The Anatomy of Melancholy

For uprightness is reward enough: “goodness is its own reward.” In our times the only recompense for doing well is doing well; but wickedness will eventually punish itself: “For the wicked, wickedness itself is punishment.” As the saying goes,

Those who have done well will follow their deeds; The deeds of those who have done ill will follow them.

Those who do well will have reward at last; Those who do ill will suffer for their past.

“Yes, but I am ashamed, disgraced, dishonoured, degraded and publicly hissed down. My notorious crimes and villainies have come to light—‘it is miserable to be caught.’ My filthy lust, abominable oppression and greed lie exposed; my good name is lost, my fortune gone. I have been branded, whipped at the post, tried and condemned; I am an object of public abuse. My ears have been cut off. I am hateful, accursed, abhorred by God and men.”

Be at peace: it is only a nine days’ wonder. As one sorrow drives out another, one passion another, one cloud another, so one rumour displaces another. Almost every day fresh news reaches our ears: the sun was eclipsed; meteors were seen in the sky; monstrous births and prodigies occurred; the Turks were defeated in Persia; there was an earthquake in Switzerland, Calabria, Japan or China, a flood in Holland, a great plague in Constantinople, a fire in Prague, a famine in Germany. One man is made a lord or bishop; another is hanged, deposed or pressed to death for murder, treason, rape, theft or oppression.

At first we hear all this with a kind of wonder, horror or dismay, but soon it is buried in silence. Your father has died; your brother has been robbed; your wife has gone mad; your neighbour has killed himself. At first it is grievous, ghastly, frightening news, on everyone’s lips and discussed at every table; but after a while, who speaks or thinks of it?

So it will be with you and your offence: it will be forgotten in a moment, whether theft, rape, sodomy, murder, incest, treason or anything else. You are not the first offender, and will not be the last. It is no marvel: every hour such offenders are brought to account. Nothing is more common,

Among whatever people, under whatever sky.

Take comfort: you are not the only one. If only someone guiltless himself could throw the first stone at you, and only someone faultless could accuse you, how many executioners or accusers would you have? If everyone’s sins were written on his forehead and his secret faults made known, how many thousands would equal, if not exceed, your offence?

Perhaps the judge who passed sentence, the jury that condemned you and the spectators who stared at you deserved much worse and were far guiltier than you. It is your misfortune to have been caught, made a public example of justice and a warning to the rest. Yet if everyone received his deserts, you might be a saint by comparison. “Censure persecutes the doves”: poor souls are punished, while the great do twenty thousand times worse and are not even mentioned.

The net is not spread for the hawk or the kite, Which harm us; it is spread for birds that do no harm.

We lay no net for kites or birds of prey; For harmless birds we always set our snares.