thinned out to 10 or 12 in. from each other in the lines. In Scotland it is preferable to sow the seed singly in small plots, placing them in a mild temperature, and transplanting them into the trenches after they have attained a height of 8 or 10 in. Water must be copiously supplied in dry weather, both to prevent the formation of flower-stalks and to increase the succulence of the leaves. In autumn the leaf-stalks are applied close to each other, and wrapped round with bands of hay or straw, only the points being left free. Earth is then drawn up around them to the height of 15 or 18 in. Sometimes cardoons are blanched by a more thorough earthing up, in the manner of celery, but in this case the operation must be carried on from the end of summer. During severe frost the tops of the leaves should be defended with straw or litter. Besides the common and Spanish cardoons, there are the prickly-leaved Tours cardoon, the red-stemmed cardoon and the Paris cardoon, all of superior quality, the Paris being the largest and most tender. The common artichoke is also used for the production of chard.
CARDS, PLAYING. As is the case with all very ancient pastimes, the origin of playing-cards is obscure, many nations having been credited with the invention, but the generally accepted view is that they come from Asia. In the Chinese dictionary, Ching-tsze-tung (1678), it is said that cards were invented in the reign of Sèun-ho, 1120 A.D., for the amusement of his concubines. There is a tradition that cards have existed in India from time immemorial—very ancient ones, round in form, are preserved in museums—and that they were invented by the Brahmans. Their invention has also been assigned to the Egyptians, with whom they were said to have had a religious meaning, and to the Arabs. A very ingenious theory, founded on numerous singular resemblances to the ancient game of chess
