INTEREST AND EFFORT
from the thought of the end, would be matters of total indifference, or even repellent. From this side, then, the development of indirect interests is simply a sign of the growth or expansion of simple activities into more complex ones, requiring longer and longer periods of time for their execution, and consequently involving postponement of achieving the end which gives decisive meaning and full worth to the intervening steps.
Not only, however, does the direct interest in an object pass thus gradually and naturally into indirect interest as the scope of action is prolonged, but the reverse process takes place. Indirect values become direct. Everybody has heard of the man who at first is interested in an acquisition of money because of what he can do with it and who finally becomes so absorbed in the mere possessing of gold that he gloats over it. This clearly expresses an undesirable instance of the change of means into end. But normal and desirable changes of the same kind are frequent. Pupils who are first interested in, say, number relations, because of what they can do
