We may call the phase of
objective foresight intellectual, and the phase of personal
concern emotional and volitional, but there is no separation in
the facts of the situation.
Such a separation could exist only if the personal attitudes ran
their course in a world by themselves. But they are always
responses to what is going on in the situation of which they are
a part, and their successful or unsuccessful expression depends
upon their interaction with other changes. Life activities
flourish and fail only in connection with changes of the
environment. They are literally bound up with these changes; our
desires, emotions, and affections are but various ways in which
our doings are tied up with the doings of things and persons
about us. Instead of marking a purely personal or subjective
realm, separated from the objective and impersonal, they indicate
the non-existence of such a separate world. They afford
convincing evidence that changes in things are not alien to the
activities of a self, and that the career and welfare of the self
are bound up with the movement of persons and things. Interest,
concern, mean that self and world are engaged with each other in
a developing situation.
The word interest, in its ordinary usage, expresses (i) the whole
state of active development, (ii) the objective results that are
foreseen and wanted, and (iii) the personal emotional
inclination.
(I) An occupation, employment, pursuit, business is often
referred to as an interest.
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