Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/498

 484 W. R. BOYCE GIBSON : tendency to make as little effort as possible. And this is a genuine case of least effort, for by least effort here is not meant the effort to set aside the uninteresting intrusion as speedily as possible by doing just what is most essential and leaving the rest, but the lazy inclination to get rid of the duty anyhow, to spare effort of brain as well as of hands. If the discomfort produced by the feeling that a certain work is being left undone is more disturbing than the actual doing of it would be, the work is done. If the effort to resist the pressure of some external compulsion is greater than the effort entailed in acquiescence, the work is again done. Otherwise endless postponement, and the relapse of least effort into complete relative inertia. It is important to emphasise this word ' relative '. The absolute inertia of M. Ferrero is a physiological disease. It implies an inability on the part of the organism to give expression to the natural functioning of psychical activities. If this organic defect is credited to the mind as its charac- teristic feature and the principle of least deflection from absolute inertia transformed into the formative principle of psychical activity, Psychology becomes nothing more nor less than a department of the more general science of Pathology. Relative Inertia is a fact that in no way requires this obverted relationship of the two sciences, for it exists only in virtue of concentration of interest along normal channels of mental activity. We are relatively inert not because we object to the making of an effort, but because we object to the abrupt transference of effort from one direction to another. We may thus willingly admit that we are, as psychical agents, relatively inert and make the least effort possible in every direction except that in which we happen to be exercising our normal activities, but we must hasten to add that it is only in the one ex- cepted direction that any mental development takes place. 1 1 It is a significant fact that the principle devised by M. Ferrero for the elucidation of the psychical life corresponds very closely to the fundamental principle of mechanics as enunciated by Hertz. Hertz's primary law of mechanics is to the effect that were the connexions of a mechanical system momentarily severed, the various masses would each and all pursue some rectilinear path with uniform velocity, but that as such a severance is not possible, the masses in their actual movements all tend to deviate as little as possible from this their free and natural form of motion. ' Every free system persists in its condition of rest or of uniform motion in a straightest possible path.' This is a combination of the laws of Inertia and of least deflection from Inertia when under constraint. And this is also M. Ferrero's psychic principle.