The Project Gutenberg eBook of The gist of Burton's Anatomy of melancholy
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: The gist of Burton's Anatomy of melancholy
Author: Charles Joseph Finger
Editor: E. Haldeman-Julius
Release date: September 27, 2026 [eBook #79662]
Language: English
Original publication: Girard: Haldeman-Julius Company, 1924
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79662
Credits: Tim Miller, Paul Fatula and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GIST OF BURTON'S ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY ***
LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 763
Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius
The Gist of Burton’s
Anatomy of Melancholy
Charles J. Finger
HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY
GIRARD, KANSAS
Copyright, 1924
Haldeman-Julius Company
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
THE GIST OF BURTON’S ANATOMY
OF MELANCHOLY
THE GIST OF BURTON’S ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY
ON PROLIXITY
Burton’s great book, _The Anatomy of Melancholy_, is one of those
more often talked about than read, running pretty close in this
respect to Sir Thomas Browne’s famous _Religio Medici_, or Milton’s
_Areopagitica_, or Fuller’s _Worthies of England_. Yet it is readable,
and although it was printed in the year 1642, there is no hint of
oddity or of the archaic in it. Call it a book of inventive wit and
scattered learning, and you have tagged it correctly. There is a
quaintness and a special charm about it, most delightful, and to it
that old thunderer Dr. Johnson owed much. For all that, it has become
almost a lost book, as forgotten and neglected as Suckling’s _Fragmenta
Aurea_, or Hobbes’ _De Cive_.
Now the every-day man who has to go to work as soon as he finds a job
that a lad may do, and who is busy ever after, sometimes wonders, when
he reads of discoveries literary, architectural or artistic, how it
comes to pass that things were lost or forgotten. He reads of gold
ornaments of considerable size being discovered when a sewer was being
dug in London, let us say; or he hears of treasures taken from the
sands of Egypt; of vast temples in the jungles of Central America. Or
he learns of precious volumes in libraries quite forgotten, of lost
arts, of the tombs of kings the very names of whom there is no mention
in history, and he finds himself wondering how such things could be
overlooked. It all seems odd and mysterious. For instance, could the
Woolworth building fall into neglect and be no more known by men? Is it
possible that these highways spanning the continent could by any chance
fall into uselessness and become earth covered, to be re-discovered
in the remote future? If so, must not the day come when all those
things on which we pride ourselves, our machines, our railroad systems,
our very civilization and our gods, shall pass away? At which point
speculation seems idle, perhaps a little dangerous, and, like a wise
man, he gives up the problem and gets down to the things of daily life,
the job of bread winning, and tax paying, and skimping to make both
ends meet and so on. Or, cleaving to an optimistic point of view, he
becomes enamored of J. B. S. Haldane and revels in his charming and
fanciful prophecies of the production of a race of supermen, of the
Seikoyski’s invention of the purple alga which manufactured nitrogen
and so increased the wheat yield, of the production of ectogenetic
children so that ectogenesis being universally adopted, it became
possible to eradicate all social evils and foster the arts and the
sciences. All of which is very amusing, but unconvincing, so that our
imaginative man would revert to his earlier speculation and wonderment
as to how this that and the other came to be forgotten and lost, and,
possibly, arrive at the conclusion that in time past men were more
careless than they are today. For, imbued with the popular notion that
we are a thrifty people, a people living in an age in which nothing is
wasted, our man would be inclined to take it for granted that no pearls
lie hidden, that merit always gets its true reward, and that a broad
path is beaten through the woods to the hut of the man who makes good
mouse traps.
And yet, a little reflection will show that we of today are quite
as wastefully ignorant as were our remote forefathers. For it has
always been a world of waste and probably always will be. You get a
fine picture of typical waste in James Fennimore Cooper’s Pioneers, a
thrilling tale of wilful destruction, of things taken from forest and
stream by the thousand, and left to rot. And every man knows that,
except for a few isolated specimens in zoological gardens, the buffalo
has disappeared, and there must soon follow the lion, the tiger,
the elephant, perhaps the quail and song birds innumerable. Whales,
seals, walrus, penguins are becoming scarce. Or read Prescott to find
a heartbreaking record. As to the waste in economic life too much has
been said and written, so much so that men cease to heed the tale. Then
there is the waste of war. Dreadful enough, but already he who harps on
it is considered a bore and a nuisance.
So we come to the question of waste in the world of literature, of
great things forgotten or unheeded. For, buried behind the mountains
of sheer trash are glories and riches untold. Things lie unread, and
Burton’s book is one of many, the value of which Time has failed to
lessen. There are other things still which Time has made great because
of the treasures in them, treasures of wisdom which the passage of time
alone could reveal. For, you see, the thoughts penned long ago are not
obsolete, are, indeed, as valuable today as when they were written. The
humor in them still brings a smile, the pathos a sigh. Old students
and scholars of clear and lofty character have always built temples of
wisdom, but always thoughtless later generations have allowed those
temples to become weed-covered and neglected, and we of today with our
printing presses and cheap magazines have very effectually covered
what was not hidden in the tangled jungles, with unmitigated trash.
So it becomes obvious that things are being lost today. To be sure,
the names of the temple builders are heard, whispered as it were in
colleges and universities--there is still talk of Langland, and Malory,
and Skelton, and Sidney, and Bacon. But it is a mere bandying of names
and no more. The things done, the work accomplished we heed not at all,
and, in our folly and our crass ignorance, we turn a willing ear to
those who speak slightingly of the old because it is old. But this is
certain, very certain. Much that ails us today, socially, politically,
internationally and economically, also ailed people in the far past
and there were men who had studied with care, and who had diagnosed
disease and advocated cures for the very malaise that now afflicts
us. That we must get straight and well fixed in our minds. For new
troubles are old troubles. And to cure those ever present ills there
were written such books as Adam Smith’s _Wealth of Nations_, Buckle’s
_History of Civilization_, John Stuart Mill’s _Science of Political
Economy_, Thomas Carlyle’s _Sartor Resartus_ and many, many others. And
of such sort was Burton’s book.
Now whether Robert Burton’s _Anatomy of Melancholy_ is a book which
time has made great or the value of which time has failed to lessen,
let who reads say for himself. There is no denying the fact that it
is unregarded today, and, equally, there is no denying the fact that,
except in a few instances, men are too busy or too thoughtless, too
worried or too impatient to attempt to tackle so formidable a work. For
it is formidable--as formidable as Bacon’s _Advancement of Learning_,
or Hobbes’ _Leviathan_, or even Carlyle’s _Sartor Resartus_. I mention
the latter with purpose, for, considering it as I do one of the
greatest books written in English, comparatively modern as it is, it
is far more talked about than read. To be sure the title of it falls
easily enough from the lips of college professors, but of the wisdom in
it they seem to know nothing, else in times of stress and excitement
and unbalance, as in those hysterical war days, they would not have
taken the course that, with very few exceptions, they did.
I have spoken of the formidable appearance of the _Anatomy_, and the
consequent discouragement to any but the bravest. And formidable it is
to those used to the scrappy appearance of the popular magazine. Let a
man cast eyes on the close-written page, the long Latin passages, the
thick bristling references, and, ninety-nine cases out of a hundred he
shall be discouraged at the very appearance of the book, for it strikes
the eye as a tangle and confusion, like the tangle and confusion of a
timber-covered mountain criss-cross with underbrush. But I promise you
that you shall be well repaid if you will but disregard appearances
just as you are well repaid for cracking the rough and tough shell of
the walnut. I give a sample taken almost at random in which you cannot
fail to note the gentle humor and sound common sense.
_Love_.
Boccace hath a pleasant tale to this purpose, which he borrowed from
the Greeks, and which Beroaldus hath turned into Latin, Bebelius into
verse, of Cymon and Iphigenia. This Cymon was a fool, a proper man
of person, and the governor of Cyprus’ son, but a very ass; insomuch
that his father being ashamed of him, sent him to a farmhouse he had
in the country, to be brought up; where by chance, as his manner was,
walking alone, he espied a gallant young gentlewoman named Iphigenia,
a burgomaster’s daughter of Cyprus, with her maid, by a brook side,
in a little thicket, fast asleep in her smock, where she had newly
bathed her self. _When Cymon saw her, he stood leaning on his staff,
gaping on her immovable, and in a maze_; at last he fell so far in
love with the glorious object, that he began to rouse himself up;
to bethink what he was; would needs follow her to the city, and for
her sake began to be civil, to learn to sing and dance, to play
on instruments, and got all those gentleman-like qualities and
compliments, in a short space, which his friends were most glad of.
In brief he became from an idiot and a clown, to be one of the most
complete gentlemen in Cyprus; did many valorous exploits, and all for
the love of Mistress Iphigenia. In a word, I may say thus much of
them, let them be never so clownish, rude and horrid, Grobians and
sluts, if once they be in love, they will be most neat and spruce;
for, _Omnibus rebus, et nitidis nitoribus antevenit amor_; they will
follow the fashion, begin to trick up, and to have a good opinion
of themselves; _venustatum enim mater Venus_; a ship is not so long
a-rigging, as a young gentlewoman a-trimming up herself against her
sweetheart comes. A painter’s shop, a flowery meadow, not so gracious
an aspect in Nature’s storehouse as a young maid, _nubilis puella_, a
Novitsa or Venetian bride, that looks for an husband; or a young man
that is her suitor; composed looks, composed gait, clothes, gestures,
actions, all composed; all the graces, elegancies, in the world,
are in her face. Their best robes, ribbons, chains, jewels, lawns,
linens, laces, spangles, must come on, _praeter quam res patitur
student elegantiae_, they are beyond all measure coy, nice, and too
curious on a sudden. ’Tis all their study, all their business, how
to wear their clothes neat, to be polite and terse, and to set out
themselves. No sooner doth a young man see his sweetheart coming,
but he smugs up himself, pulls up his cloak, now fallen about his
shoulders, ties his garters, points, sets his band, cuffs, slicks his
hair, twires his beard, etc.
