n the external world. This is the true
source of boredom--a continual panting after excitement, in order to
have a pretext for giving the mind and spirits something to occupy
them. The kind of things people choose for this purpose shows that
they are not very particular, as witness the miserable pastimes they
have recourse to, and their ideas of social pleasure and conversation:
or again, the number of people who gossip on the doorstep or gape out
of the window. It is mainly because of this inner vacuity of soul that
people go in quest of society, diversion, amusement, luxury of every
sort, which lead many to extravagance and misery. Nothing is so good
a protection against such misery as inward wealth, the wealth of
the mind, because the greater it grows, the less room it leaves for
boredom. The inexhaustible activity of thought! Finding ever new
material to work upon in the multifarious phenomena of self and
nature, and able and ready to form new combinations of them,--there
you have something that invigorates the mind, and apart from moments
of relaxation, sets it far above the reach of boredom.

[Footnote 1: And the extremes meet; for the lowest state of
civilization, a nomad or wandering life, finds its counterpart in the
highest, where everyone is at times a tourist. The earlier stage was a
case of necessity; the latter is a remedy for boredom.]

But, on the other hand, this high degree of intelligence is rooted in
a high degree of susceptibility, greater strength of will, greater
passionateness; and from the union of these qualities comes an
increased capacity for emotion, an enhanced sensibility to all mental
and even bodily pain, greater impatience of obstacles, greater
resentment of interruption;--all of which tendencies are augmented by
the power of the imagination, the vivid character of the whole range
of thought, including what is disagreeable. This applies, in various
degrees, to every step in the long scale of mental power, from the
veriest dunce to the greatest genius that ever lived. Therefore the
nearer anyone is, either from a subjective or from an objective point
of view, to one of those sources of suffering in human life, the
farther he is from the other. And so a man's natural bent will lead
him to make his objective world conform to his subjective as much as
possible; that is to say, he will take the greatest measures against
that form of suffering to which he is most liable. The wise man will,