Custom and education

Use in the book

Habit both qualifies general regimen and exposes its limits. Burton’s discussion of dietary custom begins by admitting exceptions: familiar foods and mealtimes are said to trouble accustomed people less. Regional diets, differences between laboring and inactive bodies, travelers’ sickness and stories of poison tolerance enlarge the argument. These are transmitted examples, not modern dietary findings. Cardan’s conclusion preserves the exception for extremely bad custom, while the Latin says it is to be tolerated and Burton’s English says kept. Later Burton calls collegiate custom a tyrant when it defeats a physician’s preferred mealtime interval. Habit’s power is not a certificate of its goodness.

Education similarly works in opposed directions. Excessive severity can permanently cow children, and excessive indulgence can spoil character and weaken body and mind. Tuition therefore concerns responsibility for their care. The continuation also condemns masters’ harsh treatment of servants and the failure to provide children, pupils and servants with an occupation or trade. The public argument similarly blames governors for idle upbringing and seeks to prevent theft rather than merely punish it. His own memory of grammar-school misery interrupts the borrowed authorities. He nevertheless defends measured correction against laxity, rather than abolishing discipline. Burton urges moderation and suitable teachers, then quotes Cardan’s learned fool and sickly wise man as the possible products of greedy schooling or enclosed fasting. His account of the will says that art, discipline and custom acquire bad habits, but its continuation admits divine precepts and good impulses as restraints. Good discipline and education may mitigate passions, but only in a few people at certain times; for the most part, Burton says, passions overwhelm reason and disturb the body.

Custom and training also differentiate sufferers: their symptoms take the objects of their ordinary activities, occupations and ambitions, rather than repeating one identical pattern. In consolation, accustomed endurance is promised to ease grief; in the classification of love, familiarity can produce affection among animals brought up together, separately from nurturing another creature’s young. The teaching sense of inform appears in advice to a widower, who is told conditionally that the same teacher can form another wife. The divine-love passage makes formation more explicit: one love gives life its proper form, the other deforms it. The anatomy digression calls the shaping of conduct information of manners, not merely the communication of facts.

The non-medical senses remain distinct. The proem calls false attribution to Democritus a common practice and denies that motive for Burton’s own persona. His report from Simler uses informed simply for being told something. In the imagined commonwealth, custom is a financial duty, while ecclesiastical discipline is church government; neighboring references to foreign customs concern social practices. Human disciplines, in the praise attributed to Clavius, are fields of learning.

Tuition also means protection: in the Lactantius account to which Burton explicitly assents, angels are sent to guard human beings. The wider story later allows either devils or deceptive priests and concludes only that the reports seem likely. Two Latin senses belong outside schooling and acquired habit. In the Catullan flower comparison, educat means that rain nourishes the flower. In the Caledonian woman’s quoted sexual retort, consuetudinem habemus means have relations or intimacy; Burton calls her reply largely true, but the words remain a reported boast and accusation.

Related entries

Habit and disposition

Complexion and temperament

Diet and regimen

Fasting

Commonwealth: Related vocabulary beyond this volume.