You catch readily the prolixity of the man. Perhaps it would be better
to say his leisureliness. But you also get something of his enthusiasm.
Certainly, there is no denying the fact that Burton, like Bacon, and
like Sir Thomas Browne, and sometimes Carlyle be it said, lacked the
power or the desire to omit and trim and prune. At any rate, all those
I have named were unsparing of their readers, as unsparing as Nature
herself is. If pruning is to be done, they seem to say, then let the
reader prune, for I shall certainly unfold in all richness. Indeed,
it sometimes seems as if the deliberate writers took care to preserve
odd, half-forgotten things as though they considered themselves the
proper custodians of this, that and the other which seemed in peril
of neglect. And, certainly, they did, at times, seize on pegs on
which to hang rags and tags of learning until whole chapters had the
appearance of a motley farrago. But that, it is clear, was a kind of
loving kindness and generosity, for the world was by no means free from
those who had the other and professorial idea of keeping information
to themselves so that they might the easier astound the more ignorant,
pretending to vast scholarship and occult learning. Perhaps, too,
the old writers were actuated by the same spirit which prompts the
housewife to keep odds and ends to the end that in some unexpected time
they may come in useful. Or perhaps they were lavish because of their
real modesty, giving credit where it was due and not boldly stealing
the ideas of others and, slightly transforming them, a modern trick
which no laws and regulations will prevent. But there is another angle
from which this kind of generous prolixity may be viewed. It is this.
With such a book, crammed with good things said and written by those
long since dead, readers would not be apt to presume that they stood on
the pinnacle of knowledge and had a monopoly of learning. And to make
a man who prided himself on his absorption of facts really and truly
humble, would be a happy miracle.
So it comes about then that such books are like muniment rooms. They
are like great, wonderful attics in which things that were once trifles
and common, have, by the passage of time, gained value both sentimental
and material. And looking around, we find ourselves filled with
astonishment to discover that what we thought our forwardness, is, very
often, nothing of the kind. The saying that there is nothing new under
the sun takes on a new meaning. We find our own wisdom distressingly
crude. Presently, Burton reads like a modern and cultured gentleman
conversing, and we are not astonished to find him discussing up-to-date
things, considering the effect of impure air on the health, talking
about heredity, birth control, monopoly, rich men, sycophantic poor
men, free love, degeneracy, fantastic literature. And our minds clear
up, as it were, getting a proper perspective as we discover that the
ancients knew something about war loans, capital levies, debasement
of the currency, inflated money. Or we learn of Pythocles and his
proposal for nationalizing the output of the mines of Laurium, of the
Ephesians raising money by taxing luxuries and jewelry, of Chabrias
threatening to disendow the temple, of Condalus levying a tax on vanity
by making men who affected long hair pay, of the Clasomenians and their
token coinage, and much more. Or if you are one to bewail the modern
tendencies of women to capture men by a half display of their bodies,
you find your corrective when Burton tells that that kind of thing is
old as the hills. Indeed, he goes back hundreds of years to quote old
Hierome on the subject with “she walks along, and with the ruffling of
her clothes makes men look at her, her shoes creak, her paps tied up,
her waist pulled in to make her look small, she is straight girded, her
hair about her ears, her upper garment sometimes falls and sometimes
tarries to show her naked shoulders, and as if she would not be seen,
she covers that in all haste which voluntarily she showed.” A perfectly
modern up-to-date maiden accurately described. Nor was George Bernard
Shaw the first to discover that it is a sheer fiction to pretend that
the man pursues and captures the maid, but rather the contrary, and
that woman sets her nets to capture the man, and has always so done.
ON THOROUGHNESS
It is very probable, very human, too, that what Burton, and Browne,
and Herbert Spencer, and all the rest of the leisurely writers who
gave their lives to the production of a mighty work did, was to play
a magnificent game, a game that most men who try to think would like
to play, but lack the courage or the perseverance to continue. That
is, they took a thought, or an idea, and traced it through all its
convolutions and ramifications to an end.
Such a task seems easy enough until you ponder awhile, then, from being
merely interesting, it looms vast and mighty. Still more pondering
makes it seem tremendous to the point of impossibility. Because, to
put the matter in paradoxical form, anything becomes everything. You
start at any given point thinking to arrive somewhere in all ease and
simplicity, to find that your course leads you into the universe. Take
by way of example the man who would set out to study an apple and its
growth. Doing the thing thoroughly he has accepted a life’s task. Not
only into the infinity of the minute must he go, but also into the
infinity of space, into the microcosm and into the macrocosm too. For
down he must go to the roots, studying the very nature of the soil,
the plant food, and, therefore, chemistry and physics and the atom. Or
up he goes to the leaves, and so leaps into a world of new things; to
considerations of light and heat, of form and color. He makes a study
of the sun and the solar system, of space and of time, of force and
matter. He will be led into anthropological questions, into folk lore,
into history and into philosophy. His apple tree will have become a
true tree of knowledge of good and evil, of life and of death. In his
tree he will see a world of order and a world of disorder; a world of
waste and of malady, of corruption and of paralysis. He will see in his
tree world disease warring with health, generation and degeneration, a
world visible and a world invisible marching hand in hand to conquer
and destroy. He will see insect and worm and fly and germ all enemies
leagued to overcome effort, just as in the world of men, military and
commercial imperialism march hand in hand to overcome peaceful efforts
leading towards peaceful industry. Such a man must become a pessimistic
philosopher seeing a world of strife and disorder, rather than unity
and peace.
In something of the same spirit then, a spirit of disinterested
thoroughness with which a man might take an apple tree, or a pond by
the roadside, or the subject matter of a book for a life’s study, so
Burton took the most unpromising subject on earth--the Blue Devils,
if you like, or Man’s Grouchiness. Unpromising, but of great purport,
especially if it be remembered that moping melancholy is the gateway
opening on the path that leads to the door of the house of Insanity.
And Burton finds that “all the world is melancholy, or mad, dotes, and
every member of it,” more or less, wherefore the whole world needs
the cure, or at least the knowledge of how to ward off the Beast of
Melancholy, which being the case, his _Anatomy_ must needs be one of
the most important works of mankind, if not of all time. As for great
men, Burton comes within an ace of reaching the same conclusion as
Lombroso, that moral insanity and epilepsy are closely allied with
genius and that “the true normal man is not the man of letters or of
learning, but the man who works and eats--_fruges consumere natus_.”
Indeed, in some respect, Lombroso picks up one of the threads left by
Burton, carrying the pattern forward to later times, telling of the
melancholy of Robert Burns who complained that his constitution was
“blasted with a deep incurable taint of melancholy which poisoned
existence”: of the melancholy of Schiller: of Constant: of Dupuytren:
of Cavour: of Chopin: of George Sand: of John Stuart Mill: of
Chateaubriand and a couple of dozen of others. Burton, more downright
than Lombroso, declares that those we admire “are like these double or
turning pictures; stand before which you see a fair maid on the one
side, an ape on the other, an owl; look upon them at the first sight,
all is well; but further examine, you shall find them wise on the one
side, fools on the other; in some few things praiseworthy, in the rest
incomparably faulty.”
So also did Max Nordau pick up one of the Burton threads when he
wrote his book _Degeneracy_, though Shaw tangled the Nordau pattern
sadly with his _Sanity and Art_. Or take that other instance of the
working out of Burton’s theme which you see in Dr. Strahan’s _Suicide
and Insanity_, for while the author named divides suicides into two
classes, rational and irrational, he discovers that of melancholiacs,
58.3 per cent were suicidal, but arrives at the conclusion that only
by increasing the vital energy of the people, can self-destruction be
reduced, which is another way of stating the finding of Burton, as we
shall see in good time.
Who then is sane and wise? Burton quotes Horace, satire ii. 7. 83-86,
thus:
“Sapiens sibique imperiosus,
Quem neque pauperies, neque mors, neque vincula terrent,
Responsare cupidinibus, contemnere honores
Fortis, & in seipso totus teres atque rotundus.”
(“He is wise that can command his own will,
Valiant and constant to himself still,
Whom poverty nor death, nor bands can fright,
Checks his desires, scorns honors, just and right”)
That is to say, to the best of each man’s ability, let him be a center
of order in a scene of disorder, which is Marcus Aurelius baldly
stated. To be sure a man must be interested in the beauty of life, must
find something of interest in its complex charm, but he must not lose
himself in the froth and whirl of it. He must be eager for happiness,
but if he should deliberately sow pleasure, then, most assuredly shall
he reap disaster. He must look upon the life about him, the life
national and social, as a kind of high-hearted game, but he must not
lose himself in the playing of it. In the ordinary business of life,
to look a little ahead is well enough, to look too far ahead is folly
and madness. To be sure an eye must be kept on the far horizon, but not
exclusively so, for it is the next step that counts. Or put it this
way. If it were possible for a man in his youth to see the mountain
of work that he would have to do in his life, to visualize the vast
morass of trouble through which he must pass, to see the desert of
difficulties across which he must travel in his three-score and ten
years, he would probably refuse to live his life. But instead, he faces
one thing at a time, one little job after another, meets his troubles
one by one as they appear and so gets to the end at last. Or your
traveller has his final goal on the far horizon, but is concerned
about the next step and the one after that, taking mountains foot by
foot when he comes to them and so the barrier that seemed to tower to
the sky, turns out to be nothing more than a stiff slope.
