in connection with any work we have to do.

The persons who make the complaint at the head of this chapter notice
that they take interest easily in certain things: a Jack London story,
a dish of ice cream, a foot-ball game. And they take interest in them
so spontaneously and effortlessly that they think these interests must
be born within them.

When we examine carefully the interests of man, and trace their
sources, we see that the above view is fallacious. We acquire most of
our interests in the course of our experience. Professor James asserts:
"An adult man's interests are almost every one of them intensely
artificial; they have been slowly built up. The objects of professional
interest are most of them in their original nature, repulsive; but by
their connection with such natively exciting objects as one's personal
fortune, one's social responsibilities and especially by the force of
inveterate habit, they grow to be the only things for which in middle
life a man profoundly cares."

Since interests are largely products of experience, then, it follows
that if we wish to have an interest in a given subject, we must
consciously and purposefully develop it. There is wide choice open to
us. We may develop interest in early Victorian literature, prize-fight
promoting, social theory, lignitic rocks, history of Siam, the
collection of scarabs, mediaeval history.

We should not be deceived by the glibness of the above statements into
assuming that the development of interest is an easy matter. It
requires adherence to certain definite psychological laws which we may
call the laws of interest. The first may be stated as follows: _In