y. Interest and discipline are correlative aspects of activity
having an aim. Interest means that one is identified with the objects
which define the activity and which furnish the means and obstacles to
its realization. Any activity with an aim implies a distinction between
an earlier incomplete phase and later completing phase; it implies also
intermediate steps. To have an interest is to take things as entering
into such a continuously developing situation, instead of taking them
in isolation. The time difference between the given incomplete state of
affairs and the desired fulfillment exacts effort in transformation, it
demands continuity of attention and endurance. This attitude is what
is practically meant by will. Discipline or development of power of
continuous attention is its fruit. The significance of this doctrine for
the theory of education is twofold. On the one hand it protects us
from the notion that mind and mental states are something complete in
themselves, which then happen to be applied to some ready-made objects
and topics so that knowledge results. It shows that mind and intelligent
or purposeful engagement in a course of action into which things
enter are identical. Hence to develop and train mind is to provide an
environment which induces such activity. On the other side, it protects
us from the notion that subject matter on its side is something isolated
and independent. It shows that subject matter of learning is identical
with all the objects, ideas, and principles which enter as resources or
obstacles into the continuous intentional pursuit of a course of action.
The developing course of action, whose end and conditions are perceived,
is the unity which holds together what are often divided into an
independent mind on one side and an independent world of objects and
facts on the other.

Chapter Eleven: Experience and Thinking

1. The Nature of Experience. The nature of experience can be understood
only by noting that it includes an active and a passive element
peculiarly combined. On the active hand, experience is trying--a meaning
which is made explicit in the connected term experiment. On the passive,
it is undergoing. When we experience something we act upon it, we do
something with it; then we suffer or undergo the consequences. We do
something to the thing and then it does something to us in return:
such is the peculiar combination. The connection of these two phases of
experienc