Action

Use in the book

Doing enters the dialogue as a manner. Charmides' first answer, as Socrates reports it, was that temperance "was doing everything in an orderly way and quietly" (159b). Socrates finds the quick finer than the quiet in a boy's lessons and in deliberation, where praise goes to "the one who does it most easily and most quickly" (159c–160b2); even if as many quiet actions as quick ones proved the finer, "temperance would not be acting quietly any more than acting vigorously and quickly" (160c).

Charmides' third answer, after one about modesty, turns to what is done: temperance is "doing one's own business" (161b). Socrates takes "doing" in its widest sense. The writing-master does something when he writes or reads (161d), and so does whoever heals, builds or weaves, or produces "by any craft whatever, any of the works of craft" (161e). A city in which each man made all his own things would not be well managed, though a temperately managed city would be; so doing one's own business in that way is not temperance, and its author must have spoken in riddles (161e–162b2; see Doing one's own business).

Critias takes the argument over. Having granted that craftsmen who make other people's things may be temperate, he scoffs at the suggestion that he has thereby granted "that those who do other people's business are temperate" (163a). Asked whether he calls making and doing the same, he answers, "No indeed," and adds, "nor working and making either. I learned that from Hesiod, who said that work is no disgrace." Hesiod, the poet of the farmer's Works and Days, about 700 BC, would not, he argues, have called it no disgrace to cobble shoes, sell salt fish or sit in a brothel, had he called such things works, working and doing. On Critias' reading a thing made may be a disgrace when it does not come about with what is fine, but work never: "For things made finely and beneficially he called works, and makings of that kind he called workings and doings" (163b–c). We must say, Critias goes on, that Hesiod regarded only such things as "appropriate to one", and "everything harmful as belonging to others"; so, he concludes, Hesiod, "and anyone else of sense", calls the man who does his own business temperate (163c). The division has two sides, not three. Making is the wide word, covering the shameful and the fine alike; working and doing are two names for its fine and beneficial part.

Socrates restates it: "it is what is appropriate to one, and one's own, that you call good, and the makings of good things that you call doings" (163d). "Good" is Socrates' word, not Critias', and Critias accepts it (163e). Socrates has heard Prodicus of Ceos, the sophist famous for distinguishing words of like meaning, "draw countless distinctions between words", and he tells Critias, "I allow you to assign each word as you please; only make clear what you are applying whatever word you use to" (163d). When Socrates asks whether "the man who does bad things" is not temperate, Critias answers in his own terms, in which bad things can be made but not done, and speaks of "the man who makes not good things but bad ones"; then he defines: "temperance is the doing of good things" (163e; see Doing good things). On his usage, where a doing is already a fine and beneficial making, the definition can be read as saying the same thing twice.

Critias grants that a doctor, "in making someone healthy", makes something beneficial and so does what he ought and is temperate, and allows that he perhaps need not know when his treatment benefits; Socrates concludes that "sometimes ... the doctor, having acted beneficially or harmfully, does not know himself — how he has acted" (164a–c2). The verb is back in its ordinary use, of harmful acting as of beneficial, and Critias lets it pass; what he will not accept is a temperate man who does not know himself, and he turns to knowing oneself (164c–d).

In the second half doing is joined to knowledge. Had temperance been knowledge of what one knows and does not know, Socrates recalls, "neither would we ourselves try to do what we did not know", and "with error removed and rightness leading, those so disposed must necessarily do finely and well in every action" (171d–172a; see Happiness and doing well). In what he calls his dream he grants that "the human race would act and live knowledgeably", but adds, "that by acting knowledgeably we would do well and be happy, this, my dear Critias, we cannot yet learn" (173a–d2). The knowledge that makes us do well proves to be that of good and bad; without it, Socrates says, "each of these things being done well and beneficially: that will be gone from us" (174b–d). This can be read as the answer to Critias' appeal to Hesiod: he built benefit into a word, and the argument ends by placing it in the knowledge of good and bad, which temperance, as knowledge of knowledge, does not supply.

On the last page the verbs return to everyday use, and doing becomes a matter of force. Charmides would be "doing something terrible" if he did not obey his guardian, and here, as in "Then I'll do it", "do" renders ποιεῖν, the verb Critias had kept for making (176b–c). Socrates gives way: "When you set about doing anything, and use force, no man alive will be able to oppose you" (176d).

Places to read

1. 159bCharmides' first answer, reported by Socrates: temperance is doing everything in an orderly way and quietly.
2. 159c–160d23In body and soul alike the quick proves no less fine than the quiet, so temperance is no more acting quietly than acting vigorously and quickly.
3. 161b–162b23"Doing one's own business": writing, reading, healing, building and weaving are all doing something, and the formula must be a riddle.
4. 162e–163c2Craftsmen make other people's things; Critias, citing Hesiod, sets making apart from working and doing, the names of makings done finely and beneficially.
5. 163d–eSocrates restates the usage, recalls Prodicus and lets Critias assign the words; Critias defines temperance as the doing of good things.
6. 164a–d2The doctor who does what he ought may act beneficially without knowing it; Critias will not grant that a man who does not know himself is temperate.
7. 171d–172aIf the temperate man knew what he knew and what he did not, neither he nor those he ruled would do what they did not know, and those so disposed would do finely and well in every action.
8. 173a–d2In Socrates' dream, if temperance ruled, everything would be done according to the kinds of knowledge, and men would act and live knowledgeably; but that by acting knowledgeably they would do well and be happy, he cannot yet learn.
9. 174b–dOnly the knowledge of good and bad makes us do well; without it, things would no longer be done well and beneficially.
10. 176b–dCharmides promises to do what his guardian orders; Socrates yields to one who sets about doing anything with force.

Translation in this edition

The edition keeps "do" for πράττειν, so that Charmides' formula, Socrates' widening of it to every craft (161d–e) and Critias' "doings" (163c–e2) can be followed as one word. It uses "act" at 160c ("acting quietly"), 164b–c ("having acted beneficially or harmfully") and 173d ("act and live knowledgeably"). Πρᾶξις is "actions" at 160c and "action" at 172a, and "doing" and "doings" in Critias' argument (163b–e2). Εὖ πράττειν is "do well" every time (172a twice, 173d twice, 174b), so that the slide from acting well to faring well at 172a and 173d stays visible, and καλῶς πράττειν is "do finely" (172a). Δρᾶν is always "do". "Do" is not kept for πράττειν alone: it also renders ποιεῖν in everyday phrases, as in "doing everything else, in the same manner" (159b) and "do what you order" (176c). In Critias' argument (163a–164c23), though, every "make" that names making renders ποιεῖν (the idiom "make clear" at 163d is δηλοῦν), every "work" ἐργάζεσθαι, ἔργον or ἐργασία, and "do", wherever it is more than an auxiliary, πράττειν, so that the distinction can be followed in English; at 162a Socrates' "working at and doing his own" already gives the pair Critias will set against making. "Business" in "doing one's own business" renders no Greek noun, πρᾶγμα or other, but the plural "one's own (things)", τὰ ἑαυτοῦ or τὰ αὑτοῦ; πρᾶγμα itself comes only at 175e, "a thing worth nothing".

δράω

Attested: δρῶν (drōn; 160b), δρῶντες (drōntes; 161e), δράσουσιν (drasousin; 172b), δρᾷς (drais; 176b). To do. Each time, with "this", it takes up an activity just named: deliberating and finding things out, in which praise goes to "the one who does it most easily and most quickly" (160b); the boys' writing of their enemies' names: "Well, were you being busybodies, and not temperate, when you did that?" (161d–e); examining others, where those who examine without the knowledge of knowledge "will do so more feebly and poorly" (172b); and letting Socrates charm him every day, of which Critias says, "But Charmides, if you do this, it will be proof to me that you are temperate" (176b). Lemma: δράω.

πρᾶξις

Attested: πράξεις (praxeis; 160c, 163c, 163d), πράξεων (praxeōn; 160c), πράξεως (praxeōs; 163b), πρᾶξιν (praxin; 163e twice), πράξει (praxei; 172a). A doing, an action. Socrates compares quiet actions with quick ones (160c). In Critias' argument it is the doing that Hesiod held to be other than making (163b), his name for makings done finely and beneficially (163c), in Socrates' restatement the making of good things (163d), and in Critias' definition "the doing of good things" (163e). In Socrates' account of the benefit once hoped for, those without error would "do finely and well in every action" (172a). Lemma: πρᾶξις.

πράττω

Attested: πράττειν (prattein; 159b, 160c, 161b, 161d twice, 161e twice, 162a three times, 162b twice, 162d, 163a, 163b twice, 171e twice, 172a, 173d, 174b, 176d), ἐπράττετε (eprattete; 161e), πράττοντας (prattontas; 163a, 172a), πράττοντες (prattontes; 163a, 171e, 173d), πράττοντα (prattonta; 163c), πράττων (prattōn; 163e, 164b twice), πράττει (prattei; 164b, 164c), πράττῃ (prattēi; 164b), πράξας (praxas; 164b, 164c twice), ἔπραξεν (epraxen; 164c twice), πραττομένοις (prattomenois; 171b), πραττόμενα (prattomena; 171b), πράττεται (prattetai; 171b), πράξειν (praxein; 171e), πράττοιεν (prattoien; 172d), πράττοιτο (prattoito; 173b), πράττοι (prattoi; 173d), πράττοιμεν (prattoimen; 173d). To do, act, carry through. It is the verb of Charmides' first and third answers (159b, 161b), which Socrates stretches to cover writing, reading and every craft (161d–e) and Critias sets apart from making (163a–c). It is used of the doctor who does what he ought and acts beneficially or harmfully without knowing it (164b–c), of the deeds that only one with the relevant knowledge can examine (171b), of doing only what one knows (171e, 172d, 173b, 173d), of doing well (172a, 173d, 174b), and, in Socrates' yielding, of Charmides setting about anything by force (176d). Lemma: πράττω.