So, in a day of national greatness when men were talking about their
great achievements in circumnavigating the world, in penetrating the
American continent, in beating the Spanish and the French; when there
was excitement about Raleigh in this place, about the Gunpowder Plot
and Guido Fawkes in that, about James I and his favorite in another;
when there was magnificence of display and the constable drank to the
health of the king from a cup of agate set with diamonds and rubies and
to the queen from another dragon-shaped cup of crystal garnished with
gold; when the gallows were hung with petty thieves and Henry VIII was
praised for having hung seventy-two thousand rogues; when any old woman
might be burned or hanged as a witch; when men prided themselves on
their nation because
“Turkeys, Carpes, Hops; Piccarel and Beere,
Came into England; all in one yeare.”
--when all these things and more were afoot, Robert Burton in his
retirement refused to be dazzled.
“I laugh at all,” he wrote, in the early part of his book. “I am a
mere spectator of other men’s fortunes and adventures.” “I hear new
news every day, and those ordinary rumours of wars, plagues, fires,
inundations, thefts, murders, massacres, meteors, comets, spectrums,
prodigies, apparitions, of towns taken, cities defeated in France,
Turkey, Persia, Poland--daily musters and preparations, and such
like, which these tempestuous times afford, battles fought, so many
men slain, monomachies, shipwrecks, piracies, and sea fights, peace
leagues, strategems, and fresh alarms.” For he lived in a world which,
in its broad aspects as far as the activities of men were concerned,
was strikingly like ours, so much so that reading his catalog, it
almost seems as though he recited the headlines of a bundle of
sensational newspapers such as we are accustomed to. And there is more
of it. “New books every day, pamphlets, currantoes, stories, heresies,
controversies on philosophy, religion, and so forth.” It was the day
of the appearance of, more properly speaking, the wider acceptance
and knowledge of Shakespeare’s Sonnets, and Cervantes’ _Don Quixote_,
and the dramas of Beaumont and Fletcher, and Webster’s _White Devil_,
and Drayton’s _Polyolbion_, and Raleigh’s _History of the World_, and
Chapman’s _Homer_. Not that these were produced in a single year, but
rather that they had come to be talked about, for I have gathered the
more prominent literary activities of ten years, and, of course, there
were thousands of minor things, much talked about then, the very names
of which we know no more.
Burton, then, looking about him sees his fellowman not as Sovereign
Lord of an Orderly Universe, not as Viceroy of the World, not by any
means as Governor of all the Creatures in it, but rather as a kind
of be-devilled thing, sport of the elements, victim of plagues and
sickness of mysterious origin just as we are the sports of strange
sickness with which in their intensity we are unable to cope--the
influenza for example--and so finds man “his own executioner,” “a devil
to himself and others,” and, in spite of his utmost efforts to be
otherwise, a prey to black melancholy at recurrent intervals.
So, in the quiet of his country home he sets himself to work with the
purpose of tracing this melancholy to its source, and, be it said,
when he finds the cure for it, or if not the cure at least an anodyne,
he sums the matter up in no more than six words, though the tangle of
his investigation, which I am trying to trace, took more than half a
million words.
THE GENERAL PLAN
Tremendous almost to the point of impossibility, I said, a few pages
back, having in mind the immense task Burton undertook. First, he
undertook a monument of classification easily comparable to the work
of Darwin or of Huxley. He wanted to be all-inclusive, to be clear cut
and exact, leaving out nothing. So there was made a kind of chart which
he calls his synopsis. Then came other charts, one for each partition,
with divisions and sub-divisions most wonderful. It is difficult to
convey an idea of the magnitude of the scheme without example. For
instance he takes up the task thus:
In diseases
consider
-----------------------------
Their causes Definition, Member,
Division.
--------------- -----------------------
Of the body Of the head
300 which are and mind.
Epidemical
Impulsive Instrumental. or
Particular In disposition
Sin, concupiscence &c
Intemperance or
and all second
causes Habits as
(listed names)
Then comes the ramification, quite impossible to reproduce here. But
to give an idea, he lists under the heading “Habits,” Dotage, Phrensy,
Madness, Ecstasy, Lycanthropia, Chorus Sancti Viti, Hydrophobia,
Obsession of Devils, Melancholy.
So far so good, but it must be borne in mind that about each of these
“Habits” he has much to say, quoting, arguing, coming to conclusions.
But that is not all. The word Melancholy starts him off again and there
is another classification, another chart. Considering it, he finds four
main heads, the first of which is Equivocations. That again subdivides
into two, each again ramifying, but the first of the two subdividing
into seven, while at the other end of the chart, we arrive by
degrees at “The Causes of Melancholy.” So there is another classified
chart with tremendous ramifications intended to show which causes of
Melancholy are “Evident, outward and remote” and which are “Contingent
and Inward.” Then “Particular Causes” has its separate classification
showing how a melancholy state may arrive from many causes, too many to
list here, but among which are “Bad diet, distempered liver, improper
evacuations, idleness, excess or defect of venery” and much more. But,
remember, in the book proper, each one of these is carefully considered
and argued. Yet it is not finished, the plan is not laid. There must
be further consideration. What he calls “non-natural” things that man
encounters must be considered, so there is another classification with
an examination of the sub-heads growing therefrom and he discovers
that there must be studied the effects of the eating of certain kinds
of bread, of flesh and fish and herbs, the quality and the quantity of
them, the digestive processes, corrective medicines, the temperaments
of men and how such are affected by desire, by exercise, by excessive
sexual gratification or the reverse, by study. And bear in mind, that
there is to follow what is really an essay about each and every subject
found in the classification, which essays deal with vegetarianism,
celibacy, temperance and drunkenness, cooking, conduct, education. All
that comes in the first classification under the head of A. Then B and
C follow, each with its ramifications, down to the furthermost item.
It is like the laying bare of the respiratory system of man, passing
from the mouth to the ultimate bronchial tubes, capillary--like things
almost invisible. Yet all that I have swiftly outlined, is but a third
part of the classification or synopsis for the First Partition, which
ends with “How a melancholy or mad man offering violence to himself is
to be censured.” Much more is to follow. There is a similar analysis of
the second and also of the third partition, the last grouping, a most
tremendous one, dealing with Religious Melancholy in which he passes
in review the whole known world of human thought, touching on such odd
subjects as the plurality of worlds, polygamy, atheism and pantheism,
quaint marriage laws, country life and a hundred other things. The book
is a dictionary, an encyclopedia, a library in itself. As for the man,
he seems to have read everything and remembered everything he had read.
And the Anatomy was his digestion, as it were.
But perhaps the greatest wonder is the odd scraps of information that
are to be found, hints of things of vast interest if the reader does
but choose to follow up the clue. For instance, a moment ago I chanced
to open the first volume at random and found a reference to a canal
where the Suez Canal is now. Readers of Washington Irving’s _Life of
Mahomet_ will recall that in that book is a similar reference. But hear
Burton: “The Turks of late attempted to cut that isthmus between Africa
and Asia, which Sesostris and Darius and some Pharaohs of Egypt had
formerly undertaken, with ill success....” To verify that you must go
to Herodotus.
Similarly, Burton tells us of other things, not dragged in by the
ears to display his erudition by any means, but mentioned quite _en
passant_, to elucidate some point or to amplify some argument. So we
find him writing of great floods in Zealand, of the courtesans in
Venice, of the jealousy of dogs, of spots on the sun, of the pied piper
of Hamelin, of the climate of Iceland. He leaves out nothing and all is
fish that comes to his net.
ON WITCHES AND DEVILS
Obviously, it is impossible to do more than to offer some general
sketch of parts of the book and at the best we are but scratching the
surface. So I shall take what seems to me a high point here and there.
Very naturally, considering man and his temperament, Burton hits upon
the Supernatural Will first, and hitting on that, he seems to see that
there is some ground for the theory of malevolent design as well as
the other. For in the course of any man’s life so many natural facts
are observed, so many unexpected and uninvited things happen, that it
has always been a belief that there are evil forces at work as well
as good forces. For every case of apparent beneficent design, one of
malevolent design seems to present itself. The Dr. Pangloss attitude of
everything being, on the whole, “for the best in the best possible of
worlds,” does not seem to fit at all. So there is postulated not only
a benevolent demiurge, but also a malevolent demiurge. If there is an
all powerful Good, then there is a very nearly all powerful Bad. Given
an Ormuzd, there must be an Arhiman. If the forces that make for man’s
comfort and well being are particularized, then, also, those forces
that make for man’s discomfort and his ills must be particularized.
Hence, dark, demoniac powers that seem to work by occult means evil
deeds--spirits, devils, ghosts, fairies, satyrs, trolls and all the
rest of the unseen things that live in the air, in the water, in the
forest, in fire and underground. Hence also sorcery and magic and
conjurations.
So Burton examines the theory of bad angels and other extra mundane
spirits with a view to discovering how far they are responsible for
man’s afflictions, and examining, cites the views of scholars and
philosophers and school men and students, telling of the beliefs of
many who bore great names, of Plato, Pythagoras, Zanchius, Carden--of
teachers of Rome, and Greece, and Egypt, and Persia, and India--and
what he has to say on this subject alone would fill this little book.
Old fashioned and outworn stuff, you say. Yes, to be sure. And yet, as
we read, we find much that reads strikingly like things we may find
in the pages of some book written by moderns,--by Sir Oliver Lodge or
his followers of less note, or by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Conan Doyle,
certainly, in whose book _The New Revelation_, on page 121, I find
evidence of a belief in a polter geist, and, like Yeats, Doyle has
since proclaimed his belief in fairies.
