Before sadness, perfectionism, criticism or seriousness, there is in the melancholic a simpler and deeper operation, which is measuring. Before anything at all, the melancholic structure asks, almost without meaning to: does this correspond to what it should correspond to? The sadness so many people associate with the melancholic is often just the echo of that question when the answer is no.
Measure and criterion
What the melancholic structure makes salient is measure, which can appear as proportion, precision, coherence, fittingness, difference or what is due. The melancholic spontaneously perceives disproportions and incompatibilities, even when they gain nothing by it: the crooked frame on the wall, the contradiction in a speech, the price that does not add up, the promise that was not kept. Faced with two objects or two results, they tend to compare and notice the difference. The method calls the operation with which they respond to this matter restraint, that is, the delimitation by criterion that holds, distinguishes and gives form to experience, and pictures it as cold and the crystallization of ice: concentration and sharpness.
Having a criterion, however, is not the same as having the right criterion. A person can measure everything with great precision by the wrong yardstick, and the wrong yardstick can work perfectly, with complete coherence, producing conclusions that are impeccable and false. The melancholic capacity lies in measuring, distinguishing and comparing; justice requires, in addition, that the measure be true and applied with rectitude. Nor should criterion be confused with intelligence: intelligence can refine one's criteria, but it does not create the tendency, and a melancholic of ordinary intelligence can perceive that "something isn't right" without being able to explain why.
Introversion and retention
The melancholic is introverted, but in the method's sense this does not mean quiet or antisocial. Introversion is experience turned inward, which remains available to be held, compared, worked through and reviewed. A melancholic can be talkative, a teacher, a leader and very socially competent, and still be introverted in this sense.
From this comes retention: what happens to them tends to stay inside longer. The conversation is over, but it keeps being reviewed; the relationship has ended, but it is still present. And experience stays above all when something did not close: a question without an answer, an explanation that does not convince, a proportion that seems wrong, a fact they do not understand why it happened. The expression "this doesn't add up" captures well a part of the melancholic's inner life, and the stronger the sense that something was left without a conclusion, the longer they keep thinking about it. None of this requires pathology or resentment: sometimes the content stays simply because it is still available to be worked through.
Seriousness and a sense of reality
The melancholic tends to be more serious, to have less spontaneous liveliness and to carry the weight of what happens for longer. They quickly notice risk, failure, lack and limit, and even when healthy they tend to see what is missing for something to be complete, while the sanguine tends to enjoy the good that is already present. None of this is depression, and treating melancholic seriousness as an illness is an error as serious as ignoring a real depression in a melancholic.
This sense of reality is an advantage in many contexts, but it does not make the melancholic the owner of reality. Their realism is selective: perceiving a risk is not the same as estimating its probability correctly, and the melancholic can overestimate what is lacking and underestimate the recovery that is possible. Having a strong yardstick does not mean having the right yardstick.
Comparison and the wound
When measure is applied to people, comparison is born. Perceiving who has more, who does better or who holds a certain position is not yet a vice, and recognizing a difference does not mean desiring equality. This shows up already in childhood: the melancholic child shows an early concern with what is due, almost always starting with what is due to them.
That is why the melancholic's deepest wound is the lack of correspondence, and, in the social sphere, relative diminishment: the other has something that puts them below in a measure that matters. This pain is not yet envy. The moral question begins when the result of the comparison starts to change the worth the person attributes to themselves.
What the melancholic is not
The melancholic is not the sad, the perfectionist or the pessimistic one. Sadness can pass through them as it passes through anyone; perfectionism and scrupulosity can take hold of their memory, their retention and their concern with the rule, producing excessive guilt and endless reviewing, but these are possible modulations, not the essence of the genus. What remains melancholic through all its forms is the relationship with measure and with correspondence.
Justice: the capacity and the virtue
In the created order, the melancholic has an aptitude for the matter of justice, because justice deals with measure and what is due. The aptitude for measure makes it possible to perceive a real lack, to honor proportions, to recognize the excellence of others and to correct a decision in light of better reasons. But justice is not owning a yardstick; it is submitting the yardstick to what is due. The moral bridge requires asking what is due, to whom it is due, and whether the person accepts the same yardstick when the result costs them.
There is a distinction here that the melancholic needs to learn about themselves. They usually have great self-control, through criterion, rule and retention, and can overcome a desire every day. But holding back is not the same as ordering: saying no to a desire does not, by itself, prove that the desire is ordered, and austerity does not prove temperance. The sanguine needs to learn to say no to the pleasant; the melancholic sometimes needs to learn that their no is not yet virtue. The question that measures their maturity is this: can I accept the true measure when it goes against me?
The fall: the yardstick in the service of the self
In the wounded condition, comparison can stop serving the truth and start defending a position. This is melancholic egoization: "I can perceive differences" becomes "the right measure has to preserve the position that corresponds to my worth," and the yardstick stops serving reality in order to defend the self. By this path comes envy. Envy is not comparison, nor the simple desire to have a good; it appears when another's good becomes painful because it changes, for the worse, the position of one's own self. The natural operation says: he has more. Egoization adds: if he has more, I have become less. And the melancholic's envy rarely presents itself under its own name; it usually disguises itself as technical criticism, as a defense of merit or as zeal for justice, and that is why it is so hard to recognize from the inside.
The underlying fear of this fall is that of lack, error and inferiority, and the thesis the melancholic self builds is usually this: I have to guard myself, weigh everything, avoid the wound and not expose myself to harm. From this come the vices that go with it: disordered sadness, rumination, resentment, rigidity and self-enclosure.
The mature melancholic
Maturity does not destroy the melancholic's yardstick. They go on perceiving differences, failures, proportions, errors and excellences, but they learn that being good at measuring does not make their own measure infallible, and they come to accept a yardstick they did not make themselves. The clearest sign of this maturity is admiration: recognizing precisely the excellence of another person without needing to diminish it, compensate for it or possess it, and being able to say, without bitterness, "he is better than I am at this."
The formula of this maturity is this: my commitment is to the true measure, not to the position I want to hold within it. And it is along this path that the melancholic finds a peace that their nature alone would not give them, because, in accepting that the ultimate measure is not in their hands, they discover that they no longer have to carry alone the weight of judging the whole world, and can, at last, rest in the justice of God.
The species of the melancholic
The melancholic governs three species: the melancholic-phlegmatic, the pure melancholic and the melancholic-choleric. It also takes part, in the service of another end, in the choleric-melancholic and the phlegmatic-melancholic.