st and attention are not successive but
simultaneous, or, as sometimes stated, they are back and front of the
same mental state. This becomes evident by noting the nervous conditions
which must accompany interest and attention. When one is attending to
any strange phenomenon, say a botanist to the structure of a rare plant,
it is evident that there are not only new groupings of ideas in the
mind, but also new adjustments being set up between the brain centres.
This implies in turn a lessening of resistance between the cells, and
therefore the presence of the feeling tone known as interest.

=Interest, Attention, and Habit.=--Since the impulse to attend to a
presentation is conditioned by a process of adjustment, or organization,
between brain centres, it is evident that, while the novel presentations
call forth interest and attention, repetition, by habituating the
nervous arcs, will tend to deaden interest and attention. For this
reason the story, first heard with interest and attention, becomes stale
by too much repetition. The new toy fails to interest the child after
the novelty has worn off. It must be noted, however, that while
repetition usually lessens interest, yet when any set of experiences are
repeated many times, instead of lessening interest the repetition may
develop a new interest known as the interest of custom. Thus it is that
by repeating the experience the man is finally compelled to visit his
club every evening, and the boy to play his favourite game every day.
This secondary interest of custom arises because repetition has finally
established such strong associations within the nervous system that they
now have become a part of our nature and are thus able to make a new
demand upon interest and attention.

INTEREST IN EDUCATION

=Uses of Term: A. Subjective; B. Objective.=--That the educator
describes interest as something that causes the mind to give attention
to what is before it, when in fact interest and attention are
psychologically merely two sides of a single process, is accounted for
by the fact that the term "interest" may be used with two quite
different meanings. Psychologically, interest is evidently a feeling
state, that is, it represents a phase of consciousness. My _interest_ in
football, for instance, represents the _feeling_ of worth which
accompanies attention to such experiences. In this sense interest and
attention are but two sides of the single experience, interest
repres