The Anatomy of Melancholy

Praxinoe and Gorgo, in the poet, once they had got in to see those splendid spectacles, cried “All is well” and wanted to push everyone else out. Once people are rich, honoured, promoted and satisfied, possessing everything they want, they deny others the pleasures that youth calls for and that they themselves once enjoyed.

A man sits comfortably at table in a cushioned chair, forgetting meanwhile that a tired servant stands behind him. A hungry man attends him when he is full; the man who gives him drink is thirsty, says Epictetus, and keeps silent while he speaks at will, anxious and sad while he laughs.

“He drenches himself from a full golden cup.” He feasts, revels and spends lavishly, has many robes, sweet music, ease and every pleasure the world can offer, while many a starving poor creature wastes away in the street, lacks clothes to cover himself, labours hard all day, runs and rides for a pittance, perhaps fights from dawn until dusk, sick, weary and full of pain and grief, in great distress and sorrow of heart.

He loathes and despises his inferior, hates or rivals his equal, envies his superior, and lords it over everyone beneath him, as though he belonged to another species, a demigod immune to any fall or human weakness.

Generally they neither love nor are loved in return. They exhaust other people’s bodies with ceaseless labour while living at ease themselves, caring for no one else, “born for themselves alone.” Often, far from lending a helping hand, they seek every way to keep others down—even the most worthy and deserving, better people than themselves, whom the laws of nature bind them to relieve and help to the utmost of their power. They will let them wail, starve, beg and hang before offering any assistance or relief, though able to do so. For the most part they are so unnatural and heedless, so hard-hearted, surly, proud, arrogant, stubborn and ill-disposed. Since we behave so brutally and devilishly towards one another, how can we fail to be discontented on every side, full of cares, woes and miseries?

If this is not sufficient proof of their discontent and misery, examine each condition and calling separately. Kings, princes, monarchs and magistrates seem the happiest of all; but look into their situation and you will find them the most burdened with cares, in perpetual fear, anguish, suspicion and jealousy. As was said of a crown, if they only knew the troubles that accompany it, they would not stoop to pick it up.

“What king can you show me,” says Chrysostom, “who is not full of cares?” What king can you show me who is not full of cares? Look beyond his crown and consider his afflictions; take account of the multitude of his troubles, not the number of his servants. “Power at the summit is nothing but a tempest of the mind,” as Gregory echoes him: sovereignty is a tempest of the soul. Like Sulla, they have splendid titles but terrible fits: “splendour in the title, torment in the mind.”