One hundred years ago
ENNUI.
Surely mankind has sufficient faults and failings of its own to answer for, without being called upon to assume the respon- sibility of animal failings as well. An American author has discovered that domestic animals, such as cats or dogs, are not only subject to ennui, but also display their feelings under that inflic- tion after very much the same fashion as their human friends, — a fact which no one who has kept tame animals will be tempted to deny. But from this fact our contemporary, the Daily News, leaps to a perfectly unwarrantable conclusion, and boldly asserts that ours is the fault; that mankind has inoculated the beast- creation with its own particular disease, and that it is civilisation "which pro- duces ennui, not only in men, women, and children, but even in cats and dogs." "We may well blush," it contin- ues, "when we think how man has demoralised the dog. We have taught the dog to be bored. We have corrupted him by our society." And again: — "Ennui is one of man's many inventions; but he has taught the unprofitable vice to the domestic, or at least to the house- hold animals, — pupils only too apt in evil." Was ever so monstrous a charge levelled against our innocence! The next thing we shall be told is that we arc the cause that dogs do bark and bite; and that, whatever may have been the morality of Dr. Watts, his natural histo- ry is no better than his poetry. The Daily News, if it is so assured of the demoral- ising influence it has exercised upon dogs, is welcome to blush for itself; we prefer to maintain that dogs sorrow under boredom for the same simple rea- son that they delight to bark and bite, "for 'tis their nature to." The Spectator 24 June 1893
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