Conversation

Places to read

1. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 3–5Falsely using Democritus’s name is described as a practice of later writers.
2. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 19–21Failure to train people for an occupation is blamed alongside bad government for begging and theft.
3. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 33–35Simler supplies the report about Swiss arbitrators.
4. Democritus Junior to the Reader · paragraphs 24–27Burton’s imagined commonwealth lightens charges on necessities and increases them on luxuries. Church discipline is assigned to bishops in the proposed commonwealth.
5. Section 1. Member 2. Subsection 1. A Digression on Anatomy · paragraphs 22–24Knowledge of the body is commended for shaping conduct as well as preserving health.
6. Subsection 11. The Will · paragraphs 39–41Art, discipline and custom can help acquire bad habits and corrupt the will.
7. Subsection 3 Habit in Diet, Pleasure, Appetite and Necessity How They Cause Or… · paragraph 38 through Subsection 3 Habit in Diet, Pleasure, Appetite and Necessity How They Cause Or… · paragraph 1Habituation qualifies dietary prohibitions, with a limit for extremely bad custom; the continuation adds pleasure and appetite as further exceptions.
8. Member 3 Subsection 1 Passions and Disturbances of the Mind and How They Cause… · paragraphs 37–39Good discipline and education mitigate passions only in a few people at certain times; usually the passions dominate.
9. Subsection 2 Education as a Cause of Melancholy · paragraphs 39–55Parents, guardians and teachers can promote melancholy through excessive severity or excessive indulgence. The word describes those responsible for children, not a fee paid for lessons. The schooling argument moves from cruelty and Burton’s own memory to the opposed dangers of laxity and indulgence. Harsh treatment of servants and the opposite failure to give children, pupils and servants an occupation or trade extend the educational argument. Pampering is said to form custom and eventually nature. Entrusting a child to a greedy teacher or a fasting monastery can produce learning joined to folly or illness.
10. Subsection 4 Symptoms Arising From Education, Custom, Duration, Our… · paragraphs 1–3Custom, training, education and inclinations contribute to differing symptoms according to occupation and ordinary activities.
11. Subsection 2. Diet Corrected in Quantity · paragraphs 2–4Collegiate mealtimes resist the interval urged by the cited physician.
12. Member 4 Exercise of Body and Mind Regulated · paragraphs 38–40Clavius’s praise of mathematical study places it among human disciplines.
13. Section 3 Member 1. Subsection 1 a Digression on Consolation, Containing… · paragraphs 5–7Time and accustomed endurance are presented as easing grief.
14. Member 5 Against Sorrow Over the Death of Friends or Other Causes, Groundless… · paragraphs 6–8The widower is told that if he formed his first wife’s goodness, he can teach another.
15. Subsection 2 Love’s Origin, Object, Definition and Divisions · paragraphs 12–14Animals brought up together are said to love one another despite differing natures.
16. Member 3 Charity Combining All Three Kinds of Love Pleasant Profitable And… · paragraphs 38–40Divine love forms life rightly in explicit opposition to the other love’s deforming it.
17. Section 2 Member 1, Subsection 1 Love Melancholy: Its Ancestry, Power and Reach · paragraphs 7–12Tuition here is the protection of humans entrusted to angels.
18. By Counsel and Persuasion, the Foulness of the Deed, the Faults of Men And… · paragraphs 27–29Rain nourishes the sheltered flower in a comparison of virginity with an unplucked blossom.
19. The Cure of Jealousy: Avoiding Occasions for It, Keeping Occupied; Good… · paragraphs 28–30The Caledonian woman’s sexual retort says her people have relations with the best men.

In this edition

The educational renderings distinguish several actions: “tuition and oversight” → “care and supervision”; “informed” within “to be informed” → “to be educated”; “discipline” → “training” within the list of custom, training and education; “Custom” → custom in the account of acquired bad habits.

“inform another” becomes “teach another”, while “this informs, that deforms our life” becomes “This gives our life its proper form; that disfigures it”. Care, training, education and teaching identify personal actions; proper form retains the source’s antithesis. The remarriage passage names Critobulus, but the supplied note identifies Ischomachus as the husband who describes educating his wife in Xenophon. Separately, “we are informed by Simlerus” becomes “Simler tells us”, preserving the everyday reporting sense.

Customed becomes accustomed, and the modern Habit therefore moves therefore from earlier in the original sentence. Consuetudinem utcunque ferendam, nisi valde malam preserves the Latin obligation to tolerate custom unless very bad, beside Burton’s stronger instruction to keep it. The commonwealth’s Church discipline shall be in the hands of bishops supplies shall be to complete the original nominal construction.

consuetudinem habere

Printed “consuetudinem habemus” (Latin; phrase).

Have relations or intimacy.

Here: The Caledonian woman’s sexual retort says her people have relations with the best men.

Context: This is a reported reply to Julia Augusta, amplified by Burton’s English; Burton calls it largely true, without establishing a demographic claim.

