Page:W. H. Chamberlin 1919, The Study of Philosophy.djvu/8

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Judd, Psychology, chapters 6, 7, 8, 9. Ames, Psychology of Religious Experience, chapters 16, 17.

Interests, together, of course, with each of their aspects, are growing realities. A child with an interest in plants may for the first time approach a rose to grasp it. In grasping it carelessly as it has been accustomed to grasp flowers, it experiences pain sensations. The awareness of pain sensations is henceforth an element in the meaning or awareness of a new kind of plant, the thorny rose. Correlated with this change and growth of the awareness aspect of a general interest in plants, now become more specific, is a modified manner of action and valueing, greater caution is henceforth exercised in seizing the modified object, the thorny rose.

In the above example the growth of an interest was almost accidental. But very often the growth is a matter of design, proceeding tentatively and through a thought process. The interest in expressing itself in idea or in action proves inadequate or dissatisfying. Along with this feeling of need or dissatisfaction there arise eiforts at reforming, the old interest, now disintegrating or in need of amendment. What the reformed and adequate interest will be is not known or valued. The effort to achieve it is therefore a matter of faith or hope and not of knowledge.

While in this state of putting forth efforts through a faith in the possibility of new values about to be discovered and seized or achieved, other interests from the same mind appear as suggestions. As such suggestions they are tentatively incorporated, mentally or overtly, in the halting interest, and after testing are either repelled as failing to create a satisfactory union, or, if a suggestion issues in a satisfactory result, it is attracted to the interest struggling to live on successfully, and held to it. When, finally, the old interest is modified so as to become adequate in adjusting to the new situation, the new or more specific interest, integrated out of the old and inadequate interest, and a suggestion coming from the same mind, may now live on to manifest itself in ideas and acts again and again in similar situations.

From the nature of a growing interest it may now be seen that each advance made may also be called a process of creation. Each one, according to his faith and eagerness and experience, adopts through his own preference alternative suggestions into the reintegrating interest. The resulting interest is a new reality.