The Anatomy of Melancholy

For a fickle man to write about constancy, an irreligious man lay down rules of holiness and piety, a fool write a treatise on wisdom, or, like Sallust, fiercely denounce those who plunder countries while being a most oppressive extortioner in office himself—this betrays weakness and plainly shows such people’s lack of judgement. “Which of us sins in a way more worthy of crucifixion?” Who is the fool now?

Or perhaps in some places we are all mad together, so no one notices: “A surfeit of error and madness removes both the absurdity and the astonishment.” We are like Gaius Fimbria in ancient Rome, at least in Cicero’s judgement: a bold, reckless madman, regarded as such by everyone except those as mad as himself. In such a case, no one takes any notice. No doubt he will seem mad to few, for most people suffer from the same disease. When all are mad, all equally oppressed, who can tell one madman from the rest?

But suppose they do notice, and someone is plainly shown to be mad. He now recognizes his folly, whether in action, gesture, speech, or some foolish obsession with building, boasting, quarrelling, spending, gambling, courting, scribbling, or babbling, which makes him ridiculous to others and on which he dotes. He admits as much; yet all your eloquence cannot reclaim him. Despite everything said against it, he will persist in his folly.

It is “a lovable madness, a most welcome delusion of the mind,” so pleasing, so delicious that he cannot give it up. He knows his error but makes no effort to escape it. Tell him what it will lead to—beggary, sorrow, illness, disgrace, shame, loss, madness—yet the angry man will prefer revenge, the lustful man his prostitute, the thief his loot, the glutton his belly, to his own welfare. Warn a pleasure-seeker, a miser, or an ambitious man about his wayward course, wean him from it a little, and immediately he cries, “By heaven, my friends, you have killed me!” You have ruined him; and, like a dog returning to its vomit, he goes back to it again.

No persuasion, no advice will have any effect. Say what you will: You may shout and mingle sea with sky— you are speaking to the deaf. Demonstrate your case as Ulysses did to Elpenor, Gryllus, and the rest of his companions, those swinish men: he is immovable in his disposition. A hog he will remain; pound him in a mortar, and he will still be the same.