but their frequent repetition, and especially the determined effort to maintain them for long periods, inevitably result in a deadening of the sensibility and a lack of response to ordinary and healthful stimuli.
The ignorance or disregard of these physiological laws explains some of the most disastrous and conspicuous failures to attain happiness where every circumstance seems propitious. The neglect of them is the origin of that morbid condition of the mind which has been called “the disease of the century,” la maladie de la siècle—Ennui.
The bitter pessimist, Schopenhauer, delighted to show the worthlessness of life, whose only variety is from the toil of pursuit to the ennui of possession; while the sweet mystic, Pascal, discovering in the same feeling the greatest misery of man, saw in it that which would prove his salvation, for it would lead him to renounce the vanities of the world and give himself unto God. The one opinion is worth as much as the other.
If we make an anatomy of Ennui, as Burton made an anatomy of Melancholy, we shall find that two different, though allied, mental conditions have been grouped under the name.
The one is that sense of immeasurable boredom which we feel when placed in uncongenial conditions, especially such as ought to be welcome to us, as listening to good advice, or hearing instructive lectures, or reading useful books—like this one. We are driven to any revolt by such inflictions. The scholar will turn gypsy and the virtuous youth a vagrant to escape them. As a boy, at stiff company dinners, I used to suffer from a keen desire to throw a plate through the window, or commit some other outrageous breach of decorum.
What is the meaning of this innate revolt against conventionalism and formality and respectability? The divines are ready to tell you that it is a clear case of original sin. It is nothing of the kind. It is the inherited and unquenchable thirst for freedom in the human heart, and in some temperaments the strength of this passion for liberty is such that any sacrifice is cheap to purchase it.
Perhaps these have not the worst of the bargain. “Who is the happiest man in France?” some one asked the academician, D’Alembert. Quelque misérable, “Some wretched fellow,” he replied. There is infinite philosophy in his answer. Browning, in Fifine at the Fair, discusses the question with amazing insight into human motive. He demands—
“What compensating joy, unknown and infinite,
Turns lawlessness to law, makes destitution—wealth,
Vice—virtue, and disease of mind and body—health?”
He finds the answer in the “frenzy to be free” which is the ruling passion in such characters as he describes. He is right, for ennui of this kind is unknown in conditions of the largest personal freedom, as in the savage state and among the vagabonds of society.
The other form of ennui arises not from external conditions, but from those which are within. It is a species of dissatisfaction with self. A man is generally his own stupidest companion. According to the proverb, “Poor company is better than none;” because the poorest of all is oneself. A curious paradox that has been noted is that the more a man thinks about himself, the less he cares to be alone with himself! We no longer shun solitude from the dread of bandits or ghosts, but to escape the sight of the specters which arise within ourselves. How many of us can boast of the “sessions of sweet silent thought” which the poet praises as the crown of felicity? Amid the gay throng of pleasure-seekers at Ranelagh, Dr. Johnson felt himself distressed by the reflection, “That there was not one in all that brilliant circle who was not afraid to go home and think.”
There is a moral virtue which the Roman philosophers called sufficientia and the Germans Selbstgenügsamkeit, which terms are not at all translated by the English “self-sufficiency.” Let the word go; the thing is what is needed. Make yourself an agreeable companion to yourself, and this form of ennui will be known to you no longer. This can only be accomplished by the constant and well-directed exercise of your personal activities, and by the maintenance of a high degree of sensibility to pleasurable impressions.
III. The search for novelty and variety of impressions.
The Art of Happiness prescribes that instead of cultivating a limited number of pleasurable impressions up to a high degree of intensity, we should seek a large variety, diverse in quality, moderate in intensity, considerable in persistence. This precept, properly understood, is consistent not only with a high, but perhaps with the highest degree of gratification, for it is supported by another physiological law of the greatest interest. This is, that the utmost zest of pleasure is invariably conditioned on the entire novelty of the sensation. This fact is so familiar that it is embalmed in common proverbs, as that “Variety is the spice of life,” and the like. But the deep significance and the manifold applications of these sayings are rarely considered.
Entire novelties are within the reach of few, and come of themselves but seldom. Fortunately, their agreeable effect can be closely imitated by influences quite within our own control; that is, by the remission and alternation of the pleasures already our own. This alone will maintain the efficacy of any pleasure, for it is a sad fact that in impressions on the nervous system, persistence can never become permanence. Remission and reaction in all sensations are demanded by that eternal and infinite law of Periodicity, or Rhythmical Recurrence, which is the last and highest in the Universe of mind or matter. This in turn enforces on us the importance of aiming for a multiplicity of sources of pleasure, so that we may heighten their impressions by frequent variety.
Here again we come into conflict with that cherished delusion which makes contentment and tranquillity the chief elements of happiness. With political economists, it often arises from a confusion of the spheres of the State and the Individual. The State properly aims at peace, established order, routine, and material ends; but the Individual should seek variety and activity, he should try untrodden paths and risk unknown crises. This alone will make him a many-sided, strong character, responsive up to the full measure of his powers to all impressions of natural enjoyment.
The foe he has to guard against in this joyous quest is Habit. This is the tyrant whose iron scepter enslaves most men. The promptings of pleasure and pain are far from being the only incentives; probably they are by no means the most numerous or potent. The “ruling motives” of most persons are simply the associations, customs, ideas, and aims with which they have been longest in contact. A given mental tendency soon becomes predominant, its easy yoke becomes adjusted to the neck, and the man pursues his way in life without more resistance than the ox to the wain. Vain the attempt to break his fetters and sever the bonds of his habits. He is satisfied to reply, as the Arab to the visitor, who would teach him a better agriculture--“Thus did my father before me and thus my mother taught me; and in this manner shall I continue.”
All attempts to make men happier on a large scale have been shattered against the rock of this stubborn conservatism. Only at rare intervals has it been riven by the shock of some mighty emotion which has swept, tornado-like, over the soul of a nation, uprooting the tangled growths of bigotry and routine. The only hope is that here and there an individual will arise and say to himself, “I shall believe nothing merely because those around me believe it; I shall do nothing merely because I am accustomed to do it; I shall render to myself a reason for my every decision and act.”
If some one asks, Why this invective against Habit, easy Habit, soft as a padded chair, comfortable as an old shoe? the answer must come from an analysis of mind. I have before shown that all true motives of the Will are directed toward the avoidance of pain or the attainment of pleasure. These alone are clearly conscious motives, distinguishing between Self and Object, and therefore heightening to the sense of individual life. Whatever we do “by habit,” on the other hand, we do, in a greater or less degree, by what physiologists call “unconscious cerebration,” and through the involuntary action of our nervous and muscular systems. This automatic
