Laudator Temporis Acti

Robert Burton (1577-1640), Anatomy of Melancholy, Pt. I, Sec. 2, Memb. I, Subs. 6 (vol. 1, pp. 215-216 of the Everyman edition):

So many several ways are we plagued and punished for our fathers' defaults: in so much that, as Fernelius truly saith, "It is the greatest part of our felicity to be well born, and it were happy for humankind, if only such parents as are sound of body and mind should be suffered to marry." An husbandman will sow none but the best and choicest seed upon his land; he will not rear a bull or an horse, except he be right shapen in all parts, or permit him to cover a mare, except he be well assured of his breed; we make choice of the best rams for our sheep, rear the neatest kine, and keep the best dogs, quanto id diligentius in procreandis liberis observandum! and how careful then should we be in begetting of our children! In former times some countries have been so chary in this behalf, so stern, that, if a child were crooked or deformed in body or mind, they made him away; so did the Indians of old by the relation of Curtius, and many other well-governed commonwealths, according to the discipline of those times. Heretofore in Scotland, saith Hect. Boethius, "if any were visited with the falling sickness, madness, gout, leprosy, or any such dangerous disease, which was likely to be progagated 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 with her brood were buried alive: and this was done for the common good, lest the whole nation should be injured or corrupted." A severe doom, you will say, and not to be used amongst Christians, yet more to be looked into than it is. For now by our too much facility in this kind, in giving way for all to marry that will, too much liberty and indulgence in tolerating all sorts, there is a vast confusion of hereditary diseases, 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, be they fools or dizzards, lame or maimed, unable, intemperate, dissolute, exhaust through riot, as he said, jure hæreditario sapere jubentur, they must be wise and able by inheritance: it comes to pass that our generation is corrupt, we have many weak persons, both in body and mind, many feral diseases raging amongst us, crazed families, parentes peremptores [our parents are our ruin]; our fathers bad, and we are like to be worse.

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