The Anatomy of Melancholy

A good and wise man, such as Apollo, when consulted, Could scarcely find one among many thousands. A wise and good man in a million: Apollo, when consulted, could scarcely find one. A human being is a marvel in himself, but Trismegistus adds, “The greatest marvel is a wise man”: a wise man is a wonder. Many carry the thyrsus; few are true initiates of Bacchus.

When Alexander was presented with King Darius’s rich and costly casket, and everyone advised him what to put in it, he kept it for Homer’s works, as the most precious jewel of human genius. Yet Scaliger attacks Homer’s Muse as “the nurse of mad wisdom,” a nursery of madness, as shameless as a lady at court who blushes at nothing.

Jacobus Micyllus, Gilbertus Cognatus, Erasmus, and almost all later generations admire Lucian’s exuberant wit. Yet Scaliger rejects him in his critical judgement and calls him the Cerberus of the Muses. Socrates, whom the whole world praised so highly, is condemned as a fool by Lactantius and Theodoret. Plutarch praises Seneca’s genius above that of all the Greeks, “second to none”; yet Seneca says of himself, “When I want to amuse myself with a fool, I turn to myself, and there I have him.”

In the sixteenth book of On Subtlety, Cardan lists twelve outstanding and penetrating philosophers for their merit, subtlety, and wisdom: Archimedes, Galen, Vitruvius, Archytas of Tarentum, Euclid, Geber, the first inventor of algebra, and al-Kindi the mathematician—the last two both Arabs—among others. But his “three rulers of the world,” far above the rest, are Ptolemy, Plotinus, and Hippocrates.

In Exercise 224, Scaliger mocks this judgement of Cardan’s, calls some of these men carpenters and artisans, and makes Galen “the fringe of Hippocrates,” a mere hem of Hippocrates’s garment. Elsewhere Cardan himself condemns both Galen and Hippocrates for tediousness, obscurity, and confusion. Paracelsus considers them both utter ignoramuses, infants in medicine and philosophy.

Scaliger and Cardan admire Suisset the Calculator, “who almost exceeded the limits of human intelligence,” yet Luis Vives calls his work “Suisset’s trifles.” And Cardan contradicts himself elsewhere, disparaging the ancients in comparison with the present age: “Our predecessors, compared with people today, may justly be called children.”

In the end, Cardan and Saint Bernard will admit no one to this catalogue of wise men except prophets and apostles. You have already heard what they think of themselves. We are wise in worldly matters, admire ourselves, and seek applause. But listen to Saint Bernard: “The wiser you are outwardly, the more foolish you become inwardly,” and so on; “you are prudent in everything, but foolish about yourself.” The wiser you are for others, the greater fool you are for yourself.