of material with which the pupil's mind is likely to be
already spontaneously engaged, and in the ingenuity which discovers
paths of connection from that material to the matters to be newly
learned. The principle is easy to grasp, but the accomplishment is
difficult in the extreme. And a knowledge of such psychology as this
which I am recalling can no more make a good teacher than a knowledge of
the laws of perspective can make a landscape painter of effective skill.

A certain doubt may now occur to some of you. A while ago, apropos of
the pugnacious instinct, I spoke of our modern pedagogy as being
possibly too 'soft.' You may perhaps here face me with my own words, and
ask whether the exclusive effort on the teacher's part to keep the
pupil's spontaneous interest going, and to avoid the more strenuous path
of voluntary attention to repulsive work, does not savor also of
sentimentalism. The greater part of schoolroom work, you say, must, in
the nature of things, always be repulsive. To face uninteresting
drudgery is a good part of life's work. Why seek to eliminate it from
the schoolroom or minimize the sterner law?

A word or two will obviate what might perhaps become a serious
misunderstanding here.

It is certain that most schoolroom work, till it has become habitual and
automatic, is repulsive, and cannot be done without voluntarily jerking
back the attention to it every now and then. This is inevitable, let the
teacher do what he will.

It flows from the inherent nature of the subjects and of the learning
mind. The repulsive processes of verbal memorizing, of discovering steps
of mathematical identity, and the like, must borrow their interest at
first from purely external sources, mainly from the personal interests
with which success in mastering them is associated, such as gaining of
rank, avoiding punishment, not being beaten by a difficulty and the
like. Without such borrowed interest, the child could not attend to them
at all. But in these processes what becomes interesting enough to be
attended to is not thereby attended to _without effort_. Effort always
has to go on, derived interest, for the most part, not awakening
attention that is _easy_, however spontaneous it may now have to be
called. The interest which the teacher, by his utmost skill, can lend to
the subject, proves over and over again to be only an interest
sufficient _to let loose the effort_. The teacher, therefore, need never
concern himse