The Anatomy of Melancholy

Aretaeus, an ancient author, in his third book, chapter 6, divides love melancholy in this way and derives this second kind from the first; it comes through inspiration or otherwise. Plato, in his Phaedrus, has these words: “Apollo’s priests at Delphi, and those at Dodona, perform many fine feats in their frenzy and benefit the Greeks, but never in their right minds.” He makes them all mad, as well he might.

Anyone who considers ancient superstition and its monstrous effects—as in the appropriate place I shall show the various frenzies of our prophetic gods, Pythonesses, Sibyls, enthusiasts, false prophets, heretics and schismatics in these later times of ours—will immediately admit that the whole world besides cannot furnish so much material for madness, so many astonishing symptoms, as superstition, heresy and schism have produced.

This species alone can be set against all the preceding ones: it has a wider range and more extraordinary effects. It stupefies and deludes people more than any other kind named above, does more harm, causes humanity more unrest and has tormented mortal souls more—such has been the devil’s cunning—than wars, plagues, sicknesses, scarcity, famine and all the rest.

Give me only a little liberty, and I shall briefly set before your eyes an astonishing, vast, infinite ocean of incredible madness and folly: a sea full of shoals and rocks, sandbanks, gulfs, turbulent straits and contrary tides; full of fearful monsters, strange shapes, roaring waves, tempests, Siren calms and halcyon seas; unspeakable misery, such comedies and tragedies, such absurd and ridiculous, deadly and lamentable fits, that I do not know whether they deserve more pity or ridicule, or can even be believed—except that every day we still see the same things happening in our own time: fresh examples, “new novelties,” fresh instances of misery and madness of this kind continually presented to us, abroad, at home, among us, in our own hearts.

But before I can discuss these various errors and deviations, their causes, symptoms, disturbances and so on, I must necessarily say something about the object of this love, God himself: what this love is, how it attracts us, where it comes from and—what causes all our miseries—how we misunderstand it, wander and turn away from it.

Among all the divine attributes that God claims for himself—eternity, omnipotence, immutability, wisdom, majesty, justice, mercy and so on—his beauty is not the least. “One thing,” says David, “have I desired of the Lord, and that I shall continue to desire: to behold the beauty of the Lord,” Psalm 27:4. “And out of Zion, which is the perfection of beauty, God has shone,” Psalm 50:2.

All other created things are beautiful, I admit, and many other objects greatly captivate us: a beautiful house, a beautiful horse, a handsome person. “I am amazed,” says Augustine, “when I look up to heaven and see the beauty of the stars. The beauty of angels, principalities and powers—who can express it? Who can adequately praise or describe the beauty that appears in us? So beautiful a body, so beautiful a face, eyes, nose, cheeks, chin and brows, all beautiful and lovely to behold, besides the beauty of the soul, which cannot be seen. If we exert ourselves so much and are so deeply moved by the beauty of created things, how should we be transported by the wonderful radiance of God himself?”