The Anatomy of Melancholy

I will add a word or two by way of conclusion. Many rich people—I dare say it boldly—lie on feather beds, pampered daily with delicacies in well-furnished houses, yet live with less peace of heart, more anguish, more bodily pain, and, through their excesses, more bitter hours than many prisoners or galley slaves. “Maecenas lies as wakeful on feathers as Regulus in a barrel.”

They live with less ease even than those poor starving Dutchmen whom their captain, Bartison, left in Novaya Zemlya in 1596; or those eight unfortunate Englishmen lately left behind to spend the winter in a heated shelter in Greenland, at latitude 77 degrees, in 1630: pitifully abandoned and forced to fend for themselves in a vast, dark, desolate place, struggling against hunger, cold, despair and death itself.

A patient, quiet mind—I say it again and again—gives true peace and contentment. So it is with everything else: things are, as old Chremes told us, what our use makes of them.

Parents, homeland, friends, birth, relatives and wealth: These take their character from the mind of their possessor. For one who knows how to use them, they are good; for one who misuses them, bad.

Parents, friends, fortune, country, birth, family connections and the rest ebb and flow with our judgement. They please or displease us according to how we receive and interpret them, or apply them to ourselves. “Everyone is the maker of his own fortune.” In a sense, I may truly say that prosperity and adversity are in our own hands. “No one is harmed except by himself.” Seneca confirms from his own judgement and experience that everyone’s mind is stronger than fortune and leads him whichever way he wishes: each person is himself the cause of his good or bad life.

But, willing or unwilling, let us put the worst case and suppose a person in the greatest distress. Some prefer that condition to prosperity without qualification; of the two extremes, it is the better. “People’s minds commonly grow wanton in prosperity.” In prosperity people forget God and themselves; their wealth stupefies them as henbane does birds.

They are miserable if Fortune deserts them, but more miserable if she stays and overwhelms them. For when they rise to high office and wealth, those who were most temperate, sober and prudent in private life—such as Nero, Otho, Vitellius and Elagabalus, “excellent emperors, had they never ruled”—suddenly degenerate into brute beasts: monstrous in lust, tyrannical oppressors, and so on. They cannot govern themselves; they become monsters, hateful creatures, harpies—what do they not become?

“Once they have gained triumphs, wealth and honours, they turn thereafter to pleasure and idleness.” That was Cato’s observation: they cannot restrain themselves. For that reason, perhaps:

Whenever Eutrapelus wished to harm someone, He gave him expensive clothes. For now he is rich: With fine tunics he will take on new plans and hopes, Sleep into daylight, and for a prostitute neglect His honourable duty.