The Anatomy of Melancholy

If Democritus were alive now, he would see strange transformations: a new company of false faces, triflers, asses of Cumae, masked performers, mummers, painted puppets, mere exteriors, fantastic shadows, dupes, monsters, scatterbrains, butterflies. And many of them really are butterflies, if everything I have read is true. For when Jupiter and Juno celebrated their wedding long ago, all the gods were invited to the feast, and many noblemen besides. Among them came Crysalus, a Persian prince, splendidly attended, richly dressed in gold and fine robes, with a majestic bearing—but otherwise an ass.

Seeing him arrive in such pomp and state, the gods rose to make room for him, “judging the man by his dress.” But Jupiter recognized him for what he was—a frivolous, fanciful, worthless fellow—and turned him and his proud followers into butterflies. So they remain, as far as I know, flitting about in many-coloured coats. Wiser people call them Chrysalides: golden exteriors, drones, flies, worthless things. There are multitudes of them, and so on. Everywhere you will find fools, misers, swindlers, spendthrifts.

Democritus would find many additions and a great increase in madness, folly, and vanity if he travelled now—or could get Pluto’s permission to come and see the fashions, as Charon does in Lucian—and visited our cities of Pious Fool-land and Fortunate Fool-land. I am sure he would split his sides laughing. If Democritus were here on earth, he would laugh, whether, and so on. A Roman satirist thought in his own time that every vice, folly, and madness had reached high tide: Every vice stood at the brink.

The historian Josephus rebukes his Jewish countrymen for boasting of their vices, advertising their follies, and competing to be the most notorious villains. But our madness rises higher, far beyond theirs: Soon to produce a still more vicious generation. And the final state—you know whose pronouncement this is—is likely to be the worst.

There is no denying that the world changes every day: “Cities fall, kingdoms change hands, and so on; dress changes, laws are remade,” as Petrarch observes. We change our language, clothing, laws, customs, and manners, but not our vices or diseases, or the symptoms of folly and madness: those remain the same. A river, as we see, keeps its name and place, though not its water, and still flows: It flows and will flow, rolling on for all time. Our times and individual persons change; our vices remain the same and always will. Nightingales sang, cocks crowed, cattle lowed, sheep bleated, sparrows chirped, and dogs barked long ago; they still do. We keep our madness and still play the fool: “Orestes is not finished yet.” We have the same dispositions and inclinations as our predecessors. You will find us all alike, much the same, ourselves and our sons, and our sons’ sons, and those born of them. Our descendants will continue so to the end. But let us speak of the present.