Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/502

488 W. B. BOYCE GIBSON : effort, but there is nothing in the process by which the idea is suggested to prove that it is so. We can in fact only say that it covers the facts not that it explains them. It is just as likely to be a mere common element in the results of the various processes concerned, and not a vital formative factor at all. The true concrete conception of Facilitation derives its meaning and value from the correspondingly concrete con- ception of effort. An analysis of the fundamental fact of conation shows that it is essentially an effort to satisfy a felt need, and that when the need is felt no longer the effort ceases to exist. In finding ease it finds its own natural ending. ' Hunger disappears after a full meal ; intellectual curiosity disappears when a problem is solved, and so on.' 1 The tendency of all striving is to pass out of effort into ease, and this can only be done through processes marked by a pro- gressive lessening of effort. But the lessening of effort is here no longer abstractly and negatively conceived. It is to be understood only in the light of the coherent context of reconstructed fact, the product of conceptual analysis and synthesis. It is no longer a mere lessening of Effort and nothing more, a facilitation that derives all its meaning and worth from the abstract conception of facilitation, it is a process whose specific meaning and worth is entirely deter- mined by its psychical context. It shares the full meaning of the mind's effort at self-expression, the vital factor which gives primary unity to Consciousness ; it is the expression of the fact that we are ever endeavouring to express ourselves smoothly and efficiently, with the ease that means in the long run not only the appeasing of a passing impulse, but the complete satisfaction of a whole system of related interests. The principle of lessening effort is not a principle of lessening activity, but a principle expressive of the fact that the striving which issues in mental development is continually passing, through the subdual of resistance, into the friction- less, effortless activities that are effective in proportion to their ease. This concrete interpretation of the principle of lessening effort puts a principle into our hands which makes intel- ligible the evolution of tbe spoken forms of language. In all languages that have shown any growth there has been a constant process of elimination and elaboration going on, word-endings and other dispensable parts of words being gradually dropped and the remainder being worked over in 1 Stout's MrrniHtl nf Psychology, p 66.