The laws of relative fatigue.

Abstract

The temerity that ventures to speak of fatigue laws may well arouse a critical attitude.But I shall not be quite so indiscreet as the title might be misconstrued to imply.For reasons that will presently appear in detail, I have no expectation that the laws of mental fatigue will be formulated in the immediate future.Oeffner's so-called laws of fatigue are obviously only empirical generalizations and summaries.My subject is really much less pretentious.It concerns only the relativity of fatigue.The laws of relative fatigue that we shall discuss might with equal propriety have been called the laws of fatigue relativity.My excuse for selecting so threadbare a matter as fatigue for the subject of the presidential address is largely personal.As some of you know, I have been working on various phases of mental fatigue experimentally for a number of years-too long for self complacency.More than once it has seemed to me that I was following a clear experimental path out of the .maze of fact, only to find myself back again at the starting point, facing the same fundamental questions.But however personal my interest in fatigue may be it certainly is not exceptional.I venture the guess that there is not a member of this Association but has made fatigue the subject of direct, indirect, or projected investigation.Certainly few psychological subjects have so widely interested investigators in the allied sciences.Few seem to have at once such far-reaching