Source: original marginal quotation

Source wording and original alignment: nos cum optimis viris consuetudinem habemus

Modern rendering: We have relations with the best men

Alignment scope: Equal-scope marginal clause; English wording is supplied note translation

Word and construction: Consuetudinem habemus supplies have relations, nos We, and cum optimis viris with the best men.

Alignment qualification: The original marginal expression has no separately aligned modern-body counterpart; its meaning is explained here from its full note context.

Modern container: note

consuetudo

Printed “Consuetudinem” (Latin; lemma).

Custom or established habit.

Here: Cardan’s conclusion tolerates habit unless it is very bad.

Context: Burton attributes the conclusion to Cardan from Galen; his following English to be kept is stronger than Latin to be tolerated.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Consuetudinem utcunque ferendam, nisi valde malam

Modern rendering: Habit must, in any case, be tolerated unless it is very bad

Word and construction: Consuetudinem supplies Habit; ferendam the obligation to tolerate, utcunque in any case, and nisi valde malam the unless very bad exception.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

custom · local use 1

Printed “custom” (English; lemma).

Habit acquired by repeated use or practice.

Here: Habituation qualifies general prohibitions about food and its timing.

Context: Burton begins by denying that any rule is without exceptions; he invokes Hippocrates for less harmful, not universally harmless, accustomed practices.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: custom somewhat detracts, and qualifies

Modern rendering: Habit therefore takes something away from, and qualifies

Alignment scope: Corresponding clauses with therefore relocated from earlier in the original sentence

Word and construction: Custom contributes Habit; somewhat detracts takes something away from, and qualifies is retained. Therefore comes from the earlier original clause.

Alignment qualification: Original therefore occurs in to this therefore which hath been hitherto said; the modern clause moves that connective beside Habit.

Further local use

Printed “Custom” (English; lemma).

Here: The instruction to preserve habit is limited by the exception for something extremely bad.

Context: Cardan reasons from Galen and Hippocrates; Latin toleration is stronger in Burton’s English instruction to keep the habit.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Custom is howsoever to be kept, except it be extream bad

Modern rendering: Habit should be maintained, unless extremely bad

Sense relation: The same sense, with its distinct local purpose and qualification retained.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “custome” (English; lemma).

Here: Collegiate mealtimes resist the interval urged by the cited physician.

Context: Burton himself calls custom a tyrant here, showing that its force does not guarantee its goodness.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: custome that tyrant so prevailes

Modern rendering: that tyrant custom is so powerful

Sense relation: The same sense, with its distinct local purpose and qualification retained.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “custome” (English; lemma).

Here: Time and accustomed endurance are presented as easing grief.

Context: This assurance belongs to the consolatory voice, alongside necessity and forgetfulness.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: custome will ease it

Modern rendering: habit will ease it

Sense relation: The same sense, with its distinct local purpose and qualification retained.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “custome” (English; lemma).

Here: Animals brought up together are said to love one another despite differing natures.

Context: Burton distinguishes familiarity from the nurturing relation listed next; cited animal stories are not independently verified here.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: custome, use, and familiarity

Modern rendering: habit, use and familiarity

Sense relation: The same sense, with its distinct local purpose and qualification retained.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “customed” (English; lemma).

Citation key: custom.

Here: The participle describes things made familiar by long use.

Context: Hippocrates’s concession says such things are less offensive even when bad in themselves; the surrounding claim is qualified, not universal.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Such things as we have been long customed to

Modern rendering: things to which we have long been accustomed

Word and construction: Customed contributes accustomed; long supplies the duration and the relative construction identifies the accustomed things.

Sense relation: Same underlying formation, habit or guardianship sense, with the distinct construction and agency specified.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

custom · local use 2

Printed “custom” (English; lemma).

An established or recurrent practice.

Here: Falsely using Democritus’s name is described as a practice of later writers.

Context: Burton cites Gellius, then expressly denies that such imposture is his own purpose.

Source: original body

Source wording: it hath been always an ordinary custom

Original wording: Besides it hath been always an ordinary custom, as Gellius observes, for later Writers and impostors, to broach many absurd and insolent fictions

Modern rendering: Besides, as Gellius observes, later writers and impostors have commonly put forward absurd and outrageous inventions

Alignment scope: Equal-scope introductory clause, with nominal custom recast as the adverb commonly

Word and construction: The recurrent practice expressed by custom becomes commonly modifying the writers’ action.

custom · local use 3

Printed “custom” (English; lemma).

