Member 3 Subsection 1 Passions and disturbances of the mind and how they cause melancholy

Just as the gymnosophist in Plutarch answered Alexander, when asked which had spoken best, that each of his companions had spoken better than the next, so I may say of these causes, to anyone who asks which is greatest: each is more grievous than the next, and this one, passion, is the greatest of all.

A most frequent and common cause of melancholy is this “thunderbolt of the passions,” as Piccolomini calls it: this thunder and lightning of emotional disturbance, which causes such violent and rapid changes in our little world, the human being, and often overthrows its healthy condition and balance. For just as the body acts upon the mind through its bad humours, troubling the spirits and sending thick vapours into the brain, and so, as a consequence, disturbing the soul and all its faculties—

A body burdened with yesterday’s excesses Weighs down the mind along with it—

with fear, sorrow and so on, the usual symptoms of this disease, so, on the other hand, the mind acts most powerfully upon the body. Through its passions and disturbances it produces extraordinary changes: melancholy, despair, cruel diseases and sometimes death itself.

So much so that what Plato says in his Charmides is entirely true: “All the body’s evils proceed from the soul”; all bodily misfortunes come from the soul. And Democritus argues in Plutarch that “the soul would be condemned at the body’s suit”: if the body brought a legal action against the soul on this account, the soul would surely lose its case and be convicted of causing such harm through its gross negligence.

For the soul has authority over the body and uses it as an instrument, as a smith uses his hammer, says Cyprian, laying all those faults and illnesses at the mind’s door. So does Philostratus: “The body is not defiled without the soul’s consent”; the body is corrupted only by the soul. Luis Vives holds that such turbulent upheavals proceed from ignorance and lack of judgement. All philosophers blame the body’s miseries on the soul, which should have governed it better under reason’s command and has failed to do so.

The Stoics are entirely of the opinion, as Lipsius and Piccolomini record, that a wise person should be “unaffected,” free of every kind of passion and emotional disturbance. So Seneca reports of Cato, the Greeks of Socrates, and Johannes Boemus of a people in Africa, so free from passion—or rather, so insensible—that if wounded by a sword they merely look round.

Lactantius, in book 2 of the Institutes, would exclude fear from a wise person; others exclude all passions, some only the greatest. But let them dispute as they please, lay down their theses and give instructions to the contrary: common experience proves Lemnius right—no mortal is free from these disturbances. If anyone is, surely he is either a god or a block of wood.

They are born and bred with us; we inherit them from our parents. “We receive this bad penny from our parents,” says Pelezius; “it is born and reared along with us.” It descends from Adam. Cain was melancholy, as Augustine says—and who is not?

Good discipline, education, philosophy and theology may, I cannot deny, soften and restrain these passions in a few people at certain times. But for the most part they rule, and with such violence that, like a torrent—“like a flood when its embankment breaks”—which sweeps away everything before it and overflows its banks, “lays fields flat, lays crops flat,” they overwhelm reason and judgement and corrupt the body’s balance. “The driver is swept along by his horses, and the chariot does not heed the reins.”

Now someone led in this way, says Augustine, appears to a wise person no better than a man standing on his head. Some debate “whether more serious diseases arise from the passions or from the humours”—whether humours or emotional disturbances cause the graver illnesses. But we find our Saviour’s words in Matthew 26:41 entirely true: “The spirit is willing, the flesh is weak”; we cannot resist.

And so with these words of Philo the Jew: emotional disturbances often harm the body and are very frequent causes of melancholy, wrenching it from the hinges of its health. Vives compares them to winds upon the sea: some, like great gusts, merely rock the ship, while other, tempestuous winds overturn it altogether.

Those that are slight, mild and infrequent seem to us to do little harm, and we therefore disregard them. Yet if they recur, these disturbances penetrate the mind as rain penetrates a stone, says Augustine. And, as one writer observes, they eventually produce an established disposition to melancholy; once they have gained mastery over our souls, they may rightly be called diseases.

How these passions produce this effect has been treated at length by Agrippa in Occult Philosophy, book 1, chapter 63; Cardan, On Subtlety, book 14; Lemnius, On the Hidden Wonders of Nature, book 1, chapter 12, and book 1, chapter 16; Suárez, Metaphysical Disputations, disputation 18, section 1, article 25; Timothy Bright, chapter 12 of his Treatise of Melancholy; Wright the Jesuit, in his book The Passions of the Mind; and others.

Briefly, it happens like this. Through the external senses or memory, some object to be understood reaches our imagination, which resides in the front part of the brain. Misconceiving or magnifying it, the imagination immediately communicates it to the heart, the seat of all emotions. The pure spirits at once flock from the brain to the heart through certain hidden channels and report what good or bad object has been presented. The heart immediately sets itself to pursue or avoid that object, drawing other humours along to assist it. Thus in pleasure, a great quantity of purer spirits gathers; in sadness, much melancholy blood; in anger, choler.

If the imagination is highly receptive, intent and violent, it sends a great quantity of spirits to or from the heart, making a deeper impression and a greater disturbance. As the bodily humours are correspondingly prepared, and the constitution itself is ill or well disposed, the passions last longer and grow stronger. The first beginning and source of all our troubles of this kind is therefore “impaired imagination,” which misinforms the heart and causes all these disorders, this alteration and confusion of spirits and humours.

With these so disturbed, digestion is hindered and the principal organs greatly weakened, as Dr Navarra explained well when Montanus consulted him about a Jewish man suffering from melancholy. With the spirits so disordered, nourishment must necessarily diminish, bad humours increase, and undigested matter and thick spirits be generated together with melancholy blood. The other parts, deprived of their spirits by violent passion, cannot perform their functions: sensation and movement fail. Thus we look at something without seeing it, or hear without noticing, although it would otherwise affect us deeply if we were free from that passion.

I may therefore conclude with Arnoldus: “The power of imagination is very great, and almost the whole cause of melancholy should be ascribed to this alone, rather than to an imbalance of the body.” Great is the force of imagination, and the cause of melancholy should be attributed far more to this alone than to bodily disorder.

Since imagination has so great a part in producing this illness and is so powerful in itself, it will suit my discourse to make a brief digression on its force and the way it causes this alteration. Although some dislike this kind of digression as frivolous and irrelevant, I share Beroaldus’s opinion: such digressions greatly delight and refresh a weary reader; they are like sauce to a poor appetite, and I therefore use them most willingly.