THE PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION. 115 
Discussion. 
The PReEsIDENT. 
your applause, to the author for his paper on this subject. I will 
You have already expressed your thanks, by 
now invite remarks or questions from any of the audience. 
The Rev. A. K. Cuerritt, M.A.—I am donbly interested in the 
subject of this paper—both as a parent and as a schoolmaster ; 
and in both capacities I desire to thank Dr. Schofield for calling 
attention in so interesting a manner to an aspect of the question, 
which, as he very justly says, is too often neglected; and as a 
schoolmaster I specially thank him for his paper; for I conclude, 
from the position which he holds as Chairman of the Executive 
Parents’ Educational Union, he may be regarded as an authority 
on the subject of education from the parents’ point of view, 
and it is most useful for a schoolmaster to know this. But 
on a subject of such difficulty, in which terms of somewhat 
doubtful significance have to be used—‘“terms,” as we are 
told—“ from which many English psychologists still shrink,” 
though they are obliged in some way or other to accept them, I 
should have been glad if we could have had a more precise 
definition of what we are to understand by the ‘‘ education of the 
unconscious.”” We are told there are unconscious psychic powers 
and that those powers can be educated, and Dr. Carpenter is 
quoted in illustration. ‘There are two sorts of influaence—that 
which is active and voluntary, and that which is unconscious and 
flows from us unawares to ourselves.” But surely this influence 
or power which flows from us is not the psychic power which is 
being educated in a child, but the power is the teacher’s who 
educates. 
It would be very interesting and instructive to trace and 
illustrate the effect of this unconscious influence in education. 
Yet from the point of view of a practical educator, there does not 
seem to be very much to be said about it; for as the influence is, 
by hypothesis, unconscious, if cannot be consciously used, and 
therefore the teacher cannot be taught how to use it. But 
undoubtedly there is an unconscious mind in a child which can 
be educated and the child receives very much valuable education 
of which he himself is more or less unconscious. I think, 
ar 