A duty levied on goods.

Here: Burton’s imagined commonwealth lightens charges on necessities and increases them on luxuries.

Context: The first-person proposal is not a statement of an existing tariff or a habit of behavior.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: little or no custom paid, no taxes

Modern rendering: little or no customs duty, and no taxes

Word and construction: Custom supplies customs duty; little or no supplies its amount, paid is implicit, and no taxes remains separately coordinated.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

discipline · local use 1

Printed “discipline” (English; lemma).

Training or education.

Here: Custom, training, education and inclinations contribute to differing symptoms according to occupation and ordinary activities.

Context: Burton adds learned dispositions to the historical physiological account, rather than treating all sufferers as alike.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: custom, discipline, education, and severall inclinations

Modern rendering: custom, training, education and differing inclinations

Word and construction: Discipline contributes training; custom, education and inclinations are separately coordinated items.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “Discipline” (English; lemma).

Here: Art, discipline and custom can help acquire bad habits and corrupt the will.

Context: The next paragraph allows restraint by divine precepts and good impulses; the diagnosis of bad habit is not the final word.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: by Art, Discipline, Custom, we get many bad habits

Modern rendering: Through art, training and custom we acquire many bad habits

Sense relation: The same sense, with its distinct local purpose and qualification retained.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “discipline” (English; lemma).

Here: Good discipline and education can mitigate passions.

Context: Burton sharply qualifies the concession: a few people, at certain times; the following account stresses the passions’ force.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Good discipline, Education, Philosophy, Divinity

Modern rendering: Good discipline, education, philosophy and theology

Sense relation: The same sense, with its distinct local purpose and qualification retained.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

discipline · local use 2

Printed “discipline” (English; lemma).

An institutional system of governance and regulation.

Here: Church discipline is assigned to bishops in the proposed commonwealth.

Context: Burton specifies ecclesiastical authority and hierarchy; this is not merely schooling or corporal correction.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Ecclesiastical discipline, penes Episcopos

Modern rendering: Church discipline shall be in the hands of bishops

Alignment scope: Nominal original clause expanded with a supplied modern finite verb

Word and construction: Ecclesiastical discipline contributes Church discipline; penes Episcopos means in the hands of bishops. Shall be is supplied to make the proposed arrangement explicit.

discipline · disciplines

Printed “disciplines” (English; lemma).

A branch of study or learning.

Here: Clavius’s praise of mathematical study places it among human disciplines.

Context: The evaluation belongs to Clavius as quoted; Burton uses it in his recommendation of attentive mental occupation.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: in all humane disciplines

Modern rendering: in all human learning

Word and construction: Disciplines contributes learning, understood as its branches; all humane contributes all human.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

education

Printed “Education” (English; lemma).

Upbringing and the formation of character and behavior.

Here: Parents, guardians and teachers can promote melancholy through excessive severity or excessive indulgence.

Context: Burton adopts education as an accidental cause and names Jason Pratensis; the charge concerns bad upbringing, not every act of teaching.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Education, of these accidental causes of Melancholy

Modern rendering: Among these accidental causes of melancholy, education

Alignment scope: Introductory clause with the original topic reordered in modern English

Word and construction: Education supplies education; the clause reorders the topic after Among these accidental causes of melancholy.

Further local use

Printed “Education” (English; lemma).

Here: Pampering is said to form custom and eventually nature.

Context: Burton attributes the passage to Fabius; the supplied note locates much of it in Quintilian but leaves the opening maxim unconfirmed.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: Education is another nature altering the minde and will

Modern rendering: Education is a second nature, altering the mind and will

Sense relation: The same sense, with its distinct local purpose and qualification retained.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “education” (English; lemma).

Citation key: education.

Here: Failure to train people for an occupation is blamed alongside bad government for begging and theft.

