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.