Elsewhere in Plato

Prodicus appears in the Protagoras, lodged with Protagoras in the house of Callias son of Hipponicus (311a, 315d), and Critias is there too (316a). When Critias pleads that the gathering not be broken up, Prodicus answers him with a string of fine distinctions, between disputing and quarrelling, esteem and praise, gladness and pleasure (336d–337c). Later Socrates waives "Prodicus' division of names": whether one says pleasant, delightful or enjoyable, Prodicus is to answer to what Socrates means (358a–b), as in the Charmides Socrates lets Critias assign the words as he pleases (163d). In the next breath he asks whether the actions aimed at living without pain and pleasantly are not fine, and the fine work "good and beneficial" (358b), close to the words by which, on Critias' reading, Hesiod named works and doings.

The Republic makes the formula Critias defended the definition of justice. Socrates says that "doing one's own and not being a busybody is justice" is something "we have heard from many others and often said ourselves" (433a–b), and the having and doing of "what is appropriate to one and one's own", the pair in Socrates' restatement of Critias (Charmides 163d), is justice (433e–434a). These pages draw no line between making and doing: a carpenter who tries to work a cobbler's works and a man who tries to do both trades are spoken of in one breath (434a), and the image of justice is that "the man who is by nature a shoemaker should rightly cobble and do nothing else" (443c), though cobbling heads the trades that Hesiod, as Critias reads him, would not have called work or doing (Charmides 163b; see Doing one's own business).

Other ancient sources

Critias' authority is Hesiod's Works and Days, which urges the poet's brother Perses to work so that hunger may hate him: gods and men are angry with the idle man, who lives like a stingless drone on the bees' labour; "work is no disgrace; idleness is the disgrace" (311); and Perses is to turn his foolish heart from other men's possessions to work (315–316).¹ Hesiod sets work against idleness, and the passage has no word for making or doing: the distinction is Critias' gloss, and his "everything harmful as belonging to others" can be read as taking its cue from Hesiod's "other men's possessions". The line also figured in the charges against Socrates that Xenophon, who had been one of his companions, answers in his Memorabilia, the Recollections of Socrates. "The accuser", he reports, charged that Socrates used the worst passages of the most famous poets to teach his companions to be wrongdoers and tyrants, among them this line, which, the accuser said, Socrates explained as bidding one shrink from no work, unjust or shameful, but do even that for gain. Socrates, Xenophon answers, agreed that to be a worker is beneficial and good for a man and to be idle harmful and bad; he counted as working, and as good workers, those who do something good, and gave the name of idle to the dice-player and to anyone doing something wicked and harmful (1.2.56–57).² Xenophon's Socrates reads the line as Plato's Critias does, keeping the name of work for the good and beneficial, though he marks the difference by what is done and not by the verb: good and wicked alike are things one "does" (ποιεῖν).

Later readings

Aristotle gave the division between making and doing its classic form, and drew it differently from Critias. Among things that can be otherwise there is what is made and what is done, and the one does not contain the other, "for doing is not a making, nor making a doing". Craft is a reasoned state concerned with making, practical wisdom a reasoned state concerned with doing, about what is good and bad for a human being; and the end of a making is something else, while the end of a doing is not, for "acting well is itself the end".³ For Critias doing was a kind of making, the kind done finely and beneficially; for Aristotle neither falls under the other, and what separates them is whether the end lies outside the activity. His word for that end, εὐπραξία (eupraxia), "acting well", is the noun of the Charmides' "doing well", and his "end" (τέλος) is the word Critias uses at 173d when he says that Socrates will not easily find "anything else that crowns doing well". His practical wisdom can be read as taking up the knowledge of good and bad in which the Charmides' search ends (174b–c).

Use in the book

The Hermetic creator warns souls against doing something new contrary to his plans. Action is evaluated through its relation to appointed order and threatened consequences. The passage’s verb therefore concerns accountable conduct, not an abstract definition of action as such.

Places to read

1. I.49.44.20Departure from the creator’s plans is treated as punishable conduct.

Translation in this edition

“Act” or “do” suits the verb; “action” names the corresponding activity.

Use in the book

The universal-order maxim distributes beauty across ideas and images, goodness across actions, plans and undertakings. The good actions not yet done are then called a discovery and a step forward for will: possibility can educate willingness before accomplishment. The reported earlier judgment distinguishes judging the work and actions by the rule from judging the rule and actions by the work. It retains actions in both halves rather than making a tidier rule/work reversal.

Places to read

1. I, p. 45, entry 2, ¶4Accord with universal order differentiates good action from beautiful representation.
2. II, p. 721, entry 2, ¶1An unperformed good action can advance will.
3. II, p. 888, entry 5, ¶1Actions and works are judged in relation to a rule.

Translation in this edition

The English translation preserves the different lists, the unperformed condition and the bracketed contextual rendering “[discovery].” Progrès here becomes a step forward; it does not establish an inevitable historical law of progress.

Progress

French: progrès.

The good action not yet performed is a step forward for will, a local moral possibility rather than a doctrine of universal progress.

Places to read: II, p. 721, entry 2, ¶1.

Ends and means

French: but; moyen.

But and moyens are jointly required to be honorable in the saying attributed to Mme P. [Pastoret], which Joubert endorses. The English translation translates honnête ethically rather than merely as truthful. The bracketed surname belongs to the source edition; yesterday remains relative to the note and supplies no independently dated encounter.

Places to read: II, p. 512, entry 7, ¶1.

Use in the book

Speech performed and conduct judged

Burton’s satire of rhetoricians attacks their ability to move other people while failing to govern themselves. Fabius, meaning Quintilian, supposedly judges most of them by their “speech, action, gesture” as mad declaimers. Action here includes delivery and bodily performance; the margin describes panting, gesticulation and blows to breast and forehead. The following maxim prefers wisdom shown in deeds to wisdom merely spoken. The local contrast is therefore between persuasive performance and actual moral conduct, not between speech and all bodily movement indiscriminately.

Action elsewhere names the deed assessed by moral judgment. Conscience justifies or condemns “our actions.” Will’s acts are willing and refusing, while other actions of will are carried out by lower powers, such as opening the eyes, moving from place to place or speaking courteously or abusively. That distinction separates the rational act from its bodily execution without making the latter independent of the former. The lower powers can also rebel. The two acts of willing and refusing take their moral quality from their direction. Will’s freedom is qualified relative to ourselves and contingent things, alongside necessity relative to God’s fixed purpose; the reported Stoic denial is a separate position.

Ordinary acts include the notable deeds whose histories Burton’s imagined commonwealth should preserve. “actual transgressions” are individually committed sins in his account of inherited original sin; actual does not simply mean true or accurate. A “positive act” in the distinction between ignorance and error means a real operation of judging, even when the judgment is false: positive is opposed to privation, not to wickedness. In a different register, the advice to imagine a beloved engaged in an “undecent Action” supplies an imagined repellent activity, not evidence of a crime actually committed.

The reported necessity of a familiar spirit for anyone famous in an art or “action,” meaning achievement, is expressly rejected at the next paragraph. Burton then permits a more limited account of harmful spiritual influence by divine permission. The distinction matters: the original margin’s actiones of the internal organs names bodily functions which the devil is said to obstruct, not distinguished human deeds accomplished through a personal guardian. Elsewhere the accusation that God investigates people’s conduct, actus and secret thoughts belongs to Caecilius in Octavius, not to Burton’s own denial of divine knowledge.

Operations and actualities

In the definition of disease, an “action of the body” is a bodily function whose obstruction, damage or alteration constitutes illness in the account attributed to Fuchs and Crato. The original marginal “actio” likewise means function. “Naturall actions” later denotes nutritive functions: appetite may be greater than digestion. This use of natural does not simply divide voluntary human deeds from supernatural events. The natural spirits likewise serve nutritive “natural actions,” distinguished from vital spirits and the animal spirits of sense and motion. Spirit is called the soul’s instrument for performing all its actions, but the same passage also reports a shared medium according to some and a fourth soul in Paracelsus. These alternatives must not be made one doctrine.

Waking is “the action and motion of the Senses,” as bodily spirits resume their passage and duties. Understanding has a “reflecting action,” judging its own operations; another reported list calls apprehension, combination, separation, reasoning and memory its actions. The act/habit distinction then contrasts present acts of knowing with enduring dispositions available for use. A faculty’s operation can therefore be internal rather than publicly visible. The early account calls understanding free from bodily organs, yet the later account of bodily causes says the soul performs all her actions better or worse according to her organs’ condition. The second statement remains beside the first rather than resolving their tension. Mental and bodily effects can also run both ways: Piso’s marginal actiones animi are the operations of the mind changed by altered humours, while the surrounding argument also makes imagination disturb the bodily spirits and humours.

The soul’s definition as “actus primus,” first actuality, must not be reduced to an episode of doing something. It constitutes the organized body’s capacity for living activity, even when a particular activity is not being exercised. The vegetative faculty is a “substantial act,” the sensitive faculty an “Act,” and the rational soul the “first substantial act” of a human body: these are constitutive actualities, not three isolated deeds. Vegetative life includes nutrition, growth and reproduction; sensitive life includes the lower powers as well as sensation and movement. A different marginal actus is illumination, the actuality of a transparent medium, distinguished from light in its luminous source. The final consolatory comparison uses a related distinction: a child is rational “in power, not in act,” and the troubled believer may be penitent in desire without yet performing repentance. The next paragraph says God accepts that desire as repentance, while retaining a distinction between what it is by nature and how it is accepted.