Context: Burton places responsibility on governors and advocates prevention rather than merely punishing offenders, drawing on More.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: bad policie, and idle education

Modern rendering: bad government and an idle upbringing

Word and construction: Education supplies upbringing and idle its failing; bad policie is the separate coordinated cause bad government.

Sense relation: Same underlying formation, habit or guardianship sense, with the distinct construction and agency specified.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

educo

Printed “educat” (Latin; lemma).

Nourish or bring up (Latin educare).

Here: Rain nourishes the sheltered flower in a comparison of virginity with an unplucked blossom.

Context: Burton abbreviates and alters Catullus; the surrounding praise includes a subsequent polemical qualification about religious merit.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: educat imber

Modern rendering: nourished by rain

Alignment scope: Original active clause rendered as a passive participial phrase referring to the flower

Word and construction: Educat supplies nourished, while imber is the active subject rain, made an agent with by in modern English.

Grammar: Educat is third-person singular present of educo, educare, nourish or rear; it is distinguished from educo, educere, lead out.

inform · informed · local use 1

Printed “informed” (English; lemma).

Educate or teach.

Here: Entrusting a child to a greedy teacher or a fasting monastery can produce learning joined to folly or illness.

Context: The contrast is explicitly Cardan’s; Burton’s criticism concerns the conditions of instruction and upbringing.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: to be informed

Modern rendering: to be educated

Word and construction: Informed contributes educated, with to be retaining the passive infinitive.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “inform” (English; lemma).

Citation key: inform.

Here: The widower is told that if he formed his first wife’s goodness, he can teach another.

Context: Burton gives conditional, gendered consolation; the supplied edition corrects the Xenophontic identification without altering the printed Critobulus.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: inform another

Modern rendering: teach another

Sense relation: The same sense, with its distinct local purpose and qualification retained.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention, Alignment convention.

inform · informs

Printed “informs” (English; lemma).

Give proper form to.

Here: Divine love forms life rightly in explicit opposition to the other love’s deforming it.

Context: Burton contrasts kinds of love in his account of charity; this is formative theological language, not the delivery of facts.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: this informs, that deforms our life

Modern rendering: This gives our life its proper form; that disfigures it

Word and construction: Informs contributes gives proper form to; our life is shared by both original verbs and deforms supplies disfigures.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

inform · informed · local use 2

Printed “informed” (English; lemma).

Tell or provide information.

Here: Simler supplies the report about Swiss arbitrators.

Context: The passive source-attribution construction does not imply moral formation or classroom teaching.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: we are informed by Simlerus

Modern rendering: Simler tells us

Word and construction: Informed contributes tells under a passive-to-active change; Simlerus becomes the subject Simler and we becomes us.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

information

Printed “information” (English; lemma).

Formation or shaping.

Here: Knowledge of the body is commended for shaping conduct as well as preserving health.

Context: Burton approvingly reports Melanchthon’s protest against ignorance of one’s bodily structure.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: information of his manners

Modern rendering: shaping conduct

Word and construction: Information supplies shaping; of his manners supplies conduct, with the original possessive implicit in the general modern construction.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

tuition

Printed “tuition” (English; lemma).

Care, guardianship or supervision.

Here: The word describes those responsible for children, not a fee paid for lessons.

Context: Burton condemns relentless threats and blows and calls for moderation in the making or marring of a child.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: tuition and oversight

Modern rendering: care and supervision

Word and construction: Tuition supplies care; oversight separately supplies supervision.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.

Further local use

Printed “tuition” (English; lemma).

Citation key: tuition.

Here: Tuition here is the protection of humans entrusted to angels.

Context: Burton explicitly assents to Lactantius; the subsequent broader narrative admits devils or deceptive priests and concludes only that the reports are likely.

Source: original body

Source wording and original alignment: God sent Angels to the tuition of men

Modern rendering: God sent angels to protect human beings

Word and construction: Tuition is recast as the infinitive protect; men supplies human beings, God remains the sender, and Angels the sent protectors.

Sense relation: Same underlying formation, habit or guardianship sense, with the distinct construction and agency specified.

Alignment conventions: Alignment convention.