Sometime in the 1500s, scholar Gabriel Harvey received a letter from poet Edmund Spenser. The letter complained about the evils and lack of morals in the modern world.
“You suppose it a foolish mad world, wherein all things are over-ruled by fancy. What greater error? All things else are but trouble of mind and vexation of spirit. Until a man’s fancy be satisfied, he wanteth his most sovereign contentment, and cannot be quiet in himself. You suppose most of these bodily and sensual pleasures are to be abandoned as unlawful, and the inward contemplative delights of the mind more zealously to be embraced…Good Lord, you…go about to revive so old and stale a bookish opinion…Your greatest and most erroneous suppose is that Reason should be mistress and Appetite attend on her ladyship’s person as a poor servant…
There is a variable course and revolution of all things. Summer getteth the upper hand of winter, and winter again of summer. Nature herself is changeable; and most of all delighted with vanity; and art, after a sort her ape, conformeth herself to the like mutability…all things else in a manner flourish their time and then fade to nothing…”
In other words, people, don’t judge, be kind, and enjoy yourselves and one another while nature follows its regular course...
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