4. A father offers his son a dollar for every grade on his term report which is above ninety; what type of interest relative to studies does this appeal to? What do you think of the advisability of giving prizes in connection with school work?
5. Most children in the elementary school are not interested in technical grammar; why not? Histories made up chiefly of dates and lists of kings or presidents are not interesting; what is the remedy? Would you call any teaching of literature, history, geography, or science successful which fails to develop an interest in the subject?
6. After careful observation, make a statement of the differences in the typical play interests of boys and girls; of children of the third grade and the eighth grade.
CHAPTER XVII
THE WILL
The fundamental fact in all ranges of life from the lowest to the highest is activity, doing. Every individual, either animal or man, is constantly meeting situations which demand response. In the lower forms of life, this response is very simple, while in the higher forms, and especially in man, it is very complex. The bird sees a nook favorable for a nest, and at once appropriates it; a man sees a house that strikes his fancy, and works and plans and saves for months to secure money with which to buy it. It is evident that the larger the possible number of responses, and the greater their diversity and complexity, the more difficult it will be to select and compel the right response to any given situation. Man therefore needs some special power of control over his acts—he requires a will.
1. THE NATURE OF THE WILL
There has been much discussion and not a little controversy as to the true nature of the will. Just what is the will, and what is the content of our mental stream when we are in the act of willing? Is there at such times a new and distinctly different content which we do not find in our processes of knowledge or emotion—such as perception, memory, judgment, interest, desire? Or do we find, when we are engaged in an act of the will, that the mental stream contains only the familiar old elements of attention, perception, judgment, desire, purpose, etc., all organized or set for the purpose of accomplishing or preventing some act?
The Content of the Will.—We shall not attempt here to settle the controversy suggested by the foregoing questions, nor, for immediately practical purposes, do we need to settle it. It is perhaps safe to say, however, that whenever we are willing the mental content consists of elements of cognition and feeling plus a distinct sense of effort, with which everyone is familiar. Whether this sense of effort is a new and different element, or only a complex of old and familiar mental processes, we need not now decide.