ones.

In addition to its tendency to counteract love, does this mood also tend to produce hate? To avoid a thing is not necessarily to hate it. The end of hate, derived from anger, is to destroy or to cause suffering to its object. But we have noticed that the mood of repugnance meets with such recurring opposition that anger is frequently aroused. Tied to the thing that is repugnant to us, we may come to hate it. Thus we may hate the places, people, or occupations from which we cannot free ourselves. But the mood of repugnance is so general that we cannot free ourselves from its innumerable objects; and so long as it subsists, it tends to constitute fresh Thus there is ever fresh occasion for anger, which, like the repugnance, is checked, and cannot fulfil its end. For what can a man do against the world or mankind? Still, so far as the temper of repugnance remains constant, the ends of anger are only occasionally suggested, or are subordinated to its own end of aversion; and the sentiment developed, however much at times it seems to resemble hatred, is still directed to a distinctive end. This misanthropy or pessimism has not the malevolent character of genuine hate, directed against persons, classes, and institutions. Thus we find Marmontel1 taking up the problem of Alceste again, withdrawing him from the court and the city, and by a return to nature and primitive manners, effecting a cure of his misanthropy. For moods are sometimes the effects of circumstances, sometimes of organic conditions.

4. Of the Relation between Repugnancy and Disgust. While repugnance has a great importance as a mood, and still more when it is a fixed temper, its central tendency, as we have previously noticed, possesses no distinctiveness. It is the same as that of one of the varieties of disgust. The difference between them is one of origin and emotional feeling: as forces of character they are substantially the same. From our point of view we ought therefore to class them together; and there is a wider sense in which we may use the term repugnance' than that which we have hitherto adopted. There is a sense in which the emotion of disgust is itself a

1 'Contes Moraux,' Vol. ii, ‘Le Misanthrope Corrigé.'

kind of repugnance, because it is characterised by the tendency of aversion, the tendency to exclude its object from perception and thought. From this point of view, the repugnancy we have been considering appears as only one variety among several. Going back to reconsider the chief varieties, we can distinguish them by their differences of origin. There is, first, the variety of repugnance that springs from sensations of taste or smell, and which manifests the various instincts or reflex acts of rejection; secondly, the variety that springs from sensations of touch that affects other portions of the body than the organs of taste or smell, and manifests other instincts; thirdly, that variety which springs originally from sensations of vision or of hearing, and not merely through association with the two former varieties: as the repugnance to certain colours, or combinations of colour, or to gloomy rooms, or to harsh, scraping, or ugly noises; fourthly, that variety which springs from sensations of bodily pain; fifthly, that from certain experiences of conflict,—as where we are kept in the present situation in spite of our impulse or desire to change it. From these five original sources, of which the three last have been considered in the present chapter, all the varieties of repugnance which we have been able to distinguish appear to arise: from the first two, the emotions of disgust; from the others, the emotions of repugnance that lack the character of repulsion. For we notice that while those we considered in the last chapter have the expression about the mouth which is connected with the instincts of disgust, the others do not generally have this expression: for instance, our repugnance to physical pain expresses suffering but not disgust; our repugnance to being confined in one situation while we desire to be in another, expresses annoyance but not disgust. As we have remarked, there is often a confusion in our mind between disgust and other kinds of repugnance; so that our repugnance to an occupation that in point of origin has no connection with the instincts of disgust may yet be named disgust and assume the expression characteristic of it. Thus, too, our repugnance to life we frequently speak of as our disgust with it.

We have to notice in conclusion two other emotions which are familiar to us, but not generally recognised as varieties of repugnance. These are 'ennui' or 'boredom' and discontent.'

5. Ennui.

Between the things that immediately arouse in us either joy or repugnance there are a number of other things that we call' uninteresting,' to which we are indifferent. We have no feeling for them. We do not spontaneously attend to them. They do not often arrest the movement of our eyes, which pass over them as if they had no individual existence. But when they detain us they arouse repugnance, because they are dull and uninteresting.' These things and persons, although they have at first such a negative character, play a great part in our lives. They are so numerous that we cannot avoid them altogether. And it is a relief when we are not detained by any one, but pass from one to another in hope of something better. Some people are constantly disappointed in this hope; and the more they pursue change, the more clearly is the result the same. Others cannot change their situation, and have to reconcile themselves to the same uninteresting persons and surroundings, and to direct their attention to the former, and to converse with them, showing them politeness and respect; for everyone has a claim to respect. Such persons and things cease then to be indifferent to us, and become a principal cause of ennui, because we have to occupy our minds with them. "To be let alone," says Symons," and to live my own life for ever, that was what I wanted; and I raged because I could never entirely escape from the contact of people who bored me. If people called I went out of the room before they were shown in.” 1

