102 A. T. SCHOFIELD, ESQ., M.D., ON 
Conscious education has been varied in every conceivable 
way. There has been reading with tears, and reading with- 
out tears, nursery rule, drawing-room rule, schoolroom rule, 
but every fad and every variety has followed the same 
mistaken principle, namely: all education, all training 
worthy of the name, must address itself to the child’s con- 
sciousness, 7.¢., the conscious mind. And this is the tap root 
error of every such system. 
Here the practical man intervenes with the pertinent 
question, “If this generally adopted system is so bad, so 
vicious and so pernicious, how is it we get as its result good 
children, good men,and good women with well developed 
and well balanced minds?” 
At first sight this question seems conclusive in favour of 
the value and sufficiency, for al! practical purposes, of con- 
scious education. 
But the true answer is that whether the parent likes 
it or no, whether the parent knows it or not, whether 
the parent helps it, hinders it, or ignores it, the ‘education 
of the unconscious is ever going on; aye, and going on 
faster far than that of the conscious; and whatever the 
child subsequently turns out to be, will be far rather due to 
this than to all the direct efforts made by the parent. 
All around the child lie countless forces, unnoticed and 
unknown by the parent, while within the child lies a vast. 
receptive capacity, unknown to the parent, and still largely 
ignored by these psychologists who should be his teachers— 
the unconscious mind: and it is to the action of these un- 
noticed forces upon the ignored mind that the child’s real 
early education and character is mainly due. And this 
proceeds through life, and indeed, is dimly perceived sooner 
or later by parents. Take, for instance, the value of a 
public school education. Does not every parent who has a 
son at Eton or Harrow well know that the greatest value 
to the boy is the unconscious education he receives, and not 
the lessons addressed to his conscious mind ? 
Here is the reason, then, why an untrained child, that is 
one whose conscious training has been neglected, grows up 
often so well. This has been a standing puzzle | for ages. 
One parent adopts all the paraphernalia placed at her 
disposal for the artificial fashioning of her child’s mind; 
the other lets the child run absolutely wild; and the 
result 1s often to make the former doubt the wisdom of her 
methods. 
