d
capacity, corresponding to an unrealized condition, and it is
predisposition to such rearrangement as would tend to realize the
indicated condition_. Human needs and human wants are incidents in the
series of events between the latent existence of human interest and the
achievement of partial satisfaction. Human interests, then, are the
ultimate terms of calculation in sociology. _The whole life-process, so
far as we know it, whether viewed in its individual or in its social
phase, is at last the process of developing, adjusting, and satisfying
interests._

No single term is of more constant use in recent sociology than this
term "interests." We use it in the plural partly for the sake of
distinguishing it from the same term in the sense which has become so
familiar in modern pedagogy. The two uses of the term are closely
related, but they are not precisely identical. The pedagogical emphasis
is rather on the voluntary attitude toward a possible object of
attention. The sociological emphasis is on attributes of persons which
may be compared to the chemical affinities of different elements.

To distinguish the pedagogical from the sociological use of the term
"interest," we may say pedagogically of a supposed case: "The boy has no
_interest_ in physical culture, or in shopwork, or in companionship with
other boys, or in learning, or in art, or in morality." That is,
attention and choice are essential elements of interest in the
pedagogical sense. On the other hand, we may say of the same boy, in the
sociological sense: "He has not discovered his health, wealth,
sociability, knowledge, beauty, and rightness _interests_." We thus
imply that interests, in the sociological sense, are not necessarily
matters of attention and choice. They are affinities, latent in persons,
pressing for satisfaction, whether the persons are conscious of them
either generally or specifically, or not; they are indicated spheres of
activity which persons enter into and occupy in the course of realizing
their personality.

Accordingly, we have virtually said that interests are merely
specifications in the make-up of the personal units. We have several
times named the most general classes of interests which we find
serviceable in sociology, viz.: _health_, _wealth_, _sociability_,
_knowledge_, _beauty_, and _rightness_.

We need to emphasize, in addition, several considerations about these
interests which are the motors of all individual and