The Anatomy of Melancholy

As Marsilio Ficino concludes a letter to Bernard Canisianus and some other friends, so I shall conclude this discussion for all good students: “Live cheerfully, my friends, free from care, perplexity, anguish, and distress; live cheerfully. Heaven made you for joy.” Again and again I ask you to be cheerful. If anything troubles your hearts or torments your souls, disregard and despise it; let it pass.

I urge this on you not only as a theologian but as a physician: without this cheerfulness, which is the life and very essence of medicine, drugs and everything used to prolong human life are dull, dead, and powerless. “While the Fates allow, live happily”—Seneca. Be cheerful, I say.

Let us not deprive this flourishing youth Of its amusements.

This was the prophet Tiresias’s advice to Menippus, who travelled throughout the world, even down to hell itself, seeking contentment; and his final farewell to Menippus was to be cheerful. “Despise the world,” he says, “and count what is in it as vanity and trifles. Seek only this throughout your life: do not pry too closely or worry too much about anything, but enjoy yourself in a composed, contented state, and above all be cheerful.”

If, as Numerus thinks, nothing is pleasant without love and laughter, Live amid love and laughter.

To conclude with Solomon, Ecclesiastes 3:22, nothing is better than that a person should take pleasure in his own affairs. Every physician repeats the same advice to his patient in this case. Capivaccius tells his to avoid excessive study and disturbances of mind, and, as far as he can, to live with an easy heart. Prospero Calano tells the melancholy Cardinal Cesi: amid your serious studies and business, enjoy jokes and witty fancies, games and diversions, and whatever else may refresh your mind. Nothing is better for this illness than cheerfulness and cheerful company. “It begins with sorrow,” says Montanus; “it must be driven out by joy.”

But look at the harm that follows. Many men, knowing that cheerful company is the only medicine against melancholy, therefore neglect their business and fall into the opposite extreme: they spend all their days among drinking companions in a tavern or alehouse, and know no other use for their time than drinking. Ale-soakers, human fish, or water-snakes, “who only drink, like frogs, and eat nothing”—like so many frogs in a puddle! Their sole occupation is eating and drinking.