is it that we really prize under the name of effort? What is it that we are really trying to secure when we regard increase in ability to put forth effort as an aim of education? Taken practically, there is no great difficulty in answering. What we are after is persistency, consecutiveness, of activity: endurance against obstacles and through hindrances. Effort regarded as mere increase of strain in the expenditure of energy is not in itself a thing we esteem. Barely in itself it is a thing we would avoid. A child is lifting a weight that is too heavy for him. It takes an increasing amount of effort, involving increase of strain which is increasingly painful, to lift it higher and higher. The wise parent tries to protect the child from mere strain; from the danger of excessive fatigue, of damaging the structures of the body, of getting bruises. Effort as mere strained activity is thus not what we prize. On the other hand, a judicious parent will not like to see a child too easily discouraged by meeting obstacles. If the child is physically healthy, surrender of a course of action, or diversion of energy to some easier line of action, is a bad symptom if it shows itself at the first sign of resistance. The demand for effort is a demand for continuity in the face of difficulties.
This account of the matter is so obvious as to lie upon the surface. When we examine into it further, however, we find it only repeats what we have already learned in connection with interest as an accompaniment of an expanding activity. Effort, like interest, is significant only in connection with a course of action, an action that takes time for its completion since it develops through a succession of stages. Apart from an end to be reached, effort would never be anything more than a momentary strain or a succession of such strains. It would be a thing to be avoided, not so much for its disagreeableness as because nothing comes of it save exposure to dangers of exhaustion and accident. But where the action is a developing or growing one, effort, willingness to put forth energy at any point of the entire activity, measures the hold which the activity, as one whole affair, has upon a person. It shows how much he really cares for it. We never (if we are sensible) take, in ourselves or in somebody else, the "will for the deed" unless there is evidence that there really was a will, a purpose; and the sole evidence is some striving to realize the purpose, the putting forth of effort. If conditions forbid all effort, it is not a question of "will" at all, but simply of a sympathetic wish.
This does not mean, of course, that effort is always desirable under such conditions. On the contrary, the game may not be worth the candle; the end to be reached may not be of sufficient importance to justify the expenditure of so much energy, or of running the risks of excessive strain. Judgment comes in to decide such matters, and speaking generally it is as much a sign of bad judgment to keep on at all costs in an activity once entered upon, as it is a sign of weakness to be turned from it at the first evidence of difficulties. The principle laid down shows that effort is significant not as bare effort, or strain, but in connection with carrying forward an activity to its fulfillment: it all depends, as we say, upon the end.
Two considerations follow. (1) On the one hand, when an activity persists in spite of its temporary blocking by an obstacle, there is a situation of mental stress: a peculiar emotional condition of combined desire and aversion. The end continues to make an appeal, and to hold one to the activity in spite of its interruption by difficulties. This continued forward appeal gives desire. The obstacle, on the other hand, in the degree in which it arrests or thwarts progress ahead, inhibits action, and tends to divert it into some other channel—to avert action, in other words, from the original end. This gives aversion. Effort, as a mental experience, is precisely this peculiar combination of conflicting tendencies—tendencies away from and tendencies towards: dislike and longing.
(2) The other consideration is even more important, for it decides what happens. The emotion of effort, or of stress, is a warning to think, to consider, to reflect, to inquire, to look into the matter. Is the end worth while under the circumstances? Is there not some other course which, under the circumstances, is better? So far as this reconsideration takes place, the situation is quite different from that of a person merely giving up as soon as an obstacle shows itself. Even if the final decision is to give up, the case is radically different from the case of giving up from mere instability of purpose. The giving up now involves an appeal to reason, and may be quite consistent with tenacity of purpose or "strength of will." However, reflection may take quite another course: it may lead not to reconsideration of ends, but to seeking for new means; in short, to discovery and invention also. The child who cannot carry the stone that he wishes may neither keep on in a fruitless struggle to achieve the impossible, nor yet surrender his purpose; he may be led to think of some other way of getting the stone into motion; he may try prying it along with a bar. "Necessity is the mother of invention."
In the latter case, the obstacle has, indeed, diverted energy; but the significant thing is that energy is diverted into thinking; into an intelligent consideration of the situation and of available ways and means. The really important matter in the experience of effort concerns its connection with thought. The question is not the amount of sheer strain involved, but the way in which the thought of an end persists in spite of difficulties, and induces a person to reflect upon the nature of the obstacles and the available resources by which they may be dealt with.
A person, child or adult, comes, in the course of an activity, up against some obstacle or difficulty. This experience of resistance has a double effect;—though in a given case one effect may predominate and obscure the other. One effect is weakening of the impetus in the forward direction; the existing line of action becomes more or less uncongenial because of the strain required to overcome difficulties. As a consequence, the tendency is to give up this line of action and to divert energy into some other channel. On the other hand, meeting an obstacle may enhance a person's perception of an end; may make him realize more clearly than ever he did before how much it means to him; and accordingly may brace him, invigorate him in his effort to achieve the end. Within certain limits, resistance only arouses energy; it acts as a stimulus. Only a spoiled child or pampered adult is dismayed or discouraged and turned aside, instead of being aroused, by lions in the path—unless the lions are very fierce and threatening. It is not too much to say that a normal person demands a certain amount of difficulty to surmount in order that he may have a full and vivid sense of what he is about, and hence have a lively interest in what he is doing.
Meeting obstacles makes a person project more definitely to himself the later and consummating period of his activity; it brings the end of his course of action to consciousness. He now thinks of what he is doing, instead of doing it blindly from instinct or habit. The result becomes a conscious aim, a guiding and inspiring purpose. In being an object of desire, it is also an object of endeavor.
This arousing and guiding function is exercised in two ways. Endeavor is steadied and made more persistent when its outcome is regarded as something to be achieved; and thought is stimulated to discover the best methods of dealing with the situation. The person who keeps on blindly pushing against an obstacle, trying to break through by main strength, is the one who acts unintelligently; the one who does not present to himself the nature of the end to be reached. He remains on the level of a struggling animal, who by mere quantity of brute strength tries to break down resistance and win to his goal. The true function of the conditions that call forth effort is, then, first, to make an individual more conscious of the end and purpose of his actions; secondly, to turn his energy from blind, or thoughtless, struggle into reflective judgment. These two phases of thought are interdependent. The thought of the result, the end as a conscious guiding purpose, leads to the search for means of achievement; it suggests appropriate courses of action to be tried. These means as considered and attempted supply a fuller content to the thought of the end. A boy starts somewhat blindly to make a kite; in the course of his operations he comes across unexpected difficulties; his kite does n't hold together, or it won't balance. Unless his activity has a slight hold upon him, he is thereby made aware more definitely of just what he intends to make; he conceives the object and end of his actions more distinctly and fully. His end is now not just a kite, but some special kind of a kite. Then he inquires what is the matter, what is the trouble, with his existing construction,