But you do not smile at Burton, remembering that a superstition
is, after all said and done, an abandoned theory, and our accepted
beliefs of today are the superstitions of tomorrow. And it is not
wise to disturb a superstition. You remember how Copernicus, full of
misgivings, withheld the publication of his book for thirty-six years
thinking that “perhaps it would be better to follow the examples
of the Pythagoreans and others, who delivered their doctrine only
by tradition and to friends.” Nor was the astronomer wrong, the
Inquisition condemning the book on its publication as heretical. Then
there was the experience of Galileo. But who shall say that some of
our present beliefs may not become objects of derision? Certainly,
to the mass of mankind, to believe that the sun went round the earth
seemed reasonable, an observed fact, indeed. So also, in Burton’s day,
the malevolent spirit idea was a very safe theory to account for an
observed fact and many of us who laugh at devils and witches, had we
but lived in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, would be shouting
for our evil spirits, especially when it was safe and comfortable to do
so.
Consider a moment. Let us say that a man, or many men, or a whole
village chanced to suffer from some evil, some strange sickness which
we today call typhoid fever. Careful observation would show that all
who had taken water from a certain pool or creek fell sick, while
those who took their drinking water from another pool or creek remained
well. What then more natural and simple than to conclude that one
water supply was infested by evil spirits while the other was free? To
be sure no one saw the spirits, for they were invisible, and, also,
according to a cloud of witnesses and old philosophers, they were also
(a) exceedingly small so that millions of them might rest on a single
leaf.
(b) they were creatures that lived and died.
(c) they had organs and excrements.
(d) they reproduced their kind.
(e) man could not kill them.
(f) they warred with other unseen spirits, and
(g) they invaded the bodies of men and wrought much evil.
All that, I say, you and I would be prepared to accept, just as Burton
seemed inclined to accept. A moment’s thought will show that a and b,
c and d, e and f, and g too, apply equally well to what we now call
typhoid germs. Perhaps the only difference in the belief of old and
that of today is that in the mind of the unscientific man; there is no
longer an anthropomorphic view, the evil thing is not personified as it
were; it is not thought of as a little devil wriggling and squirming,
but rather as a wriggling and squirming kind of dragon.
You see, while ancient notions excite our risibilities, our modern
notions would excite the risibilities of the ancients. We imagine
a Pasteur dropped in the midst of a company of seventeenth century
doctors and telling them that their unseen living things which
poisoned the water measured from 0.000012 inches to 0.00006 inches;
that in one day each unseen bacterium would produce 16,500,000
descendants and in two days 281,500,000,000; that chills and fevers
were indeed caused by organisms that invaded the human body; that
growing corn was in all truth hindered by invisible things that
came floating on the air; that living things not visible certainly
entered the bodies of horses and sheep and men to their detriment,
and sometimes to their deaths. Hearing all that, it would seem to the
authorities quoted by Burton that, saving the nomenclature, there was
but very little difference between the beliefs that they held, and the
beliefs held by the scientific man of the twentieth century.
Or move a step further. Would not the cures of certain ills that
afflict men seem strikingly similar? Holding to the typhoid case, we
can imagine the men of Burton’s day having located the polluted water,
solemnly exorcising the spirit of the pond and forbidding its use for a
number of days, or as would probably be the case, causing the bad water
to be drained away so as to deprive the evil spirit of its habitat and
thus cause it to fly away--in either case there would be potential
safety. As for the patient, he would be secluded and kept quiet to the
end that the evil spirit in possession of his body would leave, which,
at bottom, is strongly like the modern approved method of keeping a
typhoid patient quiet and letting nature work her wonder of healing.
There is this again, a pregnant passage: “Sometimes a strong conceit
or apprehension ... will produce real effects. Men, if they see but
another man tremble, giddy, or sick of some fearful disease, their
apprehension and fear is so strong in this kind, that they will have
the same disease.” He goes on to relate instances of imaginative
sicknesses, then considering the other phase of the matter, as “how
a strong conceit will take away sicknesses on occasion,” refers to
spells, words, characters and charms, and the power of imagination
and determination in curing hypochondriacs, so that we remember Dr.
Coue, the faith-healers, and Christian Scientists of our own day.
And mark this: “All the world knows that there is no virtue in such
charms, or cures, but a strong conceit and opinion alone.” There you
have the whole truth of the matter. Your man of morbid possibilities
or of strangely susceptible nerves is cured by an amulet today as he
was three hundred years ago. Imagination does the trick. The more a
man reads, the more he thinks, the less is he likely to look upon the
old with mere good-natured contempt. Somehow the silver thread of a
tarnished truth joins old and new, ancient and modern.
Wonderfully close, we gather from Burton, did some old scholars
approach to modern practice. There was Erasistratus, to take one
example, who traced the majority of sicknesses to indigestion
processes, and, as Henry Osborn Taylor has said in his study of Greek
Biology and Medicine, “conceived illness as resulting from the loading
of the parts of the organism with insufficiently digested food matter;
which prevented the organism from functioning.” Not for him was fever
or headache a special disease, but a symptom. That, as you know and
as I know, is a truth not yet grasped by the average man. Do not nine
people out of ten still hold headache to be a disease _per se_? Do not
manufacturers of patent medicines grow rich putting their nostrums on
the market? And it is only a few weeks since I heard a strange thing. I
was in a barber’s chair, the man working on me, when a countryman came
in.
“I want some strong tonic,” said he. “What kind?” asked the barber.
“Well,” answered the fellow, “my wife she’s got headache and she wants
some tonic to go through her head.” Not to lose good pence, the barber
left me, took from his show case a couple of bottles of hair tonic and
offered them. “The red color looks stronger than the green,” said the
countryman. “It is,” agreed the barber. So the trade was closed, the
hair tonic sold for a dollar, and, doubtless, the good wife found her
ailment relieved.
As for that Paganism and Pantheism of which Burton writes, every
observant man knows how we are prone to imaginatively endow such things
with which we come into frequent contact, with a kind of spiritual
life. To do so is human. The child is positive that her doll knows
grief and joy and loneliness. And every man who has planted and
watched and tended a tree is conscious of an affection for it. Your
mechanic working day after day with machines, likes this one, mistrusts
that, resents a slighting word said of another. In a roundhouse this
locomotive has a good reputation and another a bad, while every sailor
of the old school spoke of his ship in terms of endearment.
A word too as to the collocation of certain letters by way of charm.
Much has been made of that. But have we abandoned that kind of thing?
If so, what of the mystic meaning attributed to the letters on a secret
society charm or button? What of the insignia? The ritual? Vast results
are still attributed to that kind of thing.
In another connection I would like to steal the words of Lynn
Thorndike, Professor of History in Western Reserve University, who
has made a study and written two volumes on the _History of Magic and
Experimental Science_ during the first thirteen centuries of our era.
“If not sheer intolerance,” he says (p. 981 vol. ii) “what else than
survivals or revivals of ritual are all those conventions of dress
and etiquette which are supposed to distinguish ladies and gentlemen
from their fellow human beings? ‘Good form’ is one of the last lines
of trenches by which stupidity endeavors to hold its conquest of
inheritance or--shall we say--native soil of responsibility? And how
much we are forced to hear of literary or of social charm! Is such
charm any less fleeting and fallacious than the magic charm from which
it takes its name? Does it retard truth or retard civilization? Is
not the man without it, who has to be twice as efficient in order
to secure the same position as the man with it, the truth builder?
Does such personal charm add any more to its possessor’s real value
to society than the incantation of the ancient artizan did to his
industrial process? We believe that it does, but so did he. Or who can
marvel at past belief in the magic power of words, who hears statesmen
speak and millions shout of Militarism, Unconditional Surrender,
Nationality, Democracy, Prohibition, Socialism, and Bolshevism? What
fear, what hopes, what passions, what prejudices, what sacrifices these
words elicit! And how little agreement there is as to their meaning!
If our illustrations are somewhat frivolous and superficial, let us
measure the amount of magic in present civilization by Plotinus’
standard. He who yields to the charms of love and family affection
or seeks political power or aught else than Truth and true beauty or
even he who searches for beauty in inferior things; he who is deceived
by appearances, he who follows irrational inclinations, is as truly
bewitched as if he were the victim of magic and _goetia_ so-called.
The life of reason is alone free from magic. Measuring our age by such
a standard, we shall be tempted to cry out, Magic of Magics, all is
magic!”
CONCERNING STARS
“I will not stand here to discuss _obiter_, whether there be causes and
signs; or to apologize for judicial astrology,” writes Burton, and so
plunges into the question of Planetary influence. But first a word of
warning to the effect that while it is the fashion to roughly dismiss
what some are loosely prone to dismiss as “the olden time” as a period
when there was striking unanimity of beliefs, any thoughtful man will
be prepared to accept something altogether different and to hold that
there always were disbelievers, some active, many passive, and that at
no period of history was there any unanimous belief. So with astrology
then. To be sure, reading Aristotle’s _Secret of Secrets_ we find much
that is astrological, Alexander being advised “not to rise up or sit
down or eat or drink or do anything without consulting a man skilled
in the art of astronomy,” and all that kind of thing. Still, even with
that, when the power of monarchs is remembered, there is ground for
suspicion that the astrologers, trading in mysteries, may have thought
to rule the all powerful one with the rod of superstition. Brains
versus brute force, as it were. I have always had my suspicions as
to the sincerity of the professors of astrology, present as well as
past. Even Aristotle I would rather believe had a little bit of the
rogue in him, rather than the fool. Otherwise, how think you would
a man with his cultural and intellectual attainments have squared
his constellatory precautions with his belief in necessity? For if,
according to the stars, such and such was the fate of a man, why worry?
