William James - 2 - "Getting One’s Second Wind"
Discontinuously arranged strata
Here continues the series of sequential extracts with interspersed commentaries from William James’ essay, The Energies of Men, Moffat, Yard & Company (New York), 1914.
For a list of links to the current set of posts, please see:
![Alfred Jensen (1859–1935) - “Dreimaster auf hoher See” [Three-masted ship on the high seas], unknown date.](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Alfred_Jensen_-_Dreimaster_auf_hoher_See.jpg){kind=link}
William James - The Energies Of Men, p.8-9:
Getting One’s Second Wind
For many years I have mused on the phenomenon of second wind, trying to find a physiological theory. It is evident that our organism has stored-up reserves of energy that are ordinarily not called upon, but that may be called upon: deeper and deeper strata of combustible or explosible material, discontinuously arranged, but ready for use by anyone who probes so deep, and repairing themselves by rest as well as do the superficial strata. Most of us continue living unnecessarily near our surface. Our energy-budget is like our nutritive budget. Physiologists say that a man is in “nutritive equilibrium” when day after day he neither gains nor loses weight. But the odd thing is that this condition may obtain on astonishingly different amounts of food. Take a man in nutritive equilibrium, and systematically increase or lessen
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his rations. In the first case he will begin to gain weight, in the second case to lose it. The change will be greatest on the first day, less on the second, less still on the third; and so on, till he has gained all that he will gain, or lost all that he will lose, on that altered diet. He is now in nutritive equilibrium again, but with a new weight; and this neither lessens nor increases because his various combustion-processes have adjusted themselves to the changed dietary. He gets rid, in one way or another, of just as much N, C, H, etc., as he takes in per diem.
Just so one can be in what I might call “efficiency-equilibrium” (neither gaining nor losing power when once the equilibrium is reached) on astonishingly different quantities of work, no matter in what direction the work may be measured. It may be physical work, intellectual work, moral work, or spiritual work.