Hav­ing scanned it, and uploaded it to Dis­trib­uted Proof­read­ers, I find myself read­ing a por­tion of Amer­i­can Quar­terly Review, March 1831, at the end of a piece labeled

Art. II.–Phys­i­olo­gie des Pas­sions, ou nou­velle Doc­trine des Sen­ti­mens Moraux; par J. L. Alib­ert. Chapitre XI. de l’Ennui. Phys­i­ol­ogy of the Pas­sions; or a New The­ory of Moral Sen­ti­ments. Chap. XI. of Ennui.

As with many reviews, this wan­ders rather far afield, and uses the book to lever­age a point of the reviewer’s own devis­ing. Reli­gious mes­sage aside, an inter­est­ing pas­sage (cov­er­ing sev­eral pages):

…tongue belongs to a dis­ap­pointed man. In the tenth case, the man is an imbé­cile.

Fash­ion, also, in its excess, is but a relief against ennui; and it is rather strong evi­dence of the uni­ver­sal preva­lence of list­less­ness, that a change in dress at Paris, can, within a few months, be imi­tated in St. Louis. Yet, in the young and the fair, a milder sen­ti­ment influ­ences con­duct. In them, the latent con­scious­ness of beauty, the charm of an exis­tence that is open­ing in the ful­ness of its attrac­tions, the becom­ing love­li­ness of inno­cence and youth, the sim­ple cheer­ful­ness of inex­pe­ri­ence, lead to a mod­est and deco­rous dis­play. Broad­way, the unri­valled Broad­way, is not with­out its loungers; yet the young and the gay are not dis­con­tented ones. They move in the strength of their own beauty, like the patriot states­man, nei­ther shun­ning, nor yet court­ing admi­ra­tion; and trip­ping along the bril­liant street, half cov­et­ing half refus­ing atten­tion,
     “They feel that they are hap­pier than they know.”

From Broad­way we pass to the crowded haunts of busi­ness. Is there ennui there? Do the money chang­ers grow weary of prof­its? Is busi­ness so dull that bankers have noth­ing to do? Are doubt­ful notes so uncom­mon, that there is no lat­i­tude for shav­ing? Have the under­writ­ers noth­ing at sea to be anx­ious about? Do the insur­ers on life omit to look after those who have taken out poli­cies, and exhort them to tem­per­ance and exer­cise? These are all busy enough; too much engaged, and too lit­tle roman­tic to be much moved by sen­ti­men­tal regrets. But there are those, who plunge head­long into affairs from the rest­less­ness of their nature, and who hurry into bold spec­u­la­tions, because they can­not endure to be idle. Now, busi­ness, like poetry, requires a tran­quil mind. But there are those, who ven­ture upon the career of busi­ness, under the impulse of ennui. How shall the young and haughty heirs of large for­tunes rid them­selves of their time, and acquit them­selves in the eye of the pub­lic of their imag­ined respon­si­bil­i­ties? One writes a tale for the Sou­venirs, another spec­u­lates in the stocks. The for­mer is laughed at, yet hoards an estate; the lat­ter is food for hun­gry sharks. Then comes bank­ruptcy; sober thought repels the fiend that had been mak­ing a waste of life, or the same pas­sion dri­ves its pos­ses­sor to become a busy body and zealot in the cur­rent excite­ment of the times; or absolute despair, ennui in its inten­sity, leads to insanity.

For the mad house, too, as well as the debtor’s gaol, is in part peo­pled by the same blight­ing power, and nature recov­ers itself from a state of lan­guid apa­thy, only by the ter­rific excite­ment of frenzy. Or a pas­sion for sui­cide ensues; the mind rev­els in the con­tem­pla­tion of the grave, and cov­ets the aspect of the coun­te­nance of death as the face of a famil­iar friend. The mind invests itself in the som­bre shades of a melan­choly long­ing after eter­nal rest–a long­ing which is some­times con­nected with unqual­i­fied dis­be­lief, and some­times asso­ciates itself with an unde­fined desire of a purely spir­i­tual existence.

We might mul­ti­ply exam­ples of the very exten­sive preva­lence of that unhappy lan­guor of which we are treat­ing. Let us aim rather at observ­ing the limit of its power.

