The Anatomy of Melancholy

I am moved to do this by its widespread presence and by a desire to do good. It is a disease so frequent in our own days, as Mercurialis observes, so often occurring in our miserable times, as Laurentius says, that few escape its pain. Aelian Montalto, Melanchthon, and others are of the same opinion;

Giulio Cesare Claudini calls it the source of all other diseases, so common in this disordered age of ours that scarcely one person in a thousand is free of it—especially that splenic, hypochondriacal wind which arises from the spleen and the region beneath the lower ribs.

Since it is so grievous and so common a disease, I know no way to serve people more widely or spend my time better than by setting out ways to prevent and cure so universal a malady, so widespread a disease, which so often and so severely torments body and mind.

If I have gone too far in what I have said so far, or if it is—as some, I am sure, will object—too fanciful, too light and comic for a clergyman, too satirical for someone of my profession, I shall venture to answer as Erasmus did in a similar case: it is not I, but Democritus. Democritus said it.

You must consider the difference between speaking in one’s own person and speaking in another’s, wearing an assumed costume and name; between someone who puts on or acts the part of a prince, philosopher, magistrate, or fool, and someone who really is one. Remember, too, the freedom the ancient satirists enjoyed. This is a patchwork collected from other writers: they say it, not I.

If I happen to say something rather too playful, You will pardon me and allow me that liberty. Take care not to misunderstand me. If I forget myself a little, I hope you will forgive it. And, to tell the truth, why should anyone be offended or object?

It has been allowed, and always will be, To spare the people and speak of their vices. It was allowed of old, and still will be, To speak of vice, but leave the person free: I hate their vices, not the people themselves.

If anyone is displeased or takes anything personally, let him not argue or find fault with the person who said it. Erasmus defended himself this way to Dorpius—if small things may be compared with great—and so do I. Let the offended man be angry with himself, for betraying and exposing his own faults by applying the words to himself;

if he is guilty and deserves it, let him reform, whoever he is, instead of growing angry. Whoever hates correction is a fool: Proverbs 12:1. If he is innocent, it does not concern him. It is not my freedom of speech that makes him flinch, but his guilty conscience, a sore on his own back.

If anyone, misled by his own suspicion, Takes personally what applies to everyone, He foolishly lays bare his guilty conscience. I do not deny that what I have said has something of Democritus about it. Yet what prevents a laughing man from speaking the truth? One may speak in jest and still speak truth.