ects of the
series which he had at first despised, and little by little
mastered them all.

"A child who at first had very little power of concentrating
his attention, found an outlet from this state of chaos by
means of one of the most complex objects of the material, the
so-called length-rods; he played with these continually for a
whole week and learned to count and make simple additions. He
then began to turn to the cylinders and the insets, the
simpler objects, and showed interest in every part of the
system.

"Directly the children find their objects interesting, their
disorderliness disappears at once; their mental restlessness
is at an end, and they amuse themselves with the blocks, the
colors, etc."

It is very interesting to follow Miss George again in her description
of the special qualities that develop after such a phenomenon. She
illustrates the birth of individuality by a pretty anecdote:

"There were two sisters, one of three years old, the other of
five. The child of three could hardly be said to exist as an
individual, so minutely did she imitate her elder sister; for
example, the elder child had a blue pencil and the little one
was not happy till she too had a blue pencil; when the elder
sister ate bread and butter, whatever the little one had of a
different kind, she would touch nothing but bread and butter,
and so on. This child took no interest in anything in the
school, but merely followed her sister, imitating everything
she did. One day the little one became interested in the pink
cubes, built up the tower with the liveliest interest,
repeated the exercise several times, and completely forgot
her sister. The older girl was so astonished at this, that
she called her little sister and said to her: 'How is it
that while I am filling in a circle you are building the
tower?' From that day the younger child became a personality;
she began to develop independently, and was no longer merely
the shadow or reflection of her sister."

These interesting facts concerning the spontaneous development of
qualities which hitherto were non-existent in the individual, and
which exploded _after_ the fundamental phenomenon--of intense and
prolonged interest in a task--had manifested itself, have been
confirmed by repeated experiments in a great variety of places made by
persons who