But it is negative and weak in after results. So far as
it produces motives at all they may be dangerous. It cannot build up
and strengthen character but threatens to undermine it by cultivating
wrong motives. There is no assurance that knowledge thus acquired can
affect the will and bear fruit in action, even though it be the right
kind of knowledge, because it is not the knowledge in this case that
furnishes the incentives. The interest that is awakened in a subject
because of its innate attractiveness, leaves incentives which may ripen
sooner or later into action. The higher kind of interest is direct,
intrinsic, not simply receptive, but active and progressive. In the
knowledge acquired it finds only incentives to further acquisition. It
is life giving and is prompted by the objects themselves, just as the
interest of boys is awakened by deeds of adventure and daring or by a
journey into the woods. The interest in an object that springs from
some other source than the thing itself, is indirect, as the desire to
master a lesson so as to excel others, or gain a prize, or make a money
profit out of it. In speaking of interest in school studies, teachers
quite commonly have only the indirect in mind; _i.
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