The Anatomy of Melancholy

Others among us consider ourselves especially dear to God, more godly and sanctified than other people, made of better stuff and endowed with greater gifts. Like that proud Pharisee, we despise others in comparison with ourselves: we are better Christians, more learned, select spirits, inspired; we know more, receive special revelations and perceive God’s secrets. On this presumption we often say and do things that ought neither to be said nor done.

Among these are all superstitious idolaters, pagans, Muslims, Jews, heretics, enthusiasts, diviners, prophets, sectarians and schismatics. Zanchi divides such unbelievers into four main groups; but I shall persevere with my own intended method. All these, together with many other people given to excessive religious curiosity—monks, hermits and so on—may be placed at this extreme, fighting under the banner of superstition alongside the ignorant simpletons and countless swarms of people they lead astray.

At the opposite extreme, that of deficiency, march those impious pleasure-seekers, libertines, atheists, hypocrites and unbelievers: worldly, complacent, unrepentant, ungrateful and carnally minded people who attribute everything to natural causes and acknowledge no supreme power; whose consciences are seared, or who live with depraved judgement; or those despairing people who distrust his mercy too much. There are many subdivisions among them and different degrees of madness and folly, some greater than others, as will be shown under the Symptoms. Yet all are miserably astray, perplexed, deluded and beside themselves over religion.

For, as Zanchi rightly distinguished, and everyone knows, religion is of two kinds, true or false. False religion is the empty superstition of idolaters, such as the ancient Greeks and Romans, present-day Muslims and so on. Cicero could call it a groundless fear of the gods; or, as Zanchi defines it, where false gods are worshipped, or God is worshipped with false worship—when the gods are false, or God is falsely worshipped.

It is a wretched plague, a torture of the soul, sheer madness: religious insanity, as van Meteren calls it; or a mad error, as Seneca says, a frantic error; or, in Augustine’s words, a raging disease of the mind, a furious disease of the soul; the maddest of all madnesses, the very essence of madness. For a superstitious person can never be at peace.

It belongs to humanity alone: to humanity alone belong pride, greed and superstition, says Pliny, book 7, chapter 1; and even afterwards he rages with anxiety about the future. It wrings his soul over both the present and what is to come. Humanity bears the greatest misery: perpetual servitude, slavery, fear springing from fear, a heavy yoke, the seal of damnation, an intolerable burden. Superstitious people are continually afraid, suspicious and tormented by omens, portents, false tales, dreams, idle and empty works, and fruitless labours. As Botero observes, they are tossed about by the anxiety of an uncertain mind: enemies of God and of themselves.