The Anatomy of Melancholy

Some hold and defend the paradox, or proposition, that wise men generally father fools. Suidas gives the example of Aristarchus the grammarian: “He left two sons, Aristarchus and Aristachorus, both fools.” And, as Erasmus argues in his Praise of Folly, fools father wise men.

Cardan, On Subtlety, book 12, gives this explanation: “Because the spirits of wise men are dissipated by study and carried from the heart into the brain.” Their natural spirits are broken down by study and changed into animal spirits, drawn from the heart and the other parts into the brain.

Lemnius agrees with Cardan and gives this reason: “Because they discharge the debt listlessly and inattentively, so that their offspring fall away from their parents’ excellence.” They pay their debt to their wives, as Paul calls it, without vigour; consequently their children are weaklings, and often idiots and fools.

Other causes are given that belong specifically to the mother and originate in her. If she is excessively dull, heavy, angry, irritable, discontented and melancholy, not only at conception but throughout the time she carries the child in her womb, says Fernel, Pathology, book 1, chapter 11, her son will suffer the same affections, and worse, as Lemnius adds in book 4, chapter 7.

If she grieves too much, is troubled, or happens to be frightened and terrified by some fearful thing she hears or sees, she endangers her child and spoils its humoral balance. A woman’s extraordinary imagination acts powerfully upon her infant, so that, as Baptista Porta demonstrates in Celestial Physiognomy, book 5, chapter 2, she leaves a mark upon it. This is particularly apparent in women who have extraordinary cravings for particular foods: the child will love those foods, says Fernel, and be inclined to similar tastes.

If a pregnant woman sees a hare, her child will often have what we call a harelip. Garcæus, On Judgements of Nativities, chapter 33, gives a memorable example: Thomas Nickell, born in the city of Brandenburg in 1551, reeled and staggered all his life as though about to fall to the ground, because his mother, while pregnant, saw a drunken man staggering in the street.

I find another such case in Martin Weinrich’s Commentary on the Origin of Monstrosities, chapter 17. “I saw,” he says, “a citizen at Wittenberg in Germany who looked like a corpse. I asked him why. He replied that his mother, while carrying him in her womb, happened to see a corpse and was so badly frightened that ‘as a result the child was made like it.’” That ghastly impression made the child resemble the corpse.

In so many different ways are we afflicted and punished for our fathers’ failings, so that, as Fernel truly says, the greatest part of our happiness is to be well born; and it would be fortunate for humankind if only parents sound in body and mind were allowed to marry.

A farmer will sow only the best and choicest seed on his land. He will not rear a bull or a horse unless every part is properly formed, or let a horse cover a mare unless he is sure of its breeding. We choose the best rams for our sheep, rear the finest cattle and keep the best dogs. “How much more carefully should this be observed in producing children?” How careful, then, should we be in fathering our children?