Both Uses of
propensity
in
Tess of the d'Urbervilles
- Propensities, tendencies, habits, were as dead leaves upon the tyrannous wind of his imaginative ascendency.†
Chpt 5 *
- She had been told that, rough and brutal as they seemed just then, they were not like this all the year round, but were, in fact, quite civil persons save during certain weeks of autumn and winter, when, like the inhabitants of the Malay Peninsula, they ran amuck, and made it their purpose to destroy life—in this case harmless feathered creatures, brought into being by artificial means solely to gratify these propensities—at once so unmannerly and so unchivalrous towards their weaker fellows in Nature's teeming family.†
Chpt 5
Definition:
tendency or inclination