The Anatomy of Melancholy

If the diviner predicts sickness on a particular day, they will be sick at that very time: “Stricken by the force of fear, they fall ill”; and often they die as foretold. A true saying: “Fear of death is worse than death.” The fear of death is worse than death itself; and to some prosperous and wealthy people the thought of that sad hour is as bitter as gall, Ecclesiasticus 41:1.

“Fear of death makes our life unquiet.” No worse affliction can befall a person than such turmoil of mind. It is “a sorrowful parting,” a grievous separation: to leave, all at once, possessions won with so much labour, the worldly pleasures they have enjoyed so deliciously, and friends and companions they have loved so dearly.

Axiochus the philosopher was bold and courageous throughout his life, and gave others sound advice “on despising death” and against the vanity of the world. But when he himself was about to die, he became deeply dejected: “Shall I be deprived of this light? Bereft of these good things?” He lamented like a child, and so on. Though Socrates himself was there to comfort him—“Where is your former boasting of virtue, Axiochus?”—he was still very fearful, unable to bear death, and deeply troubled in mind: “unmanly fear and lack of fortitude,” and so on.

“O Clotho,” cries the tyrant Megapenthes in Lucian, as he is about to depart, “let me live a little longer. I will give you a thousand talents of gold, and two bowls besides, which I took from Cleocritus, worth a hundred talents apiece.”

“Alas for me,” says another, “what fine estates I shall leave! What fertile fields! What a beautiful house! What lovely children! How many servants! Who will gather my grapes, my grain? Must I die now, so well settled? Leave everything, when I am so richly and well provided for? Alas for me, what shall I do?”

Little soul, wandering, gentle, to what places will you now depart?

To these torments of fear and sorrow we may well add curiosity: that wearisome, tyrannical preoccupation, “excessive anxiety,” or unnecessary effort over useless things and their qualities, as Thomas defines it. It is an itching impulse, a kind of longing to see what is not to be seen, to do what ought not to be done, to know a secret that should not be known, to eat the forbidden fruit.

We commonly distress and exhaust ourselves over things inappropriate and unnecessary, as Martha troubled herself to little purpose. Whether in religion, classical learning, magic, philosophy, politics, or any undertaking or study, it is needless trouble, sheer torment.

For what else is scholastic theology? How many people it perplexes! What fruitless questions about the Trinity, resurrection, election, predestination, reprobation, hellfire and so on: how many will be saved, how many damned? What else is all superstition but an endless observance of idle ceremonies and traditions?