106 A. T. SCHOFIELD, ESQ., M.D., ON 
without happiness lowers the whole psychical health. The 
awful effects of a miserable infancy and unhappy childhood 
are seen afterwards in the adult, who is hike a plant which 
has been reared without sunshine. Happiness in the family 
IS a sine quad non for a mentally healthy child. 
We do not require to create happiness i in children, but only 
to see that we do not destroy it. ‘The happiness of a child, 
in the first instance, is spontaneous, and is drawn largely 
from within (its own imagination); afterwards from without. 
In childhood the pains it suffers are mainly physical—few 
mental; while its pleasures are both physical and largely 
psychical; therefore, there is a far greater proportion of 
pleasure than pain in young as compared with adult life, 
where psychic pain forms the greater part. The balance of 
increasing pain seems to turn atter puberty; when the child 
gets sadder, and more thoughtful. 
‘Due care being taken to elicit the benevolent sensibilities, 
it is the happiest children who will be the most sympathetic 
and unselfish.”* 
“How common it is to meet with irritable minds that 
spring up in oppositicn to any calm statement of facts, with 
a sort of instinctive resentment. Such a state of mind may 
often be traced to circumstances of early life that called 
forth the principle of self-defence, long before reason had 
been developed.’f In short, an unhappy childhood. 
Bearing then, in considering our subject, these two great 
pouits in mind, that the object is the foundation of character 
and that the means must in no way interfere with that 
happiness which is the moral health of the child, let us see 
what general principle of unconscious mind education we 
can grasp from the teaching of Herbert Spencer. 
Speaking a the value of unconscious education from 
surroundings, as compared with book instruction, he says :— 
“¢ Not San 2 the enormous value of that spontaneous 
education which goes on in early years, but perceiving that 
a child’s restless observation instead of bemg ignored or 
checked, should be diligently ministered to, and made as 
accurate and complete as possible, parents insist on occu- 
pying its eyes and thoughts with things that are for the time 
being incomprehensible and repugnant. They do not see 
that only when his acquaintance with the objects and pro- 
* Isaac Taylor, Home Education, p. 39. 
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