My guess is that Aristotle knew the human credulity and superstitious
fears of the dull witted Alexander and traded on them to his own
security. Thus, in the advice offered to Alexander by Aristotle, the
monarch is warned against the taking of medicines, against suffering
bleeding, against conducting his wars without the guidance of the
astrologers. There was wisdom and there was safety in the advice,
I think, safety both for the philosopher and for the king. As to
disbelievers in general, they were not wanting, as we shall see.
It seems to me that we will be fairly safe, in the long run, to
remember that man in the mass was, in Burton’s day, pretty much as he
is today, intellectually and morally and mystically. You will see that
today there are no slight traces of superstitious beliefs and people
are plentiful who pet their dogmas as Titania caressed the donkey’s
head. To be sure we pride ourselves on our material advancement with
our airplanes, automobiles, radios, phonographs, newspapers, steam
radiators, wireless, poison gas and all that sort of thing, but it
would be interesting to know how many in this day and age, make a very
comfortable living casting horoscopes, telling fortunes, who peer into
the future with crystals, get messages from the beyond with the aid
of ouija boards, who read characters and who foretell destinies by
handwriting, who set up as palmist experts. Still, while a man five
hundred years from now might draw strange conclusions while trying to
reconstruct our social life from the advertisements in certain books
and papers devoted to theosophy and the occult, he would be far from
the truth, as we know.
So we bear that in mind when we read in Burton of Paracelsus who held
that “a physician without the knowledge of the stars can neither
understand the cause or cure of any disease, ... of gout nor so much
as a toothache, except he see the peculiar geniture and scheme of
the party affected.” And remembering that there were disbelievers in
all days for all things, we recall that Cicero made an attack upon
divination, and those who pretended to predict the future, and rejected
the contentions of the Chaldeans who held that at the moment of a
man’s birth, not only his personality, but the events of his life were
determined by the position of the stars and planets. For Cicero saw
that while many were born at the some moment as Homer, there was but
one Homer, and, like the true logician that he was, asked whether it
was reasonable to believe that all the men who perished at Cannae were
born at the some moment. Then there was Favorinus who bluntly denounced
all horoscope readers as tricksters and mountebanks, and suggested that
the utter folly of astrology was shown by the self-evident fact that
while astrologers had admitted on challenge that twins were not similar
in disposition because they were not born at the same precise moment,
yet it was quite manifest that the divinity men could by no means
measure the position of the stars with any exactness, and, further,
that there were, probably, stars which men could not see because of
their distance of position, but yet which must influence, if planetary
influence was admitted.
Nevertheless, in Burton’s day as well as in the days long before his
time, which he passes in review, we find diviners pretending to great
and wonderful powers, and in all countries making a lean or fat living.
There is a host of them, Burton tells us, divining by the elements, by
the air, by fire, by water, by earth, by evil spirits, by images and
figures, by entrails of birds, by entrails of beasts, and fishes, by
herbs, by dreams, by numbers, by names, by the navel, by marks on the
belly, by the hands, by the feet, by asses’ heads, by ashes, by smoke,
by the burning of incense, by the melting of wax in water, by looking
glasses, by crystals, by stars, by shadows, by dice, by the lees of
wine (modernized into tea leaves and still practiced by thousands of
old women in the British Isles), by meal or flour. Each of these, be it
said, had its high sounding name to impress the ignorant, Gyromancy,
or Sciomancy, or Dactylomancy. As for Oneirocriticism, or the art of
interpreting dreams, that is, of all, the most popular superstition
perhaps.
Burton has something to say on Cheiromancy, or, as we would have it
today, on palmistry, and quotes authorities, then, as if he could use
his time to better purpose, brushes it aside with, “I am over tedious
in these toys, which, howsoever, in some men’s too severe censures,
they may be held absurd and ridiculous, I am the bolder to insert,
as not borrowed from circumforeanean Rogues and Gipsies, but out of
the writing of worthy philosophers and physicians, yet living some of
them, and religious professors in famous universities, who are able to
patronize that which they have said, and vindicate themselves from all
cavillers and ignorant persons.”
As in a thick forest, when we march, though we think we are on the
straight road, it is well to stop now and again to consult the compass,
or failing that, to climb a tree and correct our course by the stars
or the sun, so it is well to halt a moment in Burton’s wonderful maze.
What he is doing is following out his chart step by step, trying to see
if there is any truth in the supposition that the melancholy of man is
induced by circumstances over which he has no control, or, if it is a
something “wished upon him” as we would say, if there is any way to
offset the evil by following any occult school. Only one ray of helpful
light has been seen thus far and that is that “sometimes a strong
conceit or apprehension ... will produce real effects.”
But it is time, he considers, to pass to man himself, after thoroughly
exhausting all considerations of outward influence, so he takes up the
question of heredity.
HEREDITY
So we come to a consideration of temperament, and Burton cites
instances, new to some, old as the hills to others. First he quotes
Bacon, saying: “Where the complexion of the father is corrupt, there
the complexion and constitution of the son must needs be corrupt, and
so the corruption is derived from the father to the son.” The which
Moses, and many others, taught generations before. Yet it is a truth
constantly lost sight of, as constantly re-discovered. Indeed it seems
to those who have accepted it, so true as almost to be platitudinous.
Almost it would seem that we might accept the truth of heredity as we
accept the truth that 7×7=49. But not so. I pick up Dr. Strahan’s book
_Suicide and Insanity_ to find a passage in which he tells us that
several distinguished writers have, by carefully following the family
history of suicides, been able to demonstrate how frequently suicide
runs in families. “This has been shown by these authorities to occur
with alarming frequency, yet it only touches upon one form of heredity,
the direct, in which heredity is only admitted in those cases where
the abnormal character is identical in both ancestor and descendant.”
Again, in another place: “... we must not confine the term ‘heredity’
to suicides who have had suicidal relations, but to most of those among
whose relatives we discover insanity, epilepsy, idiocy, scrofula and
the like.” Which is very well, but we go to old Burton for something
else. For the old writer, his nose close to the trail, dares and
dares greatly, rising far above considerations of sentimentality and
considering ways to mend matters. He gathers his data, looks at it,
arranges it, studies it and sees that diseased people should not be
allowed to contaminate the race and increase suffering and misery
by propagating unfitness. He looks on mankind from a height, as it
were, just as a chicken breeder looks at his birds. This cock has an
imperfect comb, therefore off goes his head. We want no imperfect
combs. This hen is improperly barred and this chick is what is called
“smutty,” then to the chopping block with them!
More than that, for he perceives what many of our modern legislators
and fanatics and imitation patriots refuse to see--that a people which
has not injected new blood, will degenerate. You stop immigration
in any nation and you make for weakness, not strength. “In all ages
there should be ... once in 600 years, a transmigration of nations, to
amend and purify their blood, as we alter seed upon our lands, and ...
there should be, as it were, an inundation of those northern Goths and
Vandals, and many such like people which came out of that continent of
Scandia, and Sarmatia ... and over ran as a deluge, most part of Europe
and Africa, to alter for our good our complexions, which were much
defaced with hereditary infirmities, which by our lust and intemperance
we had contracted.”
Per contra, Burton would have had something to say in regard to
deportations and those who, in hysterical days, might have stood more
than a fair chance to be thrust oceans away, those in many cases whose
works might have “amended and purified.” Small chance would Percy
Bysshe Shelley have stood to stay with us; nor Edmund Burke; nor Oliver
Cromwell; and W. S. Gilbert would have stood on dangerous ground;
perhaps too William Morris, and certainly Shaw, and Tolstoy, and
Kropotkine, and Ruskin, and Hobbes of the _Leviathan_, and John Stuart
Mill, and Auberon Herbert, and Lord Byron, while Mr. Sumner would have
had Bobbie Burns in trouble in no time. And certainly, Burton would be
far from welcomed by the K. K. K.
Again: “So many ways,” writes Burton, “are we plagued and punished
for our fathers’ defaults,” then goes on to complain, as our students
and teachers of eugenics complain, that a man will not rear a bull or
horse “except he be right shapen in all parts, or permit him to cover
a mare, except he be well assured of his breed,” yet, in the raising
of children we take no heed. He quotes Boethius, who, writing of old
Scotland, declared that “if any were visited with the falling sickness,
madness, gout, leprosy, or any such dangerous disease, which was likely
to be propagated from the father to the son, he was instantly gelded;
a woman kept from all company of men; and if by chance, having some
such disease, she were found to be with child, she and her child were
buried alive.” Burton ponders over that, then declares himself all
for prevention of the propagation of the unfit in the interests of
humanity. Says he near the end of his rumination, “A severe doom, you
will say, and not to be used among Christians, yet more to be looked
into than it is. For now, by our too much facility in this kind, in
giving away for all to marry that will, too much liberty and indulgence
in tolerating all sorts, there is a vast confusion of hereditary
disease, no family secure, no man almost free from some grievous
infirmity or other. When no choice is had, but still the eldest must
marry, as so many stallions of the race; or if rich, they be fooled
by dizzards, lame or maimed, unable, intemperate, dissolute, exhaust
through riot ... they must be wise and able by inheritance; it comes
to pass that our generation is corrupt, we may have many weak persons,
both in body and mind, many feral diseases raging amongst us, crazed
families, _parentes peremptores_, (our fathers the cause of our ruin),
our fathers bad, and we are likely to be worse.” Burton and Havelock
Ellis, you see, stretch hands across the ages. The old timer is very
much akin to the modern eugenist.
