Here continues the series of sequential extracts with interspersed commentaries from William James’ essay, The Energies of Men, Moffat, Yard & Company (New York), 1914.
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Here, William James continues his discourse on energies and second wind. His language may be a bit archaic, but his writing is full of commonsense, practical material. Commentary on aspects of this will follow.
Keeping Up a Faster Pace
Of course there are limits: the trees don’t grow into the sky. But the plain fact remains that men the world over possess amounts of resource which only very exceptional individuals push to their extremes of use. But the very same individual, pushing his energies to their extreme, may in a vast number of cases keep the pace up day after day, and find no “reaction” of a bad sort, so long as decent hygienic conditions are preserved. His more active rate of energizing does not wreck him; for the organism adapts itself, and as the rate of waste augments, augments correspondingly the rate of repair.