rson is very attentive to a subject and gets pleasure from
experience in that subject, we commonly say that he is _interested_ in
that subject.

Since the importance of attention and feeling in learning has already
been shown and will be further developed in the chapters which follow in
connection with the subjects of habit, memory, and thinking, little more
need be said here.

The key to all forms of learning is _attention_. The key to attention is
_feeling_. Feeling depends upon the nature of the child, inherited and
acquired. In our search for the means of arousing interest, we look
first to the original nature of the child, to the instincts and the
emotions. We look next to the acquired nature, the habits, the ideals,
the various needs that have grown up in the individual's life.
Educational writers have overemphasized the original nature of the child
as a basis of interest and have not paid enough attention to acquired
nature. We should not ask so much what a child's needs are, but what
they _ought_ to be. Needs can be created. The child's nature to some
extent can be changed. The problem of arousing interest is therefore one
of finding in the child's nature a basis for attention and pleasure. If
the basis is not to be found there, then it must be built up. How this
can be done, how human nature can be changed, is to some extent the main
problem of psychology. Every chapter in this book, it is hoped, will be
found to throw some light on the problem.

SUMMARY. The two elementary feeling states are pleasantness and
unpleasantness. The emotions are complex mental states composed of
feeling and the sensations from bodily reactions to the situations.
Feeling and emotion are the motive forces of life, at the bottom of
all important actions. The bodily reactions of emotions are reflex
and instinctive. Attention is a matter of the relative clearness of
the contents of consciousness. The function of attention is to unify
thought and action. It is the important factor in all learning and
thinking, for it is only the attentive part of consciousness that is
effective.

CLASS EXERCISES

1. Make out a complete list of the more important emotions.

2. Indicate the characteristic expression of each emotion in your list.

3. Can you have an emotion without its characteristic expression? If,
for example, when a situation arises which ordinarily arouses anger in
you, you inhibit all the usual motor accom