Love too can be defined as an “action of the mind” directed towards good, among competing accounts of it as god, spirit or passion. In the original Latin definition, desiderans agrees with actus: it is the act that is qualified as desiring good. Scaliger subsequently objects to defining love as desire or appetite, since love can remain after possession has ended desire. Burton then allows the object to be merely an apparent good. The Latin actionibus and its expanded English gloss concern the good intended in actions, thoughts and desires, not the moral goodness of every deed; “I think” and “I suppose” remain qualifications. A subsequent encomium calls love the beginning and end of all our actions and both their efficient and instrumental cause, keeping productive agency distinct from means. The “Act of Generation” is more concrete: mating, whose pleasure is the first of five causes assigned to animal love. Preservation of the species and desire for offspring form the second; familiarity and nurturing are distinct later causes.

Acting and being acted upon

Active and passive describes reciprocal causal roles, not simply energy and idleness. The sensitive power is active when the eye sees colour and passive when sunlight injures it. Self-love makes a person an active cause of their own overestimation while others’ excessive praise also acts on them. In courtship, people pursue others and are manipulated in return; Burton’s satirical account says women are not far behind men. The eye is both active and passive as a cause and instrument of love, wounding and being wounded on the looking and the looked-at side. The ensuing narratives include sexual violence: reciprocal visual influence does not establish consent.

The same pair becomes “agents and victims” in the cuckoldry catalogue, but the original immediately explains it as having either given or taken horns. The alternatives do not establish that every named ruler did both. The following discussion also allows virtuous people and women wronged by husbands. A separate passive construction, “Religionis acti Furiis,” says people are driven by the Furies of religion: acti here is a participle of ago, and the Furies supply the driving agency. The hostile religious description remains Burton’s polemic.

Bodily responses and occupations

Scaliger’s reported claim that tears are “not... affections, but actions” distinguishes an activity or bodily response from an affection or state undergone. The surrounding catalogue explains weeping, sighing, trembling and other movements through preceding motions of mind. This does not make tears a necessarily deliberate choice. The love section similarly describes a movement from passions to actions: anxiety and desire issue in flattering, arguing, fighting, laughing and weeping. Burton then stresses that actions and passions are intermixed. His subsequent “ordinary actions” of a lovesick person include being miserable, enduring grief, wishing for death and raging, so the category is not restricted to outward voluntary deeds. The Latin margin’s actiones accompanies a shorter catalogue and love’s beginning and middle; Burton’s English also adds the end. The following neglect of business is qualified by being far gone, doubtful, despairing or intensely absorbed.

“A life out of action” means inactivity or lack of occupation. The idleness discussion ranges from having no calling or regular business to an inability or unwillingness to dress oneself or write a letter. Being “in action” can include business, conversation, sport, recreation or agreeable company. Action here is broader than paid labour or strenuous exercise. Burton’s claim that occupation relieves symptoms belongs to his historical account, with moral reproach and recognition of impaired activity both present. He also distinguishes one person without activity or employment from another overloaded with care. People who abruptly abandon lives “in action” may fare badly, although continued burdens can also lead to incapacity. His later injunction to be always in action follows the requirement that exercise be moderate and seasonable. Occupying the imagination means directing its activity towards something: left alone, it is already busy working upon itself.

“Action and gesture” also describes absorbed scholars’ bodily demeanour, beyond the deliberate delivery of an orator. A sufferer who “acts with his hand” gestures while walking. In Savonarola’s reported scale, beginning to “act” something means carrying a thought or utterance into execution; the margin’s acta are deeds mingled with speech. Yet the preceding scale attributed to Rhasis already allows gestures and other actions in the middle degree. The distinction is therefore contextual, not a rule that any visible movement proves the last stage. “Actually melancholy” likewise distinguishes present suffering from an inclination towards it. Burton’s warning against affected readers applying symptom lists to themselves is followed by advice to read cautiously; both statements belong to his historical treatment of reading.

Performers, participants and imagined parts

The world-stage metaphor can be reflective rather than fraudulent. Burton introduces his Democritus Junior persona as an “antick or personate actor” and calls himself a spectator of how other people act their parts; his admission of private discontents qualifies the distance of that spectator. The allegorical world-stage then presents people changing roles in a fable attributed to Calcagnini, alongside John of Salisbury. By contrast, the person acting twenty parts at once changes faces and allegiances for advantage. Burton’s imagined commonwealth includes actual companies of actors, while his later literary programme promises to act several parts himself, changing satirical and comic voices with the scene.

A role need not be a false identity believed by its performer. Burton first distinguishes playing a philosopher or physician from really being one. Later, the ambitious person who “acts a Lords part” believes himself a king or great man; the lover who “acts and struts” behaves before an imagined beloved. Solitary people may imagine an endless variety of roles, initially delighting in them and later finding the habit intrusive or tormenting, while Burton still allows properly used solitude and meditation. The opening poem’s speaker also acts out private scenes, alternating pleasure with misery across its stanzas. These voices and conditions should not be flattened into a single clinical or autobiographical report.

The Abydos sufferer sometimes acts in his imagined theatre as well as applauding it; the supplied note distinguishes that detail from the compared Aristotelian narrative. A comedy performed before Charles IX represents the Paris lawyer’s story: the illness is dated 1550, but the performance is not. The Abderites reportedly repeat Perseus’s tragic part after watching Andromeda; Burton mixes almost every person or house with broader all-language, and omits the fever course noted in the Lucian parallel. Elsewhere “acting as if” one saw or heard something delightful describes behaviour responding to an imagined sensory object, without asserting an actual object or a deliberate stage performance.

An actor can simply be a participant rather than an auditor or spectator. This is the point of the recreation counsel and its banquet example, although the surrounding advice attributed to Fonseca includes coercive sexual encouragement which should not disappear into a modern therapeutic paraphrase. The erotic actor takes part in kissing or dancing; Ptolemy is a principal performer in revels. Gregory’s refusal to be an actor concerns an old, gouty bishop among wedding dancers; the supplied note preserves its joking explanation and blessing, rather than deriving a general ban on weddings. The aspirant who wants to play a king but acts a clown is a rebuked bad performer, yet the next paragraph admits the alternative that an overlooked person may genuinely deserve advancement.

Other dramatic metaphors are openly condemnatory. Tricks and impostures are “acted” by political schemers; those Burton calls heretics become the devil’s actors, and a new company of actors introduces his Protestant attack on the papacy. These are his accusations, not neutral descriptions of religions. The “Acts and Scenes” of love’s tragicomedy instead name dramatic divisions, figuratively episodes of the narrated betrayals and violence.

An action at law

The creditor bringing an “action” against an imprisoned debtor initiates a legal claim. Burton uses that ordinary proceeding as an analogy for accumulating perturbations. A second metaphor imagines the body bringing an action against the soul for negligent government: the soul would be convicted. The anatomical subjects have entered a courtroom, rather than performed a physiological action in the preceding sense.

A more concrete lawsuit appears in the counsel on jealousy: “enter an Action” means bring a suit, with public exposure of supposed marital shame as the feared consequence. Burton invokes the Martin Guerre case but reverses the historical roles as the supplied note explains. The lexical sense is secure even though the anecdote’s allocation of claimant and impersonator is defective.

An “Act of Parliament” is a legislative enactment, used metaphorically for the supposedly unrepealable law of mortality. The argument does not establish a literal death clause in Magna Carta. Latin Actione, an ablative of actio, appears in an abbreviated citation for Cardan’s response to Scaliger: the editorial identification explains a written plea or reply, while the printed folio 1226 remains unresolved.

Completion, repetition and an act in progress

Latin actum agere means repeat work already done. In the preface it is an objection Burton anticipates to writing another melancholy book; in the consolation it becomes a concession followed by a defence of accessible abridgment. Neither passage simply declares compilation pointless. Actum de te, it is all over with you, supplies a mock-threat to the hostile reader, conditional on Democritus Junior really being what he claims. Actum de mortalibus, it is all over with humankind, reports what frightened people thought during an earthquake, not the occurrence of the world’s end. These impersonal idioms differ from actum in the marginal illness which began and developed from sadness alone; there the passive participle describes the malady’s development, with a later relapse case kept separate.

Finally, “the very act” can be an action still in progress. Reports of people rescued while attempting self-destruction support caution about condemning their repentance and salvation, qualifying earlier severe judgments. This is distinct from both a completed deed and the potential-versus-exercise comparison in the subsequent consolation: the latter differentiates the nature of desire from its acceptance as repentance.

Related entries

Pathetical; Parrhesia; Confer and conference; Judgment; Fact; Faculty; Soul; Will and nill; Conscience; Appetite; Passion; Habit; Imagination

