The process of transformation is occasioned by practical necessity. Men have a tendency to take objects as just so much and no more; to attach to a given subject-matter these predicates, and no others. There is a principle of inertia, or economy, in the mind, which leads it to maintain objects in their _status quo_ as long as possible. "There is no doubt that the reluctance of the mind to give up an object once made lies deep in its economies.... I wish here to call attention to the fact that the forming of a number of distinct objects has its origin in practical needs of our nature. The analysis and synthesis which is first made is that of most practical importance...."[68] We tend to retain such objects as we have, and it is not until "the original subject-matter has been overloaded with various and opposing predicates that we think of doubting the correctness of our first judgments, of putting our first objects under suspicion."[69] Once the Ptolemaic system is well established, cycles and epicycles are added without number, rather than reconstruct the original object. When, finally, we are compelled to make some change, we tend to invent some new object to which the predicates can attach. "When qualities arise so incompatible with the object already formed that they cannot be referred to that object, it is easier to form a new object on their basis than it is to doubt the correctness of the old...."[70] Let us suppose, then, that under stress of practical need, we refer the new predicates to some new object, and have, as a consequence, two objects. (Dewey illustrates this situation by specific examples.) This separation of the two objects cannot continue long, before we begin to discover that the two objects are related elements in a larger whole. "The wall of partition between the two separate 'objects' cannot be broken at one attack; they have to be worn away by the attrition arising from their slow movement into one another. It is the 'necessary' influence which one exerts upon the other that finally rubs away the separateness and leaves them revealed as elements of one unified whole."[71]