But we have now to ask whether economy of attention is the sole psychological secret of style, and whether, indeed, it is always necessary to style. Is style, like grammar or orthography, merely a more or less conventionalized device to make intelligibility certain and easy? Is our reading always the more pleasurable as it is the more effortless? The pleasure of facility certainly bears a large part in much of our literary enjoyment, but there is another and opposite law of pleasure which, I think, often determines pleasure in style. To accomplish much with no exertion, to slide down a long hill, gives pleasure, but there is also a pleasure in exertion, in climbing hills as well as sliding down. The pleasures of strenuous activity of attention form a certain element in literary effect. The writer may do too much for the reader, may make everything so simple and easy that the reader has nothing to do, but is carried along without volition and curiosity, losing all joy of attainment and grasp. For my own part, I often find authors too fluent and facile, especially among the French, and sometimes among the English, as, for instance, in some of John Stuart Mill’s writings. These do not leave enough for me to do, and led skilfully along so smooth a road that I am not conscious of moving, I lose the pleasure of achievement, of the sense of enlargement of conscious powers. Easy got, easy goes, is the law here as elsewhere. The pleasure of acquirement is directly as the amount of attention exercised.