Places to read

1. The poem’s private performanceActing imagined scenes in the speaker’s alternation of pleasure and misery
2. The author as actorAn assumed literary persona and the reader’s anticipated question
3. Watching the world-stageOther people’s parts and the spectator’s qualified detachment
4. Repeating work already doneActum agere as an anticipated objection answered by the compiler
5. Readers presently affectedActually melancholy; warning against self-application and advice to read cautiously
6. Error as a positive actAn actual judgment distinguished from privation, rather than a morally good deed
7. Changing allegorical actorsWorld-stage roles in the attributed fable, with distinct body and marginal formulations
8. Twenty parts at onceOpportunistic changes of role and allegiance
9. A written responseMarginal Actione in Cardan’s abbreviated citation; folio 1226 remains unresolved
10. Theatres and recorded deedsActors and memorable acts in the imagined commonwealth
11. Rhetorical delivery and moral deedsThe declaimer’s performance and the critique of mere eloquence
12. Playing a professionAssumed character distinguished from being the person represented
13. The postscript’s mock-threatActum de te addressed to a hostile reader, conditional on the author’s claimed character
14. Actual transgressionsIndividually committed sins within Burton’s theological account
15. Bodily functionAction and marginal actio in definitions of disease
16. A creditor’s suitThe legal analogy for accumulated disturbances
17. Spirits and the soul’s operationsNatural functions and alternative accounts of the soul’s instrument
18. First actualityThe soul’s constitutive actuality, subsequent questions and vegetative life
19. Sensitive actuality and illuminationThe faculty’s Act, active/passive sense and marginal actus of the transparent
20. Sensory activitySleep, waking and the resumption of the senses’ operations
21. Acts of understandingThe rational soul, organ-free understanding, reflection, acts and habits, and conscience’s moral judgment
22. Acts of willWilling, refusing and bodily execution
23. Rejected guardians and limited harmAchievement through a familiar spirit rejected, then organ functions obstructed by divine permission
24. An active life relinquishedAbrupt retirement and the separate dangers of continued burdens
25. Occupation and inactivityDaily tasks, recreation and the historical attack on idleness
26. Roles in solitary imaginationDelight, intrusive repetition and the allowance for properly used meditation
27. The body’s legal actionReciprocal causation and the soul charged with negligence
28. Mental operations and bodily changeMarginal actiones animi within reciprocal causation
29. An illness developed from sadnessMarginal actum as a participle; onset and development distinguished from the subsequent relapse case
30. Active and passive self-loveSelf-caused overestimation and the receiving role
31. Opportunity and self-estimateThe unknown person’s counterfactual achievement and unnoticed pride
32. Praise acting on its recipientExcessive flattery and self-destructive attempts to live up to it
33. Absorbed scholars’ gesturesBodily action beyond rhetorical delivery; the soldier’s ridicule distinguished
34. The feared end of humanityActum de mortalibus as earthquake sufferers’ belief
35. Already affected or inclinedActually melancholy and susceptibility qualified by the prior wise-person example
36. Inactivity and overloadOne person without occupation and another burdened by excessive business
37. Organs conditioning all actionsThe broad physiological claim retained beside earlier organ-free understanding
38. Natural functionsAppetite contrasted with digestion
39. Applying symptoms to oneselfThe caution that qualifies the earlier actually melancholy readership warning
40. Acting with the handGesturing among distracted bodily movements
41. The imagined theatreActing as well as applauding in the Abydos anecdote; the supplied source distinction
42. A story performed as comedyThe Paris illness dated 1550, with the performance before Charles IX undated
43. Roles believed or imaginedThe ambitious person’s assumed lordship and the lover’s posing before an imagined beloved
44. From words to executionActing upon thought and marginal acta, with earlier intermediate-stage gestures retained
45. Tears as actionsBodily responses and affections distinguished
46. Moderate and seasonable activityIn action with its governing qualification against both excess and idleness
47. Directing imagination and avoiding suggestionContinual occupation; marginal actio distinguishes doing, remembering and another’s gesture
48. Participant rather than spectatorActor in recreation and the banquet example, with the coercive surrounding counsel acknowledged
49. Useful abridgment despite repetitionActum agere conceded and the accessible compilation defended
50. Mortality’s parliamentary actAn unrepealable statute metaphor, not a literal Magna Carta clause
51. The bad actor and the overlooked claimantPlaying a king, acting a clown, and the conceded possibility of genuine merit
52. Literary roles and love’s operationChanging authorial parts; action and marginal actus in competing love definitions; actionibus, intended good and merely apparent good
53. Mating and the cause of actionsFive distinct causes of animal love, then love as beginning, end, efficient cause and instrument
54. The eye acting and affectedReciprocal optical influence distinguished from consent in the ensuing narratives
55. Dramatic repetition and erotic participationThe Abderites’ acted speech and actor as a person taking part
56. Leading performers and an absent bishopPtolemy’s participation and Gregory’s qualified wedding refusal
57. Courtship’s active and passive rolesPursuing others and being manipulated, with the extension to women
58. Behaving as if an object were presentActing as an imagined sensory response, with seeing or hearing retained
59. Passions becoming actionsThe lover’s conduct, with passions and actions intermixed
60. Broad actions of lovesicknessInward suffering and wishes as well as deeds; the shorter Latin actiones catalogue
61. Dramatic divisions of loveActs and Scenes of the tragicomedy after narrated betrayal and violence
62. An imagined repellent activityUndecent Action in proposed imaginative aversion rather than a proved deed
63. Giving or taking hornsActive/passive with either/or and the subsequent allowance for virtue
64. A suit over impersonationThe Martin Guerre example and its reversed roles
65. Impostures and the devil’s actorsSchemes acted and participants cast as instruments in Burton’s confessional polemic
66. Driven by religious FuriesActi as a passive participle, with an external driving agency
67. A new company of actorsThe papal actors of Burton’s Protestant invective
68. The critic of divine scrutinyActus as deeds in Caecilius’s accusation, not Burton’s denial of omniscience
69. Rescue during an actAn action in progress and charitable caution about repentance and salvation
70. Potential, exercise and repentanceDesire distinguished from performed action, with divine acceptance

In this edition

“Speech, action, gesture” becomes “speech, performance, or gesture.” “Action of the body” becomes “function of the body”; “reflecting action,” “reflective activity”; “life out of action,” “inactive”; and “enter an Action,” “bring a lawsuit.” The choices preserve rhetorical, physiological, intellectual, occupational and legal distinctions.

At the soul definition, the modern column combines Greek, Latin and Burton’s English restatement into one formulation of fulfilment or first actuality. The record therefore does not assign the entire definition to actus alone. In the final comparison, “in act” becomes “in its exercise,” with though and its making the connection and reference explicit, while “in action” remains action. Earlier “Actions or Habits” and “in Habit, or in Act” become acts and habits and habitual and actual: the change from or to and is recorded without merging the opposed categories. The distinction between potential capacity, present exercise and accepted intention is preserved.

Further choices operate at construction level. “Active and passive” may become active and passive verb clauses or the nouns agents and victims; the surrounding alternatives remain necessary. “Life out of action” becomes an adjective describing people, and passive tricks “acted by Politicians” becomes active political schemers practise. The marginal actio definition supplies an antecedent and English article. Marginal acta receives its contextual complement with it; the actio passage about unpleasant sights supplies English framing and the affected people. A different marginal actiones catalogue preserves beginnings and middle without importing the body’s added end. The Cardan citation receives an editorial identification rather than a claimed word-for-word translation.

act · local use 1

Printed “act” (English; verb).

Perform or enact imagined scenes for oneself.

Context: The poem’s first-person voice alternates pleasant solitary imagining with misery in adjoining stanzas; this line is not by itself a clinical autobiography.

Source: original body

Locator qualification: Source record identifies these leaves as unnumbered; plain numerical passage labels are scan numbers.

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: When to my self I act and smile

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: When I act things out and smile to myself

Alignment convention

Qualification: The modern supplies things out to make the transitive enactment explicit; to myself is redistributed after smile.

Supplied words: things out (the implied enactment made explicit)

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

act · local use 2

Printed “act” (English; verb).

Play or perform a role, figuratively conduct oneself in the world.

Context: The narrator calls himself a spectator of other people’s fortunes; his later admission of domestic discontents qualifies the apparent detachment.

Source: original body

Source wording: act their parts

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

act · local use 3

Printed “act” (English; verb).

Assume and perform roles, here opportunistically to suit different people.

Context: The satirical example shifts faces and allegiances for personal advantage; it does not make every literary or theatrical role deceitful.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: to act twenty parts and persons at once

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: playing twenty roles and persons at once

Alignment convention

Qualification: The infinitive to act is recast as the participle playing within the modern sentence; the objects and at once retain their scope.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

act · acts · local use 1

Printed “acts” (English; plural noun).

Deeds or notable achievements, here the proper material of public history.

Context: Burton proposes state-appointed historians to record noteworthy events, contrasting them with incompetent or partisan writers. All is restricted by famous, not a promise to record every trivial occurrence.

Source: original body

Source wording: all famous acts

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

act · acts · local use 2

Printed “acts” (English; verb).

Performs an assumed character or role.

Context: Burton defends his satirical persona by distinguishing the person playing a part from the person who really holds that identity, and assigns borrowed sayings to their sources.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: acts a Princes, a Philosophers, a Magistrates, a Fools part

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: acts the part of a prince, philosopher, magistrate, or fool

Alignment convention

Qualification: The possessive list before part is recast as the part of a list, with explicit articles and final or. The whole construction, not acts alone, carries these changes.

Supplied words: the; a; or (articles and coordination in the recast list)

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

act · Act · local use 1

Printed “Act” (English; noun).

Actuality constituting the organized body as capable of sensitive life.

Context: The sensitive faculty includes the vegetative powers and supplies sensation, appetite, judgment, breathing and motion. Its brain-based operations are not identical with a single momentary deed.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: an Act of an organical body

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: the actuality of an organized body

Alignment convention

Qualification: The original indefinite an becomes the in the modern definition; Act is actuality.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

act · acting · local use 1

Printed “acting” (English; present participle).

Performing roles in imagined scenes.

Context: People imagine themselves playing roles or seeing them performed. Initial delight becomes interference with tasks and eventual torment, but Burton subsequently allows properly used solitude and meditation.

Source: original body

Source wording: acting an infinite variety of parts

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

act · acts · local use 3

Printed “acts” (English; verb).

Makes expressive bodily movements; gestures.

Context: The subject is one of the distracted sufferers who laughs, smiles, frowns or moves his lips. Hand action here does not necessarily involve conscious performance for an audience.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: he acts with his hand, as he walks

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: gestures with his hand as he walks

Alignment convention

Qualification: The original repeated he is omitted before gestures because the modern carries its earlier subject across the list.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

act · local use 4

Printed “act” (English; verb).

Perform a part, here within the sufferer’s imagined theatre.

Context: The man at Abydos alternates acting with applauding and laughing at what he imagines seeing. The supplied note identifies acting himself as a detail Burton adds or transmits beyond the compared Aristotelian narrative.

Source: original body

Source wording: sometimes act himself

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

act · acted · local use 1

Printed “acted” (English; passive participle).

Presented or performed on stage.

Context: Burton separates the reported Paris lawyer’s illness in 1550 from a later performance, for which he gives no date. The comedy is a representation of the story, not the incident itself.