Now as soon as we feel ennui in dealing with such persons and things, we feel also an impulse to get away from them, because our occupation is repugnant to us. The mind cannot without effort and difficulty maintain attention to them. Lacking all interest, it grows rapidly fatigued. It is this feeling of fatigue which distinguishes ennui from other

1 Arthur Symons, 'Spiritual Adventures,'' A Prelude to Life.'

varieties of the emotion of repugnance. The eye-lids droop; the face lengthens and has a languid expression. We say that certain people' weary' us.

Ennui is also distinguished by the way in which its peculiar repugnance is evoked: namely, not by any objectionable quality in the thing itself, but by the mere fact of our enforced occupation with it. A dentist's drill as it files a tooth, and sets our teeth on edge, even when it is not painful, is repugnant to us; but we do not call it ennui. There are certain persons the very sight of whom is repellent to us, and even to hear them named; but neither do we call this ennui. In that sudden repugnance there is no fatigue; but fatigue is an essential feature of ennui. Children, when they cease to feel interest in their walks, cry out that they are tired, and drag at their nurses' sides; but when they are told some story that interests them they cease to feel both ennui and fatigue together.

We may then perhaps define ennui as a kind of repugnance induced by fatigue at having to attend to, and to think about, things and persons that lack interest for us. Many things that begin by interesting us soon fall into the great class of the dull and uninteresting. There are games that we like at first and so long as their newness arouses curiosity, but which bore us afterwards: or which we like so long as we make progress in playing them; but afterwards, when we suffer from the monotony of our own play, they no longer refresh us, but arouse fatigue and ennui. Yet it is a striking fact that we do not call mere physical fatigue ennui, though it induces a repugnance to exercise. We are simply tired, and because we are tired further exercise is repugnant to us. The fatigue which enters into ennui must therefore be of that kind which is connected with mental activity. It is the fatigue due to sustaining attention and thought in a direction which now has no interest for us.

Yet we are often bored, as we say, when we are doing nothing. When the body is at rest the mind still works on; and, having no interest to sustain its thought in any one direction, even its fitful and capricious exercise fatigues it ;

or, surrendering itself to the moment's inclination, the momentary interest leaves it, and is succeeded by ennui. Thus it seems that our energy is quickly exhausted, or at least ceases to be available, where there is no interest to organise it.

The definition of 'ennui' that we have ventured to give follows the principal use of the word in English. In the dictionary we find the following definition : "The feeling of mental weariness and dissatisfaction produced by want of occupation or by lack of interest in present surroundings." The French who invented the term employ it with a more extended signification. According to Littré it includes "toutes sortes de souffrance de l'âme "; such for instances as those "caused by the death of persons we love, or by their absence, by the loss of hope, by any misfortune whatever."2 Such a use of the term to include such different kinds of suffering as sorrow, ennui, and common repugnance, tends to confuse the difference between them. Sorrow indeed always induces a repugnance to our present state, and repugnance, when its impulse is unavailing, produces sadness or melancholy. Hence the definition of Gratiolet: "L'ennui est une tristesse mêlée d'un sentiment plus vif de répulsion et de dégoût. Aussi les mouvements d'effort et de révolte sont-ils plus prononcés dans l'ennui proprement dit que dans la tristesse." Certainly ennui is frequently blended with sadness; the feeling of fatigue which accompanies it will often account for that, and also the fact that it is not an abrupt emotion that suddenly arises and as suddenly ceases, like many other kinds of repugnance, but one that comes on gradually with fatigue, and continues so long as the impulse is held in check by the situation. But for this reason ennui is also often blended with anger, and becomes a kind of annoyance.

The distinction, then, of ennui as an emotion arises from the peculiar way in which its repugnancy is evoked, and the fatigue which accompanies it. In respect of its tendency it lacks distinctiveness: following the general law of repugnance

1 'A Dictionary of the English Language,' Murray.

Littré, Dict. Art. 'Ennui.'

2 'De la Physionomie,' ch. cxxvi.