pedagogic breast. I should indeed be glad if this passing word from me
might tend to dispel such a bad conscience, if any of you have it; for
it is certainly one of those fruits of more or less systematic
mystification of which I have already complained. The best teacher may
be the poorest contributor of child-study material, and the best
contributor may be the poorest teacher. No fact is more palpable than
this.

So much for what seems the most reasonable general attitude of the
teacher toward the subject which is to occupy our attention.




II. THE STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS


I said a few minutes ago that the most general elements and workings of
the mind are all that the teacher absolutely needs to be acquainted with
for his purposes.

Now the _immediate_ fact which psychology, the science of mind, has to
study is also the most general fact. It is the fact that in each of us,
when awake (and often when asleep), _some kind of consciousness is
always going on_. There is a stream, a succession of states, or waves,
or fields (or of whatever you please to call them), of knowledge, of
feeling, of desire, of deliberation, etc., that constantly pass and
repass, and that constitute our inner life. The existence of this stream
is the primal fact, the nature and origin of it form the essential
problem, of our science. So far as we class the states or fields of