Source: original body

Source wording: The storie saith Serres, was acted in a Comedy before Charles the ninth

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

act · acts · local use 4

Printed “acts” (English; verb).

Assumes and enacts the behaviour of a role.

Context: The ambitious person becoming melancholy believes himself a king or great man. This self-believed identity differs from a knowingly assumed satirical persona or calculated hypocrisy.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: acts a Lords part

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: plays the lord

Alignment convention

Qualification: Acts a Lords part is idiomatically condensed to plays the lord; part is implicit in the role-playing construction.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

act · acts · local use 5

Printed “acts” (English; verb).

Poses or performs expressive behaviour before an imagined beloved.

Context: Burton’s lover behaves as if his mistress were present; the adjacent Donatus case is a separately reported woman who firmly believes herself married to a king.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: acts and struts

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: posing and strutting

Alignment convention

Qualification: The finite coordinated verbs become participles linked to the preceding subject; acts is interpreted locally as posing.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

act · local use 5

Printed “act” (English; verb).

Put a thought or utterance into practice.

Context: Savonarola’s reported scale distinguishes verbal expression from execution. The preceding Rhasis account already includes gestures and other actions at the middle degree, so not every bodily movement marks the final stage.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: when he begins to act it likewise

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: when he also begins to act upon it

Alignment convention

Qualification: The modern supplies upon to express the complement relation in act it; likewise becomes also.

Supplied words: upon (explicit complement relation)

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

act · actest

Printed “actest” (English; second-person singular verb).

Perform a role or behave in its manner.

Context: The bad actor analogy rebukes an aspirant allegedly unfit for office. The next paragraph expressly considers the alternative that the overlooked person is more deserving than others.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: Thou wouldst play a Kings part, but actest a Clowne

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: You would play a king, but act a clown

Alignment convention

Qualification: The phrase play a Kings part is compressed to play a king; actest becomes modern act. The desired kingly role and alleged clownish performance remain distinct.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

act · Act · local use 2

Printed “Act” (English; verb).

Adopt and perform different literary roles or modes.

Context: Burton announces satirical, comic and mixed tones according to subject and present scene; this tells the reader to attend to changes of voice.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: to Act severall parts

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: play several parts

Alignment convention

Qualification: The original repeats to in the series of infinitives; the modern carries the earlier to before show over the coordinated play.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

act · acted · local use 2

Printed “acted” (English; past-tense verb).

Repeatedly performed or declaimed a dramatic role.

Context: The Abderite spectators reportedly repeat Perseus’s love speech after a performance. Burton says almost every man and almost every house, alongside broader rhetorical all; his retelling omits the fever course noted in the Lucian parallel.

Source: original body

Source wording: they continually acted that Tragical part of Perseus

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

act · acting · local use 2

Printed “acting” (English; present participle).

Behaving or making movements in response to an imagined experience.

Context: The symptom report attributed to Avicenna concerns smiling or behaving as if an object were present. Saw or heard remains alternative; no actual external presence or deliberate stage performance is asserted.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: acting as if they saw or heard some delectable object

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: behaving as though one saw or heard something delightful

Alignment convention

Qualification: The modern shifts they to generic one and recasts some delectable object as something delightful, retaining the as-if condition and sensory alternatives.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

act · Acts

Printed “Acts” (English; plural noun).

Major dramatic divisions, figuratively the episodes of love’s unfolding story.

Context: The preceding betrayals and violence become theatrical episodes. The supplied notes distinguish Burton’s compressed or altered narratives from their cited parallels; no historical authentication follows from the metaphor.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: Such Acts and Scenes hath this Tragecomœdy of love

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: Such are the acts and scenes of this tragicomedy of love

Alignment convention

Qualification: The original possessive construction this tragicomedy has such acts becomes such are the acts... of this tragicomedy; the same relation is redistributed.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

act · acted · local use 3

Printed “acted” (English; passive participle).

Carried out or performed, with the suggestion of staged deception.

Context: Burton’s polemical account attributes religious impostures to political schemers and ultimately the devil; the preceding heavenly-garden story is reported from Marco Polo and extended by Burton.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: Many such tricks and impostures are acted by Politicians

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: Political schemers practise many such tricks and frauds

Alignment convention

Qualification: The passive are acted by Politicians becomes active Political schemers practise; agent and object remain distinct.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

act · local use 6

Printed “act” (English; noun).

The doing of something while it is in progress, before completion.

Context: The reported rescues support charitable caution about judging repentance and salvation. Earlier severe judgments are qualified; the account does not certify every reported event.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: out of the very act of hanging and drowning themselves

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: in the very act of hanging or drowning themselves

Alignment convention

Qualification: Out of the act, governed by recovered, becomes in the act, governed by rescued. The original coordinated methods and become alternative or; both differences belong to the larger rescue construction.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

act of generation

Printed “Act of Generation” (English; noun phrase).

The reproductive sexual act.

Context: Leone Ebreo’s first cause of animal love is the pleasure taken in mating, distinct from the second cause, preservation of the species and desire for offspring. Familiarity and nurturing are later separate causes.

Source: original body

Source wording: the Act of Generation

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

Act of Parliament

Printed “Act of Parliament” (English; noun phrase).

A legislative enactment or binding statute; figuratively the unalterable law of mortality.

Context: The consolation calls universal death an unrepealable enactment, not an actual clause proved to be in Magna Carta or a specific statute. The purported Ciceronian consolation remains qualified in the note.

Source: original body

Source wording: an everlasting Act of Parliament

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

actio · local use 1

Printed “actio” (Latin; lemma).

A function or operation; the thing impaired in the marginal definition.

Context: Original marginal definition attributed to Fuchs, with a separate editorial English translation. Primum marks primary impairment in the definition; the fragment does not establish a dated sequence of symptoms.

Source: original marginal wording in Burton-labelled note

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: à quo primùm vitiatur actio

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: that by which a function is primarily impaired

Alignment convention

Qualification: The original marginal relative clause is aligned with its separate editorial translation. That makes an implicit antecedent explicit and a supplies an English article before function.

Supplied words: that (implicit antecedent supplied); a (English article supplied)

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

actio · Actione

Printed “Actione” (Latin; ablative singular noun in abbreviated citation).

A plea or response, here a written reply named in an abbreviated bibliographical citation.

Context: The margin cites Cardan against Scaliger; the editor identifies a response but leaves the edition and printed folio 1226 unresolved. The compact explains the citation’s contextual sense without reconstructing a full title.

Source: original marginal wording in Burton-labelled note

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: Actione ad subtil. in Scal. fol. 1226.

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: An abbreviated reference to Cardan’s response to Scaliger concerning De subtilitate.

Alignment convention

Qualification: This pairs an abbreviated original reference with the supplied editorial explanation, not a direct same-scope translation. Cardan and response are the editor’s expansion; the printed locator 1226 remains in the original.

Supplied words: Cardan’s response to Scaliger concerning De subtilitate (editorial expansion of the citation)

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

actio · actiones · local use 1

Printed “actiones” (Latin; accusative plural noun).

Functions or operations, here of internal organs.

Context: The claim attributed to Taurellus concerns the devil’s possible hidden obstruction of bodily workings; it follows Burton’s divine-permission limitation and disagreements about effects on mind.

Source: original marginal wording in Burton-labelled note

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: Viscerum actiones potest inhibere latenter

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: He can secretly obstruct the workings of the internal organs

Alignment convention

Qualification: Original marginal wording aligned with its separate editorial translation, not with the modern body.

Supplied words: He (contextual subject of potest made explicit); the (English articles)

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

actio · local use 2

Printed “actio” (Latin; nominative singular noun).

The doing or enactment of something, distinguished from recalling or gesturally suggesting it.

Context: The Galateus margin concerns things distressing to the imagination; the continuation extends the effect to another person’s gesture. Burton adapts a rule of manners within historical patient care.

Source: original marginal wording in Burton-labelled note

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: Neque enim tam actio, aut recordatio rerum hujusmodi displicet

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: For it is not merely the act or recollection of such things that displeases them

Alignment convention

Qualification: The compressed neque tam is rendered not merely, with the subsequent clause supplying the even construction. It is... that is English framing; them makes the affected people explicit. No simple word-for-word equation is claimed.

Supplied words: it is... that (English framing); the (article); them (contextual experiencers)

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

actio · actiones · local use 2

Printed “actiones” (Latin; nominative plural noun).

Characteristic activities or manifestations, broadly including the suffering states and wishes just listed.

Context: Castiglione’s reported catalogue includes being miserable, enduring grief, wishing for death and raging. The body adds details and love’s end, whereas this margin names only beginnings and middle.

Source: original marginal wording in Burton-labelled note

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: sint certa amantium signa & certæ actiones

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: are sure signs and characteristic actions of lovers

Alignment convention

Qualification: Certæ is rendered characteristic with actiones, while certa remains sure with signa; amantium supplies of lovers for both. The paired phrases are aligned rather than assigning certainty to actiones alone.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

actio · actionibus

Printed “actionibus” (Latin; ablative plural noun).

Deeds or activities, here considered through the good their agent intends.

Context: Burton quotes a question attributed to Augustine whose precise source remains unsettled. I think and the preceding allowance for merely apparent good qualify the argument; it does not pronounce every deed morally good.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: puto nihil in omnibus actionibus

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: Nothing, I think, in all your actions

Alignment convention

Qualification: The verb puto becomes parenthetical I think and nihil remains its thought-object. Your supplies the contextual possessor addressed by the preceding question; the original Latin has only in all actions.

Supplied words: your (contextual possessor from the addressee)

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

action · local use 1

Printed “action” (English; lemma).

An orator’s delivery or bodily performance, alongside speech and gesture.

Context: Quintilian’s judgment about most rhetoricians is reported within Burton’s satire; the next maxim contrasts wisdom in words and deeds.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: speech, action, gesture

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: speech, performance, or gesture

Alignment convention

Qualification: The modern makes the list’s coordination explicit with or. Action is performance within the whole list, not a universal equivalent.

