may receive training through
compelling the performance of certain acts, it must have a reasonably
free field, with external pressure removed. The compelling force must
come from within, and not from without.

On the other hand, there is not the least danger that we shall ever find
a place in life where all the disagreeable is removed, and all phases of
our work made smooth and interesting. The necessity will always be
rising to call upon effort to take up the fight and hold us to duty
where interest has failed. And it is just here that there must be no
failure, else we shall be mere creatures of circumstance, drifting with
every eddy in the tide of our life, and never able to breast the
current. Interest is not to supplant the necessity for stern and
strenuous endeavor but rather to call forth the largest measure of
endeavor of which the self is capable. It is to put at work a larger
amount of power than can be secured in any other way; in place of
supplanting the will, it is to give it its point of departure and render
its service all the more effective.

INTEREST AND CHARACTER.--Finally, we are not to forget that bad
interests have the same propulsive power as good ones, and will lead to
acts just as surely. And these acts will just as readily be formed into
habits. It is worth noticing that back of the act lies an interest; in
the act lies the seed of a habit; ahead of the act lies behavior, which
grows into conduct, this into character, and character into destiny. Bad
interests should be shunned and discouraged. But even that is not
enough. Good interests must be installed in the place of the bad ones
from which we wish to escape, for it is through substitution rather
than suppression that we are able to break from the bad and adhere to
the good.

Our interests are an evolution. Out of the simple interests of the child
grow the more complex interests of the man. Lacking the opportunity to
develop the interests of childhood, the man will come somewhat short of
the full interests of manhood. The great thing, then, in educating a
child is to discover the fundamental interests which come to him from
the race and, using these as a starting point, direct them into
constantly broadening and more serviceable ones. Out of the early
interest in play is to come the later interest in work; out of the early
interest in collecting treasure boxes full of worthless trinkets and old
scraps comes the later interest in earning an