hodge] HUMAN INTEREST AND NATURE-STUDY 403 



gestible sponge to observe how the cells would react. It was 

 found that the cells secreted vigorously, but they failed to recover 

 their normal condition as they do when supplied with food. Does 

 not a similar calamity to the learning mechanism, all too often, 

 result from the effort to master subjects that do not contain some 

 nutriment for thought and the mental life? 



Too often we hear: 'The child's interests are undifferentiated, 

 Fellow teachers, take anything you happen to be interested in; 

 for one thing is just as good as another in nature-study." When I 

 see a three months old baby suck a meal as good as milk out of a 

 water worn pebble, and not until then, will I cease to insist that 

 the subject matter of a course in nature-study does make all the 

 difference to the children between mental life and mental death. 



There is but one thing of deeper educational significance than 

 interest and this is the reason or cause of interest itself. We must 

 seek this in the warp and woof, in the very web and tissue of life. 

 Psychologists seem able to tell us little about the deeper biological 

 rationale of interest. Students of child study give us, as yet, only 

 superficial and fragmentary hints as to its genesis and scope, and 

 even the pedagogues have done little more than bury this most 

 vital of all subjects under mountains of misrepresentations and 

 half meaningless technical definitions. 



Nature touches the organism at a thousand points. Why does 

 the life respond, warm, glow and fuse with one point of contact 

 and not with all the rest ? Why is milk better food for a baby than 

 pebbles? There is but one answer to this question. The element 

 which kindles interest, is responded to, stands in vital relation to 

 the life. This relation or affinity is no arbitrary or fictitious mat- 

 ter. It is as much a matter of definite organization as brains or 

 stomachs or bones. The response has been woven into the fabric 

 of the species through the years of its past history. For thousands 

 of years failure to respond has meant death, the response has car- 

 ried with it life. 



This fact is seen most clearly in the new field of animal psy- 

 chology; since here the problem is simplified by narrower lines of 

 interest and by absence of pretense and all other fictitious elements. 

 Watch for a moment the robin in the garden. He stands erect 

 and looks about him — his first interest, his own safety. A cat 

 skulking along the fence is seen and immediately absorbs his 

 attention. He flies to a tree and watches the cat disappear across 



