The Anatomy of Melancholy

When Crassus, the Roman consul, fought the Parthians, he fled by night after a disastrous battle, leaving four thousand severely sick and wounded men in his camp to face the enemy’s fury. When the poor men realized this, “they filled everything with cries and howls.” They lamented miserably and roared aloud, as loudly as Homer’s Mars when wounded—a roar that ten thousand men could not drown out—all from fear of imminent death.

But our condition is far more tragic and miserable, far more pitiable; we have much greater cause to lament. The devil and the world persecute us; all good fortune has forsaken us. We are left at the mercy of beggary, cold, hunger, thirst, filth, sickness and weariness, to endure continual torment, toil and pain, mockery and contempt—all bitter enemies, far worse than any death. Death alone is what we desire; death we seek, yet cannot have. What are we to do?

“What you bear badly, grow used to; you will bear it well.” Accustom yourself to it, and eventually it will become tolerable. “Yes, but I cannot; it is beyond me. Fortune has exhausted her strength in harming me. I am at the utmost limit of human adversity. As a shadow leaves the body when the sun is gone, so I am now abandoned, lost, utterly forsaken by the world.”

“Someone lying on the ground has nowhere left to fall.” Take comfort in this, at least: you are at the worst, and before long either it will overcome you or you will overcome it. If it is violent, it cannot last: “Either it will break up, or it will break you.” Let the devil himself and all the plagues of Egypt fall on you at once:

Do not yield to adversity; meet it with greater courage.

Be courageous: misery is virtue’s whetstone.

Serpents, thirst, heat and sands Are sweet to courage.

As Cato told his soldiers marching through the deserts of Libya, thirst, heat, sands and serpents were pleasant to a brave man. Honourable undertakings bring dangers and losses, as experience proves; they will make the rest of your life taste sweeter.

But suppose they continue. You are not as poor as when you were born; and, as some maintain, it is much better to be pitied than envied. Suppose, then, that you have lost everything: you are poor, cast down, in bodily pain and mental anguish; your enemies gloat over you; you are as badly off as Job. Yet tell me, says Chrysostom, who was the greater victor, Job or the devil? Surely Job. The devil had his goods; Job sat on the dunghill and kept his good name. He lost his children, health and friends, but kept his innocence. He lost his money, but kept his trust in God, which was better than any treasure.

Do as Job did, then; triumph as Job did, and do not let yourself be disturbed as every fool does. “But how shall I be able to?” How is this to be done? Chrysostom answers, “Easily, if you think of heaven”: very easily, if you will only meditate on heaven.