Supplied words: or (explicit coordination of the list)

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

action · local use 2

Printed “action” (English; lemma).

A bodily function or operation, whose impairment features in a definition of disease.

Context: Definition attributed to Fuchs and Crato; not specifically a voluntary deed.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: any action of the body, or part of it

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: any function of the body or one of its parts

Alignment convention

Qualification: A function renders an action; one of its parts expands part of it, explicitly identifying a bodily part.

Supplied words: one of its (expansion of part of it)

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

action · local use 3

Printed “action” (English; lemma).

A legal suit or claim against a debtor.

Context: The legal situation supplies the analogy for multiple disturbances attacking a patient.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: every Creditor will bring his action against him

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: every creditor will bring a claim against him

Alignment convention

Qualification: The original possessive his action becomes an indefinite a claim. The creditor remains the claimant and him the debtor; the article replaces, rather than duplicates, the possessive.

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

action · local use 4

Printed “action” (English; lemma).

The active operation of the sensory powers during waking.

Context: Bodily spirits are the stated causal agents after vapour-blocked passages reopen.

Source: original body

Source wording: the action and motion of the Senses

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

action · actions · local use 1

Printed “actions” (English; lemma).

Operations of the rational will, immediately specified as willing and refusing.

Context: Burton says these two acts cover all acts of will, good or bad according to their direction. Some are freely performed by will itself; other acts are executed through lower powers. Freedom is qualified relative to ourselves and contingent things, alongside necessity relative to God’s fixed purpose; the Stoic denial is reported separately.

Source: original body

Source wording: The actions of the Will

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

action · local use 5

Printed “action” (English; lemma).

A lawsuit, figuratively brought by the body against its negligent governor.

Context: Counterfactual legal analogy attributed to Democritus in Plutarch.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: bring an action against the Soul

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: brought a legal action against the soul

Alignment convention

Qualification: Bring becomes brought within the modern counterfactual if-clause; legal explicitly identifies the relevant sense of action. The body is the imagined claimant and the soul the defendant.

Supplied words: legal (clarifies the local sense of action)

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

action · actions · local use 2

Printed “actions” (English; lemma).

Activities or bodily responses rather than affections or states undergone.

Context: Explicitly attributed to Scaliger; not an assertion that all tears are deliberate.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: Neither are tears, affections, but actions

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: Tears are not affections but actions

Alignment convention

Qualification: Initial Neither is recast as not after the subject; the negative contrast with actions is preserved without a separate additive neither or nor.

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

action · actions · local use 3

Printed “actions” (English; lemma).

Outward deeds or behavior proceeding from emotional states.

Context: Love’s alternating conduct is listed; Burton immediately says actions and passions intermingle.

Source: original body

Source wording: from passions to actions

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

action · Action · local use 1

Printed “Action” (English; lemma).

A lawsuit or legal proceeding; the governing verb enter means to initiate it.

Context: Burton’s Martin Guerre illustration reverses historical roles, as the supplied note warns.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: to enter an Action

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: bring a lawsuit

Alignment scope: redistributed infinitive construction

Qualification: Enter an Action becomes bring a lawsuit. The original repeats to before enter; the modern carries its earlier infinitival to over the coordinated verbs, without a second to immediately before bring.

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

action · local use 6

Printed “action” (English; lemma).

Performed or realized repentance, distinguished from inward desire for it.

Context: Consolatory application, with the not yet preserving possibility of later exercise.

Source: original body

Source wording: penitent in affection, though not yet in action

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

action · actions · local use 4

Printed “actions” (English; noun).

Operations performed by the soul through an instrument.

Context: Spirit is first defined as the soul’s material instrument. The same passage reports alternatives: a shared medium according to some, or a fourth soul in Paracelsus. These are not a single undifferentiated account.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: the instrument of the soule, to perform all his actions

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: the soul’s instrument for carrying out all its actions

Alignment convention

Qualification: The possessive and infinitive construction is recast as a possessive noun with for carrying out. Soul remains the principal whose operations are served by spirit.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

action · actions · local use 5

Printed “actions” (English; noun).

Deeds or conduct considered as objects of moral judgment.

Context: Conscience supplies the conclusion of a practical syllogism; Regulus’s promise illustrates the application. The alternatives justifying and condemning both remain.

Source: original body

Source wording: justifying or condemning our actions

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

action · local use 7

Printed “action” (English; noun).

An achievement or undertaking in which someone gains distinction.

Context: The supposed necessity of a familiar spirit for extraordinary accomplishment belongs to the preceding reported doctrines. Burton rejects these as erroneous at 031-10, before conceding limited harmful power by divine permission.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: extraordinarily famous in any Art, action, or great Commander

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: extraordinarily famous in any art or achievement, or became a great commander

Alignment convention

Qualification: The modern supplies became to repair the shift from fame in an art or action to being a great commander. The whole coordinated construction is aligned.

Supplied words: became (explicit predicate for great commander)

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

action · local use 8

Printed “action” (English; noun).

Practical opportunity or participation in affairs, especially public or military achievement.

Context: The unknown person’s superior achievement is counterfactual: had he received the opportunity, he would have done better. Burton challenges self-admiration rather than reporting a completed success.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: had he been in place or action

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: had he held the position or taken part in the action

Alignment convention

Qualification: The modern expands in place or action into held the position or taken part in the action. Held and taken part in express the original prepositional relations.

Supplied words: held; taken part in (explicit verbal relations); the (articles)

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

action · local use 9

Printed “action” (English; noun).

Bodily movement or outward demeanour.

Context: The description concerns absorbed scholars and a reported Aquinas anecdote. It extends beyond deliberate oratorical delivery; the preceding Persius verses stage a soldier’s ridicule of philosophers.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: such is their action and gesture

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: such are their movements and gestures

Alignment convention

Qualification: The singular action and gesture become plural movements and gestures; is correspondingly becomes are.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

action · actions · local use 6

Printed “actions” (English; noun).

Operations or activities of the soul.

Context: This broad organ-dependent statement belongs to the bodily-causes argument, illustrated by torch and wine-cask comparisons. It remains in tension with organ-independent understanding at 026-25 rather than replacing that earlier account.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: our soul performe all her actions, better or worse, as her organs are disposed

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: our soul performs all her actions better or worse according to the condition of her organs

Alignment convention

Qualification: As her organs are disposed becomes according to the condition of her organs; condition makes the original disposition explicit.

Supplied words: the condition of (expansion of are disposed)

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

action · local use 10

Printed “action” (English; noun).

Directed occupation or exercise, here of the imagination.

Context: Burton says the restless imagination otherwise works upon itself. Action means attention kept on some external business or recreation, not merely the existence of any mental activity; friends and physicians supply support.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: if it be not in perpetuall action, ever employed

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: unless it is continually occupied

Alignment convention

Qualification: The paired original expressions in perpetuall action and ever employed are combined as continually occupied; if not becomes unless.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

action · local use 11

Printed “action” (English; noun).

An operation or activity, here desire directed towards good.

Context: Burton attributes this definition of love to Plotinus after reporting alternatives of god, spirit and passion. Desiring good belongs to the full definition, not to action by itself.

Source: original body

Source wording: an action of the mind desiring that which is good

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

action · actions · local use 7

Printed “actions” (English; noun).

Human deeds or activities, here collectively attributed to love.

Context: The encomium calls love both productive cause and instrument and both beginning and end. The poetic-emblematic attribution should not erase the difference between causal agency and means.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: the beginner and end of all our actions, the efficient and instrumental cause

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: the beginning and end of all our actions, their efficient and instrumental cause

Alignment convention

Qualification: Their explicitly links the efficient and instrumental cause to our actions; the original apposition leaves that relation implicit.

Supplied words: their (relation to actions made explicit)

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

action · actions · local use 8

Printed “actions” (English; noun).

Usual behaviour or manifestations, here including inward distress and wishes as well as overt acts.

Context: Burton’s longer English Castiglione catalogue differs from his Latin margin. Neglect of business in the following sentence is qualified by being far gone, doubtful, despairing or intensely intent.

Source: original body

Source wording: the certain signs, and ordinary actions of a love-sick person

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

action · Action · local use 2

Printed “Action” (English; noun).

An activity or deed, here imagined as unseemly or repellent.

Context: Burton tells the lover to suppose seeing the beloved in degrading conditions; the next purging anecdote is an analogy. This is proposed imaginative aversion, not evidence that the beloved committed an act.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: about some undecent Action or other

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: engaged in some unseemly activity

Alignment convention

Qualification: About becomes engaged in; or other is absorbed into the indefinite some. The hypothetical force comes from the preceding suppose.

Supplied words: engaged in (explicit verbal expansion of about)

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

action · actions · local use 9

Printed “actions” (English; noun).

Deeds or activities, distinguished in the coordinated list from thoughts and desires.

Context: Burton expands the preceding Latin actionibus by adding thoughts and desires in his English gloss. I suppose governs this assertion, and apparent good is explicitly allowed. The claim concerns intended good, not the moral innocence of every deed.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: no ill in all thine actions, thoughts or desires

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: no evil in any of your actions, thoughts or desires

Alignment convention

Qualification: All thine becomes any of your under the negative no evil; the universal negative scope is preserved through a different construction. Thoughts and desires belong to Burton’s English expansion, not to the preceding Latin actionibus alone.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

actiones animi

Printed “actiones animi” (Latin; noun phrase; actiones accusative plural of actio).

Operations of the mind or soul.

Context: Piso’s margin explains altered humours affecting mental operations within an account that also makes impaired imagination disturb bodily spirits and humours; the causation runs both ways.

Source: original marginal wording in Burton-labelled note

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: humores enim mutati actiones animi immutant

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: for altered humours change the operations of the mind

Alignment convention

Qualification: Original marginal wording aligned with its separate editorial translation, not with the modern body.

