The Anatomy of Melancholy

He apparently held that a bachelor could not live honourably as he ought, agreeing with Georgius Wicelius, a great theologian and holy man, who has lately advanced twenty-six arguments commending marriage as most necessary for every kind of person, highly praiseworthy and fit to be embraced. He is also persuaded that no man can live and die religiously, as he ought, without a wife—“persuaded that no one can either live piously or die well without a wife.”

Such a man is false, an enemy of the commonwealth, harmful to himself, destructive to the world, an apostate from nature, a rebel against heaven and earth. Let our wilful, obstinate and ageing bachelors ponder this.

“If we could live without wives,” as Marcellus Numidicus said in Aulus Gellius, “we would all do without them; but since we cannot, let everyone marry, and consider the public good rather than personal pleasure or circumstances.”

It would be a happy thing, as wise Euripides puts it, if we could buy children with gold and silver and so provide ourselves, “without intercourse with women,” without women’s company. But that cannot be.

The world will lie foul in squalid neglect; The empty sea will stand without any fleets, And birds will be missing from the sky, wild beasts from the woods.

Earth, air, sea and land would soon come to nothing; The world itself would be brought to ruin.

Necessity therefore compels us to marry.

But why do I trouble myself to find arguments to recommend marriage or persuade people to it? Here is a brief summary of everything I have said, and much more, expressed concisely, forcefully, movingly, clearly and elegantly in twelve considerations to soften the miseries of marriage, by Jacobus de Voragine.

1 Have you property? You have someone to preserve and increase it. 2 Have you none? You have someone to acquire it. 3 Are you prospering? Your happiness is doubled.

4 Are you in adversity? She comforts you, stays beside you and shares the burden to make it bearable. 5 Are you at home? She drives away the weariness of solitude. 6 Abroad? Her eyes follow you as you leave; she misses you when absent and welcomes you back with joy.

7 Is nothing pleasant without companionship? No companionship is sweeter than marriage. 8 The bond of conjugal love is unbreakable. 9 The dear company of relatives by marriage grows; the number of parents, brothers, sisters and descendants is doubled.

10 May you become a parent of fine children. 11 The law of Moses curses barrenness in marriage; how much more, then, celibacy? 12 If nature does not escape punishment, neither will the will escape it.

1 Have you means? You have someone to preserve and increase them. 2 Have you none? You have someone to help obtain them. 3 Are you prosperous? Your happiness is doubled.