The Anatomy of Melancholy

Or, as Peter Martyr holds in book 9 of his Decades of the Ocean, along with others, the waters may come from abundant rainfall; or from the surrounding heat and cold, which alter the heat within and consequently the production of water. Or the earth may be full of wind, or of an inherent sulphurous fire, as our writers on natural phenomena tell us. This sometimes breaks out and causes those dreadful earthquakes that are so frequent these days in Japan and China and often swallow whole cities.

Let Lucian’s Menippus consult or question Tiresias, if you will not believe the philosophers: he will clear up all your doubts when he makes a second voyage.

Meanwhile, let us consider what lies “under the open sky” and discover, if possible, the true cause of the events, atmospheric phenomena, and changes that occur above ground. What produces that variety of customs and gives different nations a distinct character, so to speak? Some are wise, subtle, quick-witted; others dull, gloomy, and slow. Some are large, some small, as Cicero in On Fate, Plato in the Timaeus, Vegetius, and Bodin in chapter 5 of his Method explain at length. Some are soft, others hardy; barbarous or civilized; black, brown, or white. Does this come from the air, the soil, the influence of the stars, or some other hidden cause?

Why does Africa produce so many venomous animals, and Ireland none? Why does Athens have owls, and Crete none? Why do Daulis and Thebes have no swallows, as Pausanias tells us, although the rest of Greece does? Why has Ithaca no hares, Pontus no asses, Scythia no swine? Where does this variety of constitutions, colours, plants, birds, beasts, and metals come from, almost every place having its own?

Why are so many thousands of strange birds and beasts found only in America, as Acosta asks in book 4, chapter 36? Were they created in the six days, or ever present in Noah’s Ark? If they were there, why have they not spread and been found in other countries? “It is a question,” he says, “that has long left me uncertain. No Greek, Latin, or Hebrew writer had ever heard of them before, and yet they differ from our European animals as much as an egg from a chestnut.” What is more, cattle, horses, sheep, and so on were unheard of in those regions until the Spaniards brought them.

How does it happen that places in the same geographical position and latitude, inhabited by the people called perioeci, differ so much in soil, constitution, colour, metals, climate, and so on? Spaniards are white, and so are Italians, whereas the inhabitants around the Cape of Good Hope are Black people, and yet both are equally far from the equator.