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SECTION IX Duty and the Sense of Effort 1. Aspects of Effort, Including Moral Effort Lecture XXIV. March 5, 1901 A SIMPLE ACTIVITY comes to consciousness in the form ofa desire only when operating against some obstacle which postpones the immediate expression ofactivity, and in that postponement throws the activity into doubt and suspense which transforms it at once into an image, gives it an intellectual definition in terms of the end and also arouses the emotional condition. Of necessity, desire and effort are correlative phenomena and it is simply a question ofwhere the stress lies, whether it is stated as desire or effort. If consciousness is taken up mostly with the projective movement, if on the whole a tendency is formed and that is the thing which interests us and so holds our attention, the thought of it is desire. If, however, these obstructions or obstacles continue to assert themselves in a persistent way, then they become the focus of attention. The stress of the activity falls on them and the sense of desire falls for a time into the background. Not that the movement of desire, or the conscious evaluation of that movement as desire, dies down. In James's term it is the shift between the focal element and the marginal elements in consciousness, between the fringe and the center, the process of consciousness always involving both of these factors.l Restating this in a slightly different way: Every projective activity, when it presents itself in consciousness, inevitably involves a reconstruction , some making over of the impulse of the habit, and some degree of qualitative change of it. By the term 'reconstruction' I mean that qualitative alteration, that transformation which takes place, a 1. James introduces the fringe element in consciousness in Psychology, I, p. 258. 212 Psychology of Ethics 213 re-formation in the literal sense ofthe term even iffrom a moral point of view the result is not improvement. Ifthe reconstructive side is not very prominent or distinct, our conscious attitude remains that of desire . Just in the degree in which the necessary reconstruction forces itself upon us, the experience assumes the value or the meaning of effort. I have worked out several points in connection with my article, and will refer to that.2 In the first place, effort is never directed against an external obstacle to will but is the strain or stress of reconstruction in the volitional process itself. Put in a slightly different way: The volitional process, by the intrinsic necessity of the case not the extrinsic, involves effort because it involves the conflict of some divergent and incompatible tendencies to activity, involves the organizing of those tendencies into a new and harmonious mode of activity. Or, the new mode of activity is the coordination of modes of activity which in the present form are incompatible with each other, and thus that making over ofthose divergent tendencies which are involved in the new coordination or unified mode of action constitutes effort and reverberates its sense of effort or strain. The distinction between what is called "physical effort" and "intellectual effort" and "moral effort" is not a distinction of the psychological factors involved. All of them as present in consciousness have exactly the same factors and the same relation of factors to each other. They are all cases of a reconstruction which involves so much making over ofthe tendencies as to bring the necessity ofthat transformation clearly into consciousness. The distinction that exists has to be found in the value that is put in the factors and not in the factors themselves. The distinction which is ofsignificance to us is the evaluation which makes a certain form ofeffort appear to us as moral effort. The general criterion is the same as that given before, namely the conscious reaction of the self as self. While the self is as a matter of fact involved in all this volitional activity and consequently in all effort, it is only under certain special conditions that it is important consciously to make it a factor in the interpretation and guidance ofthe experience. That criterion applies here. If a person is trying to lift a stone, one and the same effort may present itself as a case of physical effort, intellectual effort, or moral effort. It may present itself as a case ofphysical effort on the supposition that the stress is located simply in the immediate impulses which are showing themselves. If that stress becomes somewhat less immediate...

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