The Anatomy of Melancholy

After Socrates had taken great pains to find a wise man, consulting philosophers, poets, and craftsmen for that purpose, he concluded that everyone was foolish. Although this provoked anger and much resentment against him, he would openly declare it in every company. In Pontano, Supputius travelled throughout Europe to converse with a wise man, but eventually returned with his mission unfulfilled: he could find none. Cardano agrees with him: “Few people, as far as I can see, are in their right minds.” So does Cicero: “I see everything being done foolishly and without proper thought.”

One goes left, another right; the same error catches both, but plays its tricks on everyone in different ways. One reels towards this wall, another towards that; the same error deceives them all. They are all deluded, but not alike: “Madness is not the same in everyone”—not of the same kind. One is greedy, a second lustful, a third ambitious, a fourth envious, and so on. Damasippus the Stoic has illustrated this well in the poet: They are all just as foolish as you.

It is an inborn illness in every one of us. There is “a seedbed of folly”—a nursery of foolishness—which, if stirred up or allowed to gain strength, will grow “without limit,” and varies endlessly according to our individual inclinations, says Baldassare Castiglione. It cannot easily be uprooted, for it takes such a firm hold; as Cicero puts it, “the deep roots of folly.” So we are brought up, and so we remain. Some distinguish two principal defects of understanding, error and ignorance, under which all others fall. Through ignorance we do not know what we need to know; through error we know it falsely. Ignorance is an absence, error a positive act. From ignorance comes vice; from error, heresy, and so on. But make as many kinds as you like, divide and subdivide them: few people escape or avoid falling into one kind or another. “So ignorance commonly drives fools,” as anyone who examines his own actions and other people’s will find.