INTEREST AND CHARACTER.--Finally, we are not to forget that bad interests have the same propulsive power as good ones, and will lead to acts just as surely. And these acts will just as readily be formed into habits. It is worth noticing that back of the act lies an interest; in the act lies the seed of a habit; ahead of the act lies behavior, which grows into conduct, this into character, and character into destiny. Bad interests should be shunned and discouraged. But even that is not enough. Good interests must be installed in the place of the bad ones from which we wish to escape, for it is through substitution rather than suppression that we are able to break from the bad and adhere to the good. Our interests are an evolution. Out of the simple interests of the child grow the more complex interests of the man. Lacking the opportunity to develop the interests of childhood, the man will come somewhat short of the full interests of manhood. The great thing, then, in educating a child is to discover the fundamental interests which come to him from the race and, using these as a starting point, direct them into constantly broadening and more serviceable ones. Out of the early interest in play is to come the later interest in work; out of the early interest in collecting treasure boxes full of worthless trinkets and old scraps comes the later interest in earning and retaining ownership of property; out of the interest in chums and playmates come the larger social interests; out of interest in nature comes the interest of the naturalist. And so one by one we may examine the interests which bear the largest fruit in our adult life, and we find that they all have their roots in some early interest of childhood, which was encouraged and given a chance to grow. 6. ORDER OF DEVELOPMENT OF OUR INTERESTS The order in which our interests develop thus becomes an important question in our education. Nor is the order an arbitrary one, as might appear on first thought; for interest follows the invariable law of attaching to the activity for which the organism is at that time ready, and which it then needs in its further growth. That we are sometimes interested in harmful things does not disprove this assertion. The interest in its fundamental aspect is good, and but needs more healthful environment or more wise direction. While space forbids a full discussion of the genetic phase of interest here, yet we may profit by a brief statement of the fundamental interests of certain well-marked periods in our development.