The Anatomy of Melancholy

SUBSECTION 6 Poverty and want as causes of melancholy

Poverty and want are such violent assailants, such unwelcome guests, so detested by everyone, that I must discuss them separately. Poverty, properly considered by a wise, discerning, truly regenerate and contented person, is “God’s gift”: a blessed condition, the way to heaven, as Chrysostom calls it, God’s gift, the mother of modesty, and much to be preferred to wealth, as will be shown in its proper place. Yet in the world’s judgement it is a most hateful condition, vile and base, a severe torture, “the greatest crime,” a most intolerable burden.

We all shun it, “worse than a dog or a snake”; we detest its very name. “Poverty is shunned and arraigned throughout the world”: it is regarded as the source of every other misery, care, sorrow, toil and grievance.

To escape it we will undertake any labour: “the merchant runs to the farthest Indians.” We will leave no harbour, coast or creek in the world unexplored, even at the risk of our lives. We will dive to the sea’s bottom and into the earth’s bowels, five, six, seven, eight or nine hundred fathoms deep, travel through all five zones and both extremes of heat and cold. We will become parasites and slaves, sell ourselves, swear and lie, damn our bodies and souls, forsake God, renounce religion, steal, rob and murder rather than endure this unbearable yoke of poverty, which so tyrannises over us, torments us and weighs us all down.

Look at the world, and you will see people valued mostly according to their means, and considered happy in proportion to their wealth: “Everywhere each person was worth as much as he possessed.” If a man is likely to prosper and is on the way to advancement, who matters but him?

In common opinion, if a man is wealthy, it does not matter how he acquired it, who his parents were, what abilities he has, what virtues he possesses or what villainies he inclines to. Let him be a procurer, a miser, a usurer, a villain, a pagan, a barbarian, a wretch, Lucian’s tyrant, whom it is less safe to look at than the sun: provided he is rich—and generous too—he will be honoured, admired, adored, revered and highly praised.

“The rich man is respected because of his possessions,” Ecclesiasticus 10:31. He will be befriended, for “riches gather many friends,” Proverbs 19:4; “he will count many friends.” All happiness ebbs and flows with his money. He will be considered a gracious lord, a Maecenas, a benefactor, a wise, judicious, handsome, brave and fortunate man of noble spirit; “Jupiter’s chick, the son of a white hen”: a promising man, a good man, a virtuous and honest man.