The Anatomy of Melancholy

Yes, but you object again: “We readily give advice to others.” As the saying goes, every man can tame a shrew except the man who has her. “If you were here, you would think differently.” If you were in our misery, you would find it otherwise: it is not so easily done. We know it is true that we should control ourselves, but we are swept furiously away. We cannot apply such precepts. We are overcome, sick, “unsound in mind,” disordered and accustomed to these ways; we cannot resist. You might as well tell a sick person not to feel pain as tell a melancholy person not to fear or feel sad. It is in his blood, his brain, his whole constitution; it cannot be removed.

But he can choose whether to yield too far to it; he can correct himself to some degree. A philosopher was bitten by a mad dog. The nature of that disease is to make people shrink from all water and liquids and continually imagine that they see a dog before them. Despite this he went to the bath, “struggling against himself,” and, seeing there what he thought was the image of a dog in the water, overcame the notion by reason: “What has a dog to do with a bath?” What would a dog be doing in a bath? A mere fancy.

You think you hear and see devils, black men, and so forth. It is not so: it is your disordered imagination. Settle your imagination, and you are well. You think you have an enormous nose, that you are ill, that everyone watches you and mocks you. Persuade yourself that it is nothing of the kind: this is only fear and groundless suspicion.

You are discontented, sad, and heavy-hearted; but why, on what grounds? Consider it. You are jealous, fearful, suspicious: for what reason? Examine it thoroughly, and you will find none at all, or one that deserves to be dismissed—one that you will surely laugh at and despise in yourself once it is past. Govern yourself, then, by reason; reassure yourself, train yourself, wean yourself from such foolish notions, empty fears, powerful imaginings, and restless thoughts.

You can do it. “It lies in our power to form habits,” as Plutarch says: we may shape ourselves as we will. Just as a man wearing a straight shoe can correct its slant or crookedness by wearing it on the other side, so we can overcome our passions if we will. “Whatever the mind has commanded itself, it has achieved,” as Seneca says; “no passions are so fierce that discipline cannot master them.” Whatever the will desires, it may command; no emotions are so savage that discipline cannot tame them.

You will not voluntarily do this or that which you ought to do, or refrain from what you ought to avoid; but when whipped like a sluggish nag, you will change your behaviour. Fear of the whip will make you act or refrain. Do voluntarily, then, what you can do and must do under compulsion: you can restrain yourself if you will, and master your emotions.

As a city deals with stubborn rebels who refuse to submit to civil authority, says Melanchthon, compelling them by force, so must we deal with our emotions. If the heart will not abandon those vicious impulses, or the imagination those foolish fancies, we have another form of government to control and restrain our bodily members, so that they are not led by our passions.