Specialization is necessary, but specialization in our interests should rest upon a broad field of fundamental interests, in order that the selection of the special line may be an intelligent one, and that our specialty shall not prove a rut in which we become so deeply buried that we are lost to the best in life.
A Proper Balance to Be Sought.—It behooves us, then, to find a proper balance in cultivating our interests, making them neither too broad nor too narrow. We should deliberately seek to discover those which are strong enough to point the way to a life vocation, but this should not be done until we have had an opportunity to become acquainted with various lines of interests. Otherwise our decision in this important matter may be based merely on a whim.
We should also decide what interests we should cultivate for our own personal development and happiness, and for the service we are to render in a sphere outside our immediate vocation. We should consider avocations as well as vocations. Whatever interests are selected should be carried to efficiency. Better a reasonable number of carefully selected interests well developed and resulting in efficiency than a multitude of interests which lead us into so many fields that we can at best get but a smattering of each, and that by neglecting the things which should mean the most to us. Our interests should lead us to live what Wagner calls a "simple life," but not a narrow one.
5. INTEREST FUNDAMENTAL IN EDUCATION
Some educators have feared that in finding our occupations interesting, we shall lose all power of effort and self-direction; that the will, not being called sufficiently into requisition, must suffer from non-use; that we shall come to do the interesting and agreeable things well enough, but fail before the disagreeable.
Interest Not Antagonistic to Effort.—The best development of the will does not come through our being forced to do acts in which there is absolutely no interest. Work done under compulsion never secures the full self in its performance. It is done mechanically and usually under such a spirit of rebellion on the part of the doer, that the advantage of such training may well be doubted. Nor are we safe in assuming that tasks done without interest as the motive are always performed under the direction of the will. It is far more likely that they are done under some external compulsion, and that the will has, after all, but very little to do with it. A boy may get an uninteresting lesson at school without much pressure from his will, providing he is sufficiently afraid of the master. In order that the will may receive training through compelling the performance of certain acts, it must have a reasonably free field, with external pressure removed. The compelling force must come from within, and not from without.
On the other hand, there is not the least danger that we shall ever find a place in life where all the disagreeable is removed, and all phases of our work made smooth and interesting. The necessity will always be rising to call upon effort to take up the fight and hold us to duty where interest has failed. And it is just here that there must be no failure, else we shall be mere creatures of circumstance, drifting with every eddy in the tide of our life, and never able to breast the current. Interest is not to supplant the necessity for stern and strenuous endeavor but rather to call forth the largest measure of endeavor of which the self is capable. It is to put at work a larger amount of power than can be secured in any other way; in place of supplanting the will, it is to give it its point of departure and render its service all the more effective.
Interest and Character.—Finally, we are not to forget that bad interests have the same propulsive power as good ones, and will lead to acts just as surely. And these acts will just as readily be formed into habits. It is worth noticing that back of the act lies an interest; in the act lies the seed of a habit; ahead of the act lies behavior, which grows into conduct, this into character, and character into destiny. Bad interests should be shunned and discouraged. But even that is not enough. Good interests must be installed in the place of the bad ones from which we wish to escape, for it is through substitution rather than suppression that we are able to break from the bad and adhere to the good.
Our interests are an evolution. Out of the simple interests of the child grow the more complex interests of the man. Lacking the opportunity to develop the interests of childhood, the man will come somewhat short of the full interests of manhood. The great thing, then, in educating a child is to discover the fundamental interests which come to him from the race and, using these as a starting point, direct them into constantly broadening and more serviceable ones. Out of the early interest in play is to come the later interest in work; out of the early interest in collecting treasure boxes full of worthless trinkets and old scraps comes the later interest in earning and retaining ownership of property; out of the interest in chums and playmates come the larger social interests; out of interest in nature comes the interest of the naturalist. And so one by one we may examine the interests which bear the largest fruit in our adult life, and we find that they all have their roots in some early interest of childhood, which was encouraged and given a chance to grow.