The trouble is, and Burton saw it, that while we may realize that our
descendants may pay the penalty for disobeying those principles of the
universe, obedience to which makes for health, we are entirely without
thought for our unborn children and their children’s children. When
pleasure offers, all else is nowhere at all. Indeed, by his very nature
man can have no care for that which does not exist, and he no more
thinks with affection of future generations which may proceed from his
own loins, than he thinks with affection of his remote ancestors that
wallowed in the slime.
UNWHOLESOME LIVING
So long as we are, nationally, what we are, and so long as there are
those who see filth because it hangs like a film forever before their
eyes, there are parts and chapters, paragraphs and quotations and
passages in Burton which we must pass over with a mere nod lest evil
befall the man who writes and he who publishes this book. For, from
a discussion of over-eating and under-eating, Burton considers what
he calls Retention and Evacuation, weighing the pros and cons in re
sexual gratification and continence. Repression and prohibition too
closely observed are, to the notion of Burton, not conducive to the
higher life. His is akin to the Baxian philosophy, which, rudely put,
compares the _telos_ of life to a kind of game of whist in which the
player, that is, the human race, endeavors with all its might to make
six necessary tricks: (1) good and sufficient food and drink; (2)
satisfactory and comfortable housing; (3) warm and proper clothing;
(4) fuel and light; (5) unhindered locomotion, and (6) adequate sexual
satisfaction. With these accomplished, Bax thinks, the final purpose of
the deal, which is the extended horizon, the vision, the satisfactory
life will be quite impossible. So long as man or woman lacks any one of
these, his or her horizon must necessarily be filled with longing for
the desired or the lacking thing. But when all these have become part
of the ordinary life, then they cease to be objects of interest, so
that the mind is free for higher things. Lacking any one of these real
physical necessities, a man may be compared to one with the stomachache
and unable to rise to any considerations other than his ailment. Cure
him and he is ready to go on with his writing, his making of a sonata,
his painting of a picture. The position seems to be pregnant with
common sense and one recalls Benvenuto Cellini getting hampering things
out the way so that the path for the real business may be open.
Indeed, that a vast field for speculation is open in this respect
seems to be proven by the fact that Americans and English people,
Americans especially, are much occupied with the first of the tricks,
or questions of diet. The names of Upton Sinclair, of Dr. Tilden,
of Dr. Christian, to mention a few, spring to mind. We remember the
advertisements and the chewing gum people claiming health-giving
properties for their product; we see cards in the cars bidding us eat
meat, ham, health bread, yeast; Coca Cola is urged upon us together
with a half hundred other drinks, and ice cream, and mouth washes, and
dentrifices, and near-beer. There is no appeal to other than desire.
And yet, it seems that many of the things urged upon us do not make for
wholesome living. Certainly I get along very well without nine-tenths
of them. Or to tell the truth I find some of the things urged upon us
as being far from desirable. For if that physiology I learned as a lad
has not passed into the realm of superstition, then I should say that
chewing gum, for instance, was a something better avoided than sought.
The idea would interest Burton vastly as it interests me. For as whoso
chews constantly, whether tobacco or gum, must needs use saliva, and,
therefore, there must be constant secretion of ptyalin, so that at meal
times, when a supply of ptyalin is necessary to change starchy matters
into glucose, there must needs be insufficient ptyalin, wherefore
the first act of digestion would not be completed, and, therefore, a
condition of indigestion would be exacerbated and not relieved.
But to return to Burton. Just as he tells us that the people seem
ready to listen to anything that flatters their self esteem, so we
of today lend too ready an ear to the superheated atmosphere men,
to the chautauqua spell-binders and lyceum lecturers, the patriotic
orators and the pinchbeck uplifters. Accordingly we have become as it
were hypnotized into a kind of belief that all men born between the
Canadian border and the Rio Grande are automatically ambitious, brave,
courteous, distinguished, energetic, frank, generous, healthy and
all the rest. Especially healthy. We are, indeed, in our own conceit
possessed of all the good qualities, and are national monopolists of
all desirable temperaments. Wherefore it seems strange that a large
percentage of our advertisements are devoted to the recital of ills
that afflict men, together with an offering of the nostrums to cure
from Ague down to Pyorrhea. So a stranger to our civilization would
certainly be led to judge us as by our advertisements, as a people
on the verge of physical exhaustion. As for that melancholy of which
Burton writes, and of which he seeks a cure, what of the pictures as
given in such more or less true to life books and stories as _Many
Marriages_, as _One of Ours_, as _Dust_, as Ruth Suckow’s _Renters_, as
the people of Ben Hecht, or of Miss Winslow. Do you find pictures of
a nation gay and jovial? Of a people jealous of liberty and quick on
the trigger to resent encroachment? Of men and women and children full
of gladness because of sunlight and shadow, of mountain and valley,
of sunrise and sunset? Not by any means. On the contrary, you find
pictures of people worried, discontented, oppressed, full of _ennui_,
eager to escape from themselves and at outs with their surroundings.
Just such a melancholy people as Burton tells of.
And another thing is important, bearing as it does on those six
words with which Burton offers his anodyne, for, obviously, the book
of Burton is but as dust and ashes if it bears no relation to your
life and mine, and deals with a something in which we are not at all
interested. This is that other thing. Seeing ourselves, we behold a
people priding itself on a purely theoretical activity, while at heart
the people should rather be styled physically lazy. Consider. Ten,
twenty, thirty thousand of us will sit watching a league game, or a
prize fight, or a football match, but few, very few of that same crowd
will join in a scrub game, or put on the gloves and take a pounding.
That is so true as to need no demonstration. We do not play, but we
look on at play. We take our exercise by proxy. Or on a Sunday, will
your tired businessman walk five or ten miles into the country? Or
will he drop into a street car, or into a Ford, or into another man’s
car? Nor are things different with the man in the country. Given a
spare hour and there is a squatting in the shade of the barn, or a
buggy ride to the nearest brush arbor preacher, or on week day a
dragging to the nearest picture show where he sits in vitiated air
gazing idly at shadows satisfied to waste time looking at what is
almost never an accurate and truthful representation of life. So, if
you will but go about with open eyes, you will see a widespread spirit
of unrest and semi-melancholia but no enthusiastic or joyous spirit.
Mind you, we must exclude exciting things such as Coney Islands and
Electric parks, for they, after all, are but commercialized things
to make those overcome by dreariness forget, and he who mistakes
such excitements for pleasure has a mean and wretched point of view.
Foolish wastefulness and ugly riot is not joy. That is true joy which
helps us, invigorates us, enriches our lives. If we realized that, if
we determined to live life more on our own terms, to enjoy the world
about us, the natural world and not the artificial, the real thing and
not the froth and ripple, there would be fewer books written about
sulky, moody wives, dull, preoccupied and discontented youths, Main
Streets of hopelessness, Spoon Rivers of pessimism, cities of grotesque
dullness--for such are the dominant notes in present-day literature.
I reject the obviously false pictures made by O. Henry for popular
consumption, for such can hardly be called true pictures, being
conventional and rather unpleasing representations of an impossible
world of youthful innocence and manly perfection.
I shall not spend time in drawing parallels between the social
conditions of Burton’s time and our own. The application is easy.
Burton lived and made his book in the midst of a kind of buzzing
religious confusion. The full splendor of the Elizabethan dramatist
had not burst on the world in glory and there was all the gloomy
shadowland of religious intolerance. His book was published in 1621
and the writing and preparation took, we know not how many years. So
we think of influences and of social atmosphere. We remember that
uncheerful thoughts occupied the minds of men because of many things.
The ponderous and seriously stupid man was abroad and things were
looming up that made later for all that puritanical prohibition under
the Commonwealth; that resulted in the closing of all theaters in 1642,
and much more. Again, there were too many bibles for comfort, each
bible with its fanatic ready to make others fight for it--the Douay
bible in 1609, the King James bible in 1611; Miles Coverdale’s bible
in 1535; Cramer’s bible in 1540. There were other burdening things,
too--Hooker’s _Ecclesiastical Polity_, the dull tragedians Greene and
Peele, and Kyd, and Nash, and Marlowe; John Lyly’s _Euphues_; burnings
and pressings to death, public whippings, lifelong imprisonments,
the suppression of expressed opinion, the see-sawing of Catholic and
Protestant tyrannies. With all this there were none of the glories
to be found abroad, none of the magnificencies of Michael Angelo, of
Titian, of Raphael, of Palestrina, of Montaigne. And there was the echo
and fruit of European wars and that more or less acute _malaise_ that
affects all nations following any wholesale man-killing. For they were
days of the French religious wars, of the lively career of Philip II
of Spain, of the Dutch rebellion, or the Armada. They were the days
following the stir created by Luther and Calvin and Loyola. Not that
all these happened at once, nor in the same years, but the disturbances
created by them were rife.
Looking about then, on the society around him, the old divine and
student saw much that seemed to him very like hopeless confusion, much
that looked perilous. Above all there was interference--fulminations
against the manner of living, against the manner of dressing, against
anything and everything. Then, as now, there were complaints anent the
growing levity. You may read them in Burton and you may read them in
old Harrison’s _Chronologie_. “... women’s ... staring attire as in
time past was supposed meet for none but light housewives only now is
become a habit for chaste and sober matrons. What shall I say of their
doublets with pendant cod-pieces on the breast full of jags and cuts,
and sleeves of sundry colors? Their galligascons to beat out their bums
and make their attire to fit plum round (as they term it) about them.”
The same old complaints, you see. The main difference I find between
that day and ours was in the case of the farmer who seems to have had
the best of it in the sixteenth and seventeenth century before all
the things that he had to buy were taxed to support infant industry.
