EFFORT, THINKING, AND MOTIVATION
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, willing-