Supplied words: the (English articles)

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

actions or habits

Printed “Actions or Habits” (English; phrase).

Printed form, Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: Actions or Habits

Present acts of apprehending contrasted with lasting intellectual dispositions.

Context: Burton’s classification of notions; habit is available capacity, not mere repetition.

Source: original body

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: acts and habits

Alignment convention

Qualification: The original alternative Actions or Habits becomes acts and habits while the governing sentence still distinguishes two kinds. The change from or to and is explicit; the two categories are not collapsed.

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

active and passive · Active or Passive

Printed “Active or Passive” (English; paired adjectives; original coordination or).

Operating upon something or being affected by something, as two aspects of a sensory power.

Context: The eye is active in seeing colour, passive when harmed by sunlight; unpleasant sound and smell add other examples. Passive does not mean simple inactivity.

Source: original body

Source wording: the Sensitive power is Active or Passive

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

active and passive · local use 1

Printed “active and passive” (English; paired adjectives).

Causing an effect ourselves and receiving an effect from others.

Context: In the account of self-love, inward overestimation makes us active causes, while the wider discussion brings in others’ flattery. These are causal roles, not levels of physical energy.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: we are active and passive

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: we both act and are acted upon

Alignment convention

Qualification: The adjective pair becomes coordinated active and passive verb clauses. Both makes the coordination explicit, and are acted upon supplies the passive verb construction.

Supplied words: both (coordination made explicit)

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

active and passive · Active and Passive

Printed “Active and Passive” (English; paired adjectives).

Acting upon another and receiving an effect in return.

Context: The eye is a cause and instrument on both sides of erotic looking, person looking and person seen. The following examples include sexual violence; neither reciprocity of optical influence nor love-language establishes consent.

Source: original body

Source wording: both Active and Passive in this business; it wounds and is wounded

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

active and passive · local use 2

Printed “active and passive” (English; paired adjectives).

Acting on others and being acted upon, here in courtship’s manipulation.

Context: The preceding suitors and Lucretia display men pursuing and being exploited; women are said not to be far behind. The gender generalizations remain Burton’s and his literary speakers’ satire.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: men are active and passive

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: men both act upon others and are acted upon

Alignment convention

Qualification: The adjective pair is expanded as two verb constructions; others makes the interpersonal object explicit and both coordinates the two roles.

Supplied words: both; others (coordination and implied interpersonal object)

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

active and passive · local use 3

Printed “active and passive” (English; paired adjectives).

Causing infidelity’s injury and suffering it oneself, expressed through cuckold’s horns.

Context: The series generalizes about historical and legendary rulers; either given or taken horns distributes the alternatives and does not establish that every listed man did both. The following account admits virtuous contemporaries and women wronged by husbands.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: They have been active and passive in this business, they have either given or taken horns

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: They have been both agents and victims in this business: they have either given horns or received them

Alignment convention

Qualification: The modern turns the adjectives into agents and victims and supplies both. The ensuing either/or remains essential to the distribution; this is not a claim about sexual positions.

Supplied words: both (explicit coordination); them (resumes horns)

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

actor · local use 1

Printed “actor” (English; noun).

A performer assuming a character; here the author presenting himself under another’s name.

Context: Burton anticipates the reader’s question about Democritus Junior and then asserts freedom to withhold his identity. Personate qualifies the assumed role.

Source: original body

Source wording: antick or personate actor

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

actor · actors · local use 1

Printed “actors” (English; noun).

Performers of assumed roles; here the participants in the allegorical world-stage.

Context: Burton invokes John of Salisbury and Calcagnini’s fable. Its changing professions differ between body and Latin margin; the separate Latin world-actor tag and Burton’s world-fool gloss are not identical.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: a new company of personate actors

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: a new company of actors playing assumed parts

Alignment convention

Qualification: The adjective personate becomes playing assumed parts; the expansion describes an assumed role rather than asserting literal masks.

Supplied words: playing assumed parts (expanded adjective personate)

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

actor · actors · local use 2

Printed “actors” (English; noun).

Theatrical performers, envisaged as members of organized professional bodies.

Context: In Burton’s proposed commonwealth, such colleges advance arts and learning. This constructive role differs from the satirical metaphor of a deceptive actor.

Source: original body

Source wording: Colledges of mathematicians, musicians, and actors

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

actor · local use 2

Printed “actor” (English; noun).

A participant who takes part in an activity, rather than only watching or listening.

Context: Burton advocates occasional recreation; adjoining advice attributed to Fonseca includes coercive sexual encouragement, which must not be silently converted into consensual modern care. Socrates is then a leading participant in Xenophon’s banquet.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: Not to be an auditor only, or a spectator, but sometimes an actor himself

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: He should sometimes participate himself, instead of merely listening or watching

Alignment convention

Qualification: The original noun roles auditor, spectator and actor become listening, watching and participate. He should supplies the subject and modal force carried by the surrounding prescription.

Supplied words: He should (contextual subject and prescription)

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

actor · Actor · local use 1

Printed “Actor” (English; noun).

A participant in the erotic encounter, rather than merely its observer.

Context: Burton argues that participating in dalliance, kissing or dancing intensifies the effect of seeing them. This local use does not necessarily name a professional player.

Source: original body

Source wording: an Actor himself

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

actor · Actor · local use 2

Printed “Actor” (English; noun).

A leading participant or performer in the revels.

Context: Burton’s account of Ptolemy stresses his own participation in drumming or dancing, not spectatorship alone. The Latin margin instead calls him a master of wickedness; its wording and book number differ from the body and compared Justin.

Source: original body

Source wording: a principall Actor himself

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

actor · local use 3

Printed “actor” (English; noun).

A person taking part in an entertainment, here wedding dancing.

Context: Gregory’s reported refusal concerns an old gouty bishop’s presence among dancers. The supplied note identifies a joking explanation with a blessing, not a blanket prohibition on weddings.

Source: original body

Source wording: a spectator, much less an actor

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

actor · actors · local use 3

Printed “actors” (English; noun).

Participants or instruments represented as performers in another’s drama.

Context: He is the devil, while the actors are the people Burton calls heretics and impostors. The theatrical accusation belongs to his confessional polemic.

Source: original body

Source wording: he hath more actors in his Tragœdy

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

actor · Actors

Printed “Actors” (English; noun).

People cast as performers in a supposed scene of imposture.

Context: The metaphor introduces Burton’s Protestant attack on the papacy, distinct from the earlier general world-stage and the author’s own literary persona.

Source: original body

Source wording: a new company of Actors

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

actual

Printed “actual” (English; adjective).

Committed in individual deeds, as distinct from inherited original sin or inclinations.

Context: Burton’s theological account traces individual wrongs through original sin and Adam’s disobedience to calamities construed as punishment. This is his explanatory framework.

Source: original body

Source wording: actual transgressions

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

actually · local use 1

Printed “actually” (English; adverb).

In present reality, rather than merely as a possible condition; at present.

Context: Burton warns readers already suffering from melancholy against reading symptoms or prognostics and applying general statements to themselves. He then advises caution in reading, so both formulations remain.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: who is actually melancholy

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: who is actually suffering from melancholy

Alignment convention

Qualification: The modern expands predicate melancholy into suffering from melancholy; suffering from is explicit verbal syntax, not an additional meaning carried by actually.

Supplied words: suffering from (predicate expansion)

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

actually · local use 2

Printed “actually” (English; adverb).

Already or presently in the condition described.

Context: Burton distinguishes actual melancholy from an inclination to it and makes a superlative claim about susceptibility to injury. The previous paragraph also admits susceptibility in wise people.

Source: original body

Source wording: actually melancholy, or inclined to it

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

actum

Printed “acta” (Latin; substantivized perfect participle of ago; accusative neuter plural).

Deeds or things done, here actions mingled with spoken thoughts.

Context: This marginal formulation says melancholy is fully developed when utterance is mixed with action. Its precise relation to the adjacent authors and citations remains unsettled in the supplied note.

Source: original marginal wording in Burton-labelled note

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: atque acta permisceat

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: and mingles actions with it

Alignment convention

Qualification: Acta is the object of permisceat; with it makes explicit the accompanying speech or thought supplied by context.

Supplied words: with it (contextual complement)

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

actum agere · local use 1

Printed “actum agere” (Latin; Latin idiom; actum is a substantive participle of ago).

Citation key, Printed form, Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: actum agere

Repeat work already done; literally do what has been done.

Context: This is an anticipated objection to writing another melancholy treatise, followed by Burton’s defence of compilation. It is not an unconditional admission that the work is useless.

Source: original body

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: doing what has already been done

Alignment convention

Qualification: The infinitive agere and substantivized perfect passive participle actum become doing what has already been done; the English relative and perfect passive express the participial construction.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

actum agere · local use 2

Printed “actum agere” (Latin; Latin idiom; actum substantive participle of ago).

Citation key, Printed form, Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: actum agere

Repeat a task already performed.

Context: Burton concedes prior writers have treated consolation, then justifies an accessible abridgment because their books are not readily available or widely known.

Source: original body

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: do what has already been done

Alignment convention

Qualification: The Latin infinitive follows English shall; do preserves that syntax, while what has already been done expands the substantival passive participle.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

actum de aliquo · actum de te

Printed “actum de te” (Latin; Latin impersonal perfect-passive idiom of ago).

Printed form, Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: actum de te

It is all over with you; you are ruined or finished.

Context: The mock threat to a hostile reader is conditional on Democritus Junior being what he claims. The passive idiom does not mean that the reader performs an action.

Source: original body

Locator qualification: Source record identifies these leaves as unnumbered; plain numerical passage labels are scan numbers.

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: you are done for

Alignment convention

Qualification: The impersonal elliptical Latin idiom is recast with you as English subject and are as auxiliary; de te supplies the person concerned.

