Diotimos Reading Desk

Tap the page, move to the top or bottom edge, swipe down, or press Tab to reveal reading controls. Use the arrow keys or swipe sideways to turn pages.

← ExitThe Anatomy of Melancholy

Reading language

Human Excellence, the Fall, Miseries and Infirmities; Their Causes.

Human excellence, the Fall, miseries and infirmities; their causes.

MAN, the most excellent and noble creature in the world, God’s chief and mighty work, the wonder of nature, as Zoroaster calls him; “the miracle of daring nature,” the marvel of marvels, as Plato says; the summary and epitome of the world, as Pliny says; a microcosm, a little world, a model of the world;

sovereign lord of the earth, viceroy of the world, sole commander and governor of all its creatures, each of which is subject to his rule and yields obedience; far surpassing all the rest, in soul as well as body; “the image of the Image,” created in God’s own image, in the likeness of that immortal, immaterial being, with all the faculties and powers belonging to it;

was at first pure, divine, perfect and happy, “created after God in true holiness and righteousness”; like God, free from every kind of infirmity, and placed in Paradise to know God, praise and glorify him, and do his will,

That, like the gods, he might bring forth gods.

as an old poet says: to increase the Church. But this most noble creature—“Alas, what a sad and tearful transformation!” someone exclaims; oh, pitiable change!—has fallen from what he was and forfeited his former condition. He has become a wretched little man, an outcast, a miserable wretch, one of the most unhappy creatures in the world, if considered in his own nature, without spiritual rebirth;

and his fall has so darkened him that, apart from a few surviving remnants, he is lower than a beast. “Man in honour who has no understanding is like the beasts that perish”: that is David’s estimate of him. By an astonishing transformation he has become a monster—a fox, a dog, a pig, what is he not? “How changed from what he was!” Once blessed and happy, now miserable and accursed, he must eat his food in sorrow, subject to death, every kind of infirmity and every sort of calamity.

“Great toil is ordained for all people, and a heavy yoke for the children of Adam, from the day they leave their mother’s womb until the day they return to the mother of all things: their thoughts, their hearts’ fears, their imaginings about what awaits them, and the day of death. From the man who sits on a glorious throne to the man who sits low in earth and ashes; from the man dressed in blue silk and wearing a crown to the man dressed in plain linen.”

“Anger, envy, trouble, unrest, fear of death, harshness and strife: such things come to both humans and beasts, but sevenfold to the ungodly.” All this befalls him in this life, and perhaps eternal misery in the life to come.

The impelling cause of these human miseries, this loss or destruction of God’s image, the cause of death and diseases, of all punishments in this world and the next, was the sin of our first parent Adam: eating the forbidden fruit at the devil’s instigation and enticement. His disobedience, pride, ambition, intemperance, unbelief and curiosity gave rise to original sin and the general corruption of humankind. From this, as from a spring, flowed all evil inclinations and actual transgressions, which bring upon us the various calamities inflicted for our sins.

And this, it seems, is what our poets of fable have represented figuratively in the story of Pandora’s box, which she opened out of curiosity, filling the world with every kind of disease. It is not curiosity alone, but our other sins that cry out for punishment, that draw these various plagues and miseries down upon our heads. For “where there is sin, there is a storm,” as Chrysostom aptly observes.

“Fools are afflicted for their transgressions and their wickedness.” “Fear comes like sudden devastation, and destruction like a whirlwind, with affliction and anguish,” because they did not fear God. “Are you shaken by wars?” as Cyprian forcefully asks Demetrius. “Are you troubled by scarcity and famine? Is your health shattered by raging diseases? Is humankind everywhere tormented by epidemics? It is all for your sins.” Haggai 1:9–10; Amos 1; Jeremiah 7.

God is angry, punishes and threatens because of their obstinacy and stubbornness: they will not turn to him. “If the earth is barren for lack of rain, if it lies dry and parched and produces no fruit, if your springs dry up, your wine, grain and oil are blighted, if the air is corrupted and people are afflicted with disease, it is because of their sins.” Like Abel’s blood, those sins cry aloud to heaven for vengeance. Lamentations 5:15: “We have sinned, and therefore our hearts are heavy.” Isaiah 59:11–12: “We roar like bears and mourn like doves, and lack deliverance,” and so on, “because of our sins and trespasses.”

But we cannot bear to hear or acknowledge this. Jeremiah 2:30: “We are struck in vain and accept no correction”; and chapter 5:3: “You have struck them, but they have not grieved; they have refused correction and have not returned.” He has sent pestilence, but they have not turned to him: Amos 4. Herod could not endure John the Baptist, nor could Domitian bear Apollonius telling him the causes of the plague at Ephesus: his injustice, incest, adultery and the like.