Harrison comments on the fact that though rents had risen, “the farmer
... thinks his gains very small toward the end of his term if he have
not six or seven years rent lying by him therewith to purchase a
new lease.” In short, so well situated was the farmer in the day of
Harrison, and matters had not changed for the worse up to the days of
Burton, that it was written that the farmer’s affairs “shall never
trouble him more than the hair of his beard when the barber hath washed
and shaved it from his chin.”
So in the interference all about, Burton stood for moderation, not
furiously denouncing at any time, but frowning upon those who are
forever laying down rules and regulations as to this, that and the
other; denouncing those who overeat, mildly; denouncing mildly too
those “who draw ... mischief on their heads by too ceremonious and
strict diet, being over precise, Cockney like and curious in their
observation of meats, times ... just so many ounces at dinner ... so
much at supper, not a little more, not a little less of such meat
and at such hours.” He sees danger too rolling up for those who are
“tired of everything, displeased with it all, weary of life,” and he
is no less suspicious of those who mistake a feverish activity for
real busy-ness, thus coming close to the aforementioned Dr. Strahan
who holds that “it is not probable that the civilization of any of
the nations of antiquity had anything like the same injurious effect
upon the people that our modern Western civilization has. None of the
earlier peoples ever experienced the feverish haste, the terrible wear
and tear, and the prolonged mental strain suffered by most of the
civilized peoples of this latter part of the century. Tranquillity
and repose have almost become unknown. The news of yesterday from the
whole known world is presented to us each morning with our coffee....
We take our rest as we fly through space at fifty or sixty miles an
hour, and expect to find ourselves fitted for the labors of another day
on rising.” But it is significant that while the alienist wrote that
thirty years ago, since then the speeds that he deplores have increased
and man has tried to absorb automobiles, flying machines, radios and
what not. But we bear in mind that he held that the feverish life thus
described produced suicides, lunatics, criminals, and recruited the
inmates for the asylums for the blind, deaf, dumb and idiotic. Then
there is a Dr. O’Dee, much quoted by Strahan, who pointed out that
“white men destroy themselves (by committing suicide) in the United
States at the average rate of 40 to a million inhabitants, while
negroes, living in the same environment but not under the same strain,
have a suicide record of ten times less frequent.” So the complaint
rings through the ages--Strahan bemoaning the feverish haste before the
advent of automobiles, Burton doing the same before the days of stage
coaches or newspapers. Is it then a world growing steadily more mad?
Perhaps the truth is that man of today is much as man was thirty years
ago, and the man of thirty years ago was much as was the man in 1621.
Mere material advancement has made no change in him and your man of an
excitable temperament can get as much feverish excitement by dancing
about a May pole as another could in riding a merry-go-round, or still
another by shooting along a road in a racing auto. There is quite as
much excitement in shooting craps as in playing Ma Jong, and it is
quite possible to become hilarious over a game of ping-pong.
But the high road to melancholia, in Burton’s opinion, is what he calls
“voluntary solitariness,” and he is all against day dreaming and the
idle building of castles in the air. Well enough at the beginning,
he holds, but “so delightsome these toys are at first, they could
spend days and nights without sleep, even whole years alone in such
contemplation, phantastical meditations, which are like unto dreams,
and they will hardly be drawn from them, or willingly interrupt. So
pleasant their vain conceits are, that they hinder their ordinary tasks
and necessary business, they cannot address themselves to them, or
almost to any study of employment, these phantastical and bewitching
thoughts so covertly, so feelingly, so urgently, so continually, set
upon, creep in, insinuate, possess, overcome, distract, etc., and
detain them, they cannot, I say, go about their necessary business,
stave off or extricate themselves, but are forever musing, moralizing,
melancholizing and carried along ... they run on in this labyrinth
of anxious and solicitous melancholy meditations, and cannot well
or willingly refrain, or easily leave off, winding and unwinding
themselves, as so many clocks, and still pleasing their humours, until
at last the scene is turned all of a sudden, by some bad object, and
they, being now habituated in such vain meditations and solitary
places, can endure no company, can ruminate of nothing but harsh and
distasteful objects. Fear, sorrow, suspicion, discontent and weariness
of life surprise them in a moment, and they can think of nothing else;
continually suspecting, no sooner are their eyes opened but this
infernal plague of melancholy seizeth upon them, and terrifies their
souls, representing some dismal object to their minds, which now by no
means, by no labor can they avoid, _haeret lateri letalis arundo_--the
deadly arrow remains in their sides--they cannot be rid of it, they
cannot resist.”
A remarkable passage that, I think, and one which well describes the
gradual sinking into the slough of despondency of the recluse. Yet
Burton discriminates. He is careful to show that there is a profitable
solitude, a withdrawing from the noise and confusion to the end that
minds may be free to find themselves and to work out desired problems.
For Euclid, it is clear, could never resolve his mathematical problems
in the ruck of the market place. There is such a thing as rigorous
thinking which is not to be confused with mooning. Between the two
is a gulf fixed and the one way leads to strength, the other to the
madhouse. There was no madness in the solitude of Thoreau, though
there certainly was not sanity in the solitude of Simeon Stylites on
his pillar.
_En passant_, it seems well to say here that there has been cited the
melancholy of certain great men as proof of the theory that genius
and madness are allied. But that is pernicious nonsense. True we know
that Chateaubriand, Napoleon, Cowper, Rousseau, Lamartine and many
others tried to put an end to their lives. True too that the Epicurean
as well as the Stoics preached the freedom to terminate life when
the cloud of despair and melancholy was upon them. True also that by
their own hands died Charondas, and Themistocles, and Demosthenes,
and Zeno, and Hannibal, and Cato, and Brutus, and Mark Antony, and
Chatterton, and Clive, and Boulanger, and a half hundred others. But
the cases have special features and there is a rational as well as an
irrational suicide. As for others, men of genius who have allowed their
melancholy to overcome them, there is food for thought in the fact that
the expenditure of energy in one direction left them weak in another.
Generalization will not do, is unsafe, and leads nowhere.
So we pass to the self-pitying folk, the “half idiots” of Burton,
those who allow themselves to slide to the border line, who coddle
themselves into madness, the auto-hypnotizers that he has in mind. For
the world is full of them--half baked intelligentsia. They are the
decadents. They are the emotionalists. You see their kind pictured
in the sorry hero of Sherwood Anderson’s _Many Marriages_, a fellow
who, did he live next house to yours, you would regard with keen
suspicion, knowing his queerness. Certainly no healthy specimen. Or
remember the character Des Essintes in Huysman’s _A Rebours_, one all
wrapped in idle meditation who banishes everything that is wholesome
and natural from his life. Or see the black side of Baudelaire in his
_Reve Parisien_. No. It will not do to sheer from the line in thought
or in deed. We must, we must and we must believe in discipline of
self. We must hold fast to a belief in self reliance and independence.
And we must cleave to that habit which Burton sums up in a half dozen
words. Seeing Rossini mooning until he became a victim of his own
self-manufactured devil, we wish that he had been possessed of more
self-reliance, but we do not attribute his folly to his genius. So
also learning that Voltaire was on occasion hypochrondriacal and that
Moliere at one period of his life suffered from melancholia, we do not
generalize, saying, thus they were because they were great, but rather,
if we are wise, look upon the misfortunes of both exactly as we regard
the club foot of Byron, or the unfortunate accident that deprived the
Count de Zichy of an arm and so hampered an extraordinary pianist. That
is what Burton holds too, and we mark his closing words in the passage
on Solitude: “Thou hast lost thyself wilfully, cast away thyself, thou
thyself are the efficient cause of thine own misery, by not resisting
such vain cogitations, but giving way unto them.” For we may discover
men without mental aberration whose names we place high. I cite
William Morris, Galileo, Thackeray, Huxley, Thoreau, Henry George,
Leonardo da Vinci, Moses, Whitman--masculine men all, fellows without
fads, who did a day’s work and faced the little trivialities of life
too. For each of them, and more, was given to rigorous thinking and not
to mooning. That is important to remember.
POVERTY AND WANT
I pass over much, weighty paragraphs by the hundred, learned arguments
by the dozen, two score and more of closely printed pages. Burton has
much to say and says much that this day needs to hear, especially on
the dangers of Hate, and Greed, of dwelling too long on sex, of giving
way to idle worry, of Jealousy, of Envy, of Malice, of dwelling too
much on the future. Reading all this we come to understand old Dr.
Johnson better and know why the man of Lichfield was the philosopher
that he was, for he owed no end of his philosophy to Burton. But
time is short, so we leap to salient things, especially to a kind of
discussion of fundamental economics.
Poverty may be a way to Heaven, says Burton, and a thing much to be
preferred to riches, yet, in the eyes of the world “it is a most odious
calling, vile and base, a severe torture, almost intolerable burden, we
shun it all, _cane pejus et angue_, (worse than a dog or a snake) we
abhor the name of it being the fountain of all other miseries, cares,
woes, labors, and grievances whatsoever. To avoid which we will leave
no haven, no coast, no creek of the world unsearched, though it be to
the hazard of our lives; we will dive to the bottom of the sea, to the
bowels of the earth, five, six, seven, eight, or nine hundred fathoms
deep, through all five zones, and both extremes of heat and cold; we
will turn parasites and slaves, prostitute ourselves, swear and lie,
damn our bodies and souls, forsake God, adjure religion, steal, rob,
murder, rather than endure this unsufferable yoke of poverty, which
doth so tyrannize, crucify and generally depress us.” Burton comes very
near indeed to the Nietzschean idea that man poor, loses dignity in his
own eyes, therefore strives with might and main to avoid the unblissful
state.
