The remark that it is useless to undertake to demonstrate to the young the ultimate utility of natural science studies leads naturally to a distinction between interest in the studies as ultimate ends and as immediate ends. It is suggested in this paragraph that pupils are interested in showing their capacity to accomplish results. It is very evident that one of the teacher’s chief anxieties must be to awaken an interest in the studies as ends, not perhaps in their final utility in life, but as fields in which useful work can be done even in the immediate present. The chief category by which to measure the pupil’s interest in the various activities of the schoolroom is the quality of work that he can be taught to accomplish. One need not go far to learn that children like those studies best in which they can do the best work. This is true in several respects. They are interested in the artistic perfection of what they can accomplish, as in drawing, painting, writing, the arrangement of arithmetical problems, so that the page presents a neat appearance, and so that all the processes are plainly revealed to the eye. They are interested in reading when they can call the words with facility, with neatness, without stumbling, mispronouncing or miscalling--when the tones of the voice are agreeable. The quality of the work, however, which appeals perhaps most powerfully to the children, is that of intellectual comprehension. In the reading class it is a constant delight to discover the finer shades of meaning, to express them with the voice, to detect in others any deviation from the true thought. Reading in English is particularly susceptible to this kind of treatment. For the English language being largely devoid of inflections does not show through the form of the words the finer distinctions of thought, but the mind must perceive these from a text largely devoid of grammatical inflections. It is quite possible, therefore, to read in such a manner as to miss all but the most salient points of the matter presented. There is in reading an intensive and an extensive magnitude. Our older method of teaching reading was to devote the time to a few extracts from literary masterpieces, which were exhausted by minute study. The more recent tendency in elementary education is to neglect this side of reading and to devote the time to the cursory reading, not of extracts, but of whole masterpieces of literature. The danger of such a proceeding is that the finer qualities of reading will be neglected for the sake of quantitative mastery of a large amount of reading matter. A middle course between the two would doubtless bring better results. It would, on the one hand, secure an interest that attaches to masterpieces as wholes, and, on the other, the literary appreciation that comes from minute analysis both in thought and expression of the finer distinctions of thought.