proofs of the range of application of
the principle of association of ideas in psychology. An idea will infect
another with its own emotional interest when they have become both
associated together into any sort of a mental total. As there is no
limit to the various associations into which an interesting idea may
enter, one sees in how many ways an interest may be derived.

You will understand this abstract statement easily if I take the most
frequent of concrete examples,--the interest which things borrow from
their connection with our own personal welfare. The most natively
interesting object to a man is his own personal self and its fortunes.
We accordingly see that the moment a thing becomes connected with the
fortunes of the self, it forthwith becomes an interesting thing. Lend
the child his books, pencils, and other apparatus: then give them to
him, make them his own, and notice the new light with which they
instantly shine in his eyes. He takes a new kind of care of them
altogether. In mature life, all the drudgery of a man's business or
profession, intolerable in itself, is shot through with engrossing
significance because he knows it to be associated with his personal
fortunes. What more deadly uninteresting object can there be than a
railroad time-table? Yet where will you find a more interesting object
if you are going on a journey, and by its means can find your train? At
such times the time-table will absorb a man's entire attention, its
interest being borrowed solely from its relation to his personal life.
_From all these facts there emerges a very simple abstract programme for
the teacher to follow in keeping the attention of the child: Begin with
the line of his native interests, and offer him objects that have some
immediate connection with these_. The kindergarten methods, the
object-teaching routine, the blackboard and manual-training work,--all
recognize this feature. Schools in which these methods preponderate are
schools where discipline is easy, and where the voice of the master
claiming order and attention in threatening tones need never be heard.

_Next, step by step, connect with these first objects and experiences
the later objects and ideas which you wish to instill. Associate the new
with the old in some natural and telling way, so that the interest,
being shed along from point to point, finally suffuses the entire system
of objects of thought._

This is the abstract statement; and, abstr