It was a fool­ish phi­los­o­phy, which believed in ennui as an evi­dence and a means of human per­fectibil­ity. The only exer­tions which it is capa­ble of pro­duc­ing, are of a sub­or­di­nate char­ac­ter. It may give to pas­sion a fear­ful inten­sity, con­se­quent on a state of moral dis­ease; but human virtue must be the result of far higher causes. The exer­cise of prin­ci­ple, the gen­er­ous force of puri­fied emo­tions, cheer­ful desire, and will­ing indus­try, are the par­ents of real great­ness. If we look through the var­i­ous depart­ments of pub­lic and of intel­lec­tual action, we shall find the mark of infe­ri­or­ity upon every thing which has sprung from ennui. In phi­los­o­phy, it might pro­duce the fol­lies of Cynic odd­ity, but not the sub­lime lessons of Pythago­ras or Socrates. In poetry, it may pro­duce effu­sions from per­sons of qual­ity, devoid of wit, but it never could have pointed the satire of Pope. In the mechanic arts it may con­trive a bal­loon, but never could invent a steam-​​boat. In reli­gion, it stum­bles at a thou­sand knotty points in meta­phys­i­cal the­ol­ogy, but it never led the soul to inter­course with heaven, or to the con­tem­pla­tion of divine truth.

The cel­e­brated son of Philip was a man of exalted genius; and polit­i­cal wis­dom had its share in his career. Ennui could never have pro­duced Macedonia’s mad­man, but it may well put in its claim to the Swede. Or let us look rather for a con­queror, who dreamed that he had genius to rival Achilles, and yet never had a set­tled plan of action. The famous king of Epirus has seemed to be an his­tor­i­cal puz­zle, so uncer­tain was his pur­pose, so waver­ing his char­ac­ter. Will you know the whole
truth about him? Pyrrhus was an ennuyé.

When a painter, in the pur­suit of his voca­tion, is obliged to give a like­ness of a per­son that has nei­ther beauty nor soul, he may per­haps draw fig­ures in the air, or spoil his pic­ture by an incon­sid­er­ate flour­ish of his pen­cil. He dis­likes his task, and his work will show it.

When a poet writes a song for hire, or solely to be sung to some favourite air, it is more than prob­a­ble his verses will be lan­guid, and his mean­ing doubt­ful. Thus, for exam­ple,–
     “The smiles of joy, the tears of wo
     Deceit­ful shine, deceit­ful flow.“
This is sheer non­sense. Joy smiles in good earnest, and many an aching heart knows too well the deep truth of distress.

The fer­vent elo­quence of true piety springs from con­vic­tion, and reaches the heart; but we have some­times lis­tened to a dull ser­mon, which pro­ceeded from weari­ness more than from zeal, and belonged to ennui more than to the stir­ring action of elo­quent reli­gion. The lawyer, too, is some­times over­borne in his plea by dis­gust with his work, and in his tire­some rep­e­ti­tions you may plainly see how he loathes–
     “To drudge for the dregs of men,
     And scrawl strange words with the bar­barous pen.”

The life of Napoleon, in its busiest period, presents a remark­able instance of ennui. While the allies were col­lect­ing around him in their utmost strength, he was him­self waver­ing in his pur­poses, and reluc­tant to decide on the retreat to Leip­sic. Strange, that at such a time he should have given way to an over­whelm­ing and almost child­ish lan­guor. Yet an eye­wit­ness relates, “I have seen him at that time, seated on a sofa, beside a table on which lay his charts, totally unem­ployed, unless in scrib­bling mechan­i­cally large let­ters on a sheet of white paper.” Such was the power of ennui over Napoleon, at a time, when, in his own lan­guage, noth­ing but a thun­der­bolt could save him.

It is dan­ger­ous for a man of supe­rior abil­ity to find him­self thrown upon the world with­out some reg­u­lar employ­ment. The rest­less­ness inher­ent in genius being thus left undi­rected by any per­ma­nent influ­ence, frames for itself occu­pa­tions out of acci­dents. Moral integrity some­times falls a prey to this want of fixed pur­suits; and the man who receives his direc­tion in active life from the for­tu­itous impulse of cir­cum­stances, will be very apt to receive his prin­ci­ples like­wise from chance. Genius, under such guid­ance, attains no noble ends; but resem­bles rather a copi­ous spring, con­veyed in a falling aque­duct; where the waters con­tin­u­ally escape through the fre­quent crevices, and waste them­selves inef­fec­tu­ally on their pas­sage. The law of nature is here, as else­where, bind­ing; and no pow­er­ful results ever ensue from the triv­ial exer­cise of high endow­ments. The finest mind, when thus des­ti­tute of a fixed pur­pose, passes away with­out leav­ing per­ma­nent traces of its exis­tence; los­ing its energy by turn­ing aside from its course, it becomes as harm­less and inef­fi­cient as the light­ning, which, of itself irre­sistible, may yet be ren­dered pow­er­less by a slight conductor.

