The Anatomy of Melancholy

The torture and extremity of his misery torment him so greatly that he can take no pleasure in life, but is, in a manner, compelled to do himself violence to escape his present unbearable pains. Thus some, says Fracastorius, “in frenzy, but most in despair, sorrow and fear, and from the anguish and distress of their souls, do themselves violence, for their life is unhappy and miserable. They can find no rest at night and cannot sleep; or if they do slumber, frightening dreams terrify them.”

By day some terrible object constantly frightens them, and suspicion, fear, sorrow, discontent, cares, shame and anguish tear them apart like so many wild horses. They cannot be at peace for an hour or a minute. Even against their will they dwell on it, thinking of it continually; they cannot forget it. It grinds their souls day and night. Perpetually tormented, a burden to themselves as Job was, they can neither eat, drink nor sleep. Psalm 107:18: “Their soul loathes all food, and they are brought to death’s door,” “bound in misery and iron.” With Job they curse their stars and the day of their birth and wish for death. For, as Pineda and most interpreters maintain, Job’s melancholy reached despair and almost madness itself.

In the bitterness of their passion they often murmur against the world, friends, relations and all humankind, even against God himself: “They do not wish to live; they do not know how to die”—live they will not, die they cannot. Amid these squalid, ugly and wearisome days, finding no comfort or remedy in this wretched life, they finally seek relief from everything in death. “All things seek the good”: all creatures seek the best, and what they hope will be for their good, “under the appearance”—in appearance at least—“either because they think it noble to die,” says Hippocrates, “or because they think they will thereby be freed from greater evils”: freed as they wish.

Though, like Aesop’s fish, they often leap from the frying pan into the fire itself, they hope for relief by this means. Therefore, says Felix Plater, “after many wearisome days, at last, by drowning, hanging or some such fearful end,” they throw themselves down or otherwise kill themselves. “Many lamentable examples are seen among us every day.” “One hangs himself with a noose before the doors,” as Seneca observes; “another threw himself from a roof rather than hear his angry master; another, rather than be brought back from flight, drove a blade into his entrails.” So many causes there are: “Love brings death to these, frenzy to those”—love, grief, anger, madness, shame and so on.

It is a common calamity, a fatal outcome of this disease: a jury of physicians condemns them to a violent death. Frenzied in disposition, swept headlong by their tyrannical wills and driven by misery, such people have nothing left but to be their own butchers and execute themselves, unless the heavenly Physician intervenes by his assisting grace and mercy alone, for no human persuasion or art can help. Socrates’ hemlock, Lucretia’s dagger and Timon’s halter are still available; Cato’s knife and Nero’s sword remain behind them, so many fatal instruments bequeathed to posterity, to be used until the world’s end by such distressed souls.