The Anatomy of Melancholy

SUBSECTION 5 How loss of liberty, servitude and imprisonment cause melancholy

To this catalogue of causes I may well add loss of liberty, servitude or imprisonment, which for some people is as great a torture as any of the others. Although they have every comfort—splendid houses at their disposal, fine walks and gardens, delightful bowers, galleries, good food and everything to match—they are not content. They are confined: they cannot come and go as they please, have what they want or do as they wish, but live “at another’s table,” at another person’s table and under their command.

As with food, so with everything else: places, company and amusements. However pleasant, convenient, wholesome or good they may be, “one grows tired of everything”: there is a surfeit of everything that ends in disgust. The children of Israel tired of manna. Such people find this way of living irksome; like a bird in a cage or a dog in its kennel, they grow weary of it.

They are happy, it is true, and in another person’s judgement have everything the heart could wish for or they themselves could desire, “if only they knew their own blessings.” Yet they loathe it and tire of their present condition. “Human nature is eager for novelty”: people’s nature always desires new things, variety and pleasures. Our wandering desires are so unruly in this respect that they must have change, even for the worse.

Bachelors must marry, and married men wish they were bachelors. They do not love their own wives, though otherwise beautiful, wise, virtuous and accomplished, because they are their own. Our present condition is always the worst. We cannot long endure one way of life, “and he hates what he lately prayed for”; one occupation, “it pleases him to hold honour, then displeases him”; or one place, “at Rome I love Tibur; fickle as the wind, at Tibur I love Rome.” What we once eagerly sought, we now despise.

“This drives some to death,” says Seneca: “by often changing their plans they come round to the same things again and leave no room for novelty. Life and the world itself have begun to disgust them, and that cry of their headlong pleasures arises: ‘How long must it be the same?’”

This alone kills many people: they are always tied to the same thing. Like a horse turning a mill or a dog in a wheel, they go round without change or novelty. Their life becomes hateful, the world loathsome, thwarting their frantic pursuit of pleasure. What? Still the same? Marcus Aurelius and Solomon, who had experienced every worldly delight and pleasure, confessed as much of themselves: what they most desired became tedious at last, their desires could never be satisfied, and all was vanity and distress of mind.