The Anatomy of Melancholy

Many laymen still object above all to priests’ marriages—and not only to those of clergymen, but to those of everyone of lower rank and station. They would have no one marry except the rich, who can support wives, because, apparently, their parish would be burdened with orphans and the world filled with beggars.

But these are hard-hearted, unnatural monsters of men, shallow politicians. They do not consider that much of the world is not yet inhabited as it ought to be, or how many colonies could be sent to America, the unknown southern land, and Africa. Let them consult Sir William Alexander’s book on colonies, Orpheus Junior’s Golden Fleece, Captain Whitbourne, Mr Hagthorpe and others, and they will certainly learn otherwise.

Those politically astute Romans thought differently: they believed their city and country could never be too populous. The emperor Hadrian said he would rather have people than money, “that he preferred to enlarge the empire by adding people rather than wealth.” Augustus Caesar delivered a speech at Rome “to the unmarried” to persuade them to marry.

Some countries compelled people to marry in former times, as do the Jews, Turks, Indians and Chinese, among others, in our own day. They are greatly surprised by our practice of allowing so many idle people to live in monasteries, and often wonder how they can live chastely.

On the island of Maranhão, the governor and local king were astonished by the Frenchmen and wondered how so many friars and the rest of their company could live without wives. They thought it impossible and would not believe it.

If these men surveyed our multitude of religious houses and counted our monasteries throughout Europe—eighteen nunneries in Padua, thirty-one monasteries of monks and twenty-eight of nuns in Venice, and so on—“you may know the lion by its claw”; the proportion is the same in all other provinces and cities. What would they think? Do these people live chastely? Let them dissemble as they please: I agree with Tertullian that few can remain continent except under compulsion.

“O chastity,” he says, “you are a rare goddess in the world, not easily attained and seldom lasting. Now and then you may be compelled, either through a deficiency of nature, or if discipline persuades and decrees enforce.”

Or people may abstain for some such secondary motive: sullenness, discontent, having lost their first loves, being unable to have the partner they themselves want, lack of means, rash vows, and so on. But can a man willingly remain continent? I think not.

Therefore, either out of pity for human weakness, as a matter of policy, or to prevent a far worse evil—for some regard sex as necessary as food and drink, and because the vigour of youth and the condition and temperament of most people’s bodies desire it so fiercely—some nations have in the past freely permitted polygamy and brothels.