The Foundations of Personality [59]
one finds such a person, one thrown into sustained excitement by learning, but the great majority of students, whether in medicine, law or mathematics, are "practical," meaning that their interests are relatively narrow and the good they seek an immediate one to be reaped by themselves. Recognizing this fact in the abstract, the most of teaching is conducted on the plane of the real scholar, and the average student is left to find values for himself. From first to last in teaching I would emphasize usevalue; true, I would seek to broaden the conception of usevalue, so that a student would see that usefulness is a social value, but no matter how abstract and remote the subject, its relationship to usefulness would be preliminary and continuously emphasized in order to sustain interest. Interest, like any other form of excitement, needs new stimuli and periods of relaxation. People under the driving force of necessity continue at their work for longer periods of time and more constantly than is psychologically possible for the maintaining of interest. So it disappears, and then fatigue sets in at once,--a fatigue that is increased by the effort to work and the regret and rebellion at the change. The memory seems to suffer and a fear is aroused that "I am losing my memory"; the threat to success brings anguish and often the health becomes definitely impaired. Overconcentrated, too long maintenance of interest brings apathy,--an apathy that cannot be dispelled except by change and rest. Here there is wide individual variation from those who need frequent change and relaxation periods to those who can maintain interest in a task almost indefinitely. A hobby, or a secondary object of interest, is therefore a real necessity to the man or woman battling for a purpose, whose interest must be sustained. It acts to relax, to shift the excitement and to allow something of the feeling of novelty as one reapproaches the task. As a matter of fact, excitement and interest are not easily separated from their derivatives and elaborations. Desire, purpose, ambition, imply a force; interest implies a direction for that force. Interest may be as casual as curiosity aroused by the novel and strange, or as deep-seated and specialized as a talent. The born teacher is he who knows how to arouse and maintain and direct interest; the born achiever is the man whose interest, quickly aroused, is easily maintained and directs effort. To find the activity that is natively interesting and yet suited to one's ability is the aim in vocational guidance. There are some curious pathological aspects to interest --"conflict" aspects of the subject. A man finds himself palpitatingly interested in what is horrible to him, as a bird is fascinated by a snake. Sex abnormalities have a marvelous interest to everybody, although many will not admit it. Stories of crime and bloodshed are read by everybody with great avidity,--and people will go miles to the site of grim tragedy. Court rooms are packed whenever a horrible murder is aired or a nauseating divorce scandal is tried. A chaste woman will read, on the sly and with inner rebellion, as many pornographic tales as she can get hold of, and the "carefully" brought up, i. e., those whose interest has been carefully directed, suddenly become interested in the forbidden; they seek to peek through windows when they should be looking straight ahead. As a matter of fact, interest is as much inhibited as conduct. "You mustn't ask about that" is the commonest answer a child gets. "That's a naughty question to ask" runs it a close second. Can one inhibit interest, which is the excitement caused by the unknown? The answer is that we can, because a large part of education is to do this very thing. "Can we inhibit any interest without injuring all interests?" is a question often put. My answer would be that it is socially necessary that interest in certain directions be inhibited, whether it hurts the individual or not. But the interest in a forbidden direction can be shifted to a permitted direction, and this should be done.