The Anatomy of Melancholy

astounding structures such as the Egyptian pyramids, labyrinths, and sphinxes, which a company of crowned asses vainly built to display their wealth, though neither the architect nor the king responsible, nor their use or purpose, is yet known;

to dwell on their hypocrisy, fickleness, blindness, rashness, insane recklessness, fraud, cheating, malice, anger, shamelessness, ingratitude, ambition, gross superstition; an age corrupted and filthy with flattery, as in the time of Tiberius; such base flattery, astonishing, parasitical fawning and wheedling, brawls, conflicts, desires, and disputes: it would take an expert Vesalius to dissect every part.

Shall I say it? Jupiter himself, Apollo, Mars, and the rest were foolish; and Hercules, conqueror of monsters, who subdued the world and helped others, could not help himself in this: he too went mad in the end. Where can anyone walk, whom can he speak with, in what province or city, without meeting Mr Delirious, Hercules Raging, Maenads, and Corybants?

Their speech tells the same story: people born from mushrooms; or else they trace their ancestry to those whom Samson struck with an ass’s jawbone, or to the stones of Deucalion and Pyrrha. For we are a hard race, we are marble; we are stone-hearted and show too much of our parent stock;

as though they had all heard the enchanted horn of Astolfo, the English duke in Ariosto, whose every blast drove its hearers mad and left them ready to kill themselves from fear; or had landed at the mad harbour in the Black Sea, Mad Daphne, with its hidden power to derange the mind;

They are a company of scatterbrains and afternoon drunkards; it is always the midsummer moon, and the dog days last all year. They are all mad. Whom, then, shall I except? Ulrich von Hutten’s Nobody. For nobody is wise at every hour; nobody is born without faults; nobody is free of guilt; nobody lives content with his lot; nobody is wise in love; nobody is good; nobody is wise; nobody is happy in every respect; and so on.

So Nicholas Nobody, or Monsieur Nobody, shall go free. What Nobody can do, nobody can tell. Whom shall I except next? Those who keep silent: the person who says little is wise. There is no better way to avoid folly and madness than keeping quiet.

Whom third? All senators and magistrates; for all fortunate men are wise, and conquerors brave, and so are all great men. It is no good playing with gods. They are wise by authority, good by office and rank; they may be thoroughly wicked with impunity, some say. We must not speak about them; it would not be proper. As far as I am concerned, let everything be white from this moment: I will think no ill of them.