The Anatomy of Melancholy

Like that written slip, or “Laconian scytale,” so celebrated of old in agreements, which Cicero so warmly commends to Atticus. Plutarch in his Lysander, Aristotle in his Politics, Thucydides in book 1, Diodorus, and Suidas praise and extol it for its Spartan brevity in such matters; and well they might, for, as Tertullian says, “Certainties lie in few words”: there is much greater certainty in fewer words.

And that was formerly the practice everywhere. Now many skins of parchment scarcely suffice: anyone buying or selling a house must have a houseful of documents. There are so many qualifications, so many words, such repetitive restatements of every detail—to prevent quibbling, they say. Yet we find to our cost that for ingenious minds this causes far more dispute and disagreement. Hardly any deed is drafted so precisely by one person that another cannot find a flaw or pick a quarrel with it. One misplaced word, one tiny error, and the whole thing is annulled.

What is law today is no law tomorrow; what one person thinks sound another considers deeply flawed. The result is that we have nothing among us but contention and confusion, each taking sides against the other.

What Plutarch long ago lamented about the people of Asia holds true in our time: “These men assembled here have not come to sacrifice to their gods, offer Jupiter their first fruits, or hold revels for Bacchus. An annual disease tormenting Asia has brought them here to conclude their disputes and lawsuits.” It is “a multitude destroying and being destroyed,” a destructive mob seeking one another’s ruin.

Such, for the most part, are our ordinary litigants, court-term attenders, and clients: fresh disturbances every day, mistakes, errors, quibbles, and, at this very moment, I hear, who knows how many thousand cases in a single court. No person is free of it, scarcely any title to property secure. Cases are pursued with such bitterness, so many tricks, postponements, delays, forgeries, such expense—for enormous sums are spent without thought—such violence and malice. Whose fault it is I do not know: the lawyers’, the clients’, the laws’, both parties’, or everyone’s.

But the rebuke Paul gave the Corinthians long ago applies still more aptly now: “There is a fault among you, and I say it to your shame: is there no wise man among you to judge between his brothers, instead of one brother going to law against another?” And Christ’s counsel on lawsuits never needed repeating more than in this age: “Come to terms quickly with your adversary,” and so on, Matthew 5:25.

I could list many more particular grievances that must disturb a political community. To sum it all up briefly: where there is good government and prudent, wise rulers, everything thrives and prospers; that land enjoys peace and happiness. Where it is otherwise, everything is ugly to behold, uncultivated, barbarous, uncivilised: a paradise is turned into a wilderness.