Then follows a long and powerful piece of sarcasm. Small matter,
Burton tells us, that the divines preach about Lazarus and Dives, the
rich man, in the eyes of the world, possesses all the virtues, and
if his vices be so large that no cloak can hide them, then the world
turns a blind eye on them. Be a man never so great a fool, yet, by the
power of his money he may gain places and preferment, may govern this
and that, control all kinds of things. Nay more. Because he has the
strangle-hold, few will there be to dispute his word or argue against
his opinion. All will be subservient to him in all things “for wealth
sways all.” To get away from poverty, all men are eager, in spite of
all counsels of perfection to the contrary.
Burton strikes at the root of things, and, in a way, what he says,
forms the answer to Upton Sinclair’s tantalizing _Goose Step_. For
idealist as Sinclair may be, sincere as he is in his hatred of
capitalism and all that hangs on it, earnest beyond doubt as he is
in his desire that universities may be freed from the grip of those
who have at heart the continuance of the present system, and that
professors and students in universities shall be free to speak as
they choose; yet, at bottom, things are as they are because no very
considerable body of men wish to change them or to see them changed.
“Wealth sways all” because those most concerned are happy that it
should be so. It is something like this. Universities as they are
cannot exist upon student’s fees, and university professors on the
whole are ambitious for the aggrandizement of the institutions that
they gain their livelihood by. As to industry, it is taxed to death,
and where the expenditure is concerned, Mars is preferred before
Minerva. So comes, not the monopolizing hand of the wealthy man reached
out to strangle and compress, but the subtle invitation to the wealthy
man to take his seat on the directorate, because, as old Burton says,
“all eyes are upon him, God Bless His Worship! His Honor! Every
man speaks well of him, seeks and sues to him for his love, favor,
protection, to serve him, to belong to him.” And there’s the rub. Men
seek to belong to the man of wealth. They always have. They probably
always will while human nature is what it is. As for your hypothetical
professor panting to speak his open thought, he simply does not exist.
Or speaking his open thought, he finds himself in company with Scott
Nearing. For the average professor is a diligent seeker of the crumbs
that fall from the table of Dives, he loves to bask in the smile of the
great. It is to his interest to perpetuate the very thing that Upton
Sinclair seeks to destroy, or at least deplores its perpetuation. I
speak from knowledge, for I have been in the mart where stocks and
bonds are bought and sold and know how every penny that your professor
can scrape together will go into little picayunish investments, in
buying odd lots of stocks. Every stockbroker in a small way of business
knows the same. That little knot of professors and educators gathered
on the campus is not usually discussing Aristotle, or Relativity, or
the Haldeman-Julius Little Blue Books. Cock an ear and you will most
assuredly detect fragments of conversation such as “I bought three
shares of so and so,” or “I bought Italian Lire and German Marks,” or
“I got hold of a little Anaconda copper.” Either something like that
or the telling of tales of how “my friend so and so who is worth three
millions, said this that and the other.” Certainly, as to your rich
man, the professor seeks “to belong to him,” as Burton has it. And so
long as that is the case, all the fire that burns in the belly of Upton
Sinclair must burn in vain.
THE SIX WORDS
I have given some indication then of the general trend of the _Anatomy
of Melancholy_, cutting my coat according to my cloth, and I hope that
I have made clear the strong, straightforward manner of the man, his
lucidity and patient industry, his uncompromising truth telling, the
sincere and scholarly tang in him. Certainly his reputation though it
can never be a popular one, is well established in the judgment of the
thoughtful. In his book, though it seems to be a triangle, he does not
shift feebly from track to track, but follows his light.
Like many another, great and small, he tries to find for himself the
greatest thing in life and he finds it in things educational. But
mark you, not in the mere acquisition of facts acid and meaningless,
not the outside of things. Something altogether different in fact.
At bottom, “to be chained together with so many good authors,” is
the most glorious of blessings. But to what end? That’s the point.
Certainly not that there may be a sort of shining in society, certainly
not that we may become one of those bewildered dogmatists scientific
and religious, and certainly not that we may be classed with those
superior and sneering ones of which Nietzsche speaks. But this. That
we may come to the discipline of self; that we shall be such men that
there may be mutual understanding and that one shall think aloud in the
company of his fellow; that we shall be glad enough to work truly and
nobly and without ceasing; that we shall come to heartily believe in
self-reliance and independence and in freedom. For the happy man is he
who realizes that true education is self-discipline and that the best
citizen is the man who remains sane in a frothy world, who is a center
of order in a scene of disorder. So comes this notable passage:
“Amongst exercises or receptions of the mind within-doors, there
is none so general, so aptly to be applied to all sorts of men, so
fit and proper to expel idleness and melancholy, as that of study.
What so full of content as to read, walk, and see maps, pictures,
statues, jewels, marbles, which some so much magnify as those that
Phidias made of old, so exquisite and pleasing to be beheld, that,
as Chrysostom thinketh, ‘if any man be sickly, troubled in mind, or
that cannot sleep for grief, and shall but stand over against one
of Phidias’ images, he will forget all care, or whatsoever else may
molest him, in an instant.’ There be those as much taken with Michael
Angelo’s, Raphael de Urbino’s Francesco Francia’s pieces, and many
of those Italian and Dutch painters, which were excellent in their
age; and esteem of it as a most pleasing sight to view those neat
architectures, devices, scutcheons, coats of arms, read such books,
to peruse old coins of several sorts in a fair gallery, artificial
works, perspective glasses, old reliques, Roman antiquities, variety
of colours. A good picture is _falsa veritas, et muta poesis_, and
though (as Vives saith), _artificatia delectant, sed mox fastidimus_,
artificial toys please but for a time; yet who is he that will not
be moved with them for the present? When Achilles was tormented and
sad for the loss of his dear friend Patroclus, his mother Thetis
brought him a most elaborate and curious buckler made by Vulcan,
in which were engraven sun, moon, stars, planets, sea, land, men
fighting, running, riding, women scolding, hills, dales, towns,
castles, brooks, rivers, trees, etc.; with many pretty landskips
and perspective pieces; with sight of which he was infinitely
delighted....
“King James (1605), when he came to see our university at Oxford, and
amongst other edifices, now went to view that famous library, renewed
by Sir Thomas Bodley, in imitation of Alexander, at his departure,
brake out into that noble speech: ‘If I were not a king, I would be
an university man; and if it were so that I must be a prisoner, if
I might have my wish, I would desire to have no other prison than
that library, and to be chained together with so many good authors,
_et mortuis magistris_.’ So sweet is the delight of study, the more
learning they have--as he that hath a dropsy, the more drinks, the
thirstier he is--the more they covet to learn, and the last day is
_prioris discipulus_; harsh at first, learning is _radices amaroe_,
but _fructus dulces_, according to that of Isocrates, pleasant at
last; the longer they live, the more they are enamored with the
Muses. Heinsius, the keeper of the library at Leyden in Holland, was
mewed up in it all the year long; and that which, to thy thinking,
should have bred a loathing, caused in him a greater liking. ‘I no
sooner,’ saith he, ‘come into the library, but I bolt the door to
me, excluding Lust, Ambition, Avarice, and all such vices, whose
nurse is Idleness, their mother Ignorance, and Melancholy herself;
and in the very lap of eternity, amongst so many divine souls, I
take my seat, with so lofty a spirit and sweet content, that I pity
all our great ones and rich men, that know not this happiness.’ I
am not ignorant in the meantime, notwithstanding this which I have
said, how barbarously and basely our ruder gentry esteem of libraries
and books, how they neglect and contemn so great a treasure, so
inestimable a benefit, as Aesop’s cock did the jewel he found in the
dunghill; and all through error, ignorance, and want of education.
And ’tis a wonder withal to observe how much they will vainly cast
away in unnecessary expenses, what in hawks, hounds, lawsuits, vain
building, gormandising, drinking, sports, plays, pastimes, etc.”
Then we come to the final words, the gist of the book, the central
core, the grand discovery, and if you are the kind of man who has gone
through the world with open eyes, you cannot do other than have arrived
at the same conclusion, though the thing must have seemed so simple
that you rejected it as unworthy. Yet at bottom all truths are simple
and self-evident. Or, if you have not framed something of the kind
for yourself, but have carried an attentive ear and a retentive mind,
doubtless it will come to you that you have heard your grandmother say
much the same thing. And here is the great secret of happiness, because
it is the anodyne to keep man from melancholy.
“Be not solitary, be not idle.”
Then, in capitals:
“SPERATE MISERI,
CAVETE FELICES.”
Transcriber’s Notes
In the .txt version, surrounding characters have been used to indicate
_Italics_.
Minor typographical, formatting and spelling errors have been corrected.
The table on p. 22 has been formatted to match the original.
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE GIST OF BURTON'S ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY ***
Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.
Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™
concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may
do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
license, especially commercial redistribution.
START: FULL LICENSE
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person
or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
of Project Gutenberg electronic works. Nearly all the individual
works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
that you will support the Project Gutenberg mission of promoting
free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg
works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
Project Gutenberg name associated with the work. You can easily
comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg License when
you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
other Project Gutenberg work. The Foundation makes no
representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
country other than the United States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg License must appear
prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg work (any work
on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,
performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg™ License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws
of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is
derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg
trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg License for all works
posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg work in a format
other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official
version posted on the official Project Gutenberg website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg electronic works
provided that:
• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
to the owner of the Project Gutenberg trademark, but he has
agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation.”
• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™
works.
• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
receipt of the work.
• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than
are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
cannot be read by your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
without further opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in
accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
or any Project Gutenberg work, (b) alteration, modification, or
additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg work, and (c) any
Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
from people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg’s
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.
The Foundation’s business office is located at 41 Watchung Plaza #516,
Montclair NJ 07042, USA, +1 (862) 621-9288. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website
and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state
visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.
Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.
This website includes information about Project Gutenberg,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
