INTEREST AS DIRECT AND INDIRECT
with these relations in making something else (at first interested, that is, in a branch of arithmetic simply as a means or tool), may become fascinated by what they can do with number on its own account.[1]
Boys who are at first interested in skill in playing marbles or ball simply because it is a factor in a game which interests them, become interested in practicing the acts of shooting at a mark, of throwing, catching, etc., and so arduously devote themselves to the perfecting of skill. The technical exercises that give skill in the game become themselves a sort of a game. Girls who are interested in making clothes for a doll, simply for the sake of the interest in playing with dolls, may develop an interest in making clothes till the doll itself becomes simply a sort of an excuse, or at least just a stimulus, for making clothes.
If the reader will reflect upon his own course of life over a certain period of time, he will find that the sort of thing which is somewhat trivially illustrated in these examples is of constant oc-
- ↑ In our usual terminology interest in "concrete" number passes into an interest in "abstract" number.
