Context
From "Love of Learning, or, Overmuch Study: With a Digression of the Misery of Scholars, and Why the Muses Are Melancholy"
Robert Burton
Leonartus Fuchsius, Felix Plater, Herc. de Saxonia, speak
of a peculiar fury which comes by overmuch study. Fernelius puts study,
contemplation and continual meditation, as an especial cause of
madness, and in his 86 consul. cites the same words. . . . And ‘tis the common tenet of the world that learning dulls and diminisheth the spirits and so per consequens produceth melancholy. Two
main reasons may be given of it why students should be more subject to
this malady than others. The one is, they live a sedentary, solitary
life, sibi et Musis, free from bodily exercise and those
ordinary disports which other men use; and many times if discontent and
idleness concur with it, which is too frequent, they are precipitated
into this gulf on a sudden. But the common cause is overmuch study; too
much learning, as Festus told Paul, hath made thee mad; ‘tis that other
extreme which effects it. So did Trincavellius find by his experience
in two of his patients, a young baron, and another that contracted this
malady by too vehement study. So Forestus in a young divine in
Louvain, that was mad and said "he had a Bible in his head." Marsilius
Ficinus gives many reasons "why students dote more often than others."
The first is their negligence. "Other men look to their tools, a
painter will wash his pencils, a smith will look to his hammer, anvil,
forge; an husbandman will mend his plow-irons, and grind his hatchet if
it be dull; a falconer or huntsman will have an especial care of his
hawks, hounds, horses, dogs, etc.; a musician will string and unstring
his lute, etc.; only scholars neglect that instrument, their brain and
spirits I mean, which they daily use and by which they range over all
the world, which by much study is consumed." Vide, saith Lucian, ne funiculum nimis intendendo, aliquando abrumpas; see
thou twist not the rope so hard till at length it break. Ficinus gives
some other reasons; Saturn and Mercury, the patrons of learning, are
both dry planets. And Origanus assigns the same cause why mercurialists
are so poor and most part beggars; for that their president Mercury had
no better fortune himself. The destinies of old put poverty upon him as
a punishment; since when poetry and beggary are gemelli, twin-born brats, inseparable companions: Now because they are commonly subject to such hazards and
inconveniences as dotage, madness, simplicity, etc., Jo. Voschius would
have good scholars to be highly rewarded and had in some extraordinary
respect above other men, "to have greater privileges than the rest,
that adventure themselves and abbreviate their lives for the public
good." But our patrons of learning are so far nowadays from respecting
the Muses and giving that honor to scholars or reward which they
deserve and are allowed by those indulgent privileges of many noble
princes that after all their pains taken in the universities, cost and
charge, expenses, irksome hours, laborious tasks, wearisome days,
dangers, hazards (barred interim from all pleasures which other
men have, mewed up like hawks all their lives), if they chance to wade
through them, they shall in the end be rejected, contemned, and, which
is their greatest misery, driven to their shifts, exposed to want,
poverty, and beggary. . . . If there were nothing else to trouble them, the conceit of this alone were enough to make them all melancholy. "Love of Learning, or, Overmuch Study" by Robert Burton is from The Anatomy of Melancholy.
And to this day is every scholar poor,
Mercury can help them to knowledge, but not to money. The second
is contemplation, "which dries the brain and extinguisheth natural
heat; for whilst the spirits arc intent to meditation above in the
head, the stomach and liver are left destitute, and thence come black
blood and crudities by defect of concoction, and for want of exercise
the superfluous vapors cannot exhale," etc. The same reasons are
repeated by Gomesius, Nymannus, Voschius. And something
more they add, that hard students are commonly troubled with gouts,
catarrhs, rheums, cachexia, bradiopepsia, bad eyes, stone, and colic,
crudities, oppilations, vertigo, winds, consumptions, and all such
diseases as come by overmuch sitting; they are most part lean, dry,
ill-colored, spend their fortunes, lose their wits and many times their
lives, and all through immoderate pains and extraordinary studies. If
you will not believe the truth of this, look upon great Tostatus’ and
Thomas Aquinas’ works, and tell me whether those men took pains? peruse
Austin, Jerome, etc., and many thousands besides.
