which nature has endowed man is to enable him to struggle against the
difficulties which beset him on all sides. But if this struggle comes
to an end, his unemployed forces become a burden to him; and he has to
set to work and play with them,--to use them, I mean, for no purpose
at all, beyond avoiding the other source of human suffering, boredom,
to which he is at once exposed. It is the upper classes, people of
wealth, who are the greatest victims of boredom. Lucretius long ago
described their miserable state, and the truth of his description may
be still recognized to-day, in the life of every great capital--where
the rich man is seldom in his own halls, because it bores him to be
there, and still he returns thither, because he is no better off
outside;--or else he is away in post-haste to his house in the
country, as if it were on fire; and he is no sooner arrived there,
than he is bored again, and seeks to forget everything in sleep, or
else hurries back to town once more.

[Footnote 1: i. 7 and vii. 13, 14.]

[Footnote 2: Ecl. eth. ii., ch 7.]

_Exit saepe foras magnis ex aedibus ille,
Esse domi quem pertaesum est, subitoque reventat,
Quippe foris nihilo melius qui sentiat esse.
Currit, agens mannos, ad villam precipitanter,
Auxilium tectis quasi ferre ardentibus instans:
Oscitat extemplo, tetigit quum limina villae;
Aut abit in somnum gravis, atque oblivia quaerit;
Aut etiam properans urbem petit atque revisit_.[1]

[Footnote 1: III 1073.]