Thus, alongside our blindness and obstinacy, comes God’s just judgement, as a concurrent cause and chief agent, bringing these calamities upon us to punish us, I say, for our sins and to satisfy God’s wrath. For the law requires obedience or punishment, as you may read at length in Deuteronomy 28:15: “If they will not obey the Lord and keep his commandments and ordinances, then all these curses shall come upon them.”

“Cursed in the town and in the field,” and so on; “cursed in the fruit of the body,” and so on. “The Lord shall send you trouble and shame because of your wickedness.” A little later: “The Lord shall strike you with the boils of Egypt, with haemorrhoids, scabs and itching, and you shall not be healed”; “with madness, blindness and bewilderment of heart.” Paul confirms this in Romans 2:9: “Tribulation and anguish upon the soul of everyone who does evil.”

Or these chastisements are inflicted to humble us, to exercise and test our patience here in this life, to bring us home, to make us know God and ourselves, and to instruct us in wisdom. “Therefore my people have gone into captivity, because they had no knowledge; therefore the Lord’s wrath is kindled against his people, and he has stretched out his hand against them.”

1348.The First Partition opens with a theological account of disease before turning to its medical classification. “Man” here usually means humanity. Burton’s explanation of illness through the Fall and sin is retained as his argument. The printed brace makes “The First” apply to Section, Member and Subsection alike.

1352.Microcosm means a world in miniature: the human body and soul mirror the larger creation. Burton strings together traditional praises with compressed attributions. His exact sources for Zoroaster, Plato and Pliny in this opening sequence have not been independently established; the names are not silently reassigned.

1357.“Imaginis Imago” is literally “image of the image”; its precise theological referent is not specified here. “Created to” means created in the likeness of. The marginal notes distinguish the body’s likeness to the world from the soul’s likeness to God.

1360.Angus Gowland identifies this line with Ludovico Lazzarelli’s Crater Hermetis 27.1. Direct collation with that work remains pending. The verse is translated literally; Burton applies its language of divine offspring to the propagation of the Christian Church. The quotation ascribed to “Palanterius” remains unlocated.

1365.“Quantum mutatus ab illo” recalls Virgil, Aeneid 2.274, where the dead Hector is changed from his former appearance. “Stupend” means astonishing. The quotation about eating in sorrow belongs to Genesis 3:17, not the marginal 3:13. Burton’s Latin and its immediately repeated English gloss are combined here.

1367.Ecclesiasticus, also called Sirach, 40:1–5 and 8 supplies this passage; the margin prints chapter 4. “Travel” means travail or toil. The “mother of all things” is the earth. The modern text follows Burton’s wording, including blue silk, rather than substituting a different Bible translation.

1371.An “impulsive” cause is an impelling or originating cause, distinguished below from the instruments through which harm occurs. Burton distinguishes inherited original sin from “actual” sins, meaning acts committed by individuals. “Curiosity” here carries the sense of a presumptuous desire for forbidden knowledge.

1374.Burton reads the Pandora story as a pagan analogue of the Fall. The traditional “box” is retained. The marginal Latin has the awkward reading cadens; the particular Latin version of Hesiod and that reading still require collation. The verb decussit, “knocked off,” has been checked against the scan.

1378.Cyprian’s Address to Demetrianus, especially §§5–7, underlies this passage. Burton calls the addressee Demetrius and condenses Cyprian’s argument that pagan impiety, rather than Christian refusal to worship pagan gods, causes disasters. The translated text retains Burton’s name and wording.

1380.The Lamentations wording draws on 5:16–17, rather than the printed 5:15. In Isaiah 59:11, “health” means salvation or deliverance; Burton applies the passage within his discussion of bodily illness. Abel’s blood crying for vengeance recalls Genesis 4:10.

1383.Philostratus, Life of Apollonius 8.5, reports Domitian stopping an explanation of plague because he feared that his own offences would be named as causes. Burton’s marginal paraphrase makes that anticipated accusation sound as though it had been delivered.

1389.The Egyptian boils, haemorrhoids, scab and itch occur in Deuteronomy 28:27; Burton’s margin prints verse 17. “Astonishing of heart” means stupefaction or bewilderment. These are scriptural categories, retained without assigning modern diagnoses.

1392.The joined quotations are Isaiah 5:13 and 5:25. The margin gives 15 for the second verse. This alternative explanation of suffering—as correction or a trial of patience—qualifies the preceding emphasis on punishment.