What, then, is the cause of laziness? How should one proceed in the attempt to cure it? Still more important in this complex and severely competitive age, with its incessant demand for vigour and effectiveness of performance, what are the preventive measures that may be taken in the interest alike of the individual and society? Only a few years ago it would have been impossible to answer these questions in any but the vaguest and most general way. It might have been said—indeed, it was said—that laziness is essentially an infirmity of the will. No statement could be more correct, but also none could be more futile in the absence of any clear appreciation of the factors determining the weakness or strength of one’s will-power. For, as somebody has truly said, the will is not an isolated entity, absolutely independent of, and superior to, the organism through which it operates. Having a controlling force, it still is, to a large extent, itself controlled by material as well as by psychical circumstances, by bodily states and by the impressions the mind absorbs from the environment. Consequently the solution of the problem of laziness depends at bottom on the ascertainment of the factors hurtful to efficient willing. This task quite recently has been essayed with remarkable success, and, especially by a little group of French investigators, with immediate reference to the problem presented by the lazy man. Laziness in all its phases has been studied with the resourcefulness and painstaking precision characteristic of the new school of medical psychologists, to whom we are already so heavily indebted for a better understanding of the mind of man both in its normal and its abnormal aspects. And with respect to laziness they have likewise made some interesting and important discoveries. What, in particular, they have found is that it is usually associated with a peculiarly debilitated condition of the nervous system—an “asthenia” marked by a slow heart-beat, low arterial pressure, and poor circulation. The consequence of this is, to quote Théodule Ribot, one of the leaders in the scientific study of laziness, that “the brain shows not so much an indisposition as a real incapacity for concentrating attention, and soon, owing to the fact that its nourishment is at the vanishing-point, becomes exhausted.” A whole series of idlers, tested scientifically, were shown to be suffering from this asthenic condition, which led them instinctively to husband their feeble resources by the simple expedient of exerting themselves no more than was absolutely necessary. Yet not a few of them were to all appearance healthy enough, and, until the medical examination had been made, it was difficult to credit their well-grounded complaint that they really felt “too tired to work,” and at best could do so “only by fits and starts.”