TEACHERS AND THEIR PUPILS 49 
It is given to comparatively few to exert this powerful and subtle 
influence in a high degree, for it is a gift confined to a few rare natures. 
All the more important is it, therefore, to ensure that an effective per- 
sonal influence may play its part in the intercourse between ordinary 
teachers and ordinary pupils in the customary routine of schoo! and 
university life. 
How, then, is the proper personal and sympathetic relation to be 
established between teacher and pupil, so that the individuality of the 
one may call out the character and the effort of the other? Those who 
enquire of their earliest school reminiscences will probably recollect 
that the teachers who obtained a real hold upon them did so by virtue 
of the power which they possessed of arousing their intellectual interest. 
I would ask you for a moment to analyze the character of this interest. 
In the young child I believe that it will be found to be mainly that 
of novelty: with him “this way and that dividing the swift mind,” 
sustained thought, or even sustained attention, has not yet become pos- 
sible; the inquisitive and acquisitive faculties are strong; and every 
new impression awakens the interest by its novelty quite apart from its 
purpose. You have only to watch and see how impossible it is for a 
young child to keep its attention fixed upon a game such as cricket or 
football to realize how still more difficult it is to keep his attention fixed 
upon an intellectual purpose. 
To quite young children, except to those who are unfortunately 
precocious, even an impending examination is not a permanent object 
of anxiety. 
Now contrast the aimless interest which can be aroused in any young 
child’s mind by the pleasure of a new impression, a new activity, or a 
new idea, with that which appeals, or should appeal, to the more ma- 
ture intellect of an older student. With him it is not enough that the 
impression or the idea should be new; if it is to arouse interest it must 
also direct his mind to a purpose. This is to him the effective interest 
of his games or sport; in the game the desire to succeed or to win is the 
animating purpose, just as the expectation of catching a fish is the in- 
terest which keeps the angler’s attention fixed for hours upon his line. 
In both the desire is fostered by the imagination, which ‘maintains a 
definite purpose before the mind. 
It is sometimes forgotten that as he grows the pupil is no longer 
“an infant crying for the light,” but has become a man with “ splendid 
purpose in his eyes.” 
While, therefore, it should be the aim of a teacher of young chil- 
dren to set before them the subjects of their lessons in an attractive 
manner, so that the novelty is never lost, and not to weary their active 
and restless minds with too sustained an effort, it should at a later stage 
be the teacher’s aim to keep the object and purpose of the new fact or 
