Subsection 4 Symptoms arising from education, custom, duration, our circumstances, mingled with other diseases, occurring in fits, from inclination, and so on

Another major cause of the variety of these symptoms lies in custom, training, education and differing inclinations. This humour will impress upon melancholic people the objects most closely corresponding to their condition in life and ordinary activities, and shape their dispositions according to their various studies and occupations.

If an ambitious man becomes melancholic, he immediately thinks he is a king, an emperor, a monarch, and walks alone, pleasing himself with an empty hope of future advancement—or advancement already achieved, as he supposes. At the same time he plays the lord, assumes the role of some statesman or grandee, makes bows, receives visitors and looks important. Francisco Sansovino records a melancholic man in Cremona who could not be persuaded that he was anything but the pope: he granted pardons, made cardinals, and so on. Christophorus à Vega mentions another man he knew who thought he was a king driven from his kingdom and was very anxious to recover his position.

A covetous person is always occupied with buying lands and properties, scheming in his mind how to acquire this or that manor, as if he were already its lord and able to carry the purchase through. Everything he sees is his, “in reality or in hope”: he has swallowed it up in anticipation, or in imagination counts it his own, like the man in Athenaeus who thought all the ships in the harbour belonged to him.

A lustful lover spends the whole day planning how to please his mistress, posing and strutting and conducting himself as though she were present, continually dreaming of her, as Pamphilus dreams of his Glycerium, or as some people do in their morning sleep. Marcellus Donatus knew such a gentlewoman in Mantua, called Elionora Meliorina, who firmly believed that she was married to a king. She would kneel and talk with him as though he were there with his companions; and if she happened to find a piece of glass on a dung heap or in the street, she would say that it was a jewel sent by her lord and husband.

If devout and religious, he is wholly taken up with fasting, prayer, ceremonies, alms, interpretations, visions, prophecies and revelations. He is inspired by the Holy Ghost, full of the spirit: at one moment he is saved, at another damned, or continually troubled in mind over his sins—the devil will certainly have him, and so on. More about these matters in the Third Partition, on love melancholy.

A scholar’s mind is occupied with his studies. He applauds himself for what he has done or hopes to do, at one moment fearing that he will fail in his next academic exercise, at another scorning all criticism; he envies one person and rivals another, or else wears himself out with unremitting labour and study. So it is with the rest: all vary according to the weaker or stronger impression made by the object of thought, or as the humour itself is intensified or diminished.

For some are so mildly melancholic that it can scarcely be detected in their behaviour or by anyone observing them, yet to them it is an intolerable burden, impossible to endure. “Some things are hidden, some evident”: some signs are plain and obvious to everyone at all times, some to only a few, or seldom, or barely perceived. If they keep their own counsel, no one will notice or suspect them.

They do not outwardly display their disordered imaginings, as Hercules de Saxonia observes, but keep them entirely to themselves, and are very wise people, as I have often seen. Some are afraid; some feel no fear at all, such as those who think themselves kings or dead. Some have more signs, some fewer; some severe, some less so. Some are troubled, fret, constantly fear, grieve, lament, suspect, laugh, sing, weep or rage, in fits—as I have said—or for longer, continuing periods. Some are deluded about one thing, are utterly childish and ridiculous in that respect and provoke astonishment, yet in everything else are very judicious and wise.

In some it is a disposition, in another an established habit; and, as writers describe degrees of heat and cold, we may say of this humour that one person is “melancholic to the eighth degree,” a second two degrees less, a third halfway. There are superparticular proportions of melancholy, one and a half and one and a third, and proportions exceeding unity by two thirds or two fifths, and so on. All those geometrical proportions are insufficient to express it.

For many it comes and goes in fits; for others it is continuous. Many, says Faventinus, are troubled only in spring and autumn, some once a year, like the Roman Galen mentions; one only at the conjunction of the Moon, or at certain unfavourable planetary aspects, at particular fixed hours and times, like the tides of the sea. Some women experience it only when pregnant, as Plater notes, and never otherwise. In others it is settled and fixed; in one person it is continually led astray and shifted about by that will-o’-the-wisp, imagination. Like arthritis or wandering gout, it is here and there and in every joint, always troubling one part or another; or, if the body is free, tormenting the mind in a myriad forms.

A second person has a most grievous fit perhaps once in his life, once in seven years or once in five, reaching the extremity of madness, death or mental derangement, brought on by some dreadful event or disturbance or terrifying sight. It lasts for a time, perhaps never experienced before and never afterwards. A third is affected by all such distressing things, adverse fortune, disaster and violent passions, but is otherwise free, troubled once in three or four years.

A fourth, if things are to his liking, or he is active, contented and in good company, is very cheerful and in good bodily condition. If idle or alone, he is utterly dejected or wholly carried away by pleasant dreams and fantasies; but once thwarted and displeased,

“He will conceive nothing but sorrow in his heart.”

His expression changes suddenly, his heart grows heavy, distressing thoughts torment his soul, and in an instant he is sunk in dejection or weary of life; he will kill himself. A fifth suffers in youth, a sixth in middle age, the last in old age.