Supplied words: are (English predicate syntax)

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

actum de aliquo · actum de mortalibus

Printed “actum de mortalibus” (Latin; Latin impersonal perfect-passive idiom of ago).

Printed form, Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: actum de mortalibus

It is all over with humankind; humanity is finished.

Context: The phrase expresses what frightened inhabitants thought during the reported Bologna earthquake, not a statement that the world actually ended. Fulco’s subsequent story belongs to the quoted author.

Source: original body

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: that humankind was finished

Alignment convention

Qualification: The impersonal idiom becomes an English clause with humankind as subject; that connects it to the surrounding report of their belief and was supplies the finite predicate.

Supplied words: that; was (reported-clause syntax)

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

actus · local use 1

Printed “actus” (Latin; nominative singular noun).

Actuality or actual realization; here the illuminated state of a transparent medium.

Context: The original Latin margin distinguishes illumination in the medium from light in a luminous source. It is a different application from first actuality in the soul definition.

Source: original marginal wording in Burton-labelled note

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: Lumen est actus perspicui

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: Illumination is the actuality of the transparent

Alignment convention

Qualification: Original marginal wording aligned with its separate editorial translation, not with the modern body.

Supplied words: the (English articles for actuality and substantival transparent)

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

actus · local use 2

Printed “actus” (Latin; nominative singular noun).

An act or operation, here qualified as desiring good.

Context: The original Latin margin gives Burton’s reported Plotinian definition. Desiderans grammatically agrees with actus, while animi names the mind whose act it is; the marginal definition is not an independent verification of Plotinus’s wording.

Source: original marginal wording in Burton-labelled note

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: Amor est actus animi bonum desiderans

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: Love is an act of the mind desiring good

Alignment convention

Qualification: Original marginal wording aligned with its separate editorial translation, not with the modern body.

Supplied words: an; the (English articles)

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

Also find under: desiderans (exact attested component; Latin participle agreeing with actus; desiring); desiring (English component meaning; Latin participle agreeing with actus; desiring)

actus · local use 3

Printed “actus” (Latin; accusative plural noun).

Deeds or actions, alongside conduct and hidden thoughts.

Context: The criticism of a God investigating everyone belongs to Caecilius in Octavius, resumed after a Mela reference. It is not Burton’s assertion that God lacks such knowledge.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: in omnium mores, actus, & occultas cogitationes inquirentem

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: investigating everyone’s conduct, actions and secret thoughts

Alignment convention

Qualification: The accusative participle inquirentem becomes investigating in the larger description of God; the possessive omnium governs the coordinated objects, with the original ampersand rendered and. The Latin in plus accusative object construction becomes the direct object of investigating.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

actus primus

Printed “actus primus” (Latin; phrase).

First actuality, the constituted capacity for living activity, rather than an individual performed deed.

Context: Aristotelian definition as Burton presents it, with Greek, Latin and English restatement combined in the modern column.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: ἐντελέχεια, perfectio & actus primus corporis Organici, vitam habentis in potentia: the perfection or first act of an Organical body, having power of life

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: the fulfilment or first actuality of an organized body with the capacity for life

Alignment scope: combined multilingual definition

Qualification: The indexed phrase actus primus is Latin. The complete Greek/Latin definition and its English restatement are merged into one modern definition; & within the Latin gloss and or within the English restatement become the single modern or. The whole repeated construction, not actus alone, carries the rendering.

Supplied words: the before capacity (article added to the English power of life restatement)

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

ago · actum

Printed “actum” (Latin; perfect passive participle, neuter singular).

Brought on or carried forward; here developed, predicated of an illness.

Context: The original Latin margin attributes both onset and development to sadness alone. The separate following case concerns relapse after apparent cure; the two clinical reports must not be merged.

Source: original marginal wording in Burton-labelled note

Locator qualification: Do not remove bracketed or repeated-page qualifier.; This source group includes repeated printed 96–97 and supplied 98–99; see SUPPLIED_OPENING and SOURCE_DJR_040.

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: Malum inceptum & actum à tristitia sola

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: The illness began and developed from sadness alone

Alignment convention

Qualification: The Latin participles inceptum and actum become finite intransitive began and developed; the noun malum becomes the illness. Alone qualifies sadness as cause.

Supplied words: The (English article)

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

ago · acti

Printed “acti” (Latin; perfect passive participle, nominative masculine plural).

Driven or impelled by an external force.

Context: The perfect passive participle agrees with the people Burton attacks; the Furies are the driving agency. His sweeping hostile description of religious zeal is attributed, not adopted as a neutral account.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: Religionis acti Furiis

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: Driven by the Furies of religion

Alignment convention

Qualification: Equal-scope phrase or construction alignment; the whole unit carries the rendering.

Supplied words: by; the (agent relation and English article)

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

first substantial act

Printed “first substantial act” (English; noun phrase).

The primary constitutive actuality of a natural organized human body.

Context: The philosophers’ definition includes lower powers within the rational soul and free choice. It simultaneously calls the soul independent of organs in itself and describes its working through organs.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: the first substantial act of a Natural, Humane, Organical Body

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: the first substantial actuality of a natural human body furnished with organs

Alignment convention

Qualification: Furnished with organs expands the adjective Organical within the same descriptive construction.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

in act

Printed “in act” (English; phrase).

In the actual exercise of a capacity, contrasted with possessing it potentially.

Context: The child analogy supports possible repentance; the next paragraph distinguishes nature from divine acceptance.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: in power, not in act

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: in potential, though not in its exercise

Alignment convention

Qualification: The original juxtaposition in power, not in act becomes in potential, though not in its exercise. Though supplies the explicit concessive connection and its resumes the capacity.

Supplied words: though (explicit concessive connection); its (capacity resumed)

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

in act · in Act

Printed “in Act” (English; prepositional phrase).

In present exercise, contrasted with a power possessed as an enduring disposition.

Context: This is one of several reported divisions of understanding, not a classification of all bodily action. The modern changes or to and while enumerating the two opposed terms.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: in Habit, or in Act

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: habitual and actual

Alignment convention

Qualification: The two prepositional phrases become paired adjectives habitual and actual; original or becomes and. Actual here renders the phrase in Act, not an original printed adjective actual.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

in action · local use 1

Printed “in action” (English; prepositional phrase).

Engaged in practical affairs or substantial employment.

Context: The described vulnerability especially concerns people who abruptly relinquish busy lives; the continuation also says remaining in such responsibilities may end in incapacity. The account belongs to historical claims about ageing.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: have lived in action all their lives

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: have led active lives

Alignment convention

Qualification: The original all their lives is compressed into the life-course expression have led active lives; active renders the phrase in action rather than a printed adjective.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

in action · local use 2

Printed “in action” (English; prepositional phrase).

Engaged in activity, including exercise of both body and mind.

Context: The cosmic-motion comparison urges activity, but the paragraph begins by requiring moderate, seasonable exercise as the remedy for both excess and idleness. Ever does not cancel that qualification.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: we should ever be in action

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: we should always be active

Alignment convention

Qualification: The prepositional phrase in action becomes the adjective active; ever is preserved as always.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

natural actions · naturall actions

Printed “naturall actions” (English; phrase).

Nutritive bodily operations, exemplified by eating and digestion.

Context: Historical symptom account distinguishes appetite from digestive capacity.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: In naturall actions

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: In their nutritive functions

Alignment convention

Qualification: The supplied modern makes the possessor explicit and interprets natural actions as nutritive functions in this context; nutritive is not a universal rendering of natural.

Supplied words: their (possessor restored from context)

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

natural actions

Printed “natural actions” (English; noun phrase).

The nutritive operations served by natural spirits in the liver-and-veins account.

Context: Burton distinguishes natural, vital and animal spirits; the opening organ list has a different order. Sense and motion are assigned to animal spirits, rather than all three kinds being interchangeable.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: those natural actions

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: the natural functions

Alignment convention

Qualification: The demonstrative those becomes the definite article the; functions renders actions in the nutritive context.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

out of action · local use 1

Printed “out of action” (English; phrase).

Without practical activity or occupation; inactive. The phrase describes the life led by those discussed.

Context: Context ranges from lacking a calling to being unable or unwilling to undertake daily tasks.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: a life out of action

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: inactive

Alignment scope: condensed construction

Qualification: The noun phrase a life out of action is compressed into the adjective inactive, which describes the people in the modern sentence. Life is not separately translated; this is a constructional condensation.

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

out of action · local use 2

Printed “out of action” (English; prepositional phrase).

Without practical occupation or activity.

Context: Burton immediately contrasts this person with another overwhelmed by cares and burdensome business; lack of activity is not the only route to distress.

Source: original body

Source wording, Original wording, Original construction: one is out of action, company, imployment

Modern rendering, Modern wording, Modern construction: One has no activity, company or employment

Alignment convention

Qualification: Is out of becomes has no across the whole coordinated list; original punctuation becomes explicit or.

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

positive act

Printed “positive act” (English; noun phrase).

An actual operation of judging, contrasted with an absence of knowledge; positive does not mean morally good.

Context: Some distinguish ignorance as privation and error as knowing falsely. Burton reports this taxonomy within his argument that few escape folly.

Source: original body

Source wording: error a positive act

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.

reflecting action

Printed “reflecting action” (English; phrase).

An intellectual operation turning upon and judging its own operations.

Context: Attributed philosophical definition of understanding.

Source: original body

Source wording: a reflecting action

Notes: Historical source attributions are Burton’s; no fresh collation of the cited works is claimed.

substantial act

Printed “substantial act” (English; noun phrase).

An actuality constituting a living being, here in its nutritive, growing and reproductive life.

Context: The vegetative faculty belongs to animals and humans as well as plants. Its three operations and four subordinate nutritive powers are distinct from the constitutive actuality.

Source: original body

Source wording: a substantial act of an organical body

Notes: Historical source attributions and claims remain Burton’s; no fresh collation of cited works is claimed.