The Anatomy of Melancholy

Human excellence, the Fall, miseries and infirmities; their causes.

MAN, the most excellent and noble creature in the world, God’s chief and mighty work, the wonder of nature, as Zoroaster calls him; “the miracle of daring nature,” the marvel of marvels, as Plato says; the summary and epitome of the world, as Pliny says; a microcosm, a little world, a model of the world;

sovereign lord of the earth, viceroy of the world, sole commander and governor of all its creatures, each of which is subject to his rule and yields obedience; far surpassing all the rest, in soul as well as body; “the image of the Image,” created in God’s own image, in the likeness of that immortal, immaterial being, with all the faculties and powers belonging to it;

was at first pure, divine, perfect and happy, “created after God in true holiness and righteousness”; like God, free from every kind of infirmity, and placed in Paradise to know God, praise and glorify him, and do his will,

That, like the gods, he might bring forth gods.

as an old poet says: to increase the Church. But this most noble creature—“Alas, what a sad and tearful transformation!” someone exclaims; oh, pitiable change!—has fallen from what he was and forfeited his former condition. He has become a wretched little man, an outcast, a miserable wretch, one of the most unhappy creatures in the world, if considered in his own nature, without spiritual rebirth;

and his fall has so darkened him that, apart from a few surviving remnants, he is lower than a beast. “Man in honour who has no understanding is like the beasts that perish”: that is David’s estimate of him. By an astonishing transformation he has become a monster—a fox, a dog, a pig, what is he not? “How changed from what he was!” Once blessed and happy, now miserable and accursed, he must eat his food in sorrow, subject to death, every kind of infirmity and every sort of calamity.

“Great toil is ordained for all people, and a heavy yoke for the children of Adam, from the day they leave their mother’s womb until the day they return to the mother of all things: their thoughts, their hearts’ fears, their imaginings about what awaits them, and the day of death. From the man who sits on a glorious throne to the man who sits low in earth and ashes; from the man dressed in blue silk and wearing a crown to the man dressed in plain linen.”

“Anger, envy, trouble, unrest, fear of death, harshness and strife: such things come to both humans and beasts, but sevenfold to the ungodly.” All this befalls him in this life, and perhaps eternal misery in the life to come.

The impelling cause of these human miseries, this loss or destruction of God’s image, the cause of death and diseases, of all punishments in this world and the next, was the sin of our first parent Adam: eating the forbidden fruit at the devil’s instigation and enticement. His disobedience, pride, ambition, intemperance, unbelief and curiosity gave rise to original sin and the general corruption of humankind. From this, as from a spring, flowed all evil inclinations and actual transgressions, which bring upon us the various calamities inflicted for our sins.