The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton
page 343 of 2094 (16%)
page 343 of 2094 (16%)
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out of reason. _Contumax voluntas_, as Melancthon calls it, _malum facit_:
this stubborn will of ours perverts judgment, which sees and knows what should and ought to be done, and yet will not do it. _Mancipia gulae_, slaves to their several lusts and appetite, they precipitate and plunge [1634]themselves into a labyrinth of cares, blinded with lust, blinded with ambition; [1635]"They seek that at God's hands which they may give unto themselves, if they could but refrain from those cares and perturbations, wherewith they continually macerate their minds." But giving way to these violent passions of fear, grief, shame, revenge, hatred, malice, &c., they are torn in pieces, as Actaeon was with his dogs, and [1636]crucify their own souls. SUBSECT. IV.--_Sorrow a Cause of Melancholy_. _Sorrow. Insanus dolor_.] In this catalogue of passions, which so much torment the soul of man, and cause this malady, (for I will briefly speak of them all, and in their order,) the first place in this irascible appetite, may justly be challenged by sorrow. An inseparable companion, [1637]"The mother and daughter of melancholy, her epitome, symptom, and chief cause:" as Hippocrates hath it, they beget one another, and tread in a ring, for sorrow is both cause and symptom of this disease. How it is a symptom shall be shown in its place. That it is a cause all the world acknowledgeth, _Dolor nonnullis insaniae causa fuit, et aliorum morborum insanabilium_, saith Plutarch to Apollonius; a cause of madness, a cause of many other diseases, a sole cause of this mischief, [1638]Lemnius calls it. So doth Rhasis, _cont. l. 1. tract. 9._ Guianerius, _Tract. 15. c. 5_, And if it take root once, it ends in despair, as [1639]Felix Plater observes, and as in [1640]Cebes' table, may well be coupled with it. [1641]Chrysostom, in his seventeenth epistle to Olympia, describes it to be |
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