"I can't get interested in Mediaeval History." This illustrates a kind of complaint frequently made by college students. It is our purpose in this chapter to show the fallacy of this; to prove that interest may be developed in an "uninteresting" subject; and to show how. In order to lay a firm foundation for our psychologizing, let us examine into the nature of interest and see what it really is. It has been defined as: "the recognition of a thing which has been vitally connected with experience before--a thing recognized as old"; "impulse to attend"; "interest naturally arouses tendencies to act"; "the root idea of the term seems to be that of being engaged, engrossed, or entirely taken up with some activity because of its recognized worth"; "interest marks the annihilation of the distance between the person and the materials and results of his action; it is the sign of their organic union." In addition to the characteristics just mentioned should be noted the pleasurableness that usually attends any activity in which we are "interested." A growing feeling of pleasure is the sign which notifies us that we are growing interested in a subject. And it is such an aid in the performance of work that we should seek earnestly to acquire it in connection with any work we have to do. The persons who make the complaint at the head of this chapter notice that they take interest easily in certain things: a Jack London story, a dish of ice cream, a foot-ball game. And they take interest in them so spontaneously and effortlessly that they think these interests must be born within them. When we examine carefully the interests of man, and trace their sources, we see that the above view is fallacious. We acquire most of our interests in the course of our experience. Professor James asserts: "An adult man's interests are almost every one of them intensely artificial; they have been slowly built up. The objects of professional interest are most of them in their original nature, repulsive; but by their connection with such natively exciting objects as one's personal fortune, one's social responsibilities and especially by the force of inveterate habit, they grow to be the only things for which in middle life a man profoundly cares." Since interests are largely products of experience, then, it follows that if we wish to have an interest in a given subject, we must consciously and purposefully develop it. There is wide choice open to us. We may develop interest in early Victorian literature, prize-fight promoting, social theory, lignitic rocks, history of Siam, the collection of scarabs, mediaeval history.