The Anatomy of Melancholy

this scrupulous conscience, as Pieter van Foreest calls it, which tortures so many. From a deep sense of their unworthiness or reflection on their own dissolute lives, they accuse themselves and magnify every small offence, even when there is no such cause. Meanwhile doubting God’s mercy, they fall into these troubles.

The poets call them Furies, the Dread Ones; but it is conscience alone that supplies a thousand witnesses against us,

Night and day they carry their own witness in their breast.

It is an unceasing witness giving evidence, empanelling a jury to examine us and pronounce us guilty; a pursuer following with hue and cry, a court officer summoning us, a bailiff carrying us off, a sergeant arresting us, a lawyer pleading against us, a jailer tormenting us and a judge condemning us—continually accusing, denouncing, torturing and harassing.

And just as the statue of Juno in that sacred city near the Euphrates in Assyria always looks towards you—sit wherever you like in her temple, she stares directly at you; pass by, and her gaze follows—so in every position, place, gathering and action, our conscience will always be ready to accuse us.

After many pleasant days, fortunate ventures and merry seasons, conscience finally arrests us. A person may indeed escape punishment in this world, bribe a corrupt judge, evade the sentence of the law and flourish for a time;

for who ever saw, says Chrysostom, a greedy man troubled in mind while counting his money, or an adulterer grieving with his mistress in his arms? At such times we are drunk with pleasure and notice nothing:

yet, as the prodigal son at first had fine food, sweet music, merry company and jovial entertainment, but a cruel reckoning in the end, bitter as wormwood, a dreadful visitation commonly follows. The devil who then told you that it was a slight sin, or no sin at all, now magnifies it in the opposite direction and tells you it is an utterly unforgivable offence, as he did with Cain and Judas, to bring them to despair;

every small circumstance previously overlooked and despised will now magnify itself, rise in judgement and accuse them—the dust of their shoes, creatures without speech. As with Lucian’s tyrant, the bed and the candle, the bed and candle bore witness, tormenting their souls for their past sins.

Tragic examples of this kind are all too familiar and common. Hadrian, Galba, Nero, Otho, Vitellius and Caracalla were so horrified in conscience by their crimes—murders, rapes, extortion and wrongs—that they grew weary of life and could find no one to kill them.