THE QUESTION OF FATIGUE FROM THE ECONOMIC STANDPOINT. 263 



Hence in experimental work the immediate conditions of attention 

 are chiefly ol an objective nature, such as the intensity, extent, and 

 duration of the stimulus ; in the factory, attention is more frequently 

 determined by the mental relation of the worker to his work, by his 

 needs and desires, by his moods and by his ' interests. ' 



On the other hand, laboratory work is able to study certain factors 

 in isolation in a manner which the complicated conditions of factory and 

 school life render impossible ; and the problem with which we are 

 concerned is to discover how far factory investigation can profit by the 

 analysis of the experimenter, and how far the artificiality of laboratory 

 conditions is detrimental to the transference of conclusions from one 

 field to another. 



First of all, we are confronted by the general problem which arises 

 when we bear in mind the sudden accessions of energy of which every- 

 day life shows so many examples, but which only occur on a small 

 scale under artificial conditions : — 



' It is the possibility of these sudden accessions of energy,' says 

 Dr. McDougall, 'that has rendered well nigh futile all the many 

 attempts hitherto made to obtain reliable objective measures of degrees 

 of fatigue of the organism as a whole.' He refers to the recent work 

 of Dr. Elvers, which shows how even in ergographic work suggestion 

 and expectation are often distinctly disturbing factors and essentially 

 involve the bringing into play of one or more of these special sources 

 of energy. 



Physiologists in particular are accused of neglecting this general 

 consideration. ' It seems impossible to get the physiologists of the 

 laboratory, the physiologists who are chiefly conceimed with the organs 

 rather than with the organism, to consider this conception seriously and 

 on its m.erits. If they occasionally refer to it, it is only to put it aside 

 contemptuously as a naive sui'^'ival from the dark ages. Yet those 

 who are in the habit of dealing with the problems of the organism as a 

 whole, the physician and the psychologists, constantly make use of this 

 conception, for they find it impossible to make progress in the under- 

 standing of their problems without it. That fact gives the conception 

 a claim to a more serious consideration than it has commonly received 

 from the physiologists. ' 



But it is not only in their neglect 'of such general conceptions of 

 every-day life as energy that the psychologists of the laboratory are in 

 need of correction. They are too apt to work under conditions which 

 in the case of fatigue practically exclude the production of any true 

 fatigue as ive meet with it in industry. And it is therefore not 

 surprising to note with regard to the general question of method, that 

 MM. Binet and Henri have shown the inadequacy of the various 

 methods supposed to estimate the fatigue of the organism as a whole 

 employed previous to the date of publication of their work ' La Fatigue 

 Intellectuelle ' (1898) ; and in a recent critical study of the principal 

 methods Messrs. Ellis and Shipe " have arrived at the conclusion that 

 none of those investigated by them are reliable. 



' American Journal of Psychology. 



