The Anatomy of Melancholy

We commonly count honest, devout, orthodox, godly, religious, plain-dealing people as idiots and asses if they cannot or will not lie, dissemble, scheme, flatter, “adapt themselves to the place where they were born,” strike good bargains, push others aside, prosper, “serve patrons, learn the customary ways of rising, duly observe laws, manners, and customs, praise wholeheartedly, defend stoutly, embrace opinions, doubt nothing, believe everything, accept everything, criticize nothing, and do all the other things that bring advancement and security, that unfailingly make a person fortunate and truly wise in our estimation.” They cannot trim their conduct to circumstances as others do, give and take bribes, and so on, but fear God and act conscientiously.

But the Holy Spirit, who knows better how to judge, calls those worldly people fools. “The fool has said in his heart,” Psalm 53:1; “And their ways reveal their folly,” Psalm 49:14. For what could be madder than to bring eternal punishment upon themselves for a little worldly pleasure? As Gregory and others repeatedly teach us.

Yes, even all those great philosophers whom the world has always admired, whose works we value so highly, who gave others rules of wisdom and invented arts and sciences: Socrates, judged by Apollo’s oracle the wisest man of his time, whom his two pupils Plato and Xenophon so greatly praise and exalt with such honourable titles as best and wisest of all mortals, happiest and most just; whom Alcibiades praises as beyond comparison. Achilles was a worthy man, but Brasidas and others were just as worthy; Antenor and Nestor were as good as Pericles, and so with the rest. But no one now, before, or after Socrates—“no one among the ancients or those now living”—ever was, will be, or comes close to his equal.

Those Seven Sages of Greece, those British Druids, Indian Brahmans, Ethiopian naked philosophers, Persian Magi; Apollonius, of whom Philostratus says, “Not taught to be wise, but born wise”—wise from his cradle; Epicurus, so admired by his disciple Lucretius: Who surpassed humankind in intellect, and dazzled all the stars like the rising heavenly sun. Whose wit surpassed the wits of men as far as the rising sun obscures a star. Or that celebrated Empedocles: So that he scarcely seems born of human stock.