The Anatomy of Melancholy

Suppose some woman breaks chaste marriage’s laws, Leaves her husband and becomes unfaithful: Usually it is not without a cause. She sees her husband waste her property in sin, Feels that he has withdrawn his love from her And given it to someone perhaps less worthy. Whoever strikes with the sword may be struck by the scabbard; Surely love calls for love, and like demands like.

“She will always try,” says Nevisanus, “to repay like for like”: she will pay you back if she can. Therefore Sirach 9:1 aptly advises, “Do not teach her an evil lesson against yourself.” As Jansenius and Nicholas of Lyra explain this passage, along with Denis the Carthusian, it means simply that she should not do you harm. I do not excuse her by accusing you; but if both are at fault, reform yourself first. For, as the old saying goes, a good husband makes a good wife.

Yes, but you reply, the same reasoning does not apply to men and women: through her fault my children are bastards; I cannot endure it. “Let her be bitter, domineering, wasteful,” and so on—let her scold, quarrel and spend, I do not care, “provided she is chaste”; so long as she is faithful, I could easily bear it. But this I cannot, I must not, I will not bear. My faith, my reputation and my eye must not be touched, as the saying goes,

Reputation, faith and the eye cannot bear a touch.

I say the same of my wife: touch everything, use everything, take everything except this. I acknowledge the truth of Seneca’s saying, “No good thing is pleasant to possess without a companion”: there is no sweet satisfaction in possessing any good thing without someone to share it—except this alone, I say, this.

And why this? Even this thing you abhor so much may benefit your offspring. Better to be any man’s son than yours: begotten by lowly Irus, poor Seius or humble Mevius, the town swineherd’s son, a shepherd’s son. And fortunate is he who, like Hercules, has any two fathers; for you yourself may perhaps have more diseases than a horse, more weaknesses of body and mind, a corrupted soul and a sour disposition.

Take the worst view of it: just as it is “an incurable wound, so it is a wound not felt”; as it is incurable, so it causes no bodily pain. But are you sure it is so?

“Is he attending to your business?” Does he really do so? Perhaps you are excessively suspicious and, like some people, without cause. If it is “an eight-month birth”—born at eight months—or the child resembles this man or that, they foolishly suspect that he fathered it. If she speaks or laughs freely with such and such men, then at once she must be sleeping with them. Such is your weakness; whereas charity, or a well-disposed mind, would put the best construction on everything.