These remarks apply per­haps in some mea­sure even to Leib­nitz, whose sub­lime intel­li­gence and men­tal activ­ity were the won­der of his age. He attained a celebrity of rep­u­ta­tion, but hardly a con­tented spirit; at times he descended to the con­sid­er­a­tion of mag­ni­tudes infi­nitely small, and at times rose to the belief that he heard the uni­ver­sal har­mony of nature; for years he was devoted to illus­trat­ing the antiq­ui­ties of the fam­ily of a petty prince; and then again he assumed the sub­lime office of defend­ing the per­fec­tions of Prov­i­dence. Yet with all this vari­ety of pur­suit, the great philoso­pher was hardly to be called a happy man; and it almost fills us with melan­choly to find, that the very the­olo­gian who would have proved this to be absolutely the best of all pos­si­ble worlds, died after all of chagrin.

Yet the name of Leib­nitz is one which should rather excite unmin­gled admi­ra­tion; for the rich endow­ments of Heaven dis­tin­guished him as one of the most favoured in that intel­lec­tual supe­ri­or­ity which is the choic­est gift of God. Our sub­ject is more fully illus­trated in the case of a less gifted, though a noto­ri­ous man; one whose qual­i­ties have been recently held up to admi­ra­tion, yet for whom we find it impos­si­ble to con­ceive sen­ti­ments of respect. We mean Lord Bolingbroke.

His tal­ents as a writer have secured to him a very dis­tin­guished place in the lit­er­a­ture of Eng­land; and his polit­i­cal ser­vices, dur­ing the reign of Queen Anne, have ren­dered him illus­tri­ous in Eng­lish his­tory. But though he was pos­sessed of wit, elo­quence, fam­ily, wealth, and oppor­tu­nity, he never dis­played true dig­nity of char­ac­ter, nor real great­ness of soul. He seemed to have no fixed prin­ci­ples of action; and to have loved con­test more than vic­tory. Wher­ever there was strife, there you might surely expect to meet St. John; and his pub­lic career almost jus­ti­fies the infer­ence, that apos­tacy (if indeed a man who has no prin­ci­ples can be called an apos­tate) would have seemed to him, after his defeat, a mod­er­ate price for per­mis­sion to appear again in the lists. But as he had always cov­eted power with an insa­tiable avid­ity, he never could rest long enough to acquire it. On the stormy sea of pub­lic life, he was for ever strug­gling to be on the top­most wave; but the waves receded as fast as he advanced; and fate seemed to have des­tined him to waste his life in fruit­less efforts and as fruit­less changes.

In early life he sought dis­tinc­tion by his debaucheries; and from the accounts of his biog­ra­pher, it would seem, that he suc­ceeded in becom­ing the most dar­ing prof­li­gate in Lon­don. Tired of the excess of dis­si­pa­tion, he attempted the career of pol­i­tics, and found his way into Par­lia­ment under the aus­pices of the whigs. When pol­i­tics failed, he put on the mask of a meta­physi­cian. Tired of that cos­tume, he next attempted to play the farmer. Dis­sat­is­fied with farm­ing, he wrote polit­i­cal pam­phlets. Still dis­con­tented with his con­di­tion in the world, he strove to under­mine the basis of religion.

He began pub­lic life as a whig; but as the tories were in the ascen­dant, he rapidly ripened into a tory; he ended his polit­i­cal career by desert­ing the tories and avow­ing the doc­trines of staunch and uncom­pro­mis­ing whigs. He tried lib­er­tin­ism, mar­ried life, pol­i­tics, power, exile, restora­tion, the House of Com­mons, the House of Lords, the city, the coun­try, for­eign travel, study, author­ship, meta­physics, infi­delity, farm­ing, trea­son, sub­mis­sion, dereliction,–but ennui held him with a firm grasp all the while, and it was only in the grave that he ceased from troubling.

To an observer who peruses his writ­ings with this view of his char­ac­ter, many of his expres­sions of wise indif­fer­ence and calm res­ig­na­tion, have even a ludi­crous aspect. The truth breaks forth from all his attempts at dis­guise. The philosopher’s robes could not hide the stately wrecks of his polit­i­cal pas­sions. They say, that round Vesu­vius, the lava of for­mer erup­tions has so entirely resolved itself into soil, that vine­yards thrive on the black ruins of the vol­cano; and that the ancient dev­as­ta­tion could hardly be recog­nised, except for an occa­sional dark mass, which, not yet decom­posed, frowns here and there over Ihe sur­round­ing fer­til­ity. Some­thing like this was Irue of St. John; he believed his ambi­tion extinct, and attempted to gather round its ruins all the beau­ties and splen­dour of con­tented wis­dom; but his nature was still ungovern­ably fierce; and to the last, his pas­sions low­ered angrily on the quiet scenes of his lit­er­ary retirement.

There is no clue to his char­ac­ter, except in sup­pos­ing him to have been under the influ­ence of ennui, which was per­pet­u­ally ter­ri­fy­ing him into the gross­est con­tra­dic­tions. He could not be said to have had any prin­ci­ples, or to have belonged to any party; and to what­ever party he ral­lied, he was sure to become utterly faith­less. He was not less false to the Pre­tender than to the King, to Ormond than to Wal­pole. He was false to the tories and false to the whigs; he was false to his coun­try, for he attempted to involve her in civil war; and false to his God, for he com­bated reli­gion. He was not swayed by a pas­sion for glory, for he did not pur­sue it steadily,–nor by a pas­sion for power, for he quar­relled with the only man by whose aid he could have main­tained it. He was rather dri­ven to and fro by a wild rest­less­ness, which led him into gross con­tra­dic­tions “for his sins.” Nor was his false­hood with­out its pun­ish­ment. What could be more piti­fully degrad­ing, than for one who had been a suc­cess­ful British min­is­ter of state, and had dis­played in the face of Europe his capac­ity for busi­ness and his pow­ers of elo­quence, to have finally stooped to accept a seat in the Pretender’s cab­i­net, where pimps and pros­ti­tutes were the prime agents and counsellors?

There exists a very pleas­ant let­ter from Pope, giv­ing an account of Bolingbroke’s rural occu­pa­tions, dur­ing his coun­try life in Eng­land, after the rever­sal of his attain­der. He insisted on being a farmer; and to prove him­self so, hired a painter to fill the walls of his par­lour with rude pic­tures of the imple­ments of hus­bandry. The poet describes him between two hay­cocks, watch­ing the clouds with all the appar­ent anx­i­ety of a hus­band­man; but to us it seems, that his mind was at that time no more in the skies than when he quoted Anaxago­ras, and declared heaven to be the wise man’s home. His heart clung to earth, and to earthly strife; and his uneasi­ness must at last have become deplorably wretched, since he could con­sent to pick up stale argu­ments against Chris­tian­ity, and leave a piece of patch­work, made up of the shreds of other men’s scep­ti­cism, as his espe­cial legacy to pos­ter­ity, in proof of the mas­terly inde­pen­dence of his
mind.

Thus we have endeav­oured to explain the nature of that apa­thy which is worse than pos­i­tive pain, and which impels to greater mad­ness than the fiercest passions,–which kings and sages have not been able to resist, nor wealth nor plea­sures to sub­due. We have described ennui as a power for evil rather than for good; and we infer, that it was an absurd phi­los­o­phy which classed it among the causes of human supe­ri­or­ity, and the means of human improve­ment. It is the curse pro­nounced upon volup­tuous indo­lence and on exces­sive pas­sion; on those who decline active exer­tion, and thus throw away the priv­i­leges of exis­tence; and on those who live a fever­ish life, in the con­stant frenzy of stim­u­lated desires. There is but one cure for it: and that is found in mod­er­a­tion; the exer­cise of the human fac­ul­ties in their nat­ural and health­ful state; the quiet per­for­mance of duty, in meek sub­mis­sion to the con­trol­ling Prov­i­dence, which has set bounds to our achieve­ments in set­ting lim­its to our power. Briefly: our abil­ity is lim­ited by Heaven–our desires are unlim­ited, except by ourselves–ennui can be avoided only by con­form­ing the pas­sions of the human breast to the con­di­tions of human existence.

In pur­su­ing this inves­ti­ga­tion, which we now bring to a close, we have not attempted to exhaust the sub­ject; we refer it rather to the calm med­i­ta­tions of oth­ers, who will find mate­ri­als enough within them­selves. And lest the impa­tient should throw aside our essay with the dis­gust of sati­ety, or the per­se­ver­ing should by our pro­lix­ity be vexed with the very spirit which we would rather teach them to exor­cise, we here take a respect­ful leave, with our sin­cer­est wishes, that life may be to the reader a suc­ces­sion of pleas­ant emo­tions, and death a rest­ing place nei­ther cov­eted nor feared.