Page:W. H. Chamberlin 1919, The Study of Philosophy.djvu/32

30 to eat, they now eat in order to live in these new interests. Thus a world of prudential interests may be formed, and these become the obvious or practical things to do.

As one engages in these prudential interests, an incidental set of interests in the objects or elements of the environment that support these prudential interests may be developed. These objects are correlated with the value aspects of the interests being fulfilled by means of them. Attention may be given to these objects as affording feelings of satisfaction. Attention to the objects as affording pleasure may be repeated until it becomes a relatively detached interest. One thus comes to view the world and its objects for the pleasure there is in viewing them, and objects supporting the new set of interests become more and more beautiful and more potent to stimulate these interests, interests distinct in quality from the prudential in which they had their genesis, and so a new set of interests, the esthetic. At first these new interests, an outgrowth of the prudential, seem wasteful and unpractical; but being an outgrowth from them and so involved in them they are sure to enhance the value of the life of prudential interests and become assimilated to what had been the practical. One may come to live in the appreciation of the beautiful and in its creation, and subordinate the prudential to the esthetic system of interests. For such they are the practical. Their value is for such tested, known, understood, and unquestioned. When such a life is however more fully examined it is seen to be nourished by and dependent upon prudential interests. It will likewise come to be seen that the prudential in order to be practically successful must nourish and cultivate the interests in the beautiful.

As one engages in his practical or tested and understood interests still another set of incidental interests is developed, the theoretical or intellectual. Interest in objects as they help us to realize our practical interests is usually generated when we fail in a successful use of them. Our need urges us to examine them and observe how they act upon other things or how they are affected by other things. The results of these observations are the meanings objects have for us. It is often practically important that we become interested in discovering these meanings, and often these new interests hold and preoccupy us, and they even tend to detach themselves from the practical interests out of which they grew. We seem to be interested in the discovery of truth for its own sake. But when the value of gaining and organizing these truths for the prudential interests out of which they grew is seen, we find that we have merely extended the realm of concrete or well-tested values. Should the pursuit of the sciences so thoroughly detach itself that a sense of