Gross gold from them runs headlong
to the boor.
Qui cupit optatam cursu contingere
and labor hard for it. So did Seneca by his own confession, "Not a day that I spend
idle, part of the night I keep mine eyes open, tired with waking, and
now slumbering, to their continual task." Hear Tully, "Whilst others
loitered and took their pleasures, he was continually at his book." So
they do that will be scholars, and that to the hazard, I say, of their
healths, fortunes, wits, and lives. How much did Aristotle and Ptolemy
spend? unius regni pretium they say, more than a king’s ransom; how many crowns per annum, to
perfect arts, the one about his History of Creatures, the other on his
Almagest? How much time did Thebet Benchorat employ to find out the
motion of the eighth sphere? Forty years and more, some write. How many
poor scholars have lost their wits or become dizzards, neglecting all
worldly affairs and their own health, wealth, esse and bene esse, to
gain knowledge? For which, after all their pains, in the world’s esteem
they are accounted ridiculous and silly fools, idiots, asses, and (as
oft they are) rejected, contemned, derided, doting and mad. . . . Go to
Bedlam and ask. Or if they keep their wits, yet they are esteemed
scrubs and fools by reason of their carriage; "after seven years’
study."
metam,
Multa tulit, fecitque, puer, sudavit et
alsit.
He that desires this wished goal to
gain
Must sweat and freeze before he can
attain,
—statua taciturnius exit,
Because they cannot ride an horse, which every clown can do,
salute and court a gentlewoman, carve at table, cringe, and make
conges, which every common swasher can do, hos populus ridet, etc.,
they are laughed to scorn and accounted silly fools by our gallants.
Yea, many times, such is their misery, they deserve it. A mere scholar,
a mere ass. . . . Thus they go commonly meditating unto themselves,
thus they sit, such is their action and gesture. Fulgosus makes mention how Th. Aquinas supping with King Lewis of France, upon a sudden knocked his fist upon the table and cried, Conclusum est contra Manichæos! his
wits were a-woolgathering, as they say, and his head busied about other
matters; when he perceived his error, he was much abashed. Such a story
there is of Archimedes in Vitruvius, that having found out the means to
know how much gold was mingled with the silver in King Hiero’s crown,
ran naked forth of the bath and cried eureka! I have found;
"and was commonly so intent to his studies that he never perceived what
was done about him. When the city was taken and the soldiers now ready
to rifle his house, he took no notice of it." St. Bernard rode all day
long by the Lemnian Lake, and asked at last where he was. It was
Democritus’ carriage alone that made the Abderites suppose him to have
been mad and send for Hippocrates to cure him; if he had been in any
solemn company, he would upon all occasions fall a-laughing.
Theophrastus saith as much of Heraclitus, for that he continually wept,
and Laertius of Menedemus Lampsacus, because he ran like a madman,
"saying he came from hell as a spy to tell the devils what mortal men
did." Your greatest students are commonly no better; silly, soft
fellows in their outward behavior, absurd, ridiculous to others, and no
whit experienced in worldly business; they can measure the heavens,
range over the world, teach others wisdom, and yet in bargains and
contracts they are circumvented by every base tradesman. Are not these
men fools? and how should they be other-wise "but as so many sots in
schools when, as he well observed, they neither hear nor see such
things as are commonly practiced abroad?" How should they get
experience, by what means? "I knew in my time many scholars," saith
Æneas Sylvius, in an epistle of his to Kaspar Schlick, chancellor to
the emperor, "excellent well learned, but so rude, so silly that they
had no common civility nor knew how to manage their domestic or public
affairs." "Paglarensis was amazed and said his farmer had surely
cozened him when he heard him tell that his sow had eleven pigs and his
ass had but one foal." To say the best of this profession, I can give
no other testimony of them in general than that of Pliny of Isæus; "He
is yet a scholar, than which kind of men there is nothing so simple,"
so sincere, none better; they are most part harmless, honest, upright,
innocent, plain-dealing men.
Plerumque et risum populi quatit.—
