Aristotle on melancholy 159
to mood changes and desires, and some become more talkative. Those,
however, who have reached a ‘mean’ (meson) in the mixture between heat
and cold, come closer to reason and are less abnormal. They are the people
who have reached outstanding achievements in the arts, culture and politics
( 954 a 39 –b 4 ). Thus here for the first time, the opening question of the
chapter is answered. However, and this is very important, it is striking that
this conclusion is immediately followed by the remark that this balance of
heat and cold is uncertain and unstable (anomalos ̄ ). The author repeats this
remark later, in 954 b 26 – 8 (after a digression). This is followed by inter-
esting and rather elaborate observations oneuthumiaanddusthumiaas the
effects of excessive heat and cold of the black bile, and on the melancholic’s
inclination to commit suicide. Here, too, the analogy with wine is made,
and a second analogy, with youth and old age, is added.^71 The chapter ends
with the summary discussed above (see note 64 ).
With regard to the physiological disposition of the melancholic this
chapter reveals precisely those details on which the scattered remarks in
the Aristotelian writings did not allow us to gain full clarity. It appears
that the ‘natural melancholic’ is characterised by an excess of black bile
in his body which is constantly and permanently present ( 954 a 22 – 3 :1
H < #n *n
oand Klibansky et al. ( 1964 ) 29 ). This does not
mean, however, that underlying this text is the humoral system of the Hip-
pocratic theory of the four humours, for a mixture ofhumoursis nowhere
mentioned: wherever the wordkrasisis used ( 953 a 30 ; 954 a 13 , 29 , 30 ; 954
b 8 , 12 , 25 , 33 ; 955 a 14 ) it refers to a mixture of heat and cold.^72 The place
where black bile can normally be found is not defined; only the presence of
heat near the ‘place where thinking takes place’ (noeros topos) is mentioned
disorders of the black bile that arenotconstitution-related (hence the wordnosemata ̄ ), which are
contrasted with the cases of Sibyls and Bakides and such people who are not enthusiastic because
of anosema ̄ , but as a consequence of theirphusis. Both thepolloiand the other group suffer from
heat (thermotes ̄) around the ‘region where thinking takes place’ (noeros topos) (this is whathothen
refers to); yet with thepolloiit is not nature but illness, whereas with the other group (Sibyls,
Bakides and the ‘naturally inspired’) it is nature. That this is the correct interpretation is shown by
the sentence %
)
, for in Flashar’s interpretation this sentence would be a
negation of what was confirmed in line 35. Cf. Tellenbach ( 1961 ) 9 and Pigeaud ( 1988 a) 41 – 2 on this
interpretation.(^71) On youth and old age as ‘ethopoietic’ factors cf.Rh. 2. 12 – 13 and the remark on youth inEth. Nic.
1154 b 9 – 11.
(^72) See above section 3 onEth. Nic. 1154 b 13 and Pigeaud ( 1988 a) 19. Incidentally, the fact that Aristotle
refers to black bile as aperittoma ̄ in the chapter from theProbl.is unparalleled (the termperittoma ̄
is only used in 955 a 24 – 5 , but in that passage without referring to black bile). Therefore Pigeaud’s
association of theperittonof the melancholic with theperittoma ̄ of black bile is not to the point
( 1988 , 20 : ‘L’homme exceptionnel est l’